How to Build an AI Advisory Board You Can Actually Use

An AI advisory board is a thinking tool. You give AI one real decision, a short brief, and a few defined views. Then you check what it raises before you decide.

Ask AI whether your business idea is good, and a smooth answer can leave the hardest part untouched. You still need to know what could make the idea fail.

AI creates the roles. They are not real people who know your business. The value comes from the questions you find and check.

AI helps explore the options. The person making the decision stays in charge.

In my keynote, Your AI Advisory Board, I teach it as three moves: Bring the Context. Ask for a Challenge. Make the Call.

Bring the Context

Start with a decision narrow enough to work through. Use this brief. Keep facts and unknowns separate.

• Decision: What must I choose?
• Goal: What result am I trying to get?
• Options: What could I do, including waiting?
• Limits: What time, money, people, or promises shape the choice?
• Known facts: What can I support?
• Unknowns: What still needs an answer?

For a general example, a media team is weighing an extra filming day. Its current edits are still waiting to be finished.

The goal is to take on more work and keep the promises already made. The options are to add the day, delay it, or change the scope. The team still needs to know how much editing the new work takes. It also needs to know when the editor can do it.

That brief gives the tool something to examine. “Help us grow” leaves most of the decision unwritten.

Use only information your company allows you to share in the chosen tool.

Ask for a Challenge

When I use my AI board to review a business plan, I give it as much detail as I possibly can. I want it to look at the plan from different sides: what could make it fail, what the competition is doing, and whether the offer makes sense.

In a discussion with my team about how the AI board should work, I described one question this way: “What will guarantee this to fail?”

For a page of copy, I need a different review. Is the customer clear? Is the problem clear? Does the reader understand why it matters?

I told the team I wanted a short response first, with room to go deeper. I don’t need every perspective on every task.

For the filming decision, three views fit. The customer view should test the need and the promise. The delivery view should look at how the work gets done. The owner view should weigh the value of the choice against the limits you have.

Try this prompt with the brief above it:

Review this decision from the customer, delivery team, and business owner views. For each, name the strongest concern, the fact we still need, and the next question to answer. Keep my facts separate from your guesses. Do not invent numbers or sources. If the views point in different directions, explain why. End with the issue I should check before I decide.

Give each view a purpose. A famous name alone does not give you that person’s judgment.

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An invented citation is still invented when it arrives in a neat table.

Make the Call

Start by checking what comes back. In the filming example, a possible concern is editing capacity. A sample response to inspect could be:

The extra filming day adds work after the camera is packed. Confirm the editing hours and the editor’s current commitments before you set a delivery date.

The next move is to review the actual work with the person doing it. AI does not know that person’s free time. A confident guess will not fill the gap.

If the answer includes a claim or source, open the source and check that it supports the claim. AI can produce convincing information that is wrong. An invented citation is still invented when it arrives in a neat table.

You can ask the tool to challenge the option you prefer, too. Use the challenge to find gaps. It does not prove the choice is free of bias or risk.

Then write a short note that stands on its own: the choice, the reason, the facts still missing, and what would make you review it.

For the next decision on your desk, complete the brief and use the prompt. Pick the question that could change your choice. Get that answer from the work or the person who knows it.

The board has done its job when you have something better to act on.

Common Questions

Is an AI advisory board made of real advisers?

No. AI creates the roles, and they do not know your business. A famous name does not give you that person’s judgment. Use the views to find better questions, then check the answers yourself.

What should stay out of the AI tool?

Anything your company does not allow you to share in that tool. Keep the brief to approved information, and mark what you know apart from what you still need to learn.

Source for AI accuracy and checking claims: Claude Help Center.