Every CEO Needs an AI Playbook. Here’s a 10-Point Plan to Start.

AI is no longer a side project. It’s becoming the nervous system of competitive advantage. Yet many CEOs are still dabbling instead of driving AI truly forward in the organisation.

If you want to lead in this new age, you need more than just the thinking part. You need a concrete plan.

Here’s a 10-point playbook I’d advise every CEO to start implementing AI:

1. Become a practitioner yourself

You can’t outsource understanding. As a CEO you can only build strategy if you understand what’s really happening. Dedicate at least 20 minutes a day to testing new AI platforms, prompts, and tools yourself. Follow the 100-hour rule: invest 100 hours and you’ll already be ahead of 99% of the market. You cannot catch the wave if you're not in the water. 

2. Make your board AI-ready

Boards are the ultimate direction givers of any organization. They must understand how AI will reshape strategy, competition, and risk. Equip them with education, briefings, and real cases. Only then can they allocate the right resources and drive the opportunity forward with conviction.

3. Decide what to automate, and what not to automate

AI gives you the power to scale. But ‘scale’ without ‘soul’ risks alienating both customers and employees. CEOs need to make deliberate choices: where do you automate in the backend for efficiency, where do you automate in the frontend for speed and convenience, and where do you intentionally keep things human? 

4. Define 1 AI Use Case per department that can solve a real business problem

Don’t drown in pilots, focus where AI can really make a difference. Ask each department to define a “hero use case” where AI can make work faster, cheaper, or better. That creates momentum and avoids the trap of AI theater. You probably seen the MIT report that 95% of AI projects don’t give ROI. 

5. Appoint a Head of AI

AI can’t just sit in silos or scattered throughout the organisation. You need a transversal champion, someone who doesn’t just chase tools but activates AI across marketing, finance, sales, HR, commercial, operations. This role is the internal connector between strategy, data, and execution.

6. Create a culture of AI curiosity

The hardest part isn’t the tech, it’s always people. Studies show that changing the culture of an organisation takes 2-3 years on average. Employees need to feel safe experimenting, failing, and learning. Build rituals of communication, training, and sharing wins. The culture shift is what gets your organization truly on the AI train.

7. Appoint Data Stewards and protect your unique data

Your competitive edge won’t come from ChatGPT, it comes from your unique proprietary data. Appoint data stewards to map, clean, and guard it. Then explore where your proprietary data can train custom AI models. Owning the quality and uniqueness of your data is the foundation of long-term differentiation.

8. Build your AI partner ecosystem

No company will win the AI race alone. The field is moving too fast, the expertise too distributed. Surround yourself with a vibrant AI partner ecosystem: startups pushing boundaries, big tech vendors with scalable infrastructure, universities fueling research, and cross-industry alliances where you share learnings. Think of it as your “AI supply chain”: the partners who help you experiment quickly, access talent, and accelerate adoption without reinventing the wheel.

9. Don’t limit yourself to Microsoft Copilot

For compliance and security reasons, many organizations default to Microsoft Copilot. It feels safe, and it’s already in the ecosystem. Nothing against Microsoft, but data shows that employees are mostly living in ChatGPT and other tools. As a CEO, you need to make a deliberate choice: where are your users, where can you create competitive advantage, and which models actually perform best for your context? Don’t just step into the convenience of the existing Microsoft framework. Broaden your lens and design a strategy that reflects reality, not habit.

10. Communicate with radical transparency

Finally, many companies promise “human in the loop” and paint AI just as a friendly co-pilot. Yet in the executive team, discussions often circle around which roles can be automated away. Employees are not naïve. They know the pressure to prove their value against the machine is real. Radical transparency is the only way forward. Be honest about where AI might replace roles, but equally clear about where people make the decisive difference. When employees understand the reality, they can show where their contribution adds unique value. 

Above all, don’t be a sitting duck. This is the moment for CEOs to move beyond reading about AI into committed action for the organisation.

If you want to book me for a keynote on Leadership in the age of AI or check out my new book 'Scale vs Soul': www.dadovanpeteghem.com