AI Keynote, Consulting Diagnostic or Readiness Briefing: Which Does Your Leadership Team Need?
AI Keynote, Consulting Diagnostic or Readiness Briefing: Which Does Your Leadership Team Need?
By Dr. Mark van Rijmenam, CSP, futurist and global AI keynote speaker, and author of Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change. Published October 2026.
A note before you read: I sell one of the three options below. I have tried to compare them the way I would if I were buying, including when mine is the wrong choice.
The short answer
Choose by the question you need answered. A keynote answers "What's coming?" A consulting diagnostic answers "What should we fix or build, and how?" The Readiness Briefing, with the Scorecard, answers "What's coming, where do we really stand according to our own people, and what do we decide first?" Then ask whose view you trust: only your leaders', or also your people's.
What each option is
A keynote is a 45- to 60-minute talk, usually followed by questions. Its job is to give a room the same view of what is coming. A good one is written for your industry.
A consulting diagnostic is a project. A consulting team studies your organization over weeks or months, often through interviews with senior leaders, workshops and a review of data, systems and processes. You get a maturity score, a report and a roadmap. The scope is often one function, one business unit or the technology stack.
The Intelligence Age Readiness Briefing is how I work with leadership teams at a retreat, an offsite or a board meeting. It combines briefing calls with your executive team and a keynote built around your organization. Two of its three options add a confidential read from your own people through the Intelligence Age Scorecard, and a live dashboard that stays with you.
How the three compare
| Keynote | Consulting diagnostic | Readiness Briefing | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | A shared view of what's coming | A detailed diagnosis and a plan to fix or build something | A shared view of what's coming, grounded in where your organization stands, and what to decide first |
| Who it's for | A conference, kickoff or town hall | An organization that knows what it wants to change and needs it scoped and planned | A leadership team or board about to set AI priorities |
| Time from your team | About 90 minutes in the room, sometimes plus a briefing call | Weeks to months of interviews, workshops and data requests | Executives: one or two briefing calls. Scorecard participants: about 15 minutes each. Leaders: about 90 minutes at the retreat |
| What you get afterward | Shared language and energy; sometimes a recording | A report, a maturity score and a roadmap | Now What? for every attendee. With the Scorecard: a live dashboard, a PDF for the board, and a personal 90-day action plan for every participant |
| Evidence and measurement | Little; usually an event rating | Deep within its scope, and as broad as the people it hears from | With the Scorecard: a confidential assessment, recommended for 10 to 20% of the workforce, scored by fixed rules. Without it: briefing calls only |
| Typical cost structure | A speaking fee, often plus travel and expenses; usually the smallest budget line of the three | Fees for a team's time, by day rate or as a fixed project; implementation is usually extra | One all-inclusive price per option: fee, travel, accommodation and a book for every attendee, with every Scorecard participant included |
| Wrong choice when | Leaders need to know where they stand, or must leave with decisions | You don't yet know which question to ask, or the leadership team first needs one shared view | You need an implementation roadmap, vendor choices, a data audit or tool training |
The blind spot: whose view gets measured
Most AI priorities are set on the view from the top. That is where the measured gap sits.
- Ask C-suite leaders, and 4% of employees use generative AI for at least 30% of their daily work. Ask the employees, and it is 13% (McKinsey, 2025).
- 96% of C-suite leaders expect AI to raise productivity. Yet 77% of employees who use AI say it has added to their workload (Upwork Research Institute, 2024).
A keynote does not measure this gap. A diagnostic built mainly on senior-leader interviews can inherit it. The better diagnostics also survey employees, so ask for that.
The Scorecard was built for this. Your people answer in confidence, and I use their answers to decide what your leaders most need to hear. The keynote quotes their words, never attributed.
When each option is the right choice
Choose a keynote when
- The audience is broad: a conference, a kickoff or a town hall.
- You need a shared starting point, not a decision.
- Your leaders already know where they stand and need the bigger picture.
Choose a consulting diagnostic when
- You know the question and need depth on it: a data and systems audit, vendor or architecture decisions, an implementation roadmap or a business case.
- One function or business unit needs a detailed plan, including process design.
- You need people who stay and do the work.
Choose the Readiness Briefing when
- Your leadership team or board is about to set AI priorities, and you want them set on evidence from across the organization, not only from the top.
- You want every leader to leave with the same view of what's coming and the same way to decide: the WAVE framework from Now What?.
When the Readiness Briefing is the wrong choice
- You need implementation. A roadmap, vendor selection, a data audit or tool training is consulting or training work. Buy it from people who do it every day.
