Fredy Diaz

Lead AI Without Getting Lost in the Hype

Data & AI Leader at a Federal agency, experienced board member, mentor, Marine

Learn how to translate your organization’s AI ambitions into measurable outcomes that matter to executives and boards.

Define Clear AI Goals

Understand where AI should and shouldn’t be used, identifying governance, ethics, and operational risks early

Spot Risks & Guardrails Early

Discover how to quickly identify feasible, high-value AI initiatives that can deliver early wins and momentum.

Prioritize High-Impact Projects

“We're going to get to AI systems that are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks... That's the thing I think we're quite likely to get in the next two or three years." - Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic), January 2025. However… ”Only 8% of employees reported they feel GenAI is already transforming their organisation.” - Deloitte -&nbsp;State of Generative AI in the Enterprise report, Q4 2024. Quite frankly, the gap between AI advancement and AI adoption that those two stats speak to is just too large. It’s no longer just a gap. It’s a chasm. And add to that… “In organisations where AI is openly embraced, the chance of developing 'AI Experts' and 'AI Practitioners' is halved when direct managers discourage its use, either directly or indirectly.” - Section School - The AI Proficiency Report, January 2025. Merging those three storylines and you get a headline that says that senior leadership is the bridge that connects AI aspirations to organisational reality, and ultimately the trajectory of its integration at every level. In other words; true organisation-wide AI adoption doesn’t begin with technology or tools. It begins with leadership. AI literate and AI skilled senior leadership. And that, in a nutshell is what this course is designed to achieve. To take you (a senior leader) and the rest of your exec team from AI novicehood to AI literacy in four weeks. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past 2 years with companies, through my consultancy, Ten Past Tomorrow. In doing so, I’ve seen first-hand what happens when those three quotes above play out. Without full commitment to AI from an AI-literate executive leadership team, AI adoption is hamstrung to the point of failure, without exception. This is a "zero-to-one" course. It's designed to take senior leadership teams from a cold start, to AI competence. Even if you've never used an AI tool, in four weeks you and your fellow senior leaders will get a world-class grounding in essential, foundational AI prompting skills, and also develop your competence to understand how AI will affect your company and industry from a strategic viewpoint. You and your executive team colleagues may still consider yourselves AI-novices. Or perhaps you feel you have 'some AI knowledge' but your company has stalled after taking your first experimental steps with AI and don't know what the path looks like from here? Or maybe you've mastered AI for yourself and your own role, know first-hand the power it has to radically ramp up efficiency and productivity, but are stuck as to how to create an AI roadmap to distribute that same knowledge across your workforce? If any of the above resonates with you and your fellow senior leaders in your exec team, this course is for you.&nbsp;&nbsp;Instead of reacting to AI disruption, you’ll soon be leading it... unlocking productivity gains, driving innovation, and making AI a competitive advantage for your company.

Close the AI capability gap: Exec-level training for senior leadership teams

Course syllabus

Each week you'll complete 2 x 1 hour blocks of self-directed learning, using a mixture of video and text-based course material. Compact learning design, for busy senior leaders.

Self-directed learning

Each week for the 4 weeks of the course, we'll gather live on Zoom (times listed below) as a cohort for discussions, activities and interactive thought experiments. New Zealand Time, Fridays, 9 - 10.30am US Time, Thursdays...5 - 6.30pm (EDT)4 - 5.30pm (CDT)2 - 3.30pm (PDT)

Live session days/times

While not designed to be taxing, short tests are included as part of your self-directed learning blocks each week. These are built with the objective of helping you to apply the principles you're learning to your own business and senior leadership practices.

Weekly projects

Course schedule

Senior leadership teams wanting to collectively, confidently, knowledgeably, skilfully and ethically lead an AI-forward company.

SLT teams who sense AI is far more than a technical challenge, that it demands leaders step forward to lead comprehensive strategic change.

Leadership teams excited by making a genuine commitment to fundamentally reshape their people, processes and businesses.

Who is this course for?

What you’ll get out of this course

By the end of this course, you'll understand what the five strategic steps to AI adoption are and how to apply them. You'll leave with a clear roadmap to make your business AI-forward, as a leadership team that drives efficiency, innovation, and long-term competitive advantage.

Understand the 5 (tested and proven) strategic steps to build an AI-forward business.

You'll master AI prompting. Well enough in fact that you'll apply those skills to use your favourite LLM as your own personal strategic executive assistant. Then take those skills away to drive radical productivity in your own work tasks, and guide your employees toward the same.

