AI Guardrails & Guidelines
An Ignite AI series from IION
Sara Phelan, founder of Evalu8-Evolve, brings business owners AI Guardrails and Guidelines, a five-part virtual Lunch & Learn series for business owners and leaders across Northern Ontario and our regional networks.
Each session is 30 minutes of facilitated content plus 15 minutes of live Q&A, running 12:00 to 12:45 pm ET on the third Wednesday of the month.
The sessions build on each other, moving from business opportunity to information risk, tool risk, organizational rules and finally implementation. Each one produces a practical piece of a starter AI governance system: prioritized use cases, data-handling rules, an AI tool due diligence checklist, a core policy with incident response, and a 90-day implementation plan. People can attend individual sessions, and those who complete all five leave with a Starter Governance Pack that pulls it all together. Find registration links for each session below.
Register for November 18: Where Should We Actually Be Using AI?
Register for December 16: What Information Needs Protection?
Register for January 20: How Do We Know an AI Tool Is Safe to Use?
Register for February 17: Do We Need an AI Policy?
Register for March 17: How Do We Roll This Out and Know It's Working?
SESSION 1: November 18th / Where Should We Actually Be Using AI?
Stop experimenting with AI and start using it to create real business value. Learn how to identify and prioritize the right AI opportunities for your business.
Session Goals
1) Identify where AI can create real business value.
2) Spot high-impact use cases.
3) Prioritize where to start based on business need, value and risk.
Who Should Attend
Business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders who are using or considering AI and want a practical way to decide where it can create real value in their business.
Event Description
AI is showing up everywhere, but that does not mean every task, process or problem needs an AI solution. In this practical session, Strategic AI and Growth Advisor Sara Phelan will help business owners and leaders step back from the tools and identify where AI can actually create value in their business.
Using a strategy-first approach, participants will look at real business needs, recurring friction, opportunities and workflows to identify potential AI use cases. From there, they will learn how to prioritize where to start based on business value, feasibility and risk rather than simply adopting the latest technology.
Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of where AI may support their business, which opportunities are worth exploring first, and what to consider before moving from experimentation to implementation. This session is designed for business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders at any stage of AI adoption. No technical or AI expertise is required.
Session 2: December 16th / What Should You Never Put Into AI
Using AI safely starts with knowing what information belongs there and what does not. Learn practical boundaries for protecting business, client and sensitive data.
Session Goals
1) Recognize information that creates AI risk.
2) Understand practical data boundaries.
3) Build your own Allowed / Caution / Never guidelines.
Who Should Attend
Business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders using or considering AI who want clearer boundaries to protect business, client, and sensitive information.
Event Description
AI can make everyday business work faster and easier, but what happens when you enter sensitive business, client, or employee information into an AI tool?
In this practical session, Strategic AI and Growth Advisor Sara Phelan will help business owners and leaders understand one of the most important foundations of responsible AI use: knowing what information is appropriate to use with AI and what requires greater caution.
Participants will explore common areas of risk, including confidential business information, client and customer data, employee information, financial information and intellectual property. Rather than relying on complicated rules or technical language, the session will introduce a practical framework for deciding what information can be used, what requires caution and what should stay out of AI tools.
Participants will begin developing their own Allowed / Caution / Never guidelines, creating a practical starting point for clearer AI use across their organization.
This session is designed for business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders at any stage of AI adoption. No technical or AI expertise is required.
Session 3: January 20 / Do We Need an AI Policy? Building Practical Guardrails
AI policies do not need to be complicated. Learn how to turn practical business boundaries into clear guardrails for responsible, consistent AI use.
Session Goals
1) Understand what an AI policy should address.
2) Define practical rules and responsibilities.
3) Start building AI guardrails your team can actually use.
Who Should Attend
Business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders who want practical AI rules, clearer accountability, and a starting point for responsible AI use across their organization.
Event Description
As AI becomes part of everyday business, informal rules and individual judgment are no longer enough. Businesses need clear expectations about how AI should be used, what requires human review and who is responsible for the decisions being made.
But an AI policy does not need to be complicated to be useful.
In this practical session, Strategic AI and Growth Advisor Sara Phelan will help business owners and leaders understand the core elements of practical AI governance and translate them into rules that make sense for their organization.
