What business outcome — a number the CFO tracks — is each AI initiative accountable for? And which initiatives have nothing written next to them?
Use-case descriptions describe what the technology will do. Outcomes describe what the business will get. The list tells you which question the institution is really asking.
Who actually owns the AI question here — and is that where the shape of the business gets decided?
A centre of excellence can run initiatives. Only the room that decides what the business becomes can own the question.
Are the problems we solve for customers today still the problems they will have tomorrow?
Customers are inside the same reset. The largest risk is automating yesterday’s answers very efficiently.
Is our spend split between AI that earns and AI that saves — and can we show which is which, in our own numbers?
The institutions reporting unmistakable value can show this split in their own filings. It is the tell.
How many of our pilots have reached production? Of those, how many changed a number we track — and what stopped the rest?
Most initiatives never fail in production; they never get there. The pilot succeeds, the deck is written, and nothing changes.
Would we trust this data, as it stands, to make this decision manually? If not, what is the work that comes first?
If the answer is no, there is no model that fixes that — only foundation work that precedes it.
What are we genuinely willing to let AI change — the tools, the workflow, or the work itself?
Adding intelligence to an existing process yields the existing process, slightly faster. The returns live one question deeper.
When an initiative’s costs run ahead of its returns, when do we find out — and who says so first?
Budget review is the most expensive possible time to learn it.
Are risk, compliance, legal and HR inside the build from the start — or waiting at its exit?
Gatekeepers at the end stop things; enablers at the start shape how to do them safely.
What have we told our people about what this means for their roles — and would they call it honest?
No architecture survives the people it ignores. Adoption is where returns live or die, and adoption is human.
These questions do most of their work simply by being asked together, in one sitting, by the room that decides. Where the answers diverge across the table is usually where the first real conversation is.
Built to be carried into your institution. Take it to the room that decides.
From The Instruments at bharatravuri.com — the frameworks are open; the value is what’s brought into the room. Free to print, forward, and table. — Bharat Ravuri, The Practitioner Thinker.