Program · the top of the ladder

Executive Authority

A closed cycle for a group of executives to stop approving what they cannot examine. This is not a course on artificial intelligence: it is judgment practice, on real decisions, under the new condition AI has created.

What the cohort receives
8 or 16weeks
4modules
4deliverables
19real cases
1cohort per cycle

One cohort per cycle, from the same organization. Each participant enters with their own diagnostic, and the cohort is read in aggregate.

What it solves

The AI training your company has already run did not solve this

Almost every organization has already trained its teams on tools. Few have addressed the question that remains afterwards, and it is an executive's question, not an engineer's.

01
The symptom

Signature without examination

The executive approves reports, analyses, and recommendations he would have no way of producing and no way of checking. The approval still happens, and the name on it is still his. What disappeared was the examination.

02
The cause

No one defined where to stop

The question "how far can this process run on its own, and what control has to remain on my side" has no owner in most companies. Each area answers it differently, and no answer is auditable six months later.

The structure

Four modules, and each one builds a different capability

Each module is a prerequisite for the next and closes with a deliverable. Two weeks per module in the base cycle, four in the extended cycle. There are four deliverables, one per module, built to enter the following week's operation — working instruments, not reading material. They come out finished and applied to the participant's own case, never as a blank template.

Module 1 · Synthesize

Strategic foundation

Arriving at a committee with a formed position, even with sources that contradict each other and little time. Ceasing to be the person who reads everything and becoming the person who decides what is worth reading.

Leaves with: a script of his own for reaching a formed position in half a day, run on a real decision from his own company.
Module 2 · Assess

Assess and decide

Assessing a proposal and a vendor by his own criteria. What to approve, what to veto — and, above all, how to hold the veto in front of the people who want to approve.

Leaves with: an instrument for assessing proposals and vendors, applied to a decision that is on the table now.
Module 3 · Lead

Leading his own team

Leading people with a real fear of the change, redefining what is expected and what is required. It is the module where the conversation stops being about technology and becomes about people.

Leaves with: the script for the conversation that redefines what is expected of the team, and a redesigned process that names who signs each step.
Module 4 · Position

Positioning himself as an executive

Holding a position of authority outside his own team, with proof and not with a claim. It is where the program stops being development and becomes positioning.

Leaves with: the piece he uses to hold his own position outside the team, built on evidence from the cycle, not on an opinion about AI.
How the room works

No one watches. Everyone decides.

The unit of work is not the lecture, it is the case. Groups receive a real decision with two positions in conflict, and have to leave the session with a recommendation that survives the rebuttal.

19
The case library

Nineteen decisions, and none of them has an obvious answer

Cases from technology, human resources, and governance: an adoption that promises to prevent incidents, a screening process that decides about people, AI use that nobody authorized, an adoption target that makes the operation more expensive. Some are built for practice; three are public facts, reported by the press.

The house rule: one in every three cases has to end in release more autonomy. A method that only brakes is not a method, it is a temperament.
04
The deliverables

One protocol per module, applied before anyone leaves

A protocol is not a document template: it is the sequence of questions that leads from raw information to a defensible decision. Each one is run in the room, on the participant's own case, and reviewed with the group before the module closes.

Each cycle also produces an aggregate cohort report, with the decision pattern that appeared in the group — without exposing individual answers.
The premise we state out loud

The exercises stop at a specific rung, and that is a choice

"Not being agentic is not a failure. It is a choice, when the reach of the error does not pay for the autonomy."

Part of the market defines as advanced only what runs without a human at every step, and from there concludes that requiring approval is backwardness. That is a definition of architecture, not a judgment of maturity — but it reaches the board as though it were a grade.

In this program the exercises operate at a declared level of autonomy, with the human inside the loop. And the participant is not required to agree: faced with a case that calls for more autonomy, the exercise is to argue whether the premise holds there, not to obey it. That is what trains judgment instead of compliance.

In 2026, after two serious incidents, one of the most AI-intensive companies in the world reinstated human approval for assisted code. It stepped down a rung on purpose. The yardstick is not conservatism: it is the same one that company ended up applying, late.

Where it comes from

Forty years in the chair, and sources with names

The content was built by someone who held the chair, on a public and verifiable base. Where there is a third-party framework, it is cited; where there is an extension of our own, it is declared as such.

03
The chair

IBM · Mastercard · Johnson & Johnson · Kenvue

Forty years of executive career in four global corporations, the last of them as CTO for Latin America. Fortune 500 operations, teams of hundreds of people, decisions with irreversible effect — which is exactly the subject matter of the program.

04
The base

Public framework, declared extension

The AI adoption scale starts from the public yardstick by Mike Taylor and Every. The reversibility axis and the remaining-control rule are original Prædictor extensions. Governance rests on the NIST AI RMF; the reading of power and influence, on French and Raven.

The house method

MAPPA

Before there was a yardstick for deciding about AI, there was the method with which Prædictor treats executive development. There are five fronts, and the program takes its name from the second. The full account of all five lives on the Career Map page, which is where they operate end to end.

MMentality of the Turn
AExecutive Authority
PPeople and Teams
PStrategic Positioning
AAcceleration to the Next Level
Format

Corporate, in a cohort, delivered through partners

The program is designed for a group from the same organization, or from organizations that share the same kind of decision. It is not an open course, and there is no shopping cart.

Who it is for

Managers and leaders

People who already answer for results and have to decide about AI without being the technical person in the room.

Before it starts

Individual diagnostic

Each participant enters with their own position measured on two axes, and the whole cohort is read in aggregate.

During

Live sessions

Sessions run on a fixed calendar, with group work between them on a case the cohort carries from start to finish.

At the end

Cycle report

The organization receives the decision pattern observed in the cohort and where the governance gaps are.

Base cycle
8 weeks

One module every two weeks. Each group carries one case from start to finish and leaves with the four deliverables applied. It is the minimum design in which the method completes the full turn.

Extended cycle
16 weeks

The same design with twice the time per module, and the extra time is not more content: it is more repetition. More cases from the library, decisions defended individually in front of the group, and application followed up between sessions.

The choice between the two is not a matter of budget, it is a matter of ambition. Eight weeks build common criteria and leave four instruments running. Sixteen build practice — and practice is what makes the criteria survive the first difficult room. The proposal is put together by scope: how many people, on what calendar, and what kind of decision they sign.

Want to see whether it fits your cohort?

The conversation starts with scope, not with a budget: how many people, what kind of decisions they sign off on, and what the reach of the error is in those decisions.

I want this program at my company
If it is not yet time for the program