The Better Boards Podcast Series
The Better Boards podcast series is the podcast for Chairs, CEOs, Non-Executive Directors, Company Secretaries, and their advisors.
Every episode is filled with practical insights and learnings from those inside the boardrooms. We tease out what really matters and highlight actionable steps you can take to enhance the performance of your board.
The Better Boards Podcast Series
10x Your Impact – How the Smartest Directors Are Using AI
How the Smartest Directors Are Using AI
In this episode, we speak with Jamie Green, Co-Founder and CEO of Tutaki, the Director Workbench designed to make board directors radically more effective. Drawing on his experience at McKinsey and extensive conversations with Chairs, directors, and governance leaders, Jamie built Tutaki to help transform how board members prepare, engage, and act. With a strong foundation in strategy, governance, and AI product design, Jamie is at the forefront of a new era of “augmented directorship.” As complexity grows and time shrinks, AI is proving to be a performance accelerator, not just a support tool.
In this episode of the Better Boards podcast, we speak with Jamie Green, Co-Founder and CEO of Tutaki, the Director Workbench designed to make board directors radically more effective. Drawing on his experience at McKinsey and hundreds of conversations with Chairs, directors, and governance leaders, Jamie built Tutaki to transform how board members prepare, engage, and act. With a background in strategy, governance, and AI product design, he’s leading a new era of “augmented directorship.” In this conversation, Jamie outlines how the best boards are using AI not just to cope—but to lead.
Why effectiveness matters
The most valuable strategic decisions happen in the boardroom. AI can dramatically enhance this by helping directors focus on what matters, enabling more trust and transparency with management.
“Directors are the amplifiers, and it’s really key that their whole process works effectively to actually get the best out of it.”
What’s holding boards back
The main blockers? Lack of clarity on use, data privacy fears, and over-reliance. Jamie argues that these risks can be mitigated—and that the real risk is not using AI at all.
“If you blanket rule, ‘you can’t use AI,’ and your competitors do, they’ll make faster, more accurate decisions—and leave you behind.”
Where AI is heading
Jamie outlines four phases of AI maturity in the boardroom: analysis, automation, AI-assisted directors, and eventually AI boards. While AI boards are still a few years off, the steps to get there are already unfolding.
“Imagine if you had Warren Buffett sitting there analysing the financials. That’s the power of AI.”
Start today
Directors are already using AI to synthesise documents, explore competitor strategy, and broaden their thinking. The key is starting with clarity—ask AI to help you ask better questions.
Three takeaways:
“Not using AI is the riskiest option… The best directors are going to be AI-literate.”
- Not using AI is the greatest risk.
- The best boards are already using it.
- Seek out vertical tools that solve real problems.
Discover how you can take the first confident steps toward AI-powered boardroom effectiveness—starting today.
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To find out how you can participate in the Better Boards Podcast Series or for more information on Better Boards’ solutions, please email us at info@better-boards.com.
how the smartest directors are using AI. Welcome to the Better Boards podcast series, the podcast for chairs, CEOs, non-executive directors, company secretaries, and their advisors. Every episode is filled with practical insights and learnings from those inside boardrooms. We discuss what really matters and highlight actionable steps you can take to enhance the performance of your board. Today's episode It's for every board director wondering how to stay ahead as complexity grows and time shrinks. We are joined by Jamie Green. Jamie is co-founder and CEO of Tutaki, an AI platform built specifically for board directors. Jamie brings a bold perspective that AI isn't just a support tool, it's a performance accelerator. In this episode, we explore how forward-looking directors are using AI to enhance their effectiveness, how governance workflows are evolving and what directors can do today to stay at the forefront and at the top of their game. Jamie, thank you so, so much for contributing to the Better Boards podcast series.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, thank you. Thank you for having
SPEAKER_01:me. All right. We love to have people from around the world. So I sit currently in London. Maybe tell our listeners where you are sitting.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm currently, if anyone's been to the other side of the planet in New Zealand, I'm in Little Old New Zealand and even up north in New Zealand, so a small town called Whangarei. So yeah, pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Fantastic. It's important for the series because we really want to capture the perspective of different people from different countries, different roles. So a very warm welcome from New Zealand. Let's jump straight in. Why is effectiveness, and we love effectiveness, Yeah, I mean, it's a great
SPEAKER_00:first question. You think about the purpose of companies overall is to create value. And arguably the place where a lot of that value is created is in the board. I mean, the board's making the most strategic decisions that exist operationally and just generally. strategically for that business. So effectiveness overall at the board level is massively important. And companies that do it well, move faster, make more accurate decisions, better decisions. And the companies that don't, the board can feel like a drag. Management feel like they're preparing for weeks for a learning education session. And not a lot can come out of it. There's a lot of trust. So an effective system is one where directors, they focus on the right things, They're asking the right questions and generally not asking management to make oodles and oodles of models for them. And secretaries are streamlining that process, making sure the right information is flowing to the right people. And the executive team has full trust in their board. So they're not trying to hide information. They're actually sharing the right information at the right level to make not operational, but strategic decisions. Often you see 200-page documents and a board director looks at it and goes, what am I supposed to decide here? So directors are the amplifiers and it's really key that that whole process works effectively to actually get the best out of
