You can skip the 40-page AI strategy deck. The decision in front of you is smaller: act this year, or wait. Score each of the six dimensions below from 0 to 5. Thirty points is the maximum, and a higher score always means a stronger case for acting now.
The six dimensions
Repeatable work. How much of what your people do is knowledge work with a known shape: research, analysis, reports, notes. Give yourself a 5 if that describes most of it, and a 1 if nearly everything is one-off and needs a person start to finish.
Asset base. Proprietary methods, a library of past work product, or data nobody else has. Rich and reusable scores a 5. Nothing to build on scores a 1.
Customer pull. Are customers already asking what you are doing with AI, or would they pay for an AI-assisted version of what you sell? Asking now is a 5. No interest yet is a 1.
Headroom. How little AI is in use today. This one runs backwards from what people expect: the less you have, the more there is to gain, and the clearer the starting point. Almost none in use scores a 5. Heavily automated already scores a 1.
Change capacity. Leadership wants this and one named person owns it: 5. Nobody has the time, or people are resisting: 1.
Urgency. Margin pressure, competitors built around AI, or customers who have started to expect it. Heat you can feel today is a 5. None is a 1.
Reading the score
0 to 12, exposed. You are behind and it has started to cost money. Begin with the risk.
13 to 20, ready. Good raw material and nothing built yet. Most businesses land here, and it is the best place to start from.
21 to 26, building. Early moves are underway and gaps remain. The return is in closing them.
27 to 30, leading. You are ahead. The work now is sharpening what exists and turning it into something you can sell.
What to do with it
A useful diagnostic ends in at least two concrete moves, one inside the business and one facing customers, each ranked by payoff against ease. Internal moves take hours out of delivery: a research and synthesis engine, a first-draft writer trained on your own templates, a proposal drafter, meetings turned straight into notes and actions. External moves bring in revenue: a tool your customers use under your name, an AI-assisted version of a service you already sell, a knowledge assistant built on what your firm knows.
Start with the cheapest internal win that nobody can argue with. Let its result pay for the argument about the bigger, customer-facing move.