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Agentic AI Leadership Programme

3 min read
📊 Case Study

Context & Background

To support the company’s pivot to an AI-first strategy, the organisation needed more than AI features — it needed product teams who could think, design, and deliver with AI as part of everyday work. I designed and led a 4-week Agentic AI leadership programme for 30 triad leaders across Product, Design, and Engineering, partnering with AI Academy to deliver hands-on capability building.

Teams worked on real veterinary use cases, built agentic workflows, and delivered prototypes — three of which became production features in the company’s first Clinical AI product release.

This wasn’t “AI training.” It was capability transfer — from zero to production in one release cycle.

The Challenge

The company couldn’t become AI-first if only a handful of people understood how to use AI. We needed 30 product leaders to become AI-capable fast enough to ship real AI features in the next release cycle — not in theory, but in production.

The challenge wasn’t awareness.
It was turning AI into applied capability inside real work, at real speed.

The programme had to be:

  • Hands-on, not classroom

  • Based on real customer workflows

  • Designed for triads, not individuals

  • Fast enough to change behaviour in one quarter

  • Repeatable without external trainers
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🧪 What We Did

  • Trained 30 PM, Design, and Engineering leads together

  • Used 20 live veterinary use cases as the training base

  • Produced 16 agentic prototypes in 4 weeks

  • 3 were shipped in the first Clinical AI product release

  • PMs began using AI for synthesis, prioritisation, and roadmap debates

  • Org shifted from learning about AIbuilding with AI within one quarter
  • The shift wasn’t technical — it was behavioural. AI became part of how the organisation worked, not a side initiative.

    Strategy & Implementation

    The solution was a 4-week agentic AI capability sprint, blending teaching, co-building, and live application.

    1️⃣ Week 1 — AI Fundamentals


    How AI actually works, where it fails, what it accelerates, and where human judgment stays central.

    2️⃣ Week 2 — Prompts, Personas & Reasoning Models


    How to structure prompts, layer context, refine outputs, and build reusable prompt systems.

    3️⃣ Week 3 — Agentic Workflow Building


    Multi-step workflows using Make, system prompts, conditional logic, and structured outputs.

    4️⃣ Week 4 — Production Application


    Teams developed real prototypes based on 20 live veterinary use cases, with demo, scoring, and selection.

    Results & Impact

  • Organisation moved from AI-curious → AI-capable in 4 weeks

    • 30 leaders gained hands-on AI workflow and agentic design capability

    • AI embedded into product discovery, documentation, and decision-making

    • 3 prototypes became part of the AI product line that generated €2M ARR in 6 months

  • PM role evolved from “backlog owner” to decision accelerator

    • The programme became a repeatable onboarding asset for future hires
    > AI didn’t replace the product team — it removed the excuses that protected slow thinking and slow delivery.

    Key Insights & Learnings

    I architected the programme structure, selected AI Academy as the enablement partner, defined the use-case framework, coached triad leads throughout the sprint, and converted the output into a repeatable internal capability model.

    The goal wasn’t training.
    It was building an AI-enabled product organisation — not just AI-enabled products.

    Success Metrics: - Leadership AI competency scores

    • Team adoption rates post-training

    • AI-powered workflow implementations

    • Organizational velocity improvements

    About the Author

    John Costello

    John Costello

    Product Leadership & AI Strategy

    Transforming product organisations through AI-first leadership, data-driven decision making, and strategic customer advocacy.