Become a highly skilled AI prompt writer and use those skills to build your own personal "AI strategic thought partner"

Still wondering if you're ahead, on-track or behind your competition with AI deployment? Assess your company’s AI maturity using a structured matrix framework across 10 key AI KPIs. Benchmark progress, spot gaps, and confidently communicate AI readiness to your stakeholders.

Deploy a framework-led diagnosis of whether your company is behind, on-track or ahead with AI, in relation to 10 key AI KPIs.

Your leadership team will move from AI uncertainty to confidence. Gain the strategic and practical AI skills needed to drive adoption at scale, making your organisation AI-forward. Leave with the knowledge to lead AI initiatives, boost efficiency, and stay ahead in your industry.

Become an AI literate senior leadership team that collectively has the understanding and skillset to create an 'AI Emergent' organisation.

The hands-on skills to prompt off-the-shelf AI tools (like ChatGPT) so you can drive radical productivity and efficiency in your own role, and for your employees.

AI efficiency and productivity

Understand what state of the art generative AI can do right now, what developments are likely coming in 12-18 months from the major AI labs, and how to map them across your strategic plan to ascertain where AI represents strategic opportunities and threats to your business model.

Strategic clarity

Learn the major components needed to construct a clear AI roadmap for integrating AI into your business, using a proven five-step framework. This is the roadmap to build an AI-forward organisation.

What does an AI roadmap look like?

Note: The course price given on this page is not per person. It is one single payment, which enrols your entire executive leadership team together as one.

One price for your entire senior leadership team

Arming senior leadership teams with the AI literacy, practical skills and strategic acumen needed to guide their companies into the AI era.

Mark Laurence

Ten Past Tomorrow founder • Generative AI cognoscente • Futurist

A.Icehouse Cohort

February 2026 Cohort

In the last 12 months, AI has shifted from a "tech trend" to a market-decimating force. The old playbook of simply "shipping features" is dead; leaders must now build "Contextual Moats" and defensible strategies. This course bridges the gap between Executive Leadership and AI Strategy. We take the rigor of the #1 Ranked Advanced Product Management curriculum and infuse it with the frameworks needed to win in the age of AI. What You'll Get Out of This Course 1. Define Strategic Leverage (Not Just Features) Stop searching for problems to solve with AI. Start with customer problems and identify where AI creates breakthrough leverage. Master the 4 Sources of AI Leverage: Data, Distribution, Trust in UX, and Learning Loops. Learn to build "Contextual Moats" that endure when the underlying models become commodities. 2. Shift from "Roadmaps" to "Planning in Motion" Traditional planning assumes the environment will cooperate long enough to execute. In AI, that assumption breaks. Learn to build a "Sensing Function"—a structured review of model performance and competitor moves. Move from a unit mindset to a systems mindset, creating roadmaps that adapt to new information without descending into chaos. 3. Architect the Human + Agent Workforce Output can now rise through leverage, not just headcount. This isn't about replacing people; it's about changing the mix of work. Learn to design the "Baton Pass": deciding where tasks are repeatable (Agents lead) and where judgment and novelty matter most (Humans lead). Structure your org to scale impact without scaling headcount at the same rate. 4. Master AI Economics &amp; The "Trust" Metric Powerful models cannot compensate for a weak core value proposition. You will master the new P&amp;L: forecasting inference costs that scale linearly and managing the "Cost vs. Quality" trade-off. You will also learn to measure Trust in UX as a first-class metric, setting tolerances for error and building affordances for user control.

Lead the AI Transformation. Don't just witness it

You'll have 5 hours of class split into two 2.5-hour modules. Each module consists of 60% lecture-style learning and 40% hands-on group exercises. Don't worry about missing a class—you can make up missed classes in a future cohort, and you'll receive the recordings right away.

Saturdays

The capstone project allows you to go through the end-to-end lifecycle of developing a major feature for a consumer company like Facebook, Google Maps, or Amazon, and present it in a product review meeting to the VP of Product at Shopify.

Weekly Capstone Projects (Optional)

We will spend about 20 hours on the core course material plus about 6 hours on Q&amp;A. Timings for each session have been chosen based on what works best for most product people in practice. Recordings for all modules will be made available for you to watch in your Maven account.

Optimized for very busy schedules of PMs / Execs / Managers.

Ambitious Senior PMs, GPMs, &amp; VP Level Leaders: Leaders who are responsible for product success and need to crystallize their skills to lead

Founders &amp; Executives: Those who realize that "be first to market" is no longer enough and need a strategy that provides a durable advantage

Note: This course is not for early-career PMs or those looking for a basic introduction to prompt engineering. This is a strategy and leader

Who is this course for

Understand the non-obvious factors that lead to AI product success and how to think strategically when every competitor has access to the same APIs.

