Cottingham & Butler AI4SLT: Building Senior leaders Confidence Through Direct Use

Client: Cottingham & Butler

Event: AI4SLT

Industry: Insurance

Date: 19 January 2026

Consultant: Rob Dixon

Senior leaders from across Cottingham & Butler came together for an AI4SLT session in Iowa, USA to work directly with current AI tools and test what organisational AI capability looks like in practice. The group included executives responsible for operations, risk, employee benefits, finance, HR, and strategy. The focus in the room was not policy or future planning, but direct exposure to how AI systems behave when used on real business tasks.

Getting hands-on with live AI systems

Participants began by setting up and logging into multiple AI platforms themselves, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. This removed reliance on demonstrations and ensured every leader could see differences in interface, output style, and control. Once accounts were live, leaders moved quickly into applied use rather than observation.

Turning internal documents into working outputs

One practical demonstration used Google NotebookLM to transform existing documents into a short-form audio briefing. Leaders watched a static source file become a structured podcast in minutes, clarifying how internal knowledge can be repurposed without manual rewriting. The discussion that followed centred on where this kind of capability could sit inside existing review, compliance, and communication workflows.

Building agents, not just prompts

The session then shifted into live agent creation inside Copilot 365. Leaders worked through how to define a narrow business purpose, connect it to existing tools, and test outputs in real time. Use cases raised by the group included employee performance reviews, RFP drafting, and security assessment preparation. The emphasis stayed on what leaders could realistically build and maintain, rather than speculative automation.

One line from the session captured the tone of the conversation:

“The only thing you can control is the pace of change in your organisation. You can't control the change, you can't stop it, but you can speed it up or you can slow it down.”

The session closed with leaders having personally built, tested, and questioned AI tools rather than abstractly discussing them.

For organisations facing similar leadership-level decisions about AI adoption, Dixon AI runs AI4SLT sessions that prioritise direct experience and practical judgement over theory.