Mamal Poladia

Engineering Leader | Netflix, Meta

How to Manage Up With AI

Spot the moment you sent context instead of clarity

Diagnose what's buried in a message before you send it

Turn a vague question into a recommendation with a cost

Practice writing a real message by naming tradeoffs

Pressure-test the draft before your manager reads it

Use AI to test whether your judgment is visible

The timeless principles of management, powered by AI.

Executive Coach to Systematic Leaders

NVIDIA

Uber

Apple

Zoom

Amazon

Dave Kline

Founder of MGMT Accelerator (prev: Bridgewater, Moody's, PwC)



Entrepreneur, Leader, Coach, Mom

Google

Oracle

Salesforce

The Boeing Company

Tesla

Marsden Kline

Founder of MGMT Accelerator (prev: Google, Goldman Sachs, Compass)

Cohort 6

Cohort 7

60% of new managers fail in their first 18 months. It doesn't have to be you.That number isn't an opinion. It's McKinsey. Gartner. Korn Ferry. Harvard. They keep running the study. The number keeps coming back the same.Why? Because only 15% of new managers ever get any training before they're handed a team. Your company took a great individual contributor, gave them a new title, and assumed you'd figure it out. They asked you to learn by trial and error. Usually your error. Usually at the team's expense.And now you're being asked to do all of that and figure out where AI fits before your competitors do.That's the trap. Most "AI for managers" content treats AI like a shortcut around the fundamentals. It isn't. AI without judgment just produces wrong answers faster. The leaders who will own the next decade are the ones who master the fundamentals first, then use AI to build on top of them faster.That's what we teach.

AI won't make a bad manager good. But it can make a good manager great.

1. Manage Yourself — because you can't lead what you can't see in yourself

2. Manage Potential — because your job is to grow people, not tasks

3. Manage Performance — because the bar only matters if you hold it

4. Manage Conflict — because the team that can't fight productively can't ship

5. Manage Output — because effort without results is a hobby

6. Manage Up — because your boss is your biggest source of cover or chaos

If you're managing managers, this is not for you. Look at MGMT Accelerator instead.

This is NOT a Fortune 500 VP course

If you're already running Claude Code and want to talk agents and tool use, this isn't it. We teach AI as a multiplier, not a replacement.

This is NOT for AI-native engineers

The students who win here chose to be here. If your manager is making you take it, save your seat for next cohort and come back when ready.

This is NOT for anyone whose company is forcing them in

New managers (0–3 years in) who've started to suspect "winging it" isn't a strategy and want a system they can run on Monday morning

Operators at 50–500-person companies with no in-house L&amp;D — nobody is going to train you but you, and we're here to help

Curious, self-aware leaders who want to get ahead of the AI curve without becoming dependent on the tools or losing their judgment

Use AI to make you irreplaceable. Build a system that works every time with prompts, skills, playbooks, and more.

Chief Product Officer, Executive Coach

McKinsey & Company

Instagram

Thumbtack

Harvard University

Yue Zhao

Chief Product & Technology Officer, Executive Coach, Writer

Jun26

Sept26

★★★★½ from students at Google, Anthropic, Stripe, Amazon, OpenAI, Twilio, Fidelity, and more. Want a sneak peek? Try a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://practice.theuncommonexecutive.com/">free AI exercise</a> that helps you with non-verbal presence from the course: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://practice.theuncommonexecutive.com/">https://practice.theuncommonexecutive.com/</a> _______<h4>You're a high performer. So why aren't you being treated like one?</h4>You deliver results. You get strong reviews. But in the meetings that matter, with the executives who matter, you're talked over, passed over, or simply not in the room.This is not about doing more work. It's how you show up.This course teaches you to use AI as a strategic partner who knows your stakeholders, your communication gaps, and your political landscape, and helps you navigate all of it.You'll learn the frameworks that experienced leaders use to command rooms, land ideas, and build the relationships that drive decisions. Then you'll build those frameworks directly into your AI so the next time you prep for a high-stakes meeting, draft an executive update, or map a tricky stakeholder, you have a prepared strategic partner already on your side.No coding. No intimidating connectors or API calls. Simple prompts and playbooks for your AI that transform how you show up.

Get heard. Get credited. Get promoted. With AI as your secret weapon.

Show up differently in every room you walk into

Say more with less

Walk into any high-stakes conversation fully prepped

Build the relationships that actually drive decisions

Become someone executives trust and sponsor

You're a Senior Manager, Director, or Principal IC at a tech company with 4+ years of experience

You do great work but aren't getting the recognition or promotion. You feel talked over in meetings or passed over for key opportunities.

You want AI to help you think and navigate, to be your strategic partners and secret weapon in corporate politics.

Managers & senior ICs use AI daily, yet it hasn't made them better leaders. 

 Teach AI at HBS, Brown,Cornell,Columbia

Mike Grandinetti

AI Practitioner, 8X Founder,HBS AI Institute, Exec Ed Cornell Columbia Brown NYU

Cohort 1

The news on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://lnkd.in/g2hvderi">https://lnkd.in/g2hvderi</a> is depressing. Layoffs are a constant threat, even with a good performance review. The job market is frozen. How do you operate like a leader before someone gives you the title? Output might help you keep your job. Preparation gets you promoted. At risk if unsolved: the next promotion. The reliable operator who is perpetually“not quite ready” every cycle — while a systematically prepared peer becomes the obvious choice.Already tried: prompt collections, AI-tips newsletters, tool subscriptions. Didn't work because no recurring trigger. The habit never survived the 3rd Monday.Managers &amp; senior ICs who already use AI daily are discovering it hasn't changed how they lead: AI usage is now table stakes, so the career edge has moved to whoever runs a system.In one hands-on half-day, participate build a personal AI Leadership Operating System on your own real week — a context file, three engines, and a 30-minute Monday ritual that leaves as a scheduled habit, not notes. Unlike videos or prompt libraries, every participant builds on their real material and gets live feedback until it works — and the ritual is on their calendar before the room closes.

