The Board Rehearsal | Art & Soul Consulting

The Board Rehearsal

For boards that need to get their arms around AI, without becoming AI experts.

AI is already at work. Your board needs to know what matters. You do not need to master the technology. You need to understand what is already happening inside your organization, what belongs at board level, and what questions you need answered next.

The Board Rehearsal · Half day · $7,500

Talk It Through With Us · 20 Minutes

3 engagements available for booking by October 1
Sessions through December 31

AI may already be further inside your organization than the board realizes.

74% of private-company directors surveyed by NACD now name AI a top upcoming issue, alongside 65% of public-company directors.

Boards like yours have already put this on the agenda. And even if yours hasn't made AI a priority yet, your organization may already have.

You may be wondering:

Where are people already using it?
What information is going into it?
What decisions are being influenced by it?
What does the board actually need to oversee?
What should stay with management?
What should we be asking that we aren't?

You do not need those answers before you call us. That's the work.

What it is

A half-day working session for a board trying to get its arms around AI.

Whether you have a decision coming or are still figuring out what the board's role should be.

Before the session, we speak confidentially with 4 to 6 people so we understand the room, and your organization's actual AI picture, before we enter it. Then the session runs in three movements.

Movement 0160 to 75 min

The Table Read

Everyone gets on the same page before the work begins. In plain language, no jargon and no test: what these tools actually are, what they can and cannot do, and what your own organization is already doing, drawn from the pre-work. There is real teaching in this movement, and it is scoped to one purpose: giving every trustee enough shared understanding to deliberate that afternoon.

Movement 0290 min

The Rehearsal

The board works the real question. Where trustees are quietly holding different assumptions. What management knows that the board hasn't heard. What belongs to the board, and what should stay with management. No one has to perform expertise. The person using AI every day can bring what they know. The person who barely understands it can ask the obvious question. The skeptic can name the risk.

Movement 0360 to 75 min

The Working and Decision Session

The board moves. Either it makes the call and the reasoning is captured, or the real question is framed, the missing information is named, someone owns getting it, and there is a date for bringing it back.

And the board works out what actually belongs to it.

How it ends

You leave with one of two good outcomes.

We're ready to move.

The board has enough shared understanding to make the decision or give management clear direction.

We know what we need next.

The real question is clear. The missing information is named. Someone owns getting it. And there is a date for bringing it back.

You don't have to force a decision to make progress.

The deliverable

And you don't leave with another binder.

Within 7 business days, you receive a concise Board Read:

What is clear
What isn't
What belongs to the board
What belongs to management
What needs to come back
Who owns the next step
By when

Something you can actually use at the next meeting.

Fit

You probably need this conversation if:

AI is already being used inside the organization.
It keeps appearing in conversations about risk, people, budgets, vendors, strategy, or operations.
Trustees have very different levels of understanding or comfort.
Management is moving faster than board understanding.
Your board isn't sure what it should oversee, and what it should leave alone.

Or you simply keep thinking:

We need to get our arms around this.

That's enough. You do not need a policy vote, technology proposal, or perfectly formed AI question first.

What this isn't

Legal advice
A technology recommendation
A policy template
Another board retreat

There is teaching in the room. But it is teaching in service of a working session, not a course. Your experts bring their expertise. We help the board use its judgment.

Why Art & Soul

Our expertise is not standing at the front of the room telling people what to think about AI.

It's getting a room of smart people with different perspectives to do hard work together.

For more than 20 years, our methods have been forged in professional rehearsal rooms: places where people bring different expertise, strong opinions, limited time, real stakes, and an immovable deadline. No one gets to wait until they know everything.

You ask. You test. You disagree. You adjust. You get ready. That is Rehearsal Mode™, and it is what we bring into your board room.

And the teaching side is credentialed, not improvised. Founder Kira Troilo is a UiPath Certified Business Analyst and a founding member of the GSC AI Learning Circle, and Art & Soul teaches AI foundations to smart non-specialists in university classrooms. We explain this technology in plain language because we do it every week.

Theater isn't our metaphor. It's where we learned how to hold rooms like this.

Art & Soul's work has supported leaders and teams at organizations including Harvard University, Stratford Festival, Boston Lyric Opera, and others navigating consequential work under real pressure.

Three boards this fall

Art & Soul is offering three Board Rehearsals for booking by October 1, 2026.

$7,500

Half day · 6 to 20 participants
Delivered in person

Travel included within New England. Sessions may be scheduled through December 31. Virtual delivery is available on request.

Includes

Confidential pre-work with 4 to 6 participants
Session design around your board's actual situation
Half-day facilitated Board Rehearsal in three movements
Board Read within 7 business days
Travel to your board meeting within New England

You don't need to know the answer yet.

You just need to know it's time for the board to start asking the right questions.