An AI strategy your board can act on.
Not another PowerPoint.
A four-week AI strategy engagement for 30–300 person companies. Six dimensions scored, four ROI levers quantified, three horizons planned. Output: an 18-month roadmap with named owners, exit criteria and worked CFO-grade math per initiative.
If any of this sounds familiar
Three patterns we see in stuck AI programs
You have AI ambition but no plan.
Your board has asked "what’s our AI strategy?" three quarters in a row. You’ve answered with vendor demos, point pilots, and a Notion doc nobody reads. There’s no through-line connecting them.
You have pilots but no scaling decision.
Two teams ran AI experiments. One worked. Nobody knows if it’s the right one to scale, what scaling actually costs, or what to kill the others for. The momentum is bleeding back into business-as-usual.
You have policies but no posture.
IT wrote an AI acceptable-use policy because someone had to. It doesn’t connect to anything you’re actually building. There’s no risk register, no review cadence, no exec sponsor for AI governance.
The framework
Six dimensions. One scorecard.
Every AI strategy we write is anchored on the same six dimensions — scored 0–5, benchmarked against your peer segment, and explicit about which dimensions to invest in over the next 18 months.
Business outcomes
Which strategic goals AI will support — revenue, cost, risk or customer experience — and how each links to a measurable KPI the executive team already tracks.
Process readiness
Which workflows are mature enough to absorb AI without breaking. Mapped against effort, ROI, blast radius and data availability.
Data foundation
What lives where, what’s clean, what’s governed, what’s GDPR/HIPAA-bound, and what needs to move before any AI can be safely grounded on it.
Technology stack
Which AI capabilities already sit inside your Microsoft / Google / Salesforce / AWS licences, and where genuinely new spend is justified.
People & change
Who needs to be trained, who needs to be hired, who needs to own AI on the leadership team, and what cultural pre-conditions need to be true before adoption succeeds.
Governance & risk
Acceptable-use policy, vendor due diligence, model risk, data residency, IP and audit. Practical, not theatrical.
The 18-month plan
Three horizons. One roadmap.
Horizon 1
Months 0–6
Activate what you already own.
Three to five Microsoft Copilot or Power Platform workflows live in production. AI Readiness Assessment refreshed. Internal champion identified. Acceptable-use policy in place. First measurable ROI reported.
- Copilot rollout
- Power Automate workflows
- Acceptable-use policy
- Champion enabled
Horizon 2
Months 6–12
Build the differentiated layer.
One or two custom agents, retrieval systems or AI-powered apps deployed against your specific competitive advantage. Quarterly governance cadence in place. Two cohorts of internal users formally trained.
- Copilot Studio agent(s)
- RAG over enterprise content
- Quarterly governance
- Formal training cohorts
Horizon 3
Months 12–18
Scale the platform, not the projects.
Reusable platform patterns (eval framework, prompt library, data contracts) so the 7th and 8th use cases ship in weeks, not months. Internal AI lead is owning the agenda; we step down to quarterly sparring.
- Eval framework
- Platform patterns
- Internal AI lead in place
- Quarterly sparring cadence
ROI levers
Every initiative carries CFO-grade math
No initiative ships into the roadmap without an explicit lever and a worked ROI calculation. If we can't show the math, the initiative gets parked.
Hours saved
Manual analyst, ops and admin work eliminated. Quantified as people-hours × loaded cost.
Revenue won
New pipeline, higher conversion, faster cycles. Quantified against historical conversion baselines.
Costs removed
SaaS tools consolidated, contractor spend reduced, infrastructure decommissioned.
Risk reduced
Compliance burden lightened, error rates lowered, audit defensibility improved.
Four weeks
From kickoff to board-ready in four weeks
Week 1
Listen.
Five 60-minute sessions with the leadership team. Read the last two quarters of board decks. Walk the tech stack. No deliverables — just calibration.
Week 2
Score.
Six-dimension readiness assessment completed. Opportunity backlog drafted. ROI math worked for the top five candidates. First findings review with the CEO/CFO.
Week 3
Plan.
Three-horizon roadmap drafted. Vendor and licensing review. Governance baseline drafted. Internal review with operating leaders to test fit and adjust.
Week 4
Land.
Final roadmap + board narrative delivered. Quarterly review cadence locked. Named internal lead identified. Optional: 30-min board read-out.
What you walk away with
Seven concrete deliverables
- 18-month roadmap with named owners, exit criteria and ROI math per initiative
- Six-dimension AI readiness scorecard, scored and benchmarked
- Ranked opportunity backlog with effort, impact, and Microsoft/Google/AWS tool mapping
- AI acceptable-use policy + risk register tailored to your industry
- Vendor evaluation framework with redline-ready procurement pack
- Board-ready narrative deck and one-page strategy summary
- Quarterly review cadence and capability-building plan for the internal lead
FAQ
Common questions
How is this different from a McKinsey-style AI strategy engagement?
Three differences. First, scope: we are deliberately a four-week engagement, not a four-month one. Second, depth: the senior practitioner running the work is the one writing the slides — there is no "senior partner sells, junior team delivers" model. Third, output: we hand you working ROI math and named owners, not a 60-page strategic framework.
Do we need to be on the Microsoft stack to work with you?
No. Microsoft is our delivery centre of gravity but the strategy work is stack-agnostic. We have strategy clients running on Google Workspace, Salesforce-first stacks and pure AWS. The roadmap will reflect what you actually own.
What happens after the four weeks?
Three options, your choice. (1) You execute the roadmap with your internal team — we step out. (2) You retain us on a fractional basis to oversee execution. (3) You bring us back for a fixed-scope activation sprint on one of the Horizon 1 initiatives.
Do you sign mutual NDAs?
Yes — standard practice. We can also work under your paper. We do not store client-confidential material in shared tools; everything lives in a single-tenant workspace per engagement.
Is there a free way to start?
Yes. The free 4-minute AI Readiness Assessment gives you a scored snapshot of your current state, a top-5 opportunity list, and an outline 18-month roadmap. It is the same diagnostic we run inside Week 2 of a paid engagement — just lighter-touch.
A plan the leadership team can act on Monday.
Start with the free AI Readiness Assessment for a snapshot. If a four-week strategy engagement makes sense after that, we'll scope it on a 30-minute call.