The Board's AI Decision-Rights Framework
AI proposals reach the board at the wrong level, trivial ones consuming time and material ones slipping through: agree one shared map of which AI decisions belong to the board.
Scope. 5-page guide and a decision-map workbook with 15 worked AI examples. Governance toolkit: practitioner-designed, for use in your context.
Management brings the board an AI policy to approve. It is twelve pages, it is thorough, and it answers the wrong question. It tells the board what the technology does. It says nothing about what the board is supposed to decide, what it merely needs to be consulted on, and what should never have reached the agenda at all.
Where the board’s oversight of AI begins and ends
A framework that applies decision-rights discipline to AI, extending the four-category logic of the Decision Rights Clarity Map to the specific decisions AI raises. It gives the board a shared map of where its oversight begins and ends, so AI governance stops being either ignored or over-reached.
If you already use the Decision Rights Clarity Map for your board's general governance, this is its AI-specific extension. If you do not, it works as a standalone tool: the four categories are introduced in full.
Use it by having each director and the CTO or CDO categorise the past year's AI decisions independently, then building the map together in one session.
Four categories, one map
- The four decision categories applied to AI, each with worked AI-specific examples and the board-level question that tests whether a decision has been handled at the right level
- A one-page delegation lens for the board pack
- A facilitation guide for building the map with the board
- The reserved-matters connections to the named-owner and return-to-use decisions from the wider range
- A workbook with the AI decision map (pre-filled with the worked examples), a grey-zone register, and a maintenance record
When AI becomes a standing board concern
Built for the people who set the board’s posture
Written for the Chair setting the board's posture on AI. It also serves committee chairs working out what belongs to them, and the executive, such as the CFO or CTO, who would bring the board a proposal framed the way the board decides.
One answer to the board’s role
The board holds a single, shared answer to what its role is in governing AI. The next AI proposal gets the right level of scrutiny from the right people the first time, and the named-owner and return-to-use decisions sit in the board's schedule of matters reserved.
A practitioner-designed toolkit to be applied in your own context.
The Board's AI Decision-Rights Framework
Catalogue No. 10 · €[PRICE] · Digital delivery