Where AI starts
Decide which AI move to make first.
Before you fund an AI initiative, a Decision Review examines the evidence and tells your board whether to stop it, redirect it or commit. It is how you choose the first moves on your AI Opportunity Map.
How the review works
We agree the decision, deadline, scope and access before work starts. Executive interviews, operating records and decisions already taken are examined together, alongside the perspectives of the teams the change affects and the manager capacity, incentives and workload that decide whether it can be adopted. Conflicting accounts remain visible; concerns from the people doing the work are treated as evidence about the design or the business case, not as resistance to manage. Unsupported certainty does not become a recommendation.
Your retained output
A board decision memorandum containing the recommendation, supporting evidence, material gaps, what would change the recommendation and the conditions for the next action. Your board decides. A recommendation to stop includes the basis for closure and any conditions for reopening.
- Decision required
- Whether to fund the next rollout phase of a transformation initiative.
- Alternatives considered
- Stop · Redirect · Commit
- Recommendation
- StopRedirectCommit
- Evidence examined
- Executive interviews, operating records and prior decisions, the perspectives of the teams affected, and manager capacity, incentives and workload, compared for consistency.
- Material disagreement
- Where leadership and operating accounts diverge, recorded rather than resolved away.
- Remaining uncertainty
- What the evidence does not settle, stated explicitly.
- Decision owner
- The board. The memorandum informs; it does not decide.
- Accountable operating owner
- The named owner accountable for making the change work in the business, distinct from the board's decision.
- Adoption conditions
- What the affected teams need for the change to hold: the skills, capacity, ownership and routines to use it, and the evidence of real use required before it expands.
- Review conditions
- What would change the recommendation, and the conditions for any reopening.
A clearly bounded engagement
The proposed starting scope is one portfolio company or business unit and one AI initiative with the decision it needs. Detailed access, deliverables and timing are agreed before engagement. Any subsequent delivery is separately scoped and authorised.
Start with the first move
Bring the AI initiative, the next commitment and the date a decision is needed.