Where is your organisation, honestly
If you cannot say where your organisation is today, it is hard to plan where it goes next. Many conversations about AI stall for exactly this reason: someone asks for an AI plan before anyone has looked honestly at the starting point. This is the model we use. Six levels, each asking a little more than the one before.
Level zero: no AI, absent or quietly discouraged. Sometimes a sensible place to stay for a while; a problem when it is a habit rather than a decision. Level one: people use ChatGPT or Claude on their own, with no policy and no shared picture. Some save hours a week, others paste client details into tools nobody has checked. Most organisations are here, and many do not know it.
Level two: point solutions. Leadership has approved specific tools for specific tasks, each bought separately, none talking to the others. The value is real but scattered, and nobody can say what it adds up to. Level three: AI sits inside the way work moves. Someone owns the practice, by name. Level four: agents carry multi-step work from start to finish and people check outcomes rather than every step. Level five: what you sell has AI at its core. Few organisations are here, and most do not need to be.
Three questions to diagnose yourself. If every AI tool disappeared tomorrow, what would stop working? Who owns the AI practice, by name? Can we say what AI has given back across the whole organisation? If the answers are nothing, no one and no, you are at level one, whatever the newsletter says.
Most organisations stay at level two because moving on is not a tool upgrade. It is a change in how the organisation works: a clear idea of what AI is for here, a named owner, information that can move between tools, and work that is redesigned rather than patched. The last one is the one most often skipped. Buying another tool feels easier.
Do not aim for level five in a year. Aim to earn level three honestly, one team at a time. That is where the value starts to add up, and where it tends to stay.