For the executive weighing the investment

The AI operator you need is already in the building.

Your chief of staff already knows every function, every bottleneck, every promise the company has made. Fund one seat in the Institute and that knowledge becomes an AI operating system installed from the inside — no outside consultant, no rip-and-replace. The next cohort begins Monday, August 3.

Next cohort begins Monday, August 3 · the Intelligence OS
Bottom line, up front
The ask
One funded seat in the Institute for your chief of staff — a single line item, one month.
The cost
Less than a single month of one outside consultant — and the operating system your chief of staff builds stays with the company forever.
The return
Your chief of staff, shipping AI deliverables across all ten business functions — weekly, on your own data, behind your own firewall.
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 02 · The problem
02

The company is buying AI everywhere except where it would stick.

Tools get bought, licenses go unused, and consultants leave with the playbook in their bag. That's the villain of this story. Meanwhile the person who actually knows how the company runs — your chief of staff — is stuck at prompting. Given the right context, AI now beats a 14-year domain expert about nine times out of ten, and CEOs have stopped delegating it to IT. The only question is who installs it: an outsider who bills by the hour, or the operator already in the building.

On the ledger
AI spend that never became AI capacity

Seats bought, logins forgotten, pilots stalled. The money left the account; the capability never arrived.

In the org chart
The one person who sees everything

The chief of staff touches strategy, sales, finance, ops, and legal every week. No consultant starts with that context. Your chief of staff already has it.

The principle
Transformation sticks when it's built from the inside

An operator who stays installs the system, trains the team, and compounds. A consultant who leaves takes it with them.

The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 03 · The guides
03

We've installed this inside real companies, and we know the way in.

“Twenty years running the operating system behind a chairman and seven companies. The chief of staff seat is where transformation actually installs, I've lived it.”

Michelle Defouw
20 years a chief of staff · author, Cracking the Code

“AI came for my 20-year business. Rather than fight it, I rebuilt it, then took a thousand companies through the same transformation.”

Steve Cunningham
Founder, Humans + Agents
100K+
Leaders trained
1,000+
Companies transformed
18mo → 2wk
Fortune 500 ramp-up · on Copilot
10
Functions, one morning brief
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 04 · The plan
04

Three steps. One funded seat.

1
Now
Fund the seat

Enroll one seat for your chief of staff in the August cohort — a single line item you can approve today. Everything justifying the spend is on this page.

2
Weeks 1–4
Build the stack

A daily Agent Builder Sprint plus the month's bootcamp, Mon–Thu. Your chief of staff ships real deliverables on real company data from week one.

3
Every quarter
Install it company-wide

The daily executive OS: ten functions fan into one morning brief. Capacity the company keeps, compounding every cycle as the models improve.

The month, on a calendar · August 2026 · the Intelligence OS
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
3Stand-up 9:15aIntelligence OS 4:00pSprint 5:00p
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20Stand-up 9:15aIntelligence OS 4:00pSprint 5:00p
21Monthly forum · full day
22GTM OS day · full day
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31Stand-up 9:15aIntelligence OS 4:00pSprint 5:00p
Daily AI coachingDaily stand-upIntelligence OS bootcampAgent Builder SprintFull-day forum
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 05 · The curriculum
05

What a funded seat actually installs.

Every cohort runs the same spine: a daily Agent Builder Sprint that gets your chief of staff shipping, and a twelve-session bootcamp that installs one operating system. Three systems, one quarter each, on a loop that sharpens every cycle as the models improve. Your August seat runs the Intelligence OS.

The Agent Builder SprintDaily on-ramp · every session

Runs alongside the bootcamp every day. Four moves that take your chief of staff from an empty folder to a working agent fleet, pointed at your real work.

01
Build Your First Agent in Four Steps. Create a folder, install the pattern, and ship a working agent in a single session.
02
Which Agents Should We Build? Map your role, find the repeatable work, and pick the agents worth building first.
03
Crush Your Goals. Turn your goals into deliverables your agents can produce every week.
04
Execution ROI. Run the numbers: what your agents earn, what they save, and what to build next.
Execution OS BootcampJuly · 12 sessions

The foundation month: the folder structure, the agents, and the standards that make a deliverable producer you can trust.

