THE AI LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME
AI is not another IT project. It is your operating model.
20 Sessions · 25 Minutes Per Day · Four Weeks · Free · For sitting executives
Hello — I am Coach Ritchie. I am the AI assistant for this programme. Ritchie Wingo built me, and your work is marked against the rubric he published; anything that falls below the mark to continue, he reviews himself, because that is the point at which a person needs help rather than a score. I am here for the moments in between, when a board paper is due on Thursday and you want to argue a point through with someone first.
Twenty sessions, twenty-five minutes a day, four weeks. This is not a course about how to write a prompt. It is about the thing almost every organisation is getting wrong at the top: treating AI as an IT project with a scope, a go-live and a handover, when what has actually arrived is a change in how the company decides. By 2027 that will not be an opinion. It will be visible in the numbers.
Every assignment is about your organisation, and every assignment comes back with a written letter — what you got right and why, and where something is thin, exactly where to look. You will never get back a bare score. By Session 20 you will hold a signed ninety-day charter for your own business, and the honest part is that most of the work is not the AI. It is naming owners, setting baselines, and saying out loud what your data is actually worth.
Ask me anything as you work and I will help you think it through, but I will not write your charter for you, and I switch myself off while you sit a quiz or an exam.
There is nothing to buy and no licence key to redeem. You sign in with your Google account so that your work can be marked and returned to you, your progress page follows you between devices, and your certificate can be issued in your own name.
With your Google account. Name, email, the organisation you work for and your role — that is the whole enrolment.
Why AI is not another IT project. Nothing to install, nothing to prepare. Read, think, and write about your own company.
Twenty-five minutes, then one written assignment. It is marked against a published rubric and comes back as a letter.
You assemble and sign your charter, sit the final, and your gift is released.
Already started? Open my progress page → · Just looking? Read Week 1 →
This programme assumes you are not a technologist and do not intend to become one. It ends with you able to govern, fund, sequence and measure AI in a real organisation — and to tell, in one meeting, the difference between a programme that will pay and one that will quietly be defunded.
Say precisely why AI is an operating model rather than a project, and what that changes about budget, ownership and accountability.
Sense, decide, act, learn — find the stage where your organisation’s loop breaks, and price the break.
Write a data contract: owner, definition, validation, threshold, reporting standard. Around the decision that matters, not the whole enterprise.
Place every system on the autonomy ladder, and grant a rung only when the control exists to hold it.
Use the value–risk map and a weighted priority score to choose three initiatives — and defend what you parked.
Outcome metrics with a baseline, an owner and a cadence. Not models deployed, not people trained.
Diagnose, design, launch. A pilot with an owner, a baseline and a number — or it is a demonstration.
Show me the model inventory. Who owns this data. Where did this reported number come from. And expect real answers.
| It is written for | It is not written for |
|---|---|
| Managing directors, chief executives, executive and non-executive directors | Engineers looking for model architecture or coding work — that is a different course |
| Functional heads — operations, finance, commercial, HSE, compliance, HR, IT — who will be asked to answer for AI | Anyone wanting a certification badge without writing about their own organisation |
| Owners and founders of firms between 20 and 20,000 people, in any sector | People who want tool tutorials; we name tools rarely and deliberately |
| Regulators, lenders and investors who must judge someone else’s AI claims | Anyone expecting twenty minutes of video and a pass |
This programme does not end in a folder of notes. Every session writes one section of a single document — your 90-Day AI Operating Model Charter — for the organisation you actually run. By Session 20 you assemble and sign it. Written properly, it is the paper you table at your next board or exco meeting.
| Week | Sections you write |
|---|---|
| Week 1 The Inflection | 1. Section 1 — Where we are today: the honest classification and the one decision that matters most. 2. Section 2 — Our broken loop: the stage that fails, and what it costs. 3. Section 3 — The one data contract we will sign first. 4. Section 4 — Our autonomy ladder: what each system is allowed to touch. 5. Section 5 — Our value–risk map and the thing we will deliberately not do. |
| Week 2 The Operating Model | 6. Section 6 — Our sequence: what we do first, second and not yet. 7. Section 7 — Our unit of value and the baseline we will measure against. 8. Section 8 — Our operating picture and the exceptions that will interrupt us. 9. Section 9 — Who owns this: sponsor, office, committee, data owners, decision rights. 10. Section 10 — Our twelve-pillar scorecard and the three foundations we will fix first. |
| Week 3 Trust, Control and the Board | 11. Section 11 — Our governance standard: five controls, five signatures. 12. Section 12 — One reported number, traced: the gaps we must close. 13. Section 13 — Our safe-use standard and the boundary we will not cross. 14. Section 14 — Where we will allow agency, and the line we will never cross. 15. Section 15 — Our board scoreboard: metric, baseline, owner, cadence. |
| Week 4 The Ninety Days That Prove It | 16. Section 16 — Our diagnostic findings and the value at stake. 17. Section 17 — Our ranked portfolio and the first three we will run. 18. Section 18 — Our first pilot charter, signed. 19. Section 19 — Our capability plan, partner test and pre-mortem. 20. The whole charter, assembled and signed. |
This programme is free. Nothing is upsold to you inside it, and there is no paid tier hiding behind Session 20. When your capstone passes, I send you the following as thanks for the time you put in.