Building on the Allowed / Caution / Never approach introduced in the series, participants will consider appropriate AI use, information boundaries, human oversight, accountability and when additional review may be required.
Participants will use the Evalu8-Evolve AI Policy Builder to begin turning those decisions into practical AI guardrails and a draft starting point for their organization.
The goal is not to create a complicated policy that sits in a folder. It is to establish clear, usable expectations that help people make better decisions about AI in everyday work. This session is designed for business owners, entrepreneurs and leaders at any stage of AI adoption. No technical, policy or AI expertise is required.
Session 4: February 17 / How Do We Get the Team Using AI Consistently?
Move beyond individual AI experimentation. Learn how to set clearer expectations, build shared practices, and create practical workflows your team can use consistently.
Session Goals
1) Identify barriers to AI adoption. 2) Create shared practices for consistent AI use. 3) Build AI into everyday workflows with clear ownership and oversight.
Who Should Attend
Business owners and leaders who want to move AI beyond individual experimentation and create more consistent, responsible use across their team.
Event Description
One person is using ChatGPT every day. Someone else has barely touched AI. Another employee has built their own way of working with it, and nobody is quite sure what information or tools are being used.
This is where many businesses find themselves as AI adoption grows.
In this practical session, Strategic AI and Growth Advisor Sara Phelan will help business owners and leaders move from individual AI experimentation toward more consistent, responsible use across their organization.
Participants will explore the practical foundations of team adoption, including shared expectations, approved tools, useful business context, prompting practices, workflow integration, roles and ownership, training, and human oversight.
The session will also cover how to identify where AI belongs in an existing workflow, rather than adding another disconnected tool or process.
Participants will leave with a clearer approach for helping their team use AI consistently, while maintaining the guardrails and accountability established earlier in the series.
This session is designed for business owners and leaders who have employees, contractors or collaborators using AI, or who are preparing to introduce AI more broadly across their organization. No technical or AI expertise is required.
Session 5: March 17th / Is AI Actually Working? From Use Case to Business Value
Using AI is not the same as getting value from it. Learn how to measure what is working, what is not, and where to focus your AI efforts next.
Session Goals
1) Define what AI success looks like.
2) Identify practical measures of business value.
3) Prioritize next steps and build a focused 90-day action plan.
Who Should Attend
Business owners and leaders using or investing in AI who want to know whether it is improving efficiency, decisions, workflows, or business results.
Event Description
Your team is using AI. New tools are being introduced. Tasks may be getting faster. But is any of it actually improving the business?
AI adoption should ultimately create business value, not simply more activity.
In this practical session, Strategic AI and Growth Advisor Sara Phelan will help business owners and leaders move beyond AI use and evaluate whether their AI efforts are producing meaningful results.
Participants will explore how to define success before implementing an AI use case, establish a useful baseline and identify practical measures such as time saved, improved workflow efficiency, quality, adoption, cost, revenue opportunity and risk reduction.
The session will also examine an important part of responsible AI implementation: knowing when to continue, improve, expand or stop an AI use case based on what the business is actually experiencing.
Participants will bring together the thinking developed throughout the series to identify their implementation priorities and create a focused 90-day AI action plan for their organization.
The goal is not to measure AI for its own sake. It is to make better decisions about where AI deserves continued time, attention and investment.
This session is designed for business owners and leaders who are already using AI or preparing to invest more intentionally in its implementation. No technical or AI expertise is required.
Sara Phelan is a business strategist, Strategic AI and Growth Advisor, and founder of Evalu8-Evolve. She helps business owners and leaders move from scattered AI use to practical, intentional adoption focused on business value, clear guardrails and stronger decision-making. Sara is the creator of the Evalu8 Framework and author of AI-Driven Success: Ask the Right Questions.
Evalu8-Evolve helps business owners and leadership teams adopt AI with greater clarity, structure and confidence. Using a strategy-first approach, we help organizations identify where AI can create business value, establish practical guardrails, improve workflows and team adoption, and turn AI use into measurable business outcomes.
Founded by Strategic AI and Growth Advisor Sara Phelan, Evalu8-Evolve combines business strategy, AI integration and the Evalu8 Framework to help organizations move from scattered experimentation to intentional, responsible implementation.
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