Accountable, not advisory
This is a seat in your leadership meetings with a named owner and agreed objectives, not a monthly deck. If a decision needs making, we make it or we tell you why it is yours.
Leadership
Executive AI leadership without the executive headcount
Plenty of companies need someone senior owning AI decisions and nowhere near enough work to justify a full-time hire at that level. We take the role on retainer: the roadmap, the vendor calls, the governance, and the awkward job of telling people when something is not worth building.
From$4,000/ month
A named senior owner, a maintained costed roadmap, vendor evaluation and monthly leadership reporting.
Indicative starting price. The fixed fee for your scope is quoted after the two-day diagnosis, before any build begins.
What makes it work
Three things we insist on
Vendor-neutral by construction
We take no referral fees or reseller margin from any platform we evaluate. When the answer is an off-the-shelf tool rather than a build, saying so costs us nothing.
Builds your capability, not our lock-in
The measure of the engagement is whether you need it less over time. Part of the remit is identifying and developing the internal person who eventually takes the role.
Own the decisions, not the tickets What gets built, what gets refused, and which vendor claim to disbelieve
Say no in writing The most valuable output is frequently a costed case for not building something - which is hard to ask of someone whose fee depends on the build
Set the standards that outlast the engagement Evaluation as a line item, logging schema, permission model, review cadence
Hand it to someone internal The goal is a team that runs it without us, and a defined point where that happens
Capabilities
What is actually included
- 01
Roadmap ownership
A maintained, costed, sequenced plan reviewed against results rather than set once and referenced in slides.
- 02
Vendor evaluation and negotiation
Requirements, shortlists, reference calls and commercial review - including exit cost, which almost nobody checks.
- 03
Delivery oversight
Governance of internal teams and external suppliers against the standard of evidence we would hold our own work to.
- 04
Governance and policy
Acceptable use, data handling, human oversight and review cadence, established once and maintained.
- 05
Board and leadership reporting
A defensible account of what AI has cost, delivered and put at risk, in language the board can act on.
In detail
What this covers, specifically
A category name is not a scope. These are the individual pieces of work inside this practice - take the two that apply to you and ignore the rest.
- 01
Roadmap ownership
A maintained, costed, sequenced plan reviewed against actual results, owned by a named person rather than referenced in slides.
- 02
Vendor evaluation and negotiation
Requirements, shortlists, reference calls, commercial review and exit terms, with no referral fee or reseller margin on our side.
- 03
Delivery oversight
Governance of internal teams and external suppliers against the same standard of evidence we hold our own work to.
- 04
Governance and policy
Acceptable use, data handling, human oversight and review cadence established once and then maintained as things change.
- 05
Budget ownership
Holding and defending the AI line item, including the unglamorous work of killing things that are not returning.
- 06
Team structure and hiring
Advice on what to hire, when, and at what level, including when the honest answer is not yet.
- 07
Board reporting
A defensible account of what AI has cost, delivered and put at risk, written in language a board can act on.
- 08
Succession
Identifying and developing the internal person who eventually takes the role, so the engagement is designed to end.
What you receive
Concrete artefacts, not a slide deck
- Named senior owner with agreed objectives
- Maintained, costed AI roadmap
- Vendor evaluations and commercial reviews
- Governance framework and policy set
- Monthly leadership and quarterly board reporting
01 Diagnose Days 1-2
02 Prove Week 1
03 Integrate Weeks 2-3
04 Operate Ongoing
Around three weeks end to end. That comes from scoping tightly to one workflow - not from skipping a phase. Each still ends in evidence you can check.
Let's talk
Try it for a quarter
The engagement runs on a rolling quarterly basis with no long tie-in. If we have not paid for ourselves in decisions avoided and spend redirected within three months, stop - and keep the roadmap.
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