Notes on standing up AI and data programs
These are notes from work inside operating companies, written for people who have just been given the mandate. They cover the funding case, the governance that keeps delivery moving, the operating model, and the data and integration work underneath the models.
The Decision Company
We treat a business as a system for making decisions. How we rank the decisions worth improving, choose the method, judge whether the data is useful, and capture the judgment of experienced people.
Standing up an AI & data program
What to settle with the CEO before the first workshop, how to choose and sequence the first use cases, how a use case gets into production, and how ownership moves to your team.
Talking about AI in dollars
How to build and report an AI funding case in the terms finance already uses: gross margin, revenue, cycle time, working capital, headcount, and cost per business outcome.
Governance that helps you ship
Privacy, security, fairness, and model-risk review cost less at the framing gate than at the door to production. What each gate should check, what to build controls against while the rules keep moving, and who owns the function.
Why hub-and-spoke keeps winning
Where the people sit: one central team, the business units, or both. What the hub has to own, what has to be in the units, and how a delivery pod puts the two together.
The pathfinder playbook
Pathfinders are the first live use cases in a program. Each one has to produce a result the business will use and put pressure on a different part of the operating model, and ownership moves to the client team across the set.
The data behind autonomous agents
Agents plan, retrieve, and act with little supervision, which raises what the data underneath has to do. What a semantic layer provides, which parts of the stack are worth building yourself, and where the controls sit.
Teach the insider
Specialist hiring is slow and expensive, and a full roster of outside hires still would not carry the knowledge of how your business runs. Most of the capability has to come from people already inside it.
Talk through your own program
We can go over where you are now and what would be worth building first.