AI Board Design Method
Build an on-demand advisory board around your blind spots and long-term goals
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 94%
The AI Board Design Method starts with the leader rather than a list of famous names. The leader supplies the model with a long-term vision, business plan, culture documents, personality information, known strengths, and known weaknesses. AI then interviews the leader to uncover additional blind spots and converts those gaps into capabilities an effective board should provide. Exemplary people or purpose-built personas are selected for each capability, and each profile receives explicit boundaries defining where it may and may not advise. A future-self persona adds a perspective aligned with the person the leader wants to become decades later. The board can then examine decisions from multiple specialized viewpoints, but its recommendations remain inputs to human judgment rather than delegated authority.
Origin
Geoff Woods created an AI board because he had self-funded AI Leadership, had no investors or formal board, and wanted advice on demand from perspectives designed to augment his weaknesses.
Core principles
- 01Design advisors around weaknesses rather than fame
- 02Ground the board in personal and business context
- 03Give every persona a narrow mandate
- 04Prohibit advice outside a persona's legitimate domain
- 05Include a future-self perspective for long-term alignment
- 06Apply human judgment to the board's recommendations
How to run it
- 1
Load foundational context
Provide the AI with your long-term vision, business plan, culture documents, personality profiles, and a candid account of strengths and weaknesses.
- 2
Interview for blind spots
Have AI ask questions that reveal unconscious strengths, weaknesses, and recurring decision gaps. Validate the findings rather than accepting them automatically.
- 3
Define missing capabilities
Translate validated gaps into skills the board must supply, such as product design, storytelling, finance, risk mitigation, or operational scale.
- 4
Select board personas
Research leaders or construct personas that exemplify the required capabilities. Build detailed profiles grounded in reliable information.
- 5
Set advisory boundaries
Define what each persona is allowed to advise on and what topics are prohibited. Keep each member within the domain that justified their inclusion.
- 6
Add your future self
Create a persona representing the person you intend to become decades from now. Use it to evaluate present choices against long-term identity and goals.
- 7
Consult and decide
Ask relevant members to assess a decision, compare their reasoning, and make the final choice yourself. Record whether subsequent outcomes support or contradict their advice.
In the wild
Woods identified capability gaps including vision, product design, storytelling, risk mitigation, finance, scale, and operational efficiency. He created bounded personas based on Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos, while explicitly prohibiting the Jobs persona from advising him about being a husband, father, or leader. He also added a persona of himself 30 years in the future.
→ He gained an on-demand set of complementary perspectives tailored to his weaknesses and long-term aspirations.
Common mistakes
Starting with famous names
Choosing admired figures before identifying missing capabilities produces a board based on status rather than strategic fit.
Giving personas unlimited authority
A person's excellence in one discipline does not qualify their simulated persona to advise across every area.
Mistaking simulation for reality
An AI persona is a probabilistic construction and should not be represented as the actual views of the person it models.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for founders and executives who lack a formal board or need additional perspectives on recurring strategic decisions.
Not ideal for
It is not suitable as a substitute for fiduciary governance, licensed professional advice, or accountable human relationships.
From the transcript
“You should have an AI board if you are in a position where it's lonely at the top, and you would like to have advice…”
“My most valuable board member is my future self. I created a persona of the man I want to be 30 years in the future…”
From the episode
How to Use AI to Make Money, Grow Your Business, and Be More Productive