| What you receive | What it is | Value |
|---|---|---|
| The Intelligent Barrel — Digital Edition | The complete book behind this programme: the operating doctrine for AI, in full, with every framework you were taught and the chapters this course only had time to summarise. | $39.99 |
| The Reader’s Toolkit | The six frameworks on one executive reference sheet. Bonus one of three, included with the book. | Included |
| The 90-Day AI Pilot Charter & Playbook | How to scope a pilot that actually pays — the working template behind Session 18. Bonus two of three. | Included |
| The Value–Risk Map & Autonomy Playbook | Fund what pays, govern what bites — the working version of Sessions 4 and 5. Bonus three of three. | Included |
| Certificate and reference letter | A completion certificate and a reference letter from me naming the doctrine you were trained in and the charter you produced. Issued on a pass, not on attendance. | The credential |
How it reaches you. When Session 20 is marked at 70 or above, a single-use code is emailed to the Google address you signed in with. The code takes The Intelligent Barrel — Digital Edition plus its three executive bonuses, $39.99, to zero at checkout — you pay nothing and enter no card. The certificate and reference letter follow in the same week.
Only people who have finished the programme can write one — the Session 20 capstone passed and the marked Final passed, both recorded by the server rather than by anyone’s say-so. They are shown exactly as written, never solicited and never edited.
One session a day, twenty-five minutes. Each one teaches a framework and makes you use it on your own business.
Every session ends in a written assignment — a diagnosis, a score, a contract, a charter section. Four hundred to nine hundred words.
Against the rubric printed under the assignment. A written letter comes back, usually within minutes.
Session 20 assembles nineteen sections into one document, then the final exam — three of whose questions are rebuilt from your own mistakes.
No mystery, and no waiting days for a mark. Here is the whole loop.
One document per session — Word or Google Docs — with the first line reading Session: N. Your own organisation, your own figures.
Against that session’s published rubric, criterion by criterion. The same rubric every time, for everybody.
Not a score — a letter naming what holds up, what is asserted without evidence, and exactly where to look to fix it.
Your mark joins your progress page and the corrected section goes into your charter, so Session 20 is assembly rather than writing.
An illustration of the letter format, using Session 17’s real rubric.
| Criterion | Awarded |
|---|---|
| Six or more real candidates from the student's own organisation scored on all five criteria, with a justification for each value and readiness score | 30 / 30 |
| Priority score computed with the exact weights, including the inverted risk term, and the arithmetic shown for at least two candidates | 22 / 30 |
| Ranked portfolio with every candidate labelled quick win, foundation, big bet or park | 19 / 20 |
| Names the first three under the Rule of Three, plus the excluded enthusiasm and the person who must be told | 13 / 20 |
Four weeks. Five sessions a week, twenty-five minutes each, at whatever pace your diary allows. Every session ends in one written assignment about your own organisation, and every assignment becomes a section of your charter.
Nine papers, marked the moment you submit, every question returned with the reasoning behind it. Four pop quizzes of five questions, four practice exams of fifteen, and a fifteen-question final. You are never left to guess when to sit one: the session that opens a paper says so, prints the paper beside its assignment, and flags itself on the session tab — and your progress page always names the paper due now. Closed book, no notes, and Coach Ritchie switches himself off while you sit one. Pass mark 70 — and you may resit the practice papers as often as you like.
5 questions · after Session 3
15 questions · after Session 5, closing Week 1
5 questions · after Session 8
15 questions · after Session 10, the midpoint
5 questions · after Session 13
15 questions · after Session 15, closing Week 3
5 questions · after Session 18
15 questions · after Session 19, before the final
15 questions · in Session 20
Nineteen sections written one per session, assembled and signed in Session 20: a named first pilot, a baseline, an owner, a start date, and a one-page executive summary a board would accept. It is the document you take back to your own organisation.
The whole programme on one printable page — the six frameworks, the twelve pillars, the ladder, the map, the weights, the gates and the scoreboard. Keep it beside you from Week 2.
The document every assignment is written in — opens in Word or Google Docs, with the first line already correct.
Read the first session before you sign in, and decide for yourself whether the rest is worth four weeks.
Your marks, your letters, your charter sections and your paper results, in one place.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Is it really free? | Yes. No card, no key, no paid tier. The gift at the end is free too. |
| How much time, honestly? | Twenty-five minutes of reading and thirty to sixty minutes of writing per session. Call it eight to ten hours over four weeks, and rather more if you do the capstone properly. |
| Do I need any technical background? | None. You need a real organisation and the willingness to look at it honestly. |
| I am not in oil and gas. Does it apply? | Yes. The doctrine is taught industry-neutral and every session carries the energy worked case beside a parallel outside energy — banking, manufacturing, telecoms, logistics, healthcare, retail, construction, the public sector. |
| Can my leadership team do it together? | Yes, and it works better that way — but each person signs in and submits their own work, because the charter is only useful if it is argued over. |
| What if I miss a week? | Nothing happens. There are no cohort dates and no deadlines. Your progress waits for you. |
| Who marks it? | It is marked against R. Wingo’s published rubric, criterion by criterion, the same way every time. Anything that comes out below the mark to continue, he reviews himself before it reaches you — that is the moment you need a person, not a score. Coach Ritchie helps you think; he does not mark and he does not write your charter. |