ai@madurez.ai
Madurez Academy
AI is already influencing how organisations work, serve customers and make decisions. I help leaders develop the understanding and judgement to decide where it belongs, what it should achieve and how its use should be governed.
Through Madurez Academy, I offer focused masterclasses, tailored programmes and a three-day AI for Directors and Leaders Programme.
I start with your organisation’s objectives and the decisions in front of you. I combine explanation, sector examples, structured discussion and practical application, giving you frameworks you can continue using afterwards.
Masterclasses
Half day or full day
In a masterclass, I give your board or leadership team time to examine a specific AI challenge and work through its implications for your organisation.
Tailored Programmes
Your team. Your priorities. Your pace
Build capability across your leadership team
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AI for Directors and Leaders Programme
Three days to develop a practical approach to AI leadership
In this three-day programme, I help directors and senior leaders understand AI’s impact, evaluate its opportunities and risks, and establish the governance needed for effective business integration.
Masterclasses
Themes I draw on include:
AI opportunity and strategy: I help you identify where AI could advance your objectives and distinguish worthwhile opportunities from attractive demonstrations.
Investment and business cases: I work through how to test assumptions, establish evidence and understand the costs and consequences of adoption.
Governance and accountability: I help you decide who owns AI use, what authority systems should have and where oversight belongs.
Supplier and technology decisions: I explore how to challenge claims, understand dependencies and ask the right questions about data, performance and change.
Readiness and organisational change: I help you assess the processes, people, skills and leadership needed to turn an idea into effective practice.
In a half-day session, I focus on a defined theme. A full day gives us more time for case discussion, application and challenge.
My aim is for you to leave with a clearer understanding of the issue, questions to take back to your organisation and a practical reference or framework relevant to the session.
Tailored Programmes
Build capability across your leadership team
I connect a series of sessions around your organisation’s AI priorities. This gives your leaders time to develop their understanding, apply it between sessions and return with questions grounded in their own experience.
I begin with a conversation about your sector, leadership responsibilities, current position and the decisions you need to make. Together, we agree the themes, sequence, depth and delivery format.
I can bring together:
- AI understanding and strategic direction.
- Opportunity identification and investment judgement.
- Organisational readiness and adoption.
- Governance, risk and accountability.
- Supplier evaluation and implementation oversight.
- Pilot design, review and decisions about scaling or stopping.
I structure the sessions around agreed outputs relevant to your organisation. Depending on the scope, these might include a shared statement of strategic intent, a prioritised opportunity map, an adoption roadmap or a governance framework.
I can combine masterclasses, workshops, leadership discussions and application tasks. I deliver in person or live online, with a timetable we agree around your team’s commitments.
AI for Directors and Leaders Programme
In this three-day programme, I help directors and senior leaders understand AI’s impact, evaluate its opportunities and risks, and establish the governance needed for effective business integration.
I have designed it for people who set direction, approve investment, sponsor change or answer for organisational outcomes. I focus on leadership judgement and business application.
Each day produces an output that informs the next. I guide you through a connected path from strategic purpose to adoption and oversight.
Day 1 - Strategic AI leadership and organisational opportunity
Which of our strategic outcomes should AI change, and how would we know?
I begin with your firm’s direction and help you establish where AI could make a meaningful contribution.
- Why AI is a board matter. I examine how AI is already entering organisations through staff, everyday software and suppliers, whether or not the firm has deliberately chosen to adopt it.
- Connecting AI to business value. I help you trace opportunities back to your vision and objectives, rather than starting with a supplier’s demonstration.
- Distinguishing strategy from experimentation. I show you how to test whether an initiative has a stated outcome, a named owner and a baseline against which progress can be judged.
- Establishing strategic alignment. I help you ensure each proposed initiative answers to an objective your firm has chosen.
- Applying values and risk appetite. I introduce a consequence gate to identify proposals that should not proceed, regardless of their potential value score.
Your output: I guide you in developing an AI Strategic Intent Statement and an Opportunity Map, identifying one opportunity to pursue, one to defer and one to reject.
Day 2 - Productivity value and AI adoption at scale
Of everything we could do, what should we do first, and what should we refuse?
I help you turn your opportunity map into a practical sequence of decisions about investment and adoption.
- Finding the workflows worth improving. I help you identify where AI could save time or release capacity, starting with the underlying problem and the quality of the existing process.
- Evaluating opportunities consistently. I guide you through assessing value, feasibility, risk and strategic fit, resolving differences through discussion rather than allowing an average score to conceal disagreement.
- Building a credible business case. I work through the baseline, total cost of ownership, ongoing costs and a realistic worst case.
- Assessing what scaling requires. I examine data, technology, skills, people and process, including the organisational effort required beyond purchasing software.
- Prioritising on value and readiness. I help you select a manageable number of opportunities and define the conditions for progressing, changing direction or stopping.
Your output: I guide you in developing a 90 to 180 day AI Productivity and Adoption Roadmap, staged through four decision gates.
Day 3 - AI governance risk and responsible leadership
How much authority should a system have, and how do we keep it bounded?
I help you establish how your organisation will oversee AI use and maintain control as systems, suppliers and circumstances change.
- Identifying the risks that matter. I examine false information, privacy, synthetic fraud, supplier dependency and model changes, assessing risk according to the use and authority granted.
- Setting practical guardrails. I help you establish approved tools, clear data rules and limits that people can understand and apply.
- Making human oversight effective. I explore decision thresholds, escalation routes and what reviewers need to challenge an output or refuse an action: competence, authority and time.
- Assigning responsibility explicitly. I help you identify an accountable owner for each live AI use and supplier relationship, including where one person holds several responsibilities.
Maintaining oversight after go-live. I work through how to monitor performance, quality and risk, with particular attention to drift and supplier changes.
Your output: I guide you in developing an AI Strategic Adoption and Governance Framework, specifying the evidence required before your firm commits further investment or delegates greater authority.
What you take back to your organisation
Across the three days, I help you develop four connected working documents:
- An AI Strategic Intent Statement.
- An Opportunity Map.
- A 90 to 180 day AI Productivity and Adoption Roadmap.
- An AI Strategic Adoption and Governance Framework.
Together, these give you a basis for discussing proposals, allocating responsibility and making informed decisions about what to pursue, defer or reject.
Built on experience.
Focused on what matters.
I’m Jullian Shawcross, founder of Madurez AI and Madurez Academy. I believe boards and leadership teams need the understanding, confidence and independent insight to make sound decisions about AI: where it can create value, what risks it introduces and what responsible adoption requires.
For over thirty years, I have worked in complex business environments, co-founding and leading a regulated business from inception through a management buyout to its eventual sale in 2024. That experience has shaped how I approach strategy, governance, risk, operations and organisational change—and taught me the importance of connecting ideas to the practical realities of running a business.
More recently, I have focused on AI and its implications for organisations and their leaders. I have taught AI and FinTech at postgraduate level and completed a Doctor of Business Administration, researching information asymmetry and consumer trust. Those interests inform how I examine evidence, challenge claims and help leaders make decisions under uncertainty.
My career began in insurance and financial services. The leadership questions I work with extend across industries: What are we trying to achieve? Which problems are worth solving? What needs to change? Who is accountable? And how will we know whether an investment has delivered?
Through Madurez Academy, I bring commercial experience, academic insight and contemporary AI knowledge to executive education across sectors. I shape each engagement around the organisation, its people and the decisions they face.
My aim is to help leaders understand AI, exercise independent judgement and turn that understanding into responsible action.
