DIAGNOSTIC · SIX DIMENSIONS

AI Readiness Audit

Before you buy the tool, find out what has to be true for it to work — and what will quietly stop it.

Why audits exist

Most failed AI projects were not beaten by the technology. They were beaten by an undocumented process, data nobody owns, a team that was never told whether using the tool was permitted, or a leadership group that had three different definitions of success. An audit finds those before the budget is committed.

The six dimensions

Leadership — alignment on purpose, scope and limits
People — skills, capacity and permission to use AI
Process — documented, stable workflows worth automating
Data — quality, access and lawful basis for use
Policy — a written position that matches practice
Governance — named owners, review and evidence

What the audit answers

Where adoption would succeed today, and where it would fail
Which blockers are cheap to remove and which are structural
What has to be decided before any purchase
What the first 90 days should contain, in order

The pattern

Readiness is rarely about technology budgets.

A typical audit finds the same three things. Leadership has not agreed what AI is for, so every function optimizes for something different. The processes chosen for automation are the ones nobody has written down, which is precisely why they are painful. And the staff already using AI are doing so quietly, because no one has told them it is allowed.

None of that is solved by a better tool. It is solved by decisions — which is why this audit ends in a decision list with owners rather than a maturity score to file. The score exists because boards ask for a baseline they can compare against next year, not because a number changes anything on its own.

The audit is run as part of the AI Readiness & Governance Assessment: the same inventory, interviews and document review produce both the readiness picture and the governance baseline, because in practice they come from the same conversations. Organizations that only need the governance half can scope it that way.

How it runs

Three to four weeks, mostly my time.

Your people are needed for interviews and for the readout.

01 · Baseline

What exists today

Tools in use, processes in scope, data sources, existing policy and prior decisions — collected before anyone is interviewed, so the conversations start from evidence.

Deliverable

Current-state baseline across the six dimensions.

02 · Interviews

Where it actually breaks

Confidential conversations with leadership and the people doing the work. The gap between the two is usually where the readiness problem lives.

Deliverable

Findings by function with blockers named.

03 · Scoring & plan

A sequence, not a wish list

A readiness score per dimension with the evidence behind it, blockers ranked by cost of delay, and a 90-day sequence of fixes with owners attached.

Deliverable

Scorecard, ranked blockers and a 90-day plan.

04 · Readout

Agreement in the room

A leadership or board session where the findings are presented, the first decisions are taken and the owners accept them. The organization leaves able to execute without further advisory support.

Deliverable

Board-ready readout and written decisions.

Scope & investment

From $7,500, quoted as a fixed fee.

Delivered as the AI Readiness & Governance Assessment, scoped to the number of functions in review and quoted in writing after a short fit call.

If the organization is small, or the question is narrower than readiness, the $1,500 Executive AI Governance Session is the proportionate first step and the fee is credited toward an assessment later.

Book a fit call

See the full assessment scope

Questions leaders ask

What is an AI readiness audit?

A structured check of whether an organization is actually prepared to adopt artificial intelligence well — across leadership alignment, people and skills, process maturity, data quality, policy, and governance. It answers two questions: what is in the way, and what has to be true before the first serious deployment.

How long does an AI readiness audit take?

The full AI Readiness & Governance Assessment runs three to four weeks. Organizations that need a faster read can start with the 90-minute Executive AI Governance Session and a written memo in two business days.

What does an AI readiness audit measure?

Six dimensions: whether leadership agrees on what AI is for; whether staff have the skills and the permission to use it; whether the underlying processes are documented enough to automate; whether the data is usable and lawfully usable; whether there is a policy that matches practice; and whether anyone owns the decisions.

We are small. Is an audit worth it?

For organizations under about twenty people, the session plus the free policy template is usually the proportionate starting point. The audit earns its fee where multiple functions, a board, external funders or sector regulation are involved.

What do we get at the end?

A readiness score by dimension with the evidence behind it, a ranked list of what is blocking adoption, a 90-day sequence of fixes with named owners, and a leadership readout.

Find the blockers before the budget.

Tell me what you were about to deploy and to whom. The audit usually changes the order, not the ambition.

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