AI pilots stalled or never started
You bought tools. Nothing shipped past the pilot. The org chart didn't change. That's a strategy gap.
I set your AI strategy, ship it to production, and train your team to get the most out of AI.
Your team spends 60% of their time on coordination, not production. Three places it breaks down.
You bought tools. Nothing shipped past the pilot. The org chart didn't change. That's a strategy gap.
You know what to build. You need it in production, with the team trained to own it. That's the product.
Eval suites stop getting run, prompts drift, and the vendor deprecates your model. All three are a people problem.
Three things. Pick where you are.
Pilots stalled, board asking, no clear bets to fund. Two diagnostics. Pick the one that matches the question.
For the operator who owns the AI decision at a company where nobody is running the AI program. Deliverable: a dependency map across owners, integration points, vendor risk and downstream impact, the places the program is blocked, the moves worth killing, and a 90-day sequence with a named human accountable for each line.
For execs defending AI budget and picking the next allocation. Board-ready roadmap across H1 (~70%), H2 (~20%), H3 (~10%) using McKinsey's Three-Horizon framework. Named failure modes per horizon.
You know what to build. Now ship it to production and hand it to a team that runs it after I'm gone.
One AI use case shipped to production. Multi-agent workflow, eval suite the team owns, observability, token tracking, regression tests on prompts that matter.
For teams at the 20% adoption ceiling. Three tiers: exec workshops, IC hands-on, embedded coaching. Mollick's Leadership-Lab-Crowd (Wharton, May 2025).
The layer that keeps running after the build. Your people own it; I stay behind them. Fractional for the rebuild, System Continuity for the long tail.
Director-altitude AI leader without the full-time hire. Owns org redesign, production builds, and team handoff. Hands-on across builds, eval, hiring, vendor calls.
Post-Scoped Build or post-Fractional. You shipped production AI; someone has to watch it. 2 to 3 days a month: eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations, one small scope addition. 3-month minimum.
Director-altitude org design, production patterns, and a team that runs the work after I leave. Every tier.
Headcount-to-output decoupling in every deliverable. Agents and humans as co-actors, not vendor add-ons.
Vision extraction with review gates, multi-model routing, deterministic verifiers, observability. Patterns I ship daily, applied to your stack.
Versioned. Searchable. Both your team and your AI read from it. Lives inside Fractional and Scoped Build engagements.
Eval suite, playbook, named patterns the team owns. Not a permanent dependency.
Reference ranges. Each engagement scopes against your stack, team size, and time horizon. Quoted in writing within 48 hours.
Monthly retainer. 6-month minimum. Quarterly renewal after that.
Two weeks. $2,500 flat. Five-part artifact delivered.
3 to 4 weeks. Board-ready roadmap.
60 to 90 days. 14-day ground-truth phase or you walk.
4 to 8 weeks. Three tracks: Leadership, Lab, Crowd.
3-month minimum. 2 to 3 days a month. Eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations.
Across Fractional, Scoped Build, and Audit. Continuity retainers sit below that cap, scope-locked at 2 to 3 days a month. Engagements are picked, not sold.
A part-time senior AI leader who owns the AI transformation end-to-end: org redesign, production AI build, vendor selection, hiring, and team handoff. Sits in the exec staff, reports into CEO, CTO, or COO. Replaces the gap between hiring an AI strategy consultant (deck only) and hiring a full-time Head of AI (a senior-exec base plus 6-9 month ramp).
Six tiers. Fractional retainer: 6-month minimum. AI Program Diagnostic: two weeks, $2,500 flat. AI Portfolio Allocation Review: 3 to 4 weeks. Scoped AI build: 60 to 90 days. AI workforce training: 4 to 8 weeks. AI System Continuity maintenance retainer: 3-month minimum. Quoted in writing within 48 hours of the discovery call.
Three triage questions. If pilots stalled or you haven't started, start with the AI Program Diagnostic. If you need ongoing AI leadership, start with Fractional Head of AI Transformation. If you have one capability ready to ship, start with the Scoped Build. Strategy bottleneck routes to the AI Portfolio Allocation Review or the Fractional retainer. Team bottleneck routes to workforce training. If you already shipped production AI and just need someone watching it, that's AI System Continuity.
AI System Continuity, the maintenance retainer, is the continuity tier. 3-month minimum, 2 to 3 days of work per month: eval monitoring, prompt regression triage, vendor escalations, one small scope addition. Built for the gap between shipping and hiring a full-time AI lead. Optional. You can also re-engage at any of the active tiers.
Fractional is Director-altitude leadership: org redesign, hiring, board work, new builds, vendor strategy. AI System Continuity is operational maintenance only: eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations. Different altitude, different scope. Continuity is for clients who already shipped and need someone watching, not new strategy.
AI strategy consultants ship decks, not production systems. AI automation agencies ship the agent but skip the org redesign, the eval bar, and the budget defense. This practice does both layers in one operator: Director-altitude org design plus production AI build, anchored in named frameworks (Bain headcount-output, Anthropic manager-IC, McKinsey Three-Horizon, Mollick Leadership-Lab-Crowd).
Operators who own the AI decision, have tried at least one AI use case, and have nobody running the AI program. CEOs, COOs, CTOs, and VPs of Ops carrying AI pressure without the headcount to hire a full-time Head of AI. Companies where this lands are usually 20 to 200 people.
Roughly 4 active client commitments at a time across Fractional, Scoped Build, and Audit. Mix depends on what's already booked. When the calendar is full, I say so and you wait.
One door. Tell us what you are trying to ship and which tier you think fits.