The AI Exposure & Position Review
What is AI already doing in your business?
Most leaders of SME firms can't answer that question with confidence. Not because they aren't capable, but because nobody has looked properly. This review gives you the answer in two weeks, for a fixed £2,500.
Fixed £2,500 · Two weeks · Report plus 90-minute readout
- years in operating leadership
- 20+
- people led in operational teams
- 150–200
- annual client-money cash-flow responsibility
- £1.5bn
- AI leadership certifications
- Google + Microsoft
You'll recognise some of this
Someone asked about your AI plans recently. A board member, a client, maybe one of your own team. You gave an answer, and it wasn't the answer you wanted to give.
There's a proposal sitting on your desk from a consultancy or a vendor, and your instinct says something is off about it, but you can't put your finger on what.
And somewhere in your business, people are already using AI tools you haven't approved, pasting things into free chatbots, quietly working out their own rules. You suspect it. You haven't looked.
None of this makes you behind. It makes you the same as almost every leader I speak to. The difference between the ones who stay anxious and the ones who take the wheel is usually one thing: an honest, independent picture of where they actually are.
What staying unclear costs
Every month without that picture, three things compound quietly.
Unapproved tools spread through the business, and in a regulated firm that can mean client data sitting somewhere it has no business being.
Vendor proposals get judged on gut feel, and some of those proposals are cost-cutting exercises wearing transformation language.
And you keep walking into rooms where the AI question might come up, hoping it doesn't.
What the review answers
The review is built around the questions I've found leaders genuinely can't answer, rather than the ones consultancies like to score.
- 01
Where does your leadership team actually stand on AI?
Every exec/senior leader completes a private, confidential questionnaire. You see the honest spread for the first time, including where your team disagrees without realising it. In my experience this finding alone changes the next exec meeting.
- 02
What can your leadership actually see of the AI already in use?
Every exec reports, privately, what they know, suspect and can't account for in their own function. The result isn't a forensic audit. It's something more useful at this stage: a map of your visibility. What's known, what's suspected, where the blind spots are, and what kinds of information are likely flowing through them. Where a blind spot is big enough to matter, the report says so plainly and tells you how to close it.
- 03
Is the advice you're being sold safe to take?
Every live proposal, pitch and internal initiative gets an independent read against one test: will this multiply your people or hollow the work out? I don't take vendor commissions, so the answer costs me nothing to give straight.
How it works
Two weeks, roughly a day and a half of your organisation's time in total.
Private questionnaire
Fifteen minutes per exec, completed individually. Individual answers come to me only; your team sees aggregated findings, never named responses.
A conversation with you
Forty-five minutes on the areas this impacts, the advice on your desk, and the decision you've been putting off. There's always one.
Document review
The proposals, pitches and any internal AI papers you have. I read what you're being sold so the findings are specific to your situation.
An eight-page report
Written to be quoted from, not filed. Your position in one sentence on page one. No maturity scores, no methodology chapters.
A 90-minute readout
With you, or with your full leadership team if you prefer.
What you walk away with
The morning after the readout, you can describe where your business stands on AI in one sentence you actually believe.
You know your three biggest risks by name and what contains each one.
The decision that's been stuck has options and a recommendation laid out.
You have a first 90 days written plainly enough to hand to your team.
And the final page of the report gives you clear answers to the five AI questions you're most likely to be asked, in your words, for your situation.
What this isn't
It isn't an organisation-wide diagnostic.
That's a bigger piece of work, and it's only worth doing once your leadership is aligned. This review tells you whether it is.
It isn't a maturity score.
Being told you're 2.3 out of 5 ranks you without helping you.
And it isn't a pitch dressed up as findings.
At least one recommendation in your report will be something you can act on without ever speaking to me again.
The investment
£2,500
(+VAT), fixed.
No proposal process, no scoping call, no day-rate meter running. If we speak first and I don't think the review will be worth your money, I'll say so before you commit.
Who this is for
Leaders of SME businesses who want an honest starting position before they spend real money on AI. It's particularly suited to regulated firms, where the exposure questions carry compliance weight.
It isn't for organisations that have already made their AI bets and want validation, and it isn't for anyone shopping for a reason to cut heads. That work exists, and other people do it.
The person behind the work
Why me
I'm not a data scientist and I've never claimed to be. I spent 20 years running large operational teams in regulated financial services, including holding Certified Person status for client money, before building The AI Leader Lab. I learned this a step ahead of the leaders I now work with, and I remember exactly what the uncertainty felt like. That closeness is the point. A worried MD doesn't need a machine learning PhD who has never carried a P&L.
A note on confidentiality
Your execs' individual answers are visible to me alone. Your documents are treated as confidential, are not used to train any AI system, and are deleted when the engagement closes.
Next step
Book a 30-minute fit call
Book a 30-minute fit call, or email to book the review directly. Either way, in two weeks you'll know where you stand.
Fixed £2,500 · Two weeks · Report plus 90-minute readout
Martin Wheatley
Martin reads every booking personally
30 minutes
Focused on your situation
You leave with something useful
Whether we work together or not
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