An AI strategy workshop that ends in decisions, not enthusiasm
Most teams don't have an AI tool problem. They have a Monday problem: everyone leaves the session convinced, and nothing has changed by the following week. This workshop is built the other way round — 55 cards, five phases, 2.5 hours, and every phase ends with a written decision and a name next to it.
No signup · No install · 3–12 people · A method by Makia Labs
Why most AI strategy sessions leak
The usual AI strategy workshop produces a list. Forty use cases, colour-coded, sorted by "impact vs effort". It looks like strategy and behaves like a wish list, because the unit of adoption is not an idea — it's a workflow with an owner and a real user.
The cards exist to stop that. You can't play a card without answering it out loud, and you can't close a phase without writing down what the team decided. The constraint is the product.
What your team walks out with
One workflow, not forty use cases
Long lists of AI ideas feel like progress and produce almost no adoption. The workshop forces the team down to the workflows they actually repeat every week, and picks the one worth changing first.
A written decision per phase
Each of the five phases ends with a sentence the team agreed on. Not a sticky note, not a mood — a decision you can read back three weeks later and still understand.
A named owner for every decision
A decision without a name attached is a wish. Every output leaves the room with one person accountable and a date.
A Monday-morning start
The measure of an AI strategy workshop is not how convinced people were on Thursday. It's what changed on Monday. The last phase exists only to make that concrete.
The five phases of the workshop
MAKIA — Map, Activate, Kickstart, Iterate, Achieve. It's a loop: the fifth phase feeds the first one again next quarter.
- M
Mind Mapping
20 min9 cardsSee the whole picture before diving into any single part.
- A
Activate Creativity
30 min18 cardsBreak your usual thinking patterns. Combine cards to generate unexpected possibilities.
- K
Kickstart Prototyping
45 min8 cardsStop theorizing. Make something tangible — even a rough sketch counts.
- I
Iterate with Intention
30 min18 cardsEvery version teaches you something. The goal isn’t perfect — it’s better.
- A
Adopt Systems
30 min9 cardsAdoption doesn’t end at training. It begins there.
A 2.5-hour agenda you can copy
- 0:00Frame the session
Why now, what's in scope, what a decision looks like here.
- 0:10M — Map Mindsets
Surface what the team actually believes about AI, including the fears nobody says out loud.
- 0:40A — Activate Creativity
Generate candidate workflows from real work, not from a vendor's feature list.
- 1:10K — Kickstart Prototyping
Pick one workflow and design the smallest test that could fail this week.
- 1:40I — Iterate with Insights
Decide how you'll know it worked: the signal, the check, who verifies the output.
- 2:05A — Achieve Adoption
Assign owners, set the recurring 15-minute review, agree the Monday start.
- 2:30Close
Export the summary to Notion, Slack or Miro and share it with the team.
Who it's for
- Leadership teams who keep discussing AI without deciding anything
- Ops and functional teams handed an AI tool and no strategy
- Consultants and facilitators running AI strategy sessions for clients
- Small business owners with no AI department and no time to build one
Examples: the cards teams decide with
Five of the 55 cards, one per dimension. Each one exists to force a specific AI strategy decision — and each ends with something written down.
Which problem AI is actually being pointed at — the symptom people complain about, or the strategic risk underneath it. The team writes one sentence and stops relitigating scope for the rest of the session.
Who owns the first workflow. One name, verified against authority, budget, time and genuine belief. No name means the initiative doesn't leave the room.
What 'good enough' output means here, and who checks it. Teams that skip this ship confident hallucinations into client-facing work.
Which of your candidate AI initiatives are quick wins, which are strategic bets, and which are traps you agree not to touch this quarter.
The rules everyone works under: we will always, we will never, we review when. Written the same day, not delegated to a legal review that never lands.
AI strategy workshop FAQ
What is an AI strategy workshop?
A structured working session where a team decides how AI will change their actual work — which workflow, who owns it, how it gets verified and when it starts. It is a decision session, not a training or a tool demo.
How long does the AI strategy workshop take?
The standard format is 2.5 hours covering all five phases. A 60-minute Quick Sprint covers the first two phases; a half-day Deep Dive adds full dimension work across all seven dimensions.
How much does it cost?
Nothing. The workshop runs in your browser at aionmondaymorning.com with no signup, no install and no account. The 55 cards, the timers and the exports are free.
Do we need AI expertise to run it?
No. The cards carry the prompts, the timings and the facilitation instructions. The workshop is about adoption decisions, not model selection or technical skill.
How many people should attend?
Three to twelve participants plus one facilitator. Below three you lose the disagreement that makes the session useful; above twelve the decisions get vague.
What do we leave the workshop with?
Five written decisions, one owner per decision, a first workflow to change, a verification check and a recurring review. All of it exportable to Notion, Slack, Miro or a Lovable build brief.
Can we run it remotely?
Yes. Open a team room and every participant follows the same phase, the same timer and the same cards from their own screen. Notes and votes sync live.
Who created this AI strategy workshop?
Makia Labs, an innovation studio in Montpellier, France. It is the workshop form of the MAKIA method and of the book AI on Monday Morning: The Makia Playbook for Small Business Owners.
Start the workshop
Open the deck, pick a format, and run it. If you'd rather watch one first, join the monthly open room and play with other teams.