Status meetings, rollups and decks, with you translating in both directions.
[ 02 — The shift ]
Now the work runs between meetings.
Salesforce, September 11: agents built to keep working across days and weeks.
[ 03 — The pull ]
Every thread pulls toward your desk.
Forecasts. Headcount asks. Escalations. The CEO’s Friday question.
[ 04 — The seat ]
Up and down meet in you.
[ 05 — The VP ]
You see the strategy and the work.
Few people see both. That view is the job.
[ 06 — The portfolio ]
Many teams. One honest picture.
Rollups drafted from live data. A person checks every number before it goes up.
[ 07 — Two strands ]
Learn it at your desk. Ship it to every team.
Teach
Your own practice as a VP: the weekly brief, decision memos, the board section and portfolio reviews, worked on your real material.
Build
The shared systems your teams run on, such as status rollups, intake and dashboards that draft briefs, built alongside the managers who will own them.
[ 08 — Signals ]
Two weeks of news. One page upstairs.
Salesforce says its new long-running agents handle work “across days and weeks instead of completing only a task or interaction.”
SalesforceCompany-reported product announcement, September 11, 2026
Source ↗
Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending of $2.7 trillion in 2026, up 49.5%, with spending on AI agents and assistants up 77.3%.
Gartner forecast, reported by CIO.comSeptember 23, 2026
Source ↗
In an EY survey of senior AI leaders, VP level and up, 47% said their organization had not followed its own AI governance process for urgent deployments.
EYCompany-reported survey of 202 senior AI leaders at large US public companies, September 15, 2026
Source ↗
[ 09 — Alignment ]
Every team hears the same priority.
Write the call down once. Let every manager read the same words.
[ 10 — Planning ]
Next quarter, some work never clocks out.
Give long-running agents an owner, a check-in and a stop rule.
[ 11 — Consult or Build ]
Hours with us. Or coaches with you.
Consult
$400an hour
Booked in blocks of 5 hours
Hours with our coaches on the calls that sit between the executive team and your managers: portfolio trade-offs, the brief up, the plan down.
VP of One (vpofone.ai) is a site from Utlyze for vice presidents who sit between the executive team and several managers. It covers briefing up, coaching down, portfolio calls and reporting, with AI doing the drafting and people making the decisions.
What does managing up and down mean?
Keeping the executives above you informed and aligned while you lead and unblock the managers below you. The same decision usually needs two versions: a memo for the executive team and a plan for the teams.
How do executives use AI?
Mostly for preparation: briefings, decision memos, metric analysis, first drafts of communications and the pre-read for leadership meetings. The judgment, and the decision, stay with the person.
Can AI prepare my board update?
It can draft one from your source data, such as dashboards, plans and notes. A person then checks every number and every claim before it goes to the executive team or the board.
What should a VP never delegate to AI?
Decisions, performance conversations, and commitments to customers or staff. AI can help you prepare for each of them; it should not make them or deliver them for you.
How do I coach my managers to adopt AI?
Start with one shared routine, such as the weekly status rollup, and build it with the managers who will run it. Agree on what it replaces, measure it against how the work went before, and then extend it team by team.
How is this different from Business of One?
Business of One is for owners building an AI-first company of their own. VP of One covers the seat between the executive team and several teams: managing up and down, portfolio calls and reporting, rather than running a single department. Utlyze runs both, and both offer Consult and Build.
What do Consult and Build cost?
Consult: $400 an hour, booked in blocks of 5 hours, which puts the minimum booking at $2,000. Build: $15,000 a month. Each month, pick up to 5 business processes for our build-with-you coaches to work on. They build your AI systems with you and teach your team to run them. If you ever leave, the systems stay with you. Agents work only on your systems, and a shared rotation answers calls 24/7 with response times in writing.
Is this HR, legal or investment advice?
No. What we write about reorganizations, employment, security, law, tax or investing is for education only. For your situation, talk to qualified advisers who know your company. We make no promises or guarantees about outcomes.
How do I start?
Fill in the short form at the end of the home page. Choose Consult to book hours, or Build if you want build-with-you coaches working across your organization.
Built on the Of One method: ask the right questions, map what you find, make the best move. of1.ai ↗