Master the AI Leader's Mindset
 

Learn to recognize when your data is a true moat versus when it isn't, and develop specific strategies to build durable competitive advantages that go beyond fragile tech differentiation.

Build Defensible "Contextual Moats"

Implement a proven system to take AI features from Discovery to Design, Develop, and Deploy—ensuring you ship real solutions, not just demos.

Execute with the 4D AI Method

Master the art of forecasting inference costs that scale linearly with usage and optimize the "Cost vs. Quality" trade-off to ensure profitability, not just hype.

Navigate AI Economics & Unit Economics

Build high-conviction roadmaps for high-risk, high-reward AI bets that account for uncertainty and rapid technological change.

Develop Strategic AI Roadmaps

Communicate complex AI product proposals with clarity and precision to secure executive support and cross-functional excitement.

Drive Strategic Alignment & Stakeholder Buy-In

Structure your AI initiatives for scale from day one by defining metrics that matter in a probabilistic world and avoiding the trap of endless experimentation.

Escape "Pilot Purgatory"

Align engineering, design, and data science teams on a unified vision and learn to lead effectively in an AI-first organization.

Lead Cross-Functional AI Teams

Gain insights from guest speakers including Joff Redfern (Ex-CPO Atlassian), Amit Fulay (Generative AI Leader), and Surojit Chatterjee (Ex-CPO Coinbase).

Learn from Elite Product Leaders

Complete a hands-on capstone where you develop and present the end-to-end lifecycle of a major AI feature for a consumer company, applying everything you've learned in a product review format.

Ship a Real AI Product Strategy

In the AI age, nothing matters more than Strategic Leverage. Architect it. Scale it. Master it. Win.

Satyajeet Salgar

Director of Product, Google AI

Joff Redfern

Frm. CPO at Atlassian and VP of Product  Linkedin

Amit Fulay

Vice President of Product, Uber

Cohort 4

Cohort 5

Walk away with a working AI experiment built on your own business problem — and the skills to become the go-to AI leader in your org.

Chief AI Officer

Lauren Vriens

Chief AI Officer, F500 Advisor | Drove $300M in value with AI

Cohort 2

Cohort 3

Your team needs direction. Leadership wants more with less. The AI stack changes weekly.When you're non-technical without time to get technical, this becomes an insane challenge—one I had to solve myself.At Accenture, I went from non-technical leader to securing $2M in AI funding that generated $300M in value. I helped build AI strategies driving productivity for 14,000+ consultants. Now I advise tech startups and Fortune 1000 companies on becoming AI-native.You need time and space to learn by doing. I'll show you how to pick the right AI problems (ones that get you kudos) and we'll build solutions together, live.You'll get frameworks and cheat sheets to repeat this and teach your team.Walk away with a working AI experiment plus the skills to become your org's go-to AI leader.This isn't "AI 101"—it's applied enterprise learning for leaders who want to stay ahead, not catch up.Unlike broad courses covering just definitions, this hands-on cohort has you pick use cases, calculate ROI, choose tech stacks, and automate your own workload.

Expectations have never been higher...

Identify AI Opportunities That Drive Business Results

Make Strategic Build vs. Buy vs. Vibe Code Decisions

Build Functional AI Prototypes Without Technical Skills

Steal My AI Prompts That Generate Quality Outputs

Implement AI Projects That Don't Fail (or Get Forgotten)

Team leads, directors, and department heads who have been "volun-told" to implement AI and need to show a plan, quickly.

AI consultants who need structured frameworks to help clients decide on AI use cases, execution, and ROI.

Execs, founders, and business owners who need to set the AI strategy for their org and can't afford to make costly mistakes

