Fourteen leaders left a two-day offsite with a real AI roadmap and a ranked list of what to build first

The problem

A $174B private investment management firm wanted every leader to understand AI and agree on where to start. Fourteen office heads focused on business development and operating officers running daily execution all needed to get on the same page. Three different teams needed coverage: Strategic Advisors handling tax and estate work, Client Service, and Portfolio Management. No one agreed on the starting point.

What we built

• Each group got a session built for them before they combined. Office heads got use cases tied to business development. Operating officers got use cases tied to daily execution. Mixing them on day one would have wasted both groups' time.
• The agenda came from the firm's own pain, not a consultant's template. Before the offsite, every attendee submitted their biggest time-wasters. AI sorted 100-plus submissions into themes overnight. The sessions ran on what the firm actually needed.
• Senior advisors saw a full day of synthesis compressed to 6 minutes. We demoed AI reading a real anonymized client tax-and-estate matter and producing a finished brief. That is the kind of document a senior advisor used to spend a day writing. That demo changed the room.
• Portfolio managers saw weeks of analyst work done in minutes. AI read a set of manager commentary letters, spotted contradictions across quarters, and flagged the most important question to ask. Before AI, this was a multi-week junior analyst project.
• Leadership left with a ranked pilot list everyone agreed on. The Day 2 session produced concrete next steps across all three business areas. No one left impressed but unsure what to do next.
• Every pilot had an owner, a deadline, and a success metric before anyone flew home. Post-session interviews with department heads converted pilot ideas into actionable plans. Offsite energy usually dies on the flight home. This time it did not.

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