A six-week AI reading programme for a leadership team
What to read each week, what to try between sessions, and the questions that turn a book discussion into decisions about your own business.
Updated 2026-10-07 · 2 min read
The short answer
Spend six weeks moving from using AI to deciding about it. Start with a hands-on book and a month of trying the tools, then move to books about economics and organisation, and finish with the bigger questions of risk and fairness. Each session should end with something the team will try or decide, not just an opinion about the book.
Who this is for
A leadership team of five to fifteen people who need a shared view on AI: what it changes for the business, where to start, and what to be careful about. Nobody needs a technical background.
The six weeks
Week 1: using it
Read [Co-Intelligence](/book/co-intelligence) by Ethan Mollick.
- Between now and next week, each person uses an AI tool for one real piece of their own work. Bring what happened. - What surprised you, good or bad?
Week 2: what it makes cheaper
Read [Prediction Machines](/book/prediction-machines).
- The book describes AI as cheaper prediction. List the predictions your business makes every week: demand, risk, who to hire, what to stock. - Which of those, if it became much cheaper and better, would change how you work?
Week 3: why change is slow
Read [Power and Prediction](/book/power-and-prediction).
- Think of an AI pilot in your company, or one you've heard about elsewhere. Did it change a task or a system? - What would have to change around it for it to matter?
Week 4: the shape of the company
Read [Competing in the Age of AI](/book/competing-in-the-age-of-ai), or its first half.
- Which of our processes depends most on data we already collect but don't use? - What would a competitor built around data and algorithms do differently from us?
Week 5: people and jobs
Read [Human + Machine](/book/human-machine), and for an Indian perspective, [Bridgital Nation](/book/bridgital-nation).
- Pick three roles in the company. Which tasks in each could AI take over, and what would the person do instead? - Who needs to be involved in redesigning those jobs?
Week 6: risk and responsibility
Read [Power and Progress](/book/power-and-progress), or [The Coming Wave](/book/the-coming-wave) if the team prefers a shorter argument from inside the industry.
- Who gains if we use AI the way we've discussed? Who loses? - What are the two or three rules we want for how we use it?
Running the sessions
Give each session a host from the team rather than an outside expert, and keep the expert, if you have one, for questions. Close every session with a short written note: what we agreed, what we'll try, who owns it. By week six you will have the start of a plan, written by the people who have to carry it out.
If you want help running it
Our [AI programme for leadership teams](/for-teams/ai-transformation) covers choosing the books for your team, sourcing the copies and getting them delivered, with discussion notes if you want them. We send a quote before anything is ordered.