Does your company have an "AI Council"?

I've been thinking about how company leadership often makes decisions with a few peer executives, but often they don't truly understand all the domino effects of workflow unless different levels of the organization are involved in the implementation and decision making.

The term "AI Council" has been coined, and for good reason, as there is so much to be explored, evaluated, and adopted inside an organization as it relates to AI

Instead of AI becoming a side project—or something added onto already-full roles—an AI council provides:
• Research and evaluation of AI use cases
• Visibility across teams and workflows
• Representation from executive leadership to junior staff

I believe this is the direction many companies will take to both explore and stay on top of the many AI trends and new uses to come. Has your company done this yet? Why or why not?

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nikhilnair

This is interesting! Most AI conversations I see are still tool-focused, not workflow-focused. An AI Council makes sense because AI impact isn’t isolated to one department - it quietly reshapes handoffs, decision speed, data flows, and even accountability across teams.

What I’ve noticed is that without a cross-functional group, companies end up with scattered experiments: marketing tries one tool, ops another, IT blocks half of it, and leadership never gets a clear picture of real operational impact.

The visibility + representation point you made is key. The people closest to day-to-day workflows often see automation opportunities leadership would never spot on a dashboard.

Curious to see how many orgs formalize this versus letting AI adoption grow organically (and chaotically).

ThomasM

Interesting perspective. One challenge I’m seeing right now is that AI literacy varies widely across organizations, regardless of role or seniority, which can make broad councils difficult to operationalize early on. In practice, we’ve found it more effective for a small group (or even just one person) with deeper AI familiarity to initially act as internal consultant(s), working directly with departments to identify workflow level opportunities and educate teams on what’s realistically possible before expanding governance more broadly. Over time, that foundation makes cross functional input much more productive. Curious how others are balancing expertise vs. representation at this stage. Thoughts?

Charlotte Naylor

We have an Innovation Committee that includes AI. We helped to facilitate an AI policy. And once a year, the committee hosts AI Learning Days. Committee members host AI workshops for beginners through advanced levels. Team members must complete at least one hour of learning.