Fractional
One person accountable for AI, sitting where strategy is set.
One accountable AI seat at the leadership table, without a permanent hire. Priorities, governance and vendor choices, with digital and technology direction alongside.
- 1–2 days per week · 6–12 months
- Monthly strategic reviews · handover built in
What prompts the call
- AI is on every leadership agenda and owned by nobody. IT holds the licences, the business holds the use cases, and no one holds the decision.
- Pilots run and few reach daily use. Each one is judged on its own, so nothing adds up to a position.
- The board or the owners ask what the AI position is, and the honest answer is a list of tools.
- Risk, data protection and the EU AI Act are landing on somebody’s desk as a side task.
- A permanent AI or digital leader is the right answer eventually, but not this year, and the decisions cannot wait for the search.
How it runs
The seat holds the decisions and leads the people making them, with a planned handover. Training and hands-on builds sit with Applied Futures.
Rhythm
One to two days a week, fixed
On a predictable cadence rather than on call. At this volume predictability matters more than hours. The organisation needs to know when a decision can be taken, not whether somebody will pick up the phone.
First 6 weeks
The actual position
What is running, what it costs, who uses it and what data it touches. Most organisations have more AI in use than anyone approved, and less in production than the slides suggest. The result is one page the leadership team can argue with.
Monthly
Strategic review
The spine of the engagement. Priorities, spend, risk, and what changed. Decisions recorded, so the next one starts from the last rather than from the beginning.
Between
The live questions
Vendor and model choices, use cases to stop or scale, policy, hiring, and the conversations with legal and IT that decide whether anything ships. Part of the seat is being in the room when business strategy is set, rather than receiving it afterwards.
Exit
Toward a permanent owner
For most organisations the end state is a permanent leader for AI, or a clear owner inside an existing role. Shaping that role, sitting on the panel and onboarding the person who takes it is part of the work, not an exit from it.
What you get
On the table.
- An AI position the leadership team has agreed, not merely seen. Where AI earns its cost, where it does not, and what stays off limits.
- A use-case portfolio with named owners, ranked by value and by how ready the data and the people are.
- Governance in proportion to the risk. A policy, an approval route, and the EU AI Act obligations that actually apply to you.
- Monthly strategic reviews, with decisions recorded.
- Vendor and model selection, with the comparison written down.
- Digital and technology direction alongside AI, where nobody else holds it.
- A handover to a permanent owner, or a documented state if that timing slips.
What I need from you.
- A seat at the leadership table, not a reporting line into it.
- One to two days a week held consistently, rather than borrowed when something breaks.
- Clarity on what this seat decides and what it advises. The two fail in different ways.
- Access to IT, legal and data protection, and to whoever already runs AI pilots, whatever their title.
When this is the wrong call
- You need teams trained or tools built. That is enablement and forward-deployed work, and it sits with Applied Futures.
- You need somebody accountable for one AI or digital programme’s delivery. That is interim programme leadership, at a higher cadence.
- A single assessment would answer the question. AI and digital readiness is fixed scope and considerably cheaper.
- There is already a CAIO or CTO and the real problem is that they are not listened to. A second voice does not fix that.
Questions
- What does a fractional CAIO actually decide?
- Whatever is agreed at the start, in writing. Typically AI priorities, the use-case portfolio, vendor and model choices, and the governance around them. Budget authority is set per engagement. Where the seat only advises, that is written down too.
- How is this different from Applied Futures?
- This seat owns decisions. Applied Futures, which I co-founded, delivers capability, meaning training for teams and hands-on builds. Many organisations need both. Keeping them apart means the person choosing what to build is not also selling the build.
- Is this only about AI?
- No. Where there is no CTO or digital director, the seat covers digital and technology direction as well. AI leads because that is where the open decisions are.
- How many organisations do you hold at once?
- One fractional seat at a time. The cadence only holds if the number stays that small.
- Are you tied to any vendor or platform?
- No. I am a Claude Community Ambassador for Anthropic in Copenhagen, so I know their tools well, and I say so up front. There is no reseller margin and no referral fee anywhere in this practice. Where a recommendation favours a supplier, the reasoning goes on the table with it.