AI Leadership Sprints
Rethink How You Work, Decide, and Lead in the Age of AI
Overview
For the first time in history, cognitive capabilities are abundant, not scarce. AI can process information, spot patterns, and generate ideas at a speed and scale humans can't match.
That doesn't make human leadership less important. It changes where our value lies: in the purpose, vision, judgment, and strategy that determine where these capabilities take us. The opportunity is to combine human and AI strengths to shape organizations—those who don't risk being replaced by those who do.
This series, consisting of two-hour live online sprints held over four consecutive weeks, helps you build your human-AI advantage and shape how AI is understood, applied, and adopted across your organization. This isn't just about learning to use AI. It's about redesigning how you think, communicate, decide, and operate in a world where humans and AI increasingly work together.
Key Takeaways
Separate AI Opportunity from Hype
Learn to distinguish genuine technological shifts from short-lived promises so you can make more informed decisions about where and how to invest in AI
Create Your “Second Brain”
Build a personal knowledge system that helps AI understand your work, generate better outputs, and become more valuable over time.
Develop Resilient Strategies
Identify strategic vulnerabilities and develop practical approaches for strengthening your strategy and preparing it to stand up under AI-enabled scrutiny.
Make Your Message Matter
Recognize the difference between meaningful communication and generic AI output, and develop practical approaches for making complex ideas clear, credible, and memorable.
With these AI sprints, you’ll gain:
- A clearer point of view on AI and a practical framework for separating meaningful technological shifts from hype
- A working AI-powered personal knowledge system designed to improve your work and grow more valuable over time
- Practical frameworks for organizational AI strategy that help you identify opportunities and determine where human and AI strengths can create the greatest value
- Communication and change strategies for AI adoption that help you challenge entrenched behaviors, build stakeholder alignment, and move your organization forward
- An integrated approach to leading with AI that connects how you work personally with how you shape strategy, decisions, and change across your organization
AI: Hype or Revolution?
Every transformative technology has been called overhyped. Until it changed everything. The challenge for today's leaders isn't deciding whether AI matters. It's separating genuine technological shifts from the hype so they can act with confidence.
In this session, you'll explore the historical patterns that distinguish lasting innovation from short-lived hype cycles. Through practical frameworks, real-world examples, and executive discussion, you'll learn how to evaluate AI strategically, navigate organizational skepticism, and begin building an AI gameplan for your organization.
Build Your AI-Powered Second Brain
AI is only as powerful as your relationship with it. As leaders generate more meetings, documents, ideas, and decisions, keeping track of what matters—and putting that knowledge to work—has become increasingly difficult. The challenge isn't finding more information. It's creating a system that helps AI understand your work, your priorities, and your thinking over time.
In this session, you'll build your own AI-powered personal knowledge system: a "second brain" designed to become more valuable with every interaction. Using thoughtful design principles, you'll create a system that captures context, organizes knowledge, and enables AI to deliver more relevant, personalized insights. You'll leave with a working system you can continue to build long after the session ends, improving the quality of your ideas, decisions, communication, and everyday work.
Communication & Influence
AI can generate content. It can't create conviction. As AI makes communication faster and more abundant, the ability to recognize what separates meaningful communication from generic AI output and make our own ideas cut through the noise becomes even more valuable.
This session explores how leaders communicate ideas that people understand, remember, and act on. You'll learn a practical framework for evaluating communication quality—whether you're reviewing AI-generated content or creating your own—and develop approaches for simplifying complex ideas, building alignment, and crafting messages that sound clear, credible, and distinctly yours.
Pressure-Test Your Strategy
AI isn't just changing strategy. It's raising the standard for it. Leaders face greater scrutiny, faster decision cycles, and stakeholders who can challenge assumptions, compare alternatives, and surface weaknesses with unprecedented speed and access to information. Good strategy isn't enough. It has to hold up under pressure.
In this live online session, you'll learn how to pressure-test your thinking, identify blind spots, and build strategic resilience in an AI-informed world. Using practical frameworks and a tactical approach for preparing high-stakes recommendations and decision narratives, you'll leave better equipped to champion your ideas and defend them when you need to.
