Governance
Who decides what. How work moves between the Operating Council, the AI Council, the COE, and the teams that build things.
The three bodies
Operating Council — a subset of Balsam's Leadership Team, formed recently, that sits close to the business. Owns prioritization of COE work: which cohorts run, which initiatives get funded, which workflow bets matter now.
AI Council — the enablement and standards body. Owns tooling recommendations, policy, shared infrastructure across AI efforts at Balsam, training programs, and cross-cutting things like AI tool licensing. Does not own prioritization of COE workflow bets.
COE — operated by Goose Group during the founding period. Owns the day-to-day: cohort operation, workflow mapping, prototyping, intake processing, publishing readouts, and producing the briefs the Operating Council uses to prioritize.
Decision rights
| Decision | Who decides |
|---|---|
| Which cohort runs next | Operating Council, on a brief from the COE |
| Who is in the cohort | Operating Council + cohort sponsor, on COE recommendation |
| What a cohort works on (scope) | Cohort core owners + COE, signed off by sponsor |
| Whether a validated initiative gets funded for production | Operating Council |
| Which external build partner runs a project | COE recommends, Operating Council approves |
| AI tooling standards across Balsam | AI Council |
| Training program content | AI Council |
| Data access and permissions for a cohort | France (as technology sponsor) |
| Cross-functional blockers that surface mid-cohort | Claire + France, on COE escalation |
| Commercial and contract decisions | Claire and Goose Group |
Flow of work
Idea → Intake → COE triage → Operating Council priority call → Cohort formed → Cycle runs → Readout → Handoff or next cycle
Intake. Anyone at Balsam can submit an idea using the template in intake.md. The Operating Council also nominates work directly. The COE turns every submission into a comparable brief.
Triage. The COE reviews submissions weekly. Obvious yes/no/defer calls happen at triage. Anything non-obvious goes to the Operating Council.
Operating Council priority call. Monthly. The COE presents the backlog as one-pagers. The Council picks the next cohort, defers some, declines some. Decisions are recorded.
Cohort formed. Sponsor named, core owners and participants identified, scope agreed. Cohort package created in cohorts/.
Cycle runs. Four to six weeks. Weekly working sessions, weekly sponsor sync, bookable office hours for adjacent teams.
Readout. Monthly. Published to this repo and to the Operating Council. Covers what was built, what was learned, what moves next.
Handoff or next cycle. Validated work goes to an internal pod or external build partner. Alumni move into the ring. The next cohort starts.
What the AI Council gets from the COE
The AI Council does not prioritize COE work, but it needs ground truth from the field to do its own job well.
- Monthly readouts from every cohort.
- Tooling patterns that are working and patterns that are not.
- Shared skills and playbooks surfacing from cohort work.
- Escalations where an AI Council decision (licensing, data access, policy) is blocking cohort progress.
A named liaison on the AI Council attends the monthly COE readout. This person does not need to be Claire or France.
Sunset on Goose Group coordination
Through Month 4, Goose Group operates the COE and acts as connective tissue across Balsam's broader AI landscape. By Month 5, operation transitions to an internal owner. Goose Group stays available for advisory.
The trigger for handoff is readiness of the internal owner, not a date on a calendar. If readiness happens earlier, we hand off earlier. If it takes longer, the founding period extends by written agreement.
Transparency
Ideas in the backlog are visible to everyone at Balsam. Decisions are recorded with reasoning. Readouts are published. Intake is open.
Priority calls are not a free-for-all. The Operating Council makes them. But the inputs and the outputs are in the open, so the reasoning travels with the decision.