The Leadership Crisis No One Talks AboutIt's 2:47 AM and you're staring at the retention dashboard. Again. Your "AI-enhanced" feature launched to fanfare three months ago... great press, executive excitement, promising initial adoption. Now you're watching 73% of users abandon it after the first session. Tomorrow's executive product meeting is focused on exactly this: the design problem causing the retention cliff. You need to present research findings and lead a strategy discussion that could reshape your entire approach to AI. This isn't just about fixing a feature, it's about defining what AI design leadership looks like. Why This Moment MattersYour credibility was built on predictable delivery. For years, you shipped experiences that worked consistently. Now you're pioneering something entirely new, and that positions you to lead the industry standard. The paradigm has fundamentally shifted: Traditional UX Design:- Deterministic systems with predictable, consistent experiences- One-way interaction where users experience a fixed interface- Success measured by users completing intended paths AI Systems:- Non-deterministic learning systems where every interaction changes future behaviour- Bi-directional adaptation where both human and AI evolve through each encounter- Success measured by the quality of the evolving relationship﻿ 54% of people don't trust AI systems despite 61% of respondents using them daily. (University of Melbourne and KPMG, 2025) That retention cliff isn't a failure; it's feedback. Users sense the mismatch between predictable tools and learning entities. You're uniquely positioned to solve what no one else has figured out yet. The OpportunityThe leaders who master relationship design first won't just solve their retention problems; they'll become the case study everyone else studies.This is your chance to define what trustworthy AI design looks like, rather than follow standards someone else sets. A Leadership Transformation in Three MovementsThis intensive journey rebuilds your leadership approach for the relationship design era: 1. Leading Through UncertaintyHow to guide teams building systems that learn and adaptCommunicating AI value to executives without overpromisingMaking decisions about technologies you're still mastering 2. Building Trust-First TeamsEstablishing design processes for non-deterministic systemsCreating quality standards for evolving AI relationshipsDeveloping team capabilities in trust signal design 3. Scaling Relationship DesignImplementing frameworks that work across your entire organisationMeasuring success in dynamic, learning systemsBuilding competitive advantage through trustworthy AI ﻿For Design Leaders Under PressureDesigned for leaders who must deliver AI transformation while maintaining team confidence and executive credibility—who recognise that relationship design isn't just a new methodology, it's the fundamental shift that determines whether your organisation leads or follows. Whether you're currently:A UX Design Leader orchestrating team transformationA UX Research Leader scaling insights through AIA Strategic Design Leader defining AI-enhanced experiencesWhat unites our participants is their recognition that leading AI adoption requires something more nuanced than traditional management approaches. The Essential Leadership Outcomes You emerge with:Frameworks to guide teams building learning systems you can't fully predictLanguage to communicate AI value without technical BS to executivesProcesses that maintain quality while embracing non-deterministic outputsMetrics that prove relationship design delivers measurable business impactA network of leaders defining the standards everyone else will follow Most importantly, you join a community of leaders pioneering this emerging discipline; professionals who understand that the most valuable AI systems won't be those with impressive technical specifications, but those designed with profound understanding of human trust dynamics. A Limited ExperienceLimited to fifteen participants per cohortFocused on meaningful exchange and personal attentionA deliberate practice developed through engagement with fellow leaders "The leaders who recognise this shift first won't just survive the transition—they'll define what relationship design looks like for everyone else." ** This course can you considered as an Add-On to the Human-Centred AI : Building AI Systems People can Trust. https://maven.com/ai-flywheel/human-centred-ai

Lead with Trustworthy AI: Design, Innovate & Inspire

Weekly LIve Ethics Lesson 90 minute sessions where we unpack 1 ethical principle in depth and have peer to peer conversation.

Thursdays - Live Workshops

You'll be given<ul><li>&lt; 60 min of e-learning modules per week</li><li>practical exercises</li><li>micro-habits to apply learnings directly to your AI use in your daily work</li></ul>

Self paced learning 

You have access to BONUS lessons to build your personal AI literacy - this optional session is a group coaching opportunity for any questions or challenges you have using AI for your own work.

Optional - AI Help Office Hours

UX &amp; Design Directors : Balancing executive AI demands with your team's creative integrity and fear of replacement.

UX Research Leaders : Scaling research with AI whilst preserving methodological rigour and meaningful human insights.

Service Design Leader : Reimagining end-to-end experiences with Human+AI interactions whilst maintaining human agency and trust.

You'll leave being able balance innovation with user trust, giving you confidence to lead AI initiatives that executives support.

1. Strategic AI Roadmap for Design Teams

Master proven design patterns that increase user trust in AI features by 30%. You'll learn exactly where transparency, human oversight, and error correction mechanisms create measurable improvements in adoption and retention.

2. Trust-Building Design Patterns 

Transform your designers from AI-overwhelmed to AI-empowered with frameworks that show exactly where AI enhances rather than threatens creativity. You'll restructure workflows that boost productivity whilst preserving your team's unique human value.

3. Team Transformation to AI-Enhanced Operations

Establish yourself as your organisation's trusted authority on Trustworthy AI design. You'll master the language, metrics and case studies that convince skeptical stakeholders, positioning you as the strategic bridge between technology and human experience.

4. Leadership Positioning Strategy

The live weekly sessions we unpack 1 ethical principle using a real world case study of an AI implementation that went wrong. Having peer-to-peer discussions and practice applying the ethical principle to a new case study. Allowing you to practice applying in safe space.

5. Real-World Implementation of AI Ethical Principles

Design leaders are under pressure -  expected to adopt AI, guide teams through change, protect creativity, and build trust at scale.