Who's it for
These sessions are designed for leaders who:
- Need to separate genuine AI opportunity from hype and develop a clearer point of view on where AI can create value
- Want to move beyond one-off AI use and integrate AI more meaningfully into how they think, work, and make decisions
- Shape strategy, transformation, innovation, or investment priorities and need to determine where and how AI fits
- Lead teams or organizations through change and must build understanding, alignment, and adoption around AI
- Want to combine human judgment with AI capabilities to strengthen their own leadership and their organization’s performance
Want to approach your employer about supporting your development? Check out this article.
Format & Structure
Online
Live Online Executive Learning
- Four focused, two-hour live online sessions designed to fit into a busy executive schedule
- Interactive and discussion-driven, with faculty guidance, step-by-step tutorials, and real-world demonstrations
- Intentionally focused on actively building functional systems designed for immediate use
These are live, highly interactive sessions, not on-demand courses. Active participation is an essential part of the learning experience.
Dates & Costs
Online
Get more information
Are these AI courses technical? Do I need AI experience?
No. All four sessions are designed for non-technical leaders. No coding or prior AI experience is required. The focus is strategic and practical, not tool-specific. Where specific AI tools are used, such as Claude, no paid plans are required, and no technical setup is needed in advance.
Will I have to share confidential work or strategy?
No. Exercises across all four sessions use generalized examples, public scenarios, or composite cases. Where you're invited to bring your own material, participation is guided, and the context is controlled. Nothing confidential is required.
Do I need a point of view on AI to participate in these sessions?
No. Whether you're still forming your perspective, pressure-testing an existing strategy, refining how you communicate, or building on AI habits you've already started, each session is structured to meet you where you are and push your thinking further.
Will I leave with something I can apply immediately?
Yes. Every session is designed for practical application, not theory. You'll leave each sprint with a working AI framework, a concrete tool, or a refined approach you can put to work the same week.
How do I enroll in this AI program?
Enrolling in any one of our programs is simple:
- Click on the "enroll" button on the program page
- Create an account or log in to our customer portal
- Complete the online reservation form (should take less than 2 minutes)
- Pay by credit card to complete your enrollment, or select your preferred payment type to reserve your seat and connect with the finance team
Do your programs provide credits towards a degree, grades, transcripts, or Continuing Education Units (CEUs)?
Our programs are non-degree programs and do not hold any credit unit equivalency, letter grades, pass/fail designation, Continuing Education Units (CEUs), or transcripts. Rather, we provide a certificate of completion at the conclusion of the program.
To qualify for a certificate of completion, a participant must meet the minimum requirements as noted for each program and maintaining at least 80% attendance/engagement.
Can I enroll in a program if I live outside of the U.S.?
Yes. The program is delivered in a live-online format and enrollment is available to global leaders outside of sanctioned countries (see below). Proficiency in written and spoken English at a level that allows full engagement and participation in a program is recommended.
The list of countries sanctioned by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control currently includes: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria and the Ukraine-Crimea Region, plus the addition of Russia for Berkeley Executive Education at this time.
Faculty
Kurt Beyer
Lecturer and Executive Teaching Fellow, Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Haas School of Business
Jenny Herbert Creek
Professional Faculty | Finance, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business
Certificates
Certificate of Completion
Signal your professional achievement to your network and get recognized for your completion! Upon successful completion of the program, UC Berkeley Executive Education grants a verified digital certificate of completion to participants that you are encouraged to add to your profiles.
Note: This program results in a digital certificate of completion and is not eligible for degree credit/CEUs. After successful completion of the program, your verified digital certificate will be emailed to you directly. All certificate images are for illustrative purposes only and may be subject to change at the discretion of UC Berkeley Executive Education.
Certificate of Business Excellence
Participants in the Certificate of Business Excellence (COBE) program will earn a mark of distinction from a world-class university, gain access to a powerful global network, and enjoy the flexibility of completing the program in up to three years. A UC Berkeley Certificate of Business Excellence allows individuals to create a personal learning journey structured by our four academic pillars to gain management essentials in Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Strategy, and Finance to drive both personal and organizational development.
