AI Decision Tools and Leadership Playbooks
Free AI decision tools for boards, leaders, and investors: a board question pack, portfolio triage scorecard, technical diligence checklist, and decision memo.
Direct answer
Direct answer: Decision resources
Most AI discussions inside a leadership team stall for the same reason: nobody has written down what is being decided, what evidence exists, and who owns the consequence. These resources are working tools for that conversation. Each one stands on its own and can be used without outside help. If it shows that you need an independent session, a programme, or nothing further at all, that is a useful result.
The question
“We need a practical framework for an internal AI discussion before deciding whether to commission outside help.”
Who it is for
Board members, executive teams, portfolio and operating partners, investment committees, and programme sponsors preparing an internal AI discussion.
Use a resource, then choose the next step
Choose the specific need
Where to start
Board AI Question Pack
What should board members ask about an AI initiative before approving further work?
Output: An ungated question pack organised by ownership, evidence, risk, and investment assumptions.
Decision resourcePortfolio AI Triage Scorecard
How do we decide which portfolio companies need education, validation, implementation, or no intervention yet?
Output: A company triage worksheet with explicit evidence and ownership fields.
Decision resourceAI Board Decision Memo Template
How do we present an AI decision with clear options, uncertainty, ownership, and conditions for revisiting it?
Output: An editable decision memo with assumptions, options, approval conditions, and a review date.
What you leave with
Ungated decision tools that can be copied into a board paper, investment memo, or portfolio review.
- 01 Questions directors can ask verbatim before approving further AI work
- 02 A scorecard for sorting portfolio companies into education, validation, implementation, or no intervention yet
- 03 An evidence-request list for testing an AI company’s technical claims
- 04 A decision memo template with options, assumptions, owners, conditions, and a review date
Evidence
What this draws on
GenAI and Agentic AI Playbooks
21 open chapters in ten languages under Apache 2.0: a business-leader guide to GenAI adoption followed by an engineering and operating guide to agent systems.
Inspect the source ↗AI for Everyday Automation (Packt, 2026)
Seven connected workflows for email, meetings, research, reports, task tracking, spreadsheets, and professional communication, each with people kept in review.
Read more →Regulated banking AI at Aveni
Architected enterprise banking AI with conduct-risk workflows, evidence generation, human review, escalation, evaluation, versioning, and release controls. Part of the Aveni team in the first FCA Supercharged Sandbox cohort; the FCA lists Aveni as an accepted firm, which is not an FCA endorsement or certification.
Inspect the source ↗Scope and limits
What this is not
- —These are general decision tools. They do not replace legal, regulatory, audit, valuation, or investment advice.
- —A completed checklist or scorecard records what was asked and found; it does not certify a system, a company, or a business case.
- —Adapt the questions to your organisation’s own risk, delegation, and governance frameworks.
If the need is different
Common questions
Answers before you commission
Is there a checklist a board can use for AI decisions?+
Yes. The board question pack groups questions by ownership, authority, evidence, failure, investment assumptions, and review. The decision memo template turns the answers into a record the board can approve or return.
How can a portfolio team assess AI readiness across companies?+
Use the portfolio triage scorecard. It scores each company on a few dimensions with an explicit evidence and owner field, then assigns one of four outcomes: education, validation, implementation, or no intervention yet.
Do we need outside help to use these?+
No. They are written to be used internally. Outside help is useful when the team disagrees, the evidence is contested, or nobody is in a position to challenge the sponsor independently.
What is an AI operating responsibility map?+
A record, for each material AI system, of who owns it, which actions need approval, who can stop it, and what evidence is kept. The board question pack and the AI oversight page both use it as the starting point.
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