AI strategy and fractional CAIO

What AI strategy is

An AI strategy is an assessment of what this technology can do for your business's goals. The goal might be growth, lower costs, less risk, a better culture, or something else entirely. AI helps a great deal with some goals, a little with others, and not at all with some. Which is which depends on your company, your circumstances and your culture.

It answers three questions. What can AI do for this business? What's the plan, from a reasonable target through how the work gets done and kept going? And what return should you expect?

What you'll know

Along the way you get clear answers to questions like these:

• What technology and tools you need
• How to govern it
• What budget it takes
• What the main uses are
• What the main risks are
• What the approach and next steps are
• How you'll measure success
• How the gains get shared, so people have a reason to use it

Each one gets answered at the depth you need.

How you get the strategy

In whatever format fits how your company makes decisions and acts on them: a series of conversations, formal presentations, written documents or workshops.

Or I can stay on as your fractional chief AI officer (CAIO): part-time, ongoing leadership of your AI work, without a full-time hire.

Who AI strategy is for

Anyone with a business goal who wants to use AI to reach it, or who has been told to. A lot of leaders have been asked to do something with AI without being told what. This is where to start.

Where I offer strategy

I offer strategy consulting in the areas where I have the expertise and the experience:

• Marketing content
• Marketing operations
• Content operations
• Ecommerce and digital merchandising
• Platform migrations and technical programs
• Digital product management
• Project management
• Turnarounds
• People management and leadership
• Working across teams
• AI tools and capabilities
• The value of AI spend
• AI hiring
• Winning new business
• Account management

Why work with me

My background fits this technology closely. I started as a developer, spent decades leading people and running operations, and I think in systems. This year I've built with these tools myself. I'd put my knowledge of putting AI to work up against anyone advising on it, including the large consulting firms. The evidence is public: my track record, my published writing, and what I've built, at work and on my own.

I don't sell an AI product, so nothing I recommend helps me sell something or protect something. Where AI makes sense, I'll back it. Where it doesn't, I'll say so.

I've been the one accountable for a strategy, with my job and other people's jobs depending on it. A consultant whose project fails loses a contract. Inside the company, you live with the result, so you learn to plan for the technology and also for process, people, culture, circumstances and human nature.

I've also been the one left to run things after the consultants leave. A strategy has to cover what happens next: how it scales, who maintains it, and what it costs to keep running. I know the parts that usually get skipped or oversold, and your strategy will cover them.