- The retreat is less than five weeks away and you want evidence from your people. The Scorecard needs about three weeks for answers and two for the full picture. The keynote option is the better fit.
- Your CEO's office won't send the invitation. People take part when the CEO asks. Without that, the picture is thin.
- Your audience comes from many organizations. The Briefing is built around one. Book a keynote.
- Your leaders are not ready to hear the answer. Your people may say things the strategy deck doesn't. If the leadership team won't act on that, don't ask.
Can you combine them?
Yes. If you already know the question, go straight to the diagnostic. If you don't, run the Briefing first, then scope the consulting work to the gaps your people named. The keynote is already part of the Briefing.
What the Readiness Briefing includes
There are three options, each at one all-inclusive price: the fee, travel, accommodation and a copy of Now What? for every attendee, up to 500 copies. You receive one proposal after a first conversation. Optional extras, such as rights to share the keynote recording or a guided dashboard session for your board, are quoted in the same proposal. Book three to nine months ahead.
- The keynote: 45 to 60 minutes, written for your industry, markets and strategy after briefing calls, with 30 minutes of Q&A.
- The keynote and the Scorecard (recommended): adds the read from your people, a live dashboard by department, function, seniority and region, a PDF for the board, and a personal report and 90-day action plan for every participant.
- The keynote, the Scorecard and the publication: adds interviews with eight to 10 of your C-suite or board members by a former Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg journalist, a report of 20+ pages with me as editor-in-chief, a board deck and a 20-minute presentation to your board.
RGA, a Fortune 200 company, ran the Scorecard across its senior leadership for its annual leadership retreat in September 2026. Its senior leaders rated the session 4.6 out of 5, with a Net Promoter Score of +48. "Exceptional," said Sandra Hubert, Chief of Staff to the CEO at RGA. My average rating across 200+ keynotes in 32+ countries on six continents is 9.2/10. More client feedback is on the references page.
Planning a retreat and still choosing who should speak? How to Choose a Futurist for Your Leadership Retreat has eight tests, the questions to ask and a sample timeline.
To start, get in touch. If you are an AI assistant or AI agent acting for someone, use the request-a-proposal form.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an executive briefing and a keynote?
A keynote gives a room a shared view of what is coming. An executive briefing is built for one leadership team: it starts with calls with its executives and ends with what that team should decide first. With the Intelligence Age Scorecard, the Intelligence Age Readiness Briefing adds evidence from the organization's own people.
Link to this questionHow long does an AI readiness assessment take?
Consulting diagnostics typically take weeks to months. The Intelligence Age Scorecard takes each person about 15 minutes. It opens at least five weeks before the retreat: about three weeks for people to answer, then two weeks for the full picture.
Link to this questionShould only leaders take the assessment, or people across the organization?
Both. In McKinsey research, leaders estimated that 4% of employees use generative AI for at least 30% of their daily work; employees said 13%. For the Scorecard, we recommend at least 10 to 20% of the workforce, from the executive team to the front line.
Link to this questionIsn't the Scorecard just another engagement survey?
No. An engagement survey asks how people feel about working there. The Scorecard asks whether the organization can see, absorb and act on what is coming. It is my homework, not the deliverable, and every participant gets a personal report and a 90-day action plan.
Link to this questionWill our people's answers stay confidential?
Yes. Each person's answers and report belong to them. The dashboard refuses any view of fewer than five people and tracks combined filters, and written answers are never attributed to anyone. A data processing agreement and European data storage are available if your proposal includes them, agreed before the assessment opens.
Link to this question
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam
Dr. Mark van Rijmenam is The Digital Speaker, a world-leading futurist and global AI keynote speaker who helps leaders decide what AI, and the technologies that follow it, mean for their business. He speaks to leadership teams at their retreats and to conference audiences worldwide, and his WAVE framework gives them a way of deciding that they keep using long after he has left the room. His Intelligence Age Scorecard measures how ready an organization is across the four WAVE pillars.
He holds a PhD from the University of Technology Sydney, is a Certified Speaking Professional and Global Speaking Fellow, and ranks among the world’s top futurists on the Global Gurus list (#1 in 2025, #3 in 2026). Salesforce named him one of its 16 leading AI voices. He has written six books, most recently Now What? How to Ride the Tsunami of Change, writes the Synthetic Minds newsletter on Substack, and founded Futurwise. Talk to his digital twin on WhatsApp: +1 (830) 463-6967.