SPEAKER_01:it. I mean, the whole community is at the moment really excited about AI or you see so many papers and documents and also podcasts on AI. Where in your view are most boards really stuck right now and what's holding them back from really harnessing AI more fully?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a great question. It's often the board themselves holding them back. I mean, if you think about AI, it's this thing that's moving faster than the speed of light and it changes every day. So as a director, it's really difficult to go, how can I use this effectively? How can I be most effective with AI? And typically that falls into three categories. It's what can I do with it? How can I use it? And how does this apply to my organization? Now, the first two can be kind of trained. You can just use ChatGPT, ask a couple of questions, get a rough idea. But the third one of how this can be applied to my organization, that's where that unlock really is. And if a board is saying outright, we can't use it, well, they're the most strategic part of the business. So if they don't understand how to use it and how it applies to the organization, then you can best believe that organization is not going to get the best out of it. So those are the three challenges. And I think every board... and will talk to it, should embrace it at least at some level, understand it at the very least. Because if they're not using it, I can almost guarantee the graduates that are coming out of university, out of college, they've been brought up on this stuff. And if you tell them they can't use it, they're going to use it without telling you. And if you create the right frameworks and guardrails for them to use it effectively and you use it yourself, then your business is just going to thrive.
SPEAKER_01:Now, at least some months ago, I think things are shifting now. People were very concerned about the risks. So let's talk a little bit about pitfalls. What risks do boards need to watch for when adopting AI? Let's look at it from a technical side and also from a cultural side.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. It's one of those things that's moving so quickly. We're still actually exploring and finding out, you know, some of these pitfalls. But, you know, I've talked with many a director, and the three that come to mind are this fear around outputs. Is it hallucinating? Are they the wrong thing? So that's one, and I'll talk to that. And the second is, where's my data going? I'm uploading, I'm asking questions, I'm dragging and dropping documents. Where is it all going? And then the third one is, I think the most prevalent, is people are getting over-reliant. So on outputs being wrong, I mean, if you ask a very broad question on a broad topic with a broad data set. AI can still hallucinate things. It's not infallible. There are things that can be wrong. So you need to have a keen eye on the question and what the output is. So that's one. The data can be shared piece, I think, Easily solvable, but still this fear. I mean, AI is a black box. Not even the researchers at Anthropic or OpenAI know sometimes what it's doing. So there is that fear around where it's going. Again, it can be mitigated. And then the third one is this over-reliance. I mean, we're seeing this at schools today. Teachers are saying, you know, students coming through schools are losing that logical part of their brain. And that's no different for directors that become over-reliant on this thing. So the best directors really are using it to supplement their own insight. They're using their own context and just making faster, better decisions. I mean, they're not using it to replace themselves. So it's all about getting that right data, asking the right question, and having the right guardrails in place to make sure that your privacy is in place, the data is not going anywhere, and that you're getting the best out of it for your organization.
SPEAKER_01:You know, in our prep call, you talked about security aspects. And yes, it is also from what we can see a concern for every board. But you've said it's riskier not to be using AI than actually start using it. Can you explain it a bit?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, it's a bit of a cheeky statement, but I do think it's true. So the risk I mentioned earlier, I think the one that usually sticks with people the most is what's happening to my data. I mean, you sit on a board, you're making the most strategic decisions that a company has, and these documents are usually pretty secretive. So what happens if it gets out? But ultimately, if you put the right guardrails in place, structure the LLM or the AI in the right way, it's no different than putting your documents on OneDrive or putting them on Google Drive. So I think that can be mitigated. And it can be mitigated in three ways. One is you can turn off training on the models. So ChatGPT and Anthropic Cloud, all of them in the settings will have a model that says stop training on this data. So that's one. But if you don't trust that, what you can do is create a private model. I mean, that's what we do at Tutaki. Every organization has a private model. And then the third one is you can actually just host it on-premise. So you basically host it on your servers and you know where that data is going because you host it. You know, that can be mitigated. And I think if you blanket rule, hey, you can't use AI, well, if one of your competitors does, they're going to be making decisions way quicker and they're going to be more accurate decisions. And I think the risk to you actually is just being left behind entirely. How you use AI is using it in the right way that works for your organization. I don't think that right way is just saying you can't use it.
