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A CWAI Executive Leadership Roundtable on AI strategy with senior executives from Nordic organisations.
Connected Women in AI (CWAI) - a Nordic community organisation working to advance women's participation in AI - commissioned this pro bono engagement to bring strategic clarity to a senior leadership roundtable. CWAI convened a roundtable on "AI Leadership in the Nordics" with senior executives from Maersk, Nordea, Novo Nordisk, VELUX, Tryg, and others. Panel discussion, breakout sessions, back to plenary.
The challenge with these formats? They often stay abstract. Leaders leave without clarity on what they're actually wrestling with. The conversation skims the surface - governance, culture, literacy - all true, none actionable.
"Small experiment = small value." - Observation surfaced in the room, and the most resonant line of the session.
Three tensions were blocking progress across every organisation in the room: a talk-to-action gap driven by board-level FOMO, a middle management squeeze caught between top-down push and workforce resistance, and a speed calibration problem where pressure to show momentum was producing risk, not progress.
Rather than adding to the noise, the session was designed around a single insight: the most useful thing leaders can do is name their dilemmas precisely. The format moved from abstract principles to concrete choice points. Four trade-offs were surfaced and made explicit.
Small experiments produce small value. The tension between breadth and speed on one hand, and focus and strategic impact on the other - and whether that's a conscious choice or a default.
Centralisation vs. decentralisation. Where capital should flow - into specific applications or underlying foundations. Whether AI is a business problem or an IT issue.
Fast way vs. right way. Short-term wins vs. long-term capability building. Build vs. buy vs. embed. Platform concentration risk - one platform for simplicity vs. multiple for resilience.
Decision-makers lack the literacy to govern AI well. Compliance obligations - EU AI Act, ethics frameworks. And the harder question: how much of the output needs to remain distinctly human?
The session produced a shift in how participants described their situation - from general concern about AI to named, specific dilemmas with identifiable trade-offs.
Leaders left with fewer open questions, not more. Naming dilemmas explicitly gave teams a shared basis for decision-making.
"Slow down before you speed up" gave leaders permission to resist performative momentum. Several noted it would directly change how they present AI strategy to their boards.
Good leadership principles haven't changed. What has changed is the need to be deliberate about where AI applies — and where it doesn't.
"AI cannot predict a black swan event. Only humans can."
What executives need is situational clarity that makes tensions visible and trade-offs explicit - so they can make conscious choices. When executives can name the real dilemmas, decisions can be taken.
The format demonstrated that structured dilemma-framing - rather than open-ended discussion - is a more effective model for executive AI conversations.
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