How to use Claude, ChatGPT, etc to create your own complete Personal Leadership Operating System on your own real work week in real time.  

•	Build and deploy a one-page personal context file 

•	Run the 1:1 Prep Engine on your own real calendar 

•	Define your 3 standing risk categories 

•	Extract every commitment from a week of meeting notes — owed and owed-to

•	Run the complete 30-minute Monday ritual from a recurring calendar block they 

Leave with SIX  key, actionable artifacts turn the lesson into a  weekly habit, 

We will be using a chatbot to build your personal operating system in real time. 

Basic familiarity with a Frontier chatbot. 

The free version of these tools will not enable you to get the full results

A subscription to Anthropic, Claude, ChatGPT, or Google Gemini 

You'll use these meetings as inputs to run your OS

Create a prioritized list of the most important meetings w/o  27 July

Titles: Manager/Sr Manager/Director (engineering, product, ops, marketing, finance) , senior ICs on mgmt track -staff+, senior PM, principal

• Experience: 6–15 years; owns a calendar of 10+ meetings a week and outcomes delivered through other people.

• Company: growth-stage and mid-market (50–5,000 employees), where roles are broad and preparation is visible.

Practice the three skills that make senior people listen: a sharp narrative, command of the room, and composure under pressure.

AI Founder | Google AI Accelerator Alum

OpenAI

Amazon Web Services

Dr. Aki Wijesundara

AI Founder | Educator | Google AI Accelerator Alum

Exited AI Founder | Co-Founder, Snapdrum

Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Manu Jayawardana

AI Advisor | Co-Founder & CEO at Krybe | Co-Founder of Snapdrum

Cohort 4

Cohort 3

FEW SEATS LEFT. USE CODE LASTCALLEXEC80 FOR 80% OFFYou do excellent work. But in the rooms that decide budgets, headcount, and promotions, the person who explains the work clearly gets the credit, and too often that isn't you.In one focused 3-hour session you'll fix that. You'll build a repeatable way to walk into any room, say what matters in 60 seconds, and move senior people who don't report to you. No personality transplant required.<ul><li>Build a 60-second narrative from your own project using SCQA and BLUF</li><li>Command the room on camera, coached from your own recorded reps</li><li>Frame an ask around a senior stakeholder's goals and risk, not your roadmap</li><li>Hold your ground through live pushback using bridging and labeling</li></ul>Every block ends with a rep you've actually done and feedback on it, not theory. This is taught by operators who sit in these rooms every week, not communication coaches who've never owned a roadmap.Your work is already good enough. This is about making sure the right people know it.

Get heard in the rooms where your career is decided. No title change required.

Build a 60-second narrative from real work with SCQA and BLUF

Command the room in exec and cross-functional meetings 

Influence senior stakeholders without org authority

Hold composure through live pushback and hard questions

Bring a real meeting, review, or pitch you're walking into, so every rep is built on your own work.

An upcoming high-stakes conversation

Short recorded reps are where presence improves. Come ready to record and watch yourself back.

Willingness to be on camera 

No public-speaking or media background needed. This is built for practitioners, not performers.

No prior training required

The Senior IC. Does the deepest work in the room but watches less technical peers get the visibility, the airtime, and the promotion.

The Operator. Sits in every meeting that matters and needs every word to land with founders, execs, and the board.

For tech-curious professionals who want to use AI tools to turn ideas into compelling visuals and stand out with modern, creative workflows.

Agentic AI

Coding with AI

AI Workflows

Claude Code

OpenClaw

Vibe Coding

AI Evals

AI Transformation

RAG & Search

AI for PMs

AI for Engineers

AI for Designers

AI for Marketers

AI for Founders

Product Sense

Product Discovery

User Research

Prototyping

Growth

Analytics

Tech Foundations

Strategy

Influence

Leadership

Career Growth

Machine Learning

LLM Ops

Context Eng

Security

System Design

Figma

Design Systems

Visual Design

Design Strategy

Automation

Content Marketing

Demand Gen

Go-to-Market

Product Marketing

Positioning

Social Media

Brand

B2B Marketing

SEO & AEO

AI for Leaders

AI Governance

Communication

Management

People Operations

Exec Presence

Storytelling

Goal-setting

Personal Brand

Fundraising

Everyone

Operators

Data Scientists

Business Analysts

User Researchers

Customer Success

Project Managers

HR Professionals

Sales People

Lawyers

Finance

Investors

Real Estate

Educators

Creators

Broad professional audience — content relevant across many roles and functions.

Applying AI tools and techniques to professional workflows — assign alongside more specific AI topics.

Executive communication — presenting to boards, writing memos, running all-hands, and high-stakes messaging.

Persuading stakeholders, presenting ideas, and getting buy-in across an organization without formal authority.

Automating professional workflows with AI tools — productivity, operations, and task automation.