Programme overview - Leading with AI: The Strategy Roadmap
Leading with AI: The Strategy Roadmap is a four‑month executive masterclass designed for senior leaders navigating the shift from experimental AI use to organisation‑wide, and increasingly agent‑driven, deployment.
As AI systems move beyond copilots to agents that can plan, decide, and act, leadership accountability, governance, and operating models must evolve just as quickly.
Leaders are now responsible not only for AI investment decisions, but for outcomes, risk, trust, and organisational readiness - regardless of who builds or operates the technology.
Delivered by Waikato Management School Executive Education, this programme equips leaders with the judgement, frameworks, and confidence to lead AI adoption deliberately, responsibly, and with control.
How the programme is designed
This programme is designed around the real decisions that senior leaders are already facing as AI becomes embedded across organisations.
As AI capability accelerates, leaders must:
- Make defensible decisions under uncertainty
- Govern systems that can act with increasing autonomy
- Maintain clear human accountability for outcomes, risk, and trust
The programme focuses on three practical areas of leadership attention. This keeps the programme grounded, relevant, and directly applicable — without requiring participants to become technical experts.
Three areas of focus:
Leadership accountability
Participants focus on the decisions that leaders remain responsible for — even when AI systems are making recommendations or taking action.
Decision-making in an agent-driven environment
As AI systems gain the ability to plan and act, leaders examine what can be delegated, where authority must remain, and how oversight and escalation work in practice.
Applications to real organisational challenges
Learning is applied directly to participants’ organisations, producing practical artefacts that can be used with boards, executives, and teams.
Agentic AI, embedded throughout
Rather than isolating agentic AI into a single module, it is explored throughout the programme across:
- Strategy and value identification
- Governance, ethics, and data sovereignty
- Investment, operating models, and execution
- Leadership, change, and organisational readiness
Participants develop a clear understanding of how AI is evolving from tools that assist people to systems that can act, and what this means for executive judgement, accountability, and organisational control.
What you will gain:
By the end of the programme, participants will have produced:
- A clearly articulated AI strategy: A practical strategy tailored for your organisation - including where agentic AI will or won't be used - that connects your priorities with AI opportunities, backed by case studies, a commercial value case, and governance guardrails.
- Board‑ready decision pack, including assumptions, guardrails, and accountability.
- Prioritised investment roadmap, with explicit trade‑offs and dependencies.
- Practical governance and escalation frameworks for AI systems that can act.
- Executive-level AI confidence: The frameworks, language, and decision-making tools expected by boards, investors, and regulators to cut through hype and evaluate AI investments with credibility.
- Change leadership skills: The skills to lead AI transformation, communicate clearly, reshape workflows, and build a future-ready organisational culture.
- Responsible AI adoption focus: Be able to make thoughtful choices about how the technology is used, the impact it can have, and how data is collected, shared, and protected. In Aotearoa, this includes responsibilities to Māori data sovereignty.
How you will learn:
- AI Fluency Lab: Hands-on engagement wiht New Zealand’s most practical, executive-level AI capability accelerator. Use contemporary AI tools, including early agent‑based workflows and generative AI tools. The focus is on leadership oversight, evaluation, and control, not technical configuration.
- 'AI in Action' strategic impact project: Apply your learning to a real initiative designed for your organisation, backed by a quantified ROI case, implementation roadmap and risk-governance assessment - ready to progress on completion.
- Blended delivery: In‑person intensives, live online sessions, and self‑paced learning ensure flexibility, while maintaining depth, rigour, and high-touch support.
- One‑to‑one executive coaching: Personalised coaching supports leaders to refine judgement, navigate risk, and lead AI‑enabled change with confidence.
- Ongoing AI leadership currency: After completing the programme, you'll continue to receive curated insights, podcasts, webinars, readings, and invitations to guest lectures.
Next steps
Industry practitioners
The programme draws on experienced contributors from industry and academia, selected for their real‑world experience of AI adoption, governance, and organisational transformation.
Contributors may vary by module to ensure perspectives remain current and grounded in practice.
Matt Browning - Co-CEO, Incredible AI
Matt is an entrepreneur, speaker, and Innovation & Technology award winner. Read full bio.
Stephen Johnson - Co-CEO, Incredible AI
Stephen helps businesses solve complex technology problems, from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Read full bio.
Prof. Albert Bifet - Director, Artificial Intelligence Institute, The University of Waikato
Albert is a world-leading expert in AI strategy and governance. Read full bio.
Nyssa Waters - CEO and Founder of Possibl.ai
Nyssa is a former Google senior leader who works with boards to deliver AI-enabled transformation. Read full bio.
Mark Laurence - Founder, Ten Past Tomorrow
Mark works with leadership teams to build AI literacy and drive ethical, human-centred change. Read full bio.
Andrew McPherson - AI Consultant
Andrew specialises in leading complex digital and AI-powered initiatives across large organisations. Read full bio.
Optional trip to San Francisco: International AI leadership immersion
Take your learning to the next level with this exclusive one‑week immersion experience in San Francisco. Additional costs apply.
Connect with global AI leaders, investors, policy thinkers, and New Zealanders who are building AI‑first organisations offshore. Enjoy direct access to leading AI companies and cutting-edge innovation labs.
This experience will provide insights into how organisations structure, govern, and scale AI, with learning translated back into the New Zealand context.
A final word
AI capability is advancing faster than organisational confidence. This programme exists to close that gap - giving leaders the judgement, frameworks, and confidence to act decisively, responsibly, and with control.
Places on this programme are limited to ensure a high‑quality cohort of senior leaders, so register now to avoid disappointment.