Articles
Field notes for leadership teams facing AI.
Short, board-grade pieces on AI go-to-market, capability and the technology bets that matter. Written for the room, not the feed.
Fractional AI leadership: what it is, when you need one, and what it costs in 2026
Fractional AI leadership installs a named AI owner part-time. Learn what it delivers, when each alternative is right, and UK costs in 2026.
Why Microsoft is losing the AI runtime race to Anthropic
Copilot's paid market share fell 39% in six months. This is not a product problem. It is an architecture problem, and the organisations betting on Copilot are carrying structural risk they have not named.
Your business now runs on AI (the humans are just the escalation point)
AI pilots produce adoption metrics because the tool framing optimises for adoption, not commercial advantage. The governance gap is a capital allocation problem — not a technology failure.
The three mandate conditions that make a Chief AI Officer hire defensible
Most organisations hire a Chief AI Officer before the mandate is in place. Three conditions make the hire defensible — and what a £150,000 wrong hire costs.
Your AI programme is busy. It is not building leverage.
Most AI programmes produce activity but not commercial leverage. The gap is structural and it will not close by running more projects.
Who owns the AI risk? The board's accountability question
The board's accountability structure for AI does not form unless the board requires it. One named person with budget, initiative, and reporting authority — designated before any AI programme is funded.
The right first AI bet for a mid-market firm
Your first AI bet is not a pilot or an experiment. It is the decision that shapes your entire advantage trajectory — and most mid-market firms get it wrong.
How to measure the ROI of AI — so it shows up in the P&L
AI investment has to show up in the P&L: every bet must make money or save money. Traditional ROI can't see the return in time — the Three Leverage Questions can.
How to prioritise AI initiatives
Your AI initiative list is not a strategy. It is a symptom. And the longer it grows unchecked, the less likely any single initiative on it is to deliver the advantage you are paying for.
Don't get stuck in pilots: the board's Keep/Kill/Scale decision
Boards that set a kill criterion before approving any AI pilot, and use The Seven Questions to challenge management, can make the Keep/Kill/Scale decision defensible.
AI is now your buyer
Your buyers aren't just researching differently, they're running AI agents to evaluate you before any human at their company knows your name. And in most cases, those agents are deciding you're not worth talking to.