01
Intro. The map of the three weeks and the operating system it installs.
02
Folder Structure. The six-folder spine, work lane and machinery lane.
03
Tasks, the Kanban. The dumping ground and the four fates.
04
Agents and SPECS Overview. The five-file anatomy of a deliverable producer.
05
The Golden Example. The deep dive, the whole hour on what good looks like.
06
Context. What agents read, then build your own.
07
Process. How work runs: steps, decisions, failure handling.
08
The Standard. Standards, quality control, two-stage QC, write your own qc.py.
09
Projects. The project file as operating memory, one live run end to end.
10
Programs. The coordination layer, this bootcamp live on screen.
11
ACE. The daily loop: Approve, Check, Evaluate.
12
Demo Day. Participants ship, show, and get scored.
Intelligence OS BootcampYour August seatAugust · 12 sessions

The month your chief of staff turns raw company data into judgment. One repeatable Machine, pointed at each of the ten functions, ending in a single daily executive brief.

01
The Repeatable Pattern. The Intelligence OS, and where it sits in the stack of operating systems the company runs on.
02
Strategy Intelligence. The strategy machine. You will not run the loop; you will build the team of agents that does.
03
Product Intelligence. Stop guessing what to build. The same Machine, pointed at what users do and say.
04
Marketing Intelligence. Find the words that sell. The Machine, aimed at the offers the market responds to.
05
Sales Intelligence. Know which deals are real. The Machine, aimed at the pipeline that is actually moving.
06
Finance Intelligence. Know which work makes money. The Machine, pointed at where the money actually goes.
07
Operations Intelligence. Deliver what you sold. Every delivery date is a bet on capacity; this Machine watches the bet.
08
IT / Data Intelligence. Trust your own numbers. Every number you trust is a bet on a pipe.
09
HR / Admin Intelligence. Read your own room. Are your people okay, and is the admin holding them together still holding?
10
Legal Intelligence. Read your own exposure. What did you actually promise, and which obligation comes due next?
11
Continuous Improvement Intelligence. Read what keeps breaking. The tenth function: the Machine that watches the system itself.
12
The Daily Executive OS. Run the company from one screen. Ten functions fan into one morning brief. The capstone.
Growth OS BootcampSeptember · 12 sessions

The third month: agents that don't just run the work, they move the numbers — propose, approve, run, measure, and keep what works.

01
The Decide Layer. Execution ships, Intelligence senses, Growth decides. The growth loop pattern, and where it sits in the four-layer stack.
02
The Goal Tree. Wire goals down the five-level ladder into targets agents can work toward. Your KPI chain becomes the scoreboard.
03
The Experiment Engine. Turn morning briefs into proposed bets: hypothesis, cost, expected lift, and the kill criteria stated up front.
04
Acquisition Experiments. The Machine proposes tests on lead flow: channels, hooks, and the census motion, scored against pipeline.
05
Offer and Conversion Experiments. The voice-of-customer swipe file becomes test copy: offers, pages, and pitches, measured against close rate.
06
Pricing and Margin Experiments. Every price is a bet. Experiments on packaging and anchors, aimed at the leaks the margin waterfall found.
07
Retention and Delivery Experiments. Keep what you sold: tests on onboarding, cadence, and the moments the churn signals point to.
08
The Scoreboard. Baselines, honest attribution, and the three verdicts: keep, kill, or scale. No experiment ends unread.
09
The Weekly Growth Council. The cadence: agents propose Monday, you approve, results land Friday. The meeting that replaces the growth team.
10
Autonomy Dials. How much the agents may do alone: budgets, guardrails, and the approval gates that keep judgment human.
11
Compounding. Test-then-graduate: winning experiments become standing processes, and the playbook thickens every week.
12
Demo Day. The growth loop live: a quarter of experiments, the numbers, and the next round of proposals, on stage.
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteFrom the first cohort

Week one, in their words.

