Every single executive I’ve had the chance to talk to about AI says the same thing within the first two minutes.
“I just don’t have time for it.”
I’ve heard it from board members. From CEOs running €500M organisations. From founders who built their companies on being early to everything.
They all say they don’t have time.
And then — almost without exception — when I ask what they actually do use AI for, the answer sounds something like this:
“Oh, I use it to clean up emails. Draft the occasional LinkedIn post. Sometimes I’ll ask it for a few title ideas before a presentation.”
Right.
So the problem isn’t that you don’t have time for AI. The problem is that you’re spending the time you do have on the wrong things entirely.
Polishing emails is not where the leverage is
Let me be direct: in April 2026, using AI to make your emails sound slightly more polished is roughly equivalent to hiring a Formula 1 pit crew to help you park your car.
Technically impressive. Completely misses the point.
The same goes for LinkedIn posts. The same goes for presentation titles. These are fine uses of AI. They save you seven minutes. They do not change how you lead, how you decide, or how fast your organisation moves.
And here’s what makes it worse: by spending your limited AI time on the surface, you’re not just missing the upside — you’re actively building the wrong habits. You train yourself to think of AI as a cosmetic tool. A text polisher. Something your assistant probably handles better anyway.
That mental model will cost you.
What April 2026 actually requires
The world didn’t wait. The executives who spent the last 18 months building genuine AI fluency — not awareness, fluency — are operating at a different altitude now.
They’re using AI to think through strategic decisions before walking into the boardroom. To synthesise competitive intelligence in real time. To stress-test their own assumptions before their CFO does it for them. To actually understand the AI proposals their teams are bringing to them, rather than nodding along and hoping the right people are in the room.
They show up differently. The people around them notice.
The gap between that and “I use it to clean up my emails” is not a small gap. It’s a compounding gap — and it’s compounding fast.
The time problem is real — but it’s not what you think it is
I’m not dismissing the time pressure. I’ve run a company for 14 years. I sit on boards. I train at 5am because that’s the only hour nobody owns.
I know exactly what your calendar looks like.
But here’s what I’ve found: the executives who say they don’t have time for AI are, almost universally, already spending time on AI. Just badly. Scattered. Without intention. A few minutes here, a shortcut there, nothing that builds into anything.
The answer isn’t more time. It’s better deployment of the time you’re already spending.
One focused day — the right structure, the right problems, the right training — changes the relationship entirely. Not because of what you learn. Because of what you build: a new default, a new muscle, a new way of operating that doesn’t require you to carve out extra hours.
You don’t need more time for AI. You need to stop wasting the time you’re already giving it.
That’s precisely what Executive AI Fitness is designed for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should executives actually be using AI for? The highest-leverage applications for executives are: strategic decision support (thinking through complex decisions before the boardroom), competitive intelligence synthesis, stress-testing assumptions and plans, understanding AI proposals from their teams well enough to evaluate them critically, and compressing the cycle from problem identification to action. Email polishing and LinkedIn drafting are the lowest-leverage use cases available.
How much time does it actually take to get real value from AI as an executive? Less than most executives assume. The executives seeing the biggest returns aren’t spending more time on AI — they’re spending their existing AI time more intentionally. One focused training day, followed by 30 days of structured daily practice, is enough to fundamentally change the relationship.
What is Executive AI Fitness? Executive AI Fitness is a personal AI training programme for senior leaders designed by Cris Grossmann — ETH PhD, co-founder of Beekeeper ($300M+ exit), and board member. It’s built around the principle that AI fluency at the executive level requires personal practice, not delegation or delegation or briefings.
Why do executives stay stuck on surface-level AI use? Three reasons: they start with the easiest tasks (email, drafting) and never build upward; they don’t have a structured training environment that shows them what’s actually possible; and they unconsciously model their AI use on what they see others doing — which is also surface-level. The pattern is self-reinforcing until something breaks it.