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First 30 Days

A practical month-long rollout that produces evidence before policy decks, platform sprawl, or giant transformation programs.

Leader

10 min

Open +

Do not begin with an enterprise-wide AI initiative. Begin with ten real workflows, three pilots, and one honest review.

Leave knowing / Start without boiling the company

Week by week

One month. Four simple moves.

Week 1 / Learn the work

Interview the people doing it. Collect ten repetitive, slow, language-heavy, or information-heavy workflows. Capture the current time, pain, error, and owner.

Week 2 / Test small

Choose three low-risk workflows. Use approved tools. Keep the person in control. Write down where AI helped and where it failed.

Week 3 / Make one repeatable

Turn the best pilot into a shared prompt, template, retrieval flow, or tiny internal tool. Add the right context and a verification step.

Week 4 / Decide with evidence

Compare the before and after. Keep, change, stop, buy, or build. Publish what was learned so the next team starts smarter.

30-day scorecard

At day 30 you should be able to answer these.

Which three workflows were tested?

What did the baseline look like before AI?

What measurable value changed?

What new risk or review work appeared?

What should be standardized?

What should be stopped?

What needs a proper product rather than another prompt?

Who owns the next 60 days?

Pilot brief

Use the same one-page brief for every pilot.

Try the template

AI PILOT BRIEF

Business outcome:
[WHAT SHOULD GET BETTER]

Workflow today:
[DESCRIBE THE CURRENT STEPS]

Pain / baseline:
[TIME, COST, DELAY, ERROR, OR OTHER EVIDENCE]

AI job:
[THE NARROW TASK AI WILL DO]

Human owner:
[NAME OR ROLE]

AI may not:
[BOUNDARIES]

Proof after 2-4 weeks:
[WHAT WE WILL MEASURE]

Stop condition:
[WHAT WOULD MAKE US END THE PILOT]

Notes / Subscribe

No schedule. No content calendar. A note goes out only when there is something worth understanding.