CTO · VP Engineering · Head of Engineering
AI Adoption Pressure: The Board Wants an Answer
The board member who DMs "why are we not at 100% Copilot" does not want a task force. He wants a number, a policy, and a reason to stop worrying. Meanwhile your ICs are already using Cursor and Claude, with or without a policy, and your platform team is three weeks into comparing models.
AI pressure is one of the six situations CTOs bring to me most often. The fix is a governance answer with tiers, owners, and one measurement dashboard.
The situation, from the inside
Board member DMed me last week: "why are we not at 100% Copilot?" My platform team is spinning on which model, which policy, which spend. My ICs are using Cursor and Claude anyway. And I do not have a governance answer that survives the next earnings call.
You have probably tried
- A cross-functional AI task force that met once
- Running a Copilot pilot on 3 teams with no measurement plan
- Reading DORA 2025 AI section (still not sure what to do)
- Deferring the board answer with "we are being thoughtful"
How we tackle it
Three-tier AI-governance answer: individual productivity (opt-in, measured via cycle-time delta), team workflows (spec-driven, review-gated), product-embedded AI (bet on 1-2 use cases, kill the rest). Something you defend to the board and hand to the team.
Target: By the next board meeting: written policy, one measurement dashboard, and a defensible "here is how much of this we are doing and why" answer.
Working it 1:1
Bi-weekly 60-minute sessions, weekly while the fire burns. I have sat in the seat: built Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn from 8 to 80 teams, led engineering at Manta before IBM acquired it, and spent 4+ years in the Bay Area as Principal Software Architect at Databricks. The pattern data comes from 3,400+ unique sessions with engineering leaders in 17+ countries. Rated 9.17/10 on average across 300+ reviews.
Pricing is public: 430 EUR per session, 361 EUR per session for ELC members, or 2,580 EUR per quarter (6 sessions over 3 months). You only pay for a session you rate 7 out of 10 or higher. Full pricing.
Related reads
The other situations CTOs bring
- The board wants a delivery number →
- First 90 days in an inherited org →
- Technical due diligence before a raise →
- Every decision routes through you →
- A sounding board without politics →
All six, plus the questions CTOs ask most: CTO coaching & mentoring