Direction: do you know where AI would pay first?
Most businesses can name a tool before they can name the job it should do. Direction is knowing which work is worth the effort, roughly what it is worth, and what happens after the first win.
How ready is your business for AI, really?
Twelve questions, about three minutes. You will get a straight answer: where you stand, where the gaps are, and the one thing to do next. No email needed to see your score.
Score your business
Your score
out of 100
The one thing to do this quarter
Want my read on your specific pattern?
The guidance for every dimension is on this page. Take it, no email needed. If you want my read on your particular set of answers, leave your name and email and I will write it and send it back within one business day.
You have the number and the next step. If you want to work out what to do about it properly, that is a conversation.
Book a discovery callWhat is AI readiness?
AI readiness is whether a business can reliably turn AI into measured time and money, and whether it shows up when buyers ask AI who to hire. It has two sides: inside the business, which is direction, workflows, people and trust, and market-side, which is visibility. Most readiness checks measure only the first.
They also tend to stop at your technology. This one asks whether your business can absorb it: your direction, your people, and the rules you work to. Those three carry 58% of the score.
What the score measures
Five dimensions. Four of them are about putting AI to work inside the business. The fifth is about a market where your buyers use AI to decide who to call.
Workflows: are the repetitive jobs automated, and did anyone measure it?
This is the part people picture when they think about AI at work: quotes, the inbox, invoices, reports, the follow-up that depends on someone remembering. Measured is the word doing the work in that sentence.
People: can your team actually use it?
Tools land in a business far faster than habits do, and the gap between the two is where most AI spend disappears. People carries as much of the score as Workflows does, which is the point.
Trust and data: do you know what is safe to put in, and who checks what comes out?
Not a compliance exercise. Businesses that never settle this either freeze and do nothing, or find out the hard way. Both are expensive, and the fix is usually one page long.
Visibility: does AI recommend you to buyers?
Being ready for AI also means being ready for buyers who use AI to choose. When someone asks an assistant who to hire, whatever it says about you is what they act on, and you do not get to see it happen.
What the four levels mean
Scored against the model above, not against other businesses.
Curious 0 to 25
You have not really started, which means nothing to unpick. The gap that matters is not who started first, it is who turns AI into a real return. That is still wide open.
Experimenting 26 to 50
Probably not as far behind as it feels. Most businesses are in the same spot: a few subscriptions, some experimenting, nothing measured. The next step is picking one workflow and proving it pays.
Operational 51 to 75
Something is live and paying, and you can point to what it saved. The gains now come from compounding: each workflow making the next one easier, and a team fluent enough to run it.
Compounding 76 to 100
AI is simply how your business works. The edge now is staying current as the landscape moves, and making sure AI recommends you to buyers, not just works for you.
What to do about each gap
All of it, free, whatever you scored. The results screen pulls out the one that matches your weakest dimension, but there is nothing here you have to give an email to read.
Direction
If this is your weakest area
Do not start with a strategy deck. Write down the three jobs in your business that cost the most time or lose the most money, and put a rough dollar figure beside each one. Then prove one of them works before you plan the other two. That list, with numbers on it, is the beginning of a plan.
If you are part way there
You have a direction, it just is not sized. Put a number on the top one: hours a week, times a wage, times fifty weeks. Then decide who owns it and what happens if it works. A plan nobody funds or staffs is a wish list.
If this is already a strength
You know where AI pays and somebody is accountable for it. The risk now is the plan ageing faster than the business does. Put a date in the calendar to revisit it each quarter, and keep the person who owns it close enough to the work to notice when something changes.
Workflows
If this is your weakest area
Pick the one job that eats the most hours this week, usually quotes or the inbox, and time it for a week. Do not estimate it, time it. That number is your business case, and you need it before you buy anything, not after.
If you are part way there
You have proved it works somewhere. Now make it repeatable: write down what the working process actually is, so it survives the person who invented it. Then take the next job off the list and do the same. Two measured workflows beat six half-finished experiments.
If this is already a strength
The obvious jobs are done and you are measuring them. The next gains are in the joins: the handoffs between systems where work still gets rekeyed by hand. Look for anything a person copies from one screen to another, because that is usually the last expensive thing left.
People
If this is your weakest area
Nobody is using it yet, which means there is nothing to undo. Start with one session on real work rather than a demo: everyone brings a job they actually did last week and does it again with AI beside them. People adopt what they have felt work on their own task, and very little else.
If you are part way there
Your experimenters are an asset. Get their tricks written down as three prompts the whole team can use, then run one hands-on session on real work, not examples. Left alone, what works stays stuck with the person who found it.
If this is already a strength
Your team is fluent and the good approaches get shared. Keep it from decaying: put one person in charge of noticing when the tools change, and hand new starters the playbook in their first week rather than letting them work it out.
Trust & data
If this is your weakest area
Write the one-page rule: what can go in, what never does, and who to ask when it is not obvious. Then tell the team it exists, because an unread rule is the same as no rule at all. Ours is published in full and free to copy, so you do not have to start from a blank page.
If you are part way there
The rule exists, it just has not reached everyone. Spend ten minutes on it at the next team meeting and talk through one borderline case, because the edges are where people actually get stuck. Then check what your team is signed into: a business account and a personal one handle your data differently.
If this is already a strength
Clear rules, business-grade tools, a human on the way out. That is the position most businesses are trying to reach. Keep it honest by checking it against reality once or twice a year: rules written for the tools you had last year quietly stop matching the ones you have now.
Visibility
If this is your weakest area
Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity the exact question your best customer would ask, this week. Whatever comes back is your baseline. If you do not show up, the fix usually starts with the plain facts about your business being findable and consistent everywhere they are published.
If you are part way there
You show up sometimes, which means you are known but not clearly. Check what the assistants say you sell, not just whether they name you, because being described wrongly costs you the enquiry as surely as being missed. Then make sure every service has a page that answers the question a buyer would really ask.
If this is already a strength
You show up and you are tracking it. The work now is holding it while the ground moves, because the assistants change what they cite and a position nobody is watching is one you will lose quietly. Keep checking the handful of questions that matter most to your best customers.
Questions we get asked
How long does the AI readiness score take?
Twelve questions, about three minutes. Your score appears on the screen as soon as you finish, and you do not need to leave an email to see it.
Do I have to give you my email to see my score?
No. Your score, the breakdown across the five dimensions and the guidance for each one are all on this page, free and ungated. The email is only if you want my read on your particular pattern of answers, which I write and send myself.
What is AI readiness?
AI readiness is whether a business can reliably turn AI into measured time and money, and whether it shows up when buyers ask AI who to hire. It has two sides: inside the business, which is direction, workflows, people and trust, and market-side, which is visibility. Most readiness checks measure only the first.
Is my score compared against other businesses?
No. It is scored against the readiness model set out on this page, not against a sample of anyone else. When enough businesses have taken it for a comparison to mean something, we will publish the real figures and say so plainly. Until then a percentile would be invented, and an invented number is worse than no number.
What happens to my answers?
Your score is yours. If you leave an email, I use your answers to write you something useful and specific. We also use answers anonymously to understand where businesses stand, and may publish that anonymised data. The privacy page has the detail.
We have barely started with AI. Will this just tell us we are behind?
No. Starting late is not the problem it feels like. The businesses getting a return are the ones that picked one job and proved it paid, not the ones that started first, and the score is built to show you which job that is rather than to rank you.
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