Advisory for the decisions AI puts on your desk. Private work for the leader making them.

Probably not. Board work has its own shapes: a non-voting advisory seat held over a period, a view on a single decision, or a session built for your agenda. Those are set out at board advisory, along with when a non-executive director is what you actually want instead.

People ask, and to some people I look like one. If that is your word for it, then yes, with one clarification.

Much of what is called AI consulting is roadmap and execution: tooling, integration, the build. That work matters and I am not the person for it. I am not going to build your next tech stack. If what you want is a workflow built and ten people trained on it, there are good firms for that, and you should use one.

Mine sits either side of it. Before, helping a board or a top team see the value, the gaps and the risks before you commit serious money to implementation, including the downsides nobody has costed. After, when implementation is underway, something is not going right, and the board or the senior team needs somebody to think it through with.

In practice it is closest to being a whisperer to whoever owns the problem, usually the chief executive, the transformation lead or the CHRO. The questions are about the shape of the organisation ahead: which people you will need, which capabilities, and how the strategy has to move.

I have started businesses, led them and changed them, and I have worked on AI implementation and on how the skills it demands have shifted, so there is technical ground under this. It is simply not what I sell. Strictly, I am an AI advisor with a specialism in human capability and strategy. If you call me an AI consultant, I will not correct you.

Not the kind you think you want. The tools and the pipes you can buy anywhere; this is the half that decides what they are allowed to do, and who answers for it. Rules before tools: which decisions a machine may inform, recommend or execute, which stay human, and who is accountable for each, written down before another tool is bought.

Often. Some organisations bring me back to work with the leadership team on what the talk surfaced; others want advisory across a year. Every engagement starts with the sponsor, then a short fact-find, then conversations across the business before I offer a view on anything.

Conference organisers who want the audience to leave with something to do rather than only something to think about. Chief people officers and L&D leaders framing a capability programme. Boards and executive teams wanting a private session on decision quality or AI strategy. And schools, charities and universities preparing people for what comes next.

Drift is what happens when an organisation adopts AI through a thousand reasonable, unmade decisions until its judgement has moved without anyone choosing. Design is the deliberate alternative: deciding in advance where human judgement has to remain, and building the work so it cannot slip out unseen. Where an organisation sits depends on two things: awareness, and the agency to act on it.

Yes. Alongside organisational advisory, he works privately with a small number of senior leaders, usually the person carrying the AI decision inside their organisation. Sessions run half a day at a time, over several weeks.

Building a strategic view you can hold in a board meeting, and a working practice that makes you sharper rather than more dependent. The aim is not to use AI more. It is to still recognise your own judgement in the decisions you make with it.

Chief executives and senior leaders who are expected to have a view on AI, are making decisions that will outlast them, and have nowhere internally to say what they do not yet know. The work is confidential.

From a single leadership session to a year of ongoing work. Every engagement begins with the sponsor, then a short fact-find, then conversations across the business before any recommendation is made.

Yes. Retainers suit organisations that want continuity rather than a project: a standing advisor who already knows the business, available to the leadership team as decisions arise. Typically monthly, reviewed annually.

Shaped per organisation, but usually a monthly rhythm of leadership sessions, availability between them for decisions that cannot wait, and a standing view on how the organisation's use of AI is changing its judgement. The point of a retainer is that the advice compounds.

A keynote changes how a room thinks in an hour. Advisory changes what an organisation does, and it starts by finding out where judgement has already moved.