“First session yesterday made it clear this entire experience will be value-packed.”

Cohort 1 · after session one

“Week one blew my mind. I've been operating AI from a framework already, but Steve Cunningham's framework is far superior for how to sequence prompts and data for quality outputs — and the fact that he just gifts us agents is wild, generous, and makes the time and money worth it.”

Cohort 1 · week one

“Michelle, I really like what I've learned so far. This is beyond my imagination!”

Cohort 1 · day three
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 06 · What the company keeps
06

One month in. Stacked.

The operating systemCompany keeps itThe folder structure, the agents, and the loops — documented and reusable
Keep it
Elite AI OperatorOne month: the program that takes your chief of staff to level nine
Included
The Intelligence OSTen functions, one morning brief, running on your own data
Included
The Go-To-Market OSThe full-day forum, updated monthly
Included
The communityLive forums, daily AI coaching, a full month inside
Included

One deliverable your chief of staff ships in week one can cover the seat. The rest of the quarter is upside the company keeps.

The August cohort
Enroll your chief of staff in the August cohort.
Join the Institute · $499
$0

The no-questions money-back guarantee. If the seat hasn't paid for itself by the end of the month, the money comes back. No questions asked. To date, we have refunded exactly $0 under this guarantee.

The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 07 · The stakes
07

The window doesn't wait.

Keep paying consultants who leave with the playbook in their bag.
Watch a competitor install AI across their functions first.
Watch your best operator leave for the company that will fund it.
Buy more tools no one uses, and call it a strategy.
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteAct 08 · Where this ends
08

From AI-curious to AI-operated.

The company today
  • AI spend, no AI capacity
  • Consultants who bill and leave
  • Tools bought, logins forgotten
  • The chief of staff stuck at prompting
  • Transformation always “next quarter”
Ninety days in
  • Your chief of staff shipping deliverables weekly
  • The playbook stays in the building
  • Ten functions in one morning brief
  • A level-nine operator on your own data
  • A system that compounds every quarter

This is what a single funded seat looks like one quarter in, and it keeps compounding from there.

See it live · free workshop
Watch the system run — Wednesday, July 22 · 2:30 PM ET
A free live workshop for chiefs of staff and the executives weighing this. Registration required — the Zoom link is emailed on sign-up, so register ahead of time, not at 2:30.
Register free
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteYour questions, answered

The questions you're weighing, answered.

Why fund this instead of hiring a consultant?
An operator who stays installs the system, trains the team, and compounds; a consultant leaves with the playbook. The operating system your chief of staff builds stays with the company forever — the folder structure, the agents, and the loops all travel — whether or not you ever engage an outside firm again.
What's the actual ROI?
One deliverable your chief of staff ships in week one can cover the seat. The math is honest — subject-matter-expert hours versus AI-assisted hours — and the program produces an AI Invoice on your own deliverables, so you see the payback on real work. Most seats pay back inside the first month.
What if the person leaves?
The operating system belongs to the company, not the individual — it's documented, the agents are files, and the folder structure travels. What you fund stays in the building.
We're a Microsoft / Copilot shop. Does this work?
Yes. The system underneath is model-agnostic: the file structure, the agents, and the operating loops all travel. We've deployed it inside Fortune 500 Copilot environments; one company took a ramp-up process from 18 months to two weeks, on Copilot. Claude is better; Copilot still works.
How much of their time does it take?
Live programming runs Monday through Thursday, a daily sprint plus the bootcamp, roughly an hour or two a day for the month, then a 20-minute morning loop after that. Everything is recorded and turned into easy-to-review artifacts, so nothing is lost if a session is missed.
What if it doesn't work for us?
Say so at the end of the month and the money comes back, no questions asked. We've refunded exactly $0 under this guarantee so far.
The AI Chief of Staff InstituteYour move

Fund the seat. Install the system. Start in August.

Next cohort starts Monday, August 3 · the Intelligence OS · money-back guaranteed
The AI Chief of Staff Institute Steve Cunningham & Michelle Defouw · 2026