Strategy & Governance · How the work runs
Strategy and value engagements: how they run.
What an engagement covers, from the first question to the decision at the end: what to fund, what it should return, and who is accountable for scaling it.
About this page
The client write-up is on its way.
A write-up of a recent strategy and value engagement is being prepared with the client. Until it is published, this page describes how these engagements run, so you can judge the shape of the work before you see a specific example.
Delivered work with reported figures, including two engagements with a Strategy & Governance component, is on the case studies page.
The questions
Six things executives are actually asking.
Every initiative needs two answers on the record: is it worth doing, and can we responsibly do it?
Strategy · Should we do this?
"We have dozens of AI ideas. Which five deserve money?"
Ideas made comparable, then ranked as a funding decision.
Strategy · Should we do this?
"What is the AI program actually returning?"
A business case from a measured baseline, then proof the value showed up.
Strategy · Should we do this?
"Are we ready for any of this?"
Maturity scored against your systems, not your answers.
Governance · Can we do this?
"Who approved this?"
A path with a named owner, a tier and a record.
Governance · Can we do this?
"Why has this been in review for months?"
Proportionate review, with a defensible fast lane.
Governance · Can we do this?
"Can we trust what it tells us?"
Traceable data, reproducible decisions, a trigger for re-review.
The shape of an engagement
A bounded way in, then the program the evidence calls for.
First engagements are fixed scope and fixed fee, with a defined decision at the end. Most start within two to three weeks of a signed scope.
Way in · several hours
Executive AI Workshop
When the blocker is a decision at the top. The executive team puts every idea through the same lens and leaves with a ranked shortlist and one first use case, with an owner, a success measure and a decision gate.
Workshop details →Way in · two weeks
AI & Data Assessment Sprint
When leadership needs evidence. Six readiness dimensions scored against your own systems, with a checkpoint at the end of week one and a live readout at the end of week two.
Sprint details →The main engagement
Strategy & Governance Program
The target state, the value model, the roadmap and the governance that lets it proceed, built with the people who have to run them.
Strategy & Governance →The work
Eight answers turn an idea into a decision you can fund and defend.
Strategy asks whether it is worth doing. Governance asks whether it can be done responsibly, and who is accountable. The engagement builds both, then proves them on a real decision.
- What outcome are we changing? A business result with a baseline, not a technology.
- What is it worth? Value against total cost, including remediation, integration, change and run cost, not only the model.
- What has to be true? The data, platform, people and process the use case depends on, scored on evidence.
- What gets funded first? Ideas articulated well enough to compare, then ranked on value, strategic fit, readiness, time to value, dependencies, cost and risk.
- What risk are we taking? Named, tiered and owned by someone.
- What earns trust? Evidence that the data and the system can be relied on.
- Who is accountable? A role, at each tier, that owns the outcome.
- Who decides, and what gets recorded? The decision, its evidence and its conditions, where oversight can find them.
What you receive
Deliverables you can run without us.
Built with the people who have to run them, so the team can run and extend them without us.
Baseline
Maturity and readiness
A baseline with the evidence behind every score, scored against your systems with sources cited.
Portfolio
Use cases, ranked
A portfolio and roadmap ranked by value, cost and readiness, with funding gates and the delivery sequence.
Value
ROI and value realization
A model of what each investment should return, kept separate from the check on whether it did.
Governance
Owners, tiers and a record
A review path with named owners, risk tiers, a decision log and a policy drafted for sign-off.
The way in produces its own documents first. The Assessment Sprint hands over a readiness scorecard, a gap register, an order-of-magnitude cost view and prioritized next steps. The workshop produces a circulated decision readout.
The decision at the end
Fund, test, defer or stop, on the record.
The engagement ends in a decision rather than a deck. Each finalist use case gets a call: fund it, test it first, or defer it until what it depends on is in place. The first one to proceed has an owner, a success measure and a decision gate at which the team will scale it, revise it or stop.
On the governance side, the decision is recorded with its evidence and its conditions, and a trigger for when it gets reconsidered. Where a team does not agree, the record says exactly what is still contested and by whom.
Waiting is a valid outcome. If the right answer is not to proceed yet, the readout says why, and what would change it.
Related
Keep reading.
Case study · Financial services
Contract compare-and-comply across MSAs, SOWs, POs and invoices
A global financial information and ratings provider. 15 to 25% of documents nonstandard, the only ones that now need a reviewer.
Read the story →Case study · Life sciences
A label-aware AI assistant for field and patient questions
A life-sciences data and communications provider. Audience-specific rules enforced on every response, auditable.
Read the story →Article
Building the AI business case
What it is worth, what it costs to build and to run, and the number that decides whether it gets funded.
Read the article →Next step
Bring us the decision that is waiting.
What to fund, or how to govern it. Thirty minutes with the senior people who would do the work. If a program is not the right next step, we will say so.
