A fractional seat has less time than a permanent one, so the first ninety days carry more weight. By the end of them the leadership team should know where it stands on AI, what it has decided, and who owns what. If not, the seat turns into one more voice in the meeting.
This is how I structure them. It's the same order I'd follow in-house, compressed to fit one to two days a week.
Days 1 to 30. Find out what's actually running
Most organisations have more AI in use than anyone approved, and less in production than the slides suggest. Both halves matter.
The first month is an inventory. Not a survey. Conversations with the people using the tools, a look at what's being paid for, and four questions for each use case.
What it does, and who uses it.
What data it touches, and where that data goes.
What it costs, including the staff time around it.
Who would notice if it stopped tomorrow.
The last question does most of the work. Pilots nobody would miss can close without a debate. The ones people would fight for are your real portfolio.
In the same month I agree the decision rights in writing. Which decisions the seat holds, which it only advises on, and what budget authority comes with it. It feels administrative. It's the most important document in the engagement, because every later decision depends on it being clear.
Days 31 to 60. Take a position
The second month turns the inventory into a position the leadership team can argue with. One page. Where AI earns its cost for us, where it doesn't, and what stays off limits.
Then the portfolio. Use cases ranked by value and by readiness, each with a named owner. Some get funded to production. Some get stopped. Stopping things is where a CAIO earns trust, because it frees the budget and the attention the funded ones need.
Governance comes in this month too, sized to the risk. For most organisations that means three things.
A policy short enough to read, covering which tools are approved and what data can go into them.
An approval route for new use cases that takes days, not months. If it's slower than a personal account, people will use the personal account.
A plain view of which EU AI Act obligations apply. For most organisations that's the AI literacy duty and some transparency requirements. High-risk use cases are rarer than the headlines suggest, but you need to know if you have one.
Days 61 to 90. Make it run without the seat
The third month is about rhythm. The monthly strategic review starts here. Priorities, spend, risk and what changed, with decisions written down so the next review starts from the last one.
The first funded use cases move into daily work. That's the real test of the ninety days. Not the strategy document, but whether people in the business are working differently with something that was a pilot in month one.
And the handover gets drafted. It's planned from the start, not left for the end. By day ninety there should be a first sketch of who holds these decisions permanently, whether that's a new hire or an existing leader who takes them on.
What doesn't happen in ninety days
Training the whole organisation. Building the tools. Changing how every department works. Those take longer, and they're mostly not the CAIO's job. The seat decides what gets built and who gets trained. The doing belongs to the teams, with help where it's needed. When it is, Applied Futures is where I send it, and the decision seat stays separate from the delivery.
What ninety days can do is make the organisation's AI legible. One position, one portfolio, one set of rules, and one person accountable for them. That's enough to stop the drift. The rest builds on it.
Three conditions
Three things make the first ninety days work.
A seat at the leadership table, not a reporting line into it.
A fixed cadence of one to two days a week, held.
A sponsor who'll back the first decision to stop something. There will be one early, and how the leadership team handles it sets the tone for everything after.
More on what the role owns and when fractional is the right shape. The practical details are on the fractional CAIO page.