AI for Managers Toolkit
The Manager's Toolkit: six working templates for running AI on your team
Six practical, non-technical tools that take you from the vocabulary your team needs, to finding where AI actually helps, to governing it, to the hardest conversation, to a plan you run this quarter. Download the full set or grab any single tool. Yours to use, reuse, and share with your team
How to use these tools
Each template stands alone, so you can start anywhere. Used together, they form a path: build a shared vocabulary, find the tasks worth piloting, apply the guardrails your company already set, map what stays human, and put it all into a plan you run this quarter. Most managers work through them in that order over a few weeks, often alongside their team.
These are the same frameworks behind the AI for Managers course and Arion Research's client work, drawn from Building the Digital Workforce and The Complete Agentic AI Readiness Assessment.
The Six Tools
1. The Manager's AI Glossary
What it is: A plain-language reference to the AI terms that come up in every team meeting and vendor call — generative AI, agentic AI, the autonomy dial, delegation, escalation, and more. No jargon, no code, with a "why it matters to you" note on each.
How to use it: Skim it before a vendor call or a team meeting, or whenever someone pitches you a new tool, so you can ask good questions and never get sold on hype.
Best for: Managers who need to talk about AI with their team and evaluate a new tool in five minutes.
2. The Team Workflow AI Audit
What it is: A worksheet that helps you find where AI creates real value on your team and prioritize honestly. Score your team's recurring tasks on repeatability, data availability, and error tolerance, then sort them into pilot-now and not-yet.
How to use it: Walk your team's recurring tasks, score each one, and place it in pilot-now or not-yet. The output is your top three candidates to pilot in 30 days.
Best for: Managers moving from "AI sounds useful" to a real, prioritized list of tasks worth piloting.
3. AI Governance & Acceptable-Use Checklist + Manager's Application Page
What it is: The same six-category guardrails your leadership already set — data and privacy, security and access, accuracy and oversight, IP/legal/compliance, ethics and bias, and acceptable use — applied at the level where you have real visibility: your team. The Application Page adds your monthly cadence and a log for what you find.
How to use it: Check what's true today, assign an owner to each gap, and set a status. Then set a real monthly cadence and log what you find as fixed locally or escalated.
Best for: Managers responsible for applying their company's AI guardrails day to day, without a dedicated legal or risk team.
4. Human + Digital Role Map
What it is: An honest, task-by-task map of what stays human and what moves to AI on your team — grounded in where humans win reliably (judgment, relationship, ethics, accountability) and where digital agents win reliably (volume, speed, consistency, availability).
How to use it: Reference the two lists, then sort five of your team's real tasks into fully human, fully AI, or a pairing.
Best for: Managers who need a specific, defensible answer to "what's actually changing on my team," not a vague one.
5. Manager's AI Change Conversation Guide
What it is: Straightforward talking points, grounded in the Role Map, for the hardest conversation on your team: "is this going to replace me?" What's true, what's not true, and the actual risk, along with how to coach racers and avoiders differently.
How to use it: Fill out the Role Map for the person's actual tasks, decide which lane fits them, and pick a specific date for the conversation — not "sometime soon."
Best for: Managers who want to tell their team the truth about AI without dodging the question or reading from a script.
6. The 30/60/90-Day Team AI Pilot Plan
What it is: The capstone. An eight-box, single-page plan that turns the Workflow Audit, the Role Map, and the Governance Checklist into a pilot you can run this quarter — the task, the metric, the guardrail check, the 30-day plan, and the 60–90-day expansion.
How to use it: Fill each box using your work from the Workflow Audit, the Governance Checklist, and the Role Map. Put a 30-day review date on your calendar before you close it out.
Best for: Managers ready to turn everything above into a plan their own leadership will recognize.
Download the complete toolkit
The Complete AI for Managers Toolkit — all six templates in one download.
Everything you need to go from "what do these terms even mean" to a pilot plan your own leadership will recognize: the glossary, the workflow audit, the governance checklist and application page, the role map, the change conversation guide, and the 30/60/90-day plan.
Why trust these tools
From Michael Fauscette, founder of Arion Research, author of "Building the Digital Workforce," and a Thinkers360 Top 10 global thought leader in AI and Agentic AI. Practical, vendor-neutral, and built for mid-market managers running real teams.
Next step
You have the tools. If you want help putting them to work, here are the next steps:
AI for Managers course — a step-by-step path that turns these templates into a pilot you run this quarter. [Learn more]
AI for Leaders course — for the person who sets AI direction on your team's behalf. [Learn more]
AI Blueprint — Arion Research validates your team's pilot plan and helps turn it into an executable rollout. [Learn more]
Prefer to keep exploring first? Listen to the Disambiguation podcast for plain-spoken takes on leading with AI. [Listen]