SPEAKER_01:It's, of course, a journey for every board. They start somewhere and they have to take steps to develop, but there is no final destination, of course. Help our listeners to walk us through the journey you have seen successful boards take.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll talk through. I mean, I'd say there's four steps, and two of them are probably where companies currently are, and two of them are where I see the future being. I mean, we're only two years into this technology. Think about in the context of the internet. It's moving a whole lot faster, but two years into the internet, we still had some of the biggest companies were online pet stores. So it's still quite an nascent phase of where it's going to end up being. So some of this is obviously liable to change, but this is where I think the world is. There's four phases. The first is help me analyze something. And everyone's doing that when they use ChatGPT. Ask a question. It's doing analysis. It's giving you an answer. The second is automate something for me. And typically that's around a chain of events or a chain of tasks, what we call workflows in that community. And if you think about them in the context of a board, it's Schedule a meeting, send the agenda, take minutes, take actions. That is a workflow, and that can all be automated. The third phase and fourth phase, I don't think we're at yet, but I think we're going to get there. And the third one is AI directors, and the fourth is AI boards. If you think about directors, sport, for example, has line judges. Some of the referees, I mean, boxing had introduced an AI referee in one of their heavyweight matches, I think, recently. So you're starting to see it play out as this kind of third or alternative source of information. And I don't think boards will replace directors, but they might use it as a way to test thinking, to be that kind of tell me about something in an alternative view. Imagine if you had Warren Buffett sitting there analysing the financials. That's kind of the power of AI, and you can actually create those agents to give that point of view. And the final is AI boards, and I don't think we're going to get there for a long time. But similarly, for small boards and small organizations, like as a CEO myself, I would love to have a faux board there that I could ask questions to that gives advice, that tests and prods my board pack before I send it to my chair. That would be an amazing way to actually get feedback rapidly. And I think we will get there eventually. So those are the kind of key four phases that I see us going through. And ultimately, it's the case that you need to create those right structures for your organization so everything's being done in the right way. But what an amazing world that's going to be.
SPEAKER_01:What do you think? How long will it take us to get to this phase when we really have an AI board? Any guess? Nobody knows, but give it
SPEAKER_00:a shot. I would say within five years. If you did today, if you gave all of your email context, document context, all the context that you're getting on calls, so transcriptions, et cetera, to an AI algorithm and chunked it in the right way, it would have all the relevant context to make decisions. And that is often the lagging piece with AI is it doesn't have the right context. But if you give it the right context, it's an incredibly smart tool. So I actually think it's not going to be a technical capability that's going to stop us. It's going to be... compliance, adoption, and just general human sentiment around some of these things. I can imagine startups and small boards using this stuff a lot faster than obviously the big organizations, but I'd say within five years.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. Absolutely amazing. Now let's focus more on the now, where we are now in the year 2025. I think it's important to maybe say 2025 because some of the people dive into Old podcast. So if someone listens to this in 2027, they may think, oh my goodness, what are they talking about? So old fashioned. What are some of the ways you have seen directors? How are they using AI in their board work today? Inspire some of our listeners what they can do actually today and what you have seen is really working.
SPEAKER_00:There's too many to count. But yeah, I mean, one of the benefits of my role is I get to talk to hundreds of directors and many a day. I'd say there's three big buckets, and they're broad, and I'll get into some examples within each. But one is saving time. The second is expanding their own thinking, their own aperture. And the third is managing the process. And save time is the classic, do a research report on my competitors. You go to ChatGPT, click deep research, here are my competitors, tell me everything about them, what they've done, Over the last three months, give me an update. Save time in understanding that. Synthesize reports, summarize things, all of that. I mean, if you're reading one 200-page board packet, it can be hard. And if you go, hey, I think we discussed something three months ago, it's even harder. You have to dig through three different other reports. But ChatGPT, Tutaki can do that in five seconds. So that's one. I think the second is expand their thinking and research. A director is usually someone who's got experience operationally in one domain. You're the finance director, the legal director, the operational director, or you've been trained as a professional director, but you typically kind of have your area of expertise. And that's why having a very diverse board is important because you cover each other's gaps. But I'm seeing a lot of directors use AI in a way that they can fill their own gaps. So they've got different agents with different expertise that answer the question or ask questions in different ways. So they've got their Warren Buffett for financials. They've got their person for operations, their person for marketing, the person for sales. And what it does is it raises things or flags things that they would have entirely missed. So as a director, you actually come to the meeting. more prepared because you understand these other topics in ways that you want to understand them in. So that's the second is expanding their thinking. And the third is managing a process. Directors are using tools that go through their calendar, help them get through their emails quicker, and just generally, as a board process, manage the process. Help me write agendas. Some boards are comfortable with transcriptions. Take my minutes for me. Create my documents for me. Save two weeks of work on the management team side by just aggregating information in a report for me. So I think there's those three levels of ways that companies and boards specifically are using AI today to save time and be more productive.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. When I see how I started working life and how it's evolving now, I mean, I'm absolutely stunned. what's possible and where all of this is going. And maybe, you know, our listeners are always interested in this real practical side that really inspires them and they can take and basically, yeah, apply right away. Maybe leave at the end our directors with some very practical things a director can do literally this week to begin using AI safely and also strategically.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I hope that if one thing comes out of this, I hope people take it up. I think if your listeners start using it, they'll just be such more effective directors tomorrow. The one thing I would try and do is any tool you want, if it's a general tool, if it's a board-specific tool, even better, but the best way to know what you can do with AI is to ask AI. If you ask it the question, And usually the framing is you tell AI what it is and you ask it how to think. So you are a director of this type of organization. You're trying to do this. What are five ways you can do it? Give me a prompt on that. And by asking it in that general sense and asking it to create the prompt, it'll then feed back a very concise, structured answer for how you can then ask it that question. And I think that's the biggest challenge with AI today is you have to be this prompt expert. I mean, it's called prompt engineering in the community. I mean, we've done thousands of iterations to get it to the right output. And for your director that doesn't have the time to be learning this stuff, why not ask the source what it wants to be told? So if you frame it like that, it will usually give back a really powerful prompt that you can then simply ask it to run. And the output is honestly mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing. Maybe at the end, there's always these very mean questions. What are the three things our listeners should take away from this episode?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. When you sent this question to me, I was really thinking deeply on trying not to make it too obvious. I mean, I think... The three things will be obvious, but I think they're quite powerful and meaningful. The first is not using AI is the riskiest option. Every board today is thinking, should we use it? If we use it, this might happen, et cetera, et cetera. And there are more publications daily on how you can structure your guardrails around how to get the best out of it with mitigating a lot of the risk. And I would say, like a lot of things, that startup mentality of, try it, get it going, use it in the right ways. But that is the biggest risk is that you just blanket rule, you can't use this. So I think that's one. The best directors are going to be AI literate and you have to be able to use it on your board. So that's one. The second is the best boards. If you think about the best performing boards in the world, I can always guarantee they're using AI already. And they might be quiet about it, but they're using it confidently in the board setting. Directors are getting the documents. The management team might be using AI to coach them through making the best documents for the board. Once it gets to the board, they're probably using different agents to help think better, answer questions, run reports. They're integrating external reports at the very least into their own workflows. Give me a report on macro changes. Okay, cool. That's really interesting. How does that feed into the boardroom? The best directors and the best boards are already using this. then the third one is similar to the prompt question it can be really hard to get the best out of tools and you're seeing this in the engineering space for example the best tools are the vertical agents using ai similar to the internet it's going to be the application layer or the things built on the internet that provide the highest value and if you look at cursor lovable dev like these are the tools that are getting the biggest use because they're applying ai in very vertical targeted ways and i think as a board depending on what you're looking to do you should seek out those vertical tools that leverage ai to solve a problem you're not asking the board you're not asking your organization to use ai in a myriad of ways to You have discrete problems that you want to solve and find the solutions that solve those problems. I think that's the third piece that I'd get listeners to take away from this.
SPEAKER_01:Jamie, amazing. Lots of food for thought. Thank you so, so much for contributing to the Better Boards podcast series.
SPEAKER_00:No, amazing. Pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Once again, thank you for listening to the BetterBots podcast series. If you would like to see that we cover a specific topic you are interested in or a reference to a challenge you really try to solve, let us know. We are real people behind this podcast. We talk about AI, but this is not generated completely by AI. So do get in touch. We are happy to hear from you. If you would like to hear more about our work, visit our website, the www.better-boats.com
