Field notes from real engagements. Frameworks, postmortems, and the unglamorous discipline of shipping AI in production.
Showing 1–9 of 12 essays
Most AI tools demo beautifully and break in production. After evaluating vendors across 100+ implementations, here's the framework I use — including the five questions that end most sales conversations early.
Read essayA Fractional Chief AI Officer is a senior AI executive who joins your leadership team part-time to own AI strategy, evaluate vendors, and make sure every automation dollar produces a return. Here's what the role actually involves, what it costs, and how to know when you need one.
Read essayMost companies spending money on AI can't say whether it paid off — and the ones who claim it did are often counting vanity metrics. Here's an honest framework for measuring AI ROI, including the traps that make bad investments look good.
Read essayProfessional services firms sell expertise and time — which makes AI both a huge opportunity and a genuine risk. Here's where AI creates real leverage for consultancies, agencies, and firms, and where it quietly undermines the trust you sell.
Read essayMost companies buy AI tools before they're ready to use them — which is why the tools become shelfware. Here's an honest readiness assessment across five dimensions, including the signs you should fix something else first.
Read essayYou can buy the best AI tool on the market and watch your team quietly ignore it. Adoption — not technology — is where most AI investments die. Here's how to get real, lasting use out of the tools you're paying for.
Read essayMost AI governance advice is written for Fortune 500 legal departments and is useless to a 50-person company. Here's a practical five-part framework a growing business can actually stand up in a week — without the bureaucracy.
Read essay"AI strategy consulting" means very different things depending on who's selling it. Here's what it actually is, what a good engagement delivers, the red flags to avoid, and how to tell whether you need it at all.
Read essayYour employees are already using AI at work — you just don't know which tools, or with what data. That's Shadow AI, and it's one of the fastest-growing risks in business. Here's what it is and how to get ahead of it without banning everything.
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