AI Leadership Accelerator – Essentials

About this course

The AI Leadership Accelerator Essentials is a practical, hands-on, four-hour program designed for small business owners and leaders who want to start putting AI to work in their organizations. This focused workshop introduces the essential skills and tools needed to use AI effectively, identify valuable business opportunities, and improve everyday productivity. No technical expertise or prior AI experience is required. Through practical demonstrations, guided exercises, and real-world business examples, participants explore how AI can support marketing, sales, operations, customer service, and decision-making. The program focuses on effective prompting, working with business data, identifying repeatable workflows, and understanding the basics of responsible AI use. Participants learn a step-by-step approach to identifying and documenting a business workflow, with opportunities to begin applying what they learn to their own organizations. ________________________________________ What You’ll Walk Away With: • Practical AI skills: The ability to use AI effectively, including prompting, working with business data, and an introduction to AI agents. • Business opportunities: A clearer understanding of where AI can improve productivity and support growth in your organization. • An AI-assisted workflow approach: A practical method and step-by-step instructions for identifying, documenting, and preparing a repeatable business workflow for AI implementation. • A simple AI governance plan: A practical template for establishing responsible AI guidelines covering data privacy, risk management, and accountability. The outline for the program is: * Welcome, participant introductions, and program expectations * AI momentum: Why AI matters to small businesses * Generative AI fundamentals: How it works, what it can do, and its limitations * Personalizing a large language model * Effective prompting techniques for stronger, more reliable results * Evaluating AI-generated content for accuracy and usefulness * Protecting confidential and sensitive information * Preparing business data, templates, and reference materials for AI use * Creating reusable prompts and instructions for recurring tasks * Small-business use cases in operations, customer service, research, and strategy * Identifying and prioritizing high-value AI opportunities * Mapping and documenting a current business workflow * Selecting one workflow for development during the program * Applying AI to marketing, sales, and customer engagement * Identifying where AI can support specific workflow steps * Identifying the data, templates, and documentation needed for consistent use * Creating an AI governance plan using the provided small-business template * Establishing appropriate human review and accountability * Developing short-, mid-, and long-term implementation priorities * Anticipating future AI capabilities and their potential business impact