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Leadership Alignment
A documented executive thesis tied to enterprise strategy, with named accountability, not a delegation to IT.
Workshop tell
If we removed every AI tool tomorrow, which three business outcomes would suffer first?
AI Readiness Diagnostic
A senior-led diagnostic and readiness assessment for asset managers, banks, insurers, and Private Equity firms. Leap scores readiness across 10 dimensions and turns the findings into a board-ready readout and 90-day action plan.
When To Use This
AI pilots are not scaling beyond isolated teams.
License adoption is uneven or hard to measure.
The board is asking for a clearer AI ROI story.
Managers are unsure how to coach AI-enabled work.
Governance is slowing useful experimentation.
The Premise
Access creates activity. Readiness creates operating value. The diagnostic tests whether the firm has the leadership alignment, manager fluency, workflow design, and operating model to absorb AI into the way work actually gets done.
Activity is not adoption. We see this gap repeatedly in mid-size financial services firms: high tool availability, uneven behavior change, and limited measurable value.
Manager fluency is the throttle. Front-line managers who cannot coach AI use are the constraint on adoption, not employees, not infrastructure.
Workflow redesign beats workflow acceleration. Speeding up a broken process is a small win. Redesigning the work around the model is where compounding value sits.
Operating model decides the ceiling. If no business leader owns the outcome of AI, no amount of platform investment closes the gap.
What We Measure
The diagnostic is twenty questions across the ten dimensions below. We publish the framework. The full question set, scoring rubric, and facilitation method are part of the engagement.
A documented executive thesis tied to enterprise strategy, with named accountability, not a delegation to IT.
If we removed every AI tool tomorrow, which three business outcomes would suffer first?
Active permission to redesign work, not just to use tools as-is. Anchored in real workflows, not generic training.
When did someone last change how they worked because of AI, and was that change recognized?
Front-line managers who can coach, not just authorize. Manager fluency drives adoption more than user training does.
Could your managers, today, hold a credible one-on-one about how someone should be using AI?
A current view of which roles are most exposed to AI redesign over the next 18 months, with a plan tied to that view.
Which three roles will look most different two years from now, and what are you doing about that today?
Use cases framed around the workflow and the outcome, with the AI capability chosen second. Not tool-first.
Walk us through one workflow you would redesign first if AI were free and unlimited. Why that one?
A defensible data foundation with clear ownership and quality baselines for the domains AI actually needs.
If you built a high-value AI use case tomorrow, would the data exist, be accessible, and be trustworthy?
Right-sized governance: enough to defend, not so much that nothing ships. Tiered by risk, not blanket-applied.
How long does it take, end to end, for a new AI use case to get approved here? Is that the right answer?
Selective, role-aware deployment with adoption signals tied to real workflows, not licenses purchased.
Of the AI licenses you have purchased, what percentage are actively used each week, and by whom?
Use cases with named value owners and metrics that surface in the business reviews that actually matter.
Show us your most successful AI use case. Where does its value show up on a P&L or operating metric?
A named AI operating model (who decides, who builds, who runs, who governs) accepted across business and technology.
Who, by name, owns the business outcome of your most important AI initiative?
Where Firms Land
Most mid-size financial services firms we meet sit at Level II or Level III. Very few are at Level IV; almost none at Level V. The level itself is less interesting than the dimension-level pattern that produces it, which is why the readout we leave behind is dimensional, not a single number.
Note: we publish the framework, not the scoring rubric. The score-to-level math and facilitation method are part of the engagement because they produce the defensible result.
How It's Run
Use the short screen for fit, the workshop for fast leadership alignment, and the 1-2 week assessment when the board, executive committee, or transformation sponsor needs an evidence-backed readout and roadmap.
Best with CEO/COO, CIO or CTO, Risk/Compliance, HR/Talent, and 2-3 business leaders who own high-value workflows.
A short fit conversation to identify whether the full diagnostic is warranted and where AI adoption appears most stuck.
A focused workshop with the leadership team in the room, full instrument, scoring, disagreement surfaced, and initial findings captured.
The richer engagement: interviews, workshop facilitation, evidence review, executive readