From AI Pressure to AI Confidence: A Private AI Advisory Case Study
There is a moment I recognise in almost every first conversation with a senior leader about AI.
It comes after they have described their role, their company, and what is on their plate. Then there is a short pause. And something honest comes out — something they have not said to their team or their board or the consultant who delivered the AI roadmap last quarter.
"I am not sure I know what is actually real here. And I am not sure who to ask."
This is not a failure. It is an honest description of where most experienced leaders find themselves right now. The noise around AI is enormous. The pressure to have a clear position is real. And almost everyone with an opinion on AI — vendors, consultants, internal teams — has something to gain from a particular answer.
This is the story of one leader who decided to change that.
The Situation
He was a VP of Supply Chain at a mid-sized European manufacturing company. Experienced, commercially sharp, well-regarded by his colleagues. Over the previous eighteen months, he had received vendor proposals for AI-powered demand forecasting, autonomous procurement tools, and supply chain digital twins. His board wanted a clear AI direction. His team was looking to him for guidance.
He had done all the right things. He attended industry conferences. He sat through vendor demonstrations. He commissioned an internal review. He completed an AI course through a business school.
And yet the next time a vendor presented a platform with a compelling business case and the room started nodding, he still found himself waiting to see what others thought before forming his own view.
That was what he brought to Private AI Advisory. Not a lack of effort. A desire to have his own perspective — one that he had built himself.
What We Worked On
The first thing I always say is this: we are not starting with your corporate AI strategy. We are starting with you.
Before a leader can evaluate an AI proposal or make a confident investment decision, they need to experience AI directly. Not in a vendor demo. In their own work, on their own problems, at their own pace.
In our first two sessions, he started using AI as a daily tool — for preparing leadership meetings, thinking through complex supplier situations, processing information faster than he had before. The change was quick and real. AI stopped being something abstract to manage and became something he understood from the inside.
From there, we moved to the corporate questions. We went through the specific vendor proposals on his desk and worked out which claims were solid and which were built on assumptions his organisation could not support. He developed a clear sense of which questions to ask and what answers to look out for.
We also worked on what he wanted to say to his own organisation: what AI investment made sense right now, what could wait, and how to communicate that view clearly to his leadership team and board.
Three Months Later
What changed was not dramatic. It rarely is. What shifted was the quality of his thinking in every AI conversation he walked into.
He pushed back on a major vendor proposal that had strong support inside the company. Not by rejecting it — by identifying two assumptions in the business case that the team could not actually validate. The proposal was rewritten. The revised version was much stronger. He was the one who pushed it through.
He built a practical AI programme for his supply chain managers — built around their actual work, not a generic technology training.
Along the way, he came to understand something that no briefing had ever conveyed: that AI is not just another technology to manage, but a genuine shift in how thinking and decision-making work at every level of an organisation. That changed not just how he evaluated AI proposals. It changed how he thought about his own role.
When I asked him what had shifted the most, he said: "I used to sit in those meetings and hope the questions would not come my way. Now I am the one asking them."
That is what Private AI Advisory is for. Not to give leaders a new opinion to adopt. To help them build a perspective that is genuinely their own.
Private AI Advisory for executives is available at The Change Republic, working with senior leaders across Switzerland and Europe. Find out more at www.thechangerepublic.com/private-ai
Tünde Lukacs is an executive coach, AI advisory specialist, and founder of The Change Republic. She works with senior leaders and executives on AI literacy, leadership development, and strategic decision-making across Switzerland and Europe.