Free download · 18 pages · 5 tools
Strategy Before Software: The SMB AI Readiness Kit
The instruments I use in the first two weeks of a paid engagement, packaged so you can run them yourself. Scoring sheets you fill in, a policy you can adopt as written, and the vendor questions that end bad deals before the invoice.
No call required. No sequence you can't leave. If it is useful, you will know within ten minutes.
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What's inside
Five tools, not a whitepaper
Every one of these is something you fill in, score, or adopt. Nothing in here is a definition of artificial intelligence.
Workflow Triage Scorecard
Score up to three workflows against eight weighted criteria — volume, variability, senior hours consumed, error cost, systems touched, data sensitivity, decision complexity, and internal ownership. The one with the highest score is where you start. Includes the scoring bands and what each verdict means.
The Autonomy Ladder
Four levels — validate, direct, sign off, own — with plain-language descriptions and the test for placing a workflow on each. Per workflow, never company-wide. This single page prevents most of the governance arguments that stall AI adoption in small firms.
One-Page AI Acceptable Use Policy
Fill-in-the-blank, NIST AI RMF-aligned, written for a company with no CIO. Covers approved tools, prohibited data, disclosure, and the escalation path. Adoptable this week. Most firms who download the Kit use this page first.
The Four Metrics Sheet
Cycle time, unit cost, quality, capacity unlocked — with the formula for each, how to capture a baseline before you change anything, and the monthly review rhythm. If you can't measure it, you didn't transform it.
12 Vendor Due-Diligence Questions — and 7 Workflows Never to Automate First
The twelve questions that separate an AI vendor from a reseller with a wrapper: where data is processed and retained, model change notification, subprocessors, exit and export, incident notification, and the contractual terms that matter if you hold CUI. Plus the seven workflow types that look like obvious first candidates and reliably aren't — with the reason for each.
Who it's for
Written for the owner, not the IT department
If you run a 20–200 person firm in the DMV, you personally make the AI decisions, and you have been told to "do something about AI" without being told what — this is the ninety minutes that turns that into a decision.
It is the same material that runs at the front of a paid engagement. I give it away because the firms who work through it and conclude they do not need me were never going to be good clients, and the ones who work through it and get stuck know exactly where. Both outcomes save us a bad conversation.
Roughly one in four audits ends in "don't automate this yet." That is a successful audit.
FAQ
Before you enter your email
Do I have to get on a call to receive it?
No. Enter your name and email and it is in your inbox in under a minute. There is no gate behind the gate.
What happens to my email address?
You get the Kit, then a short sequence of operator notes — five emails, roughly one a week, each one a usable idea rather than a pitch. Unsubscribe in one click at any time. Your address is never shared or sold.
Is this just a sales brochure?
Page one is the scorecard. There is no company history section and no case for hiring me until the last page. If you use the policy template and nothing else, the Kit did its job.
I'm not in the DMV. Is it still useful?
The tools are geography-neutral. The vendor questions and data classification guidance lean toward US federal-adjacent requirements, which is where the regulatory detail lives — so it is most useful if you hold CUI or serve clients who do.
Or skip the reading and bring me the workflow.
If you already know which process is the problem, thirty minutes will get you further than eighteen pages.
30 minutes. One workflow. You leave with a plain answer on whether it is worth automating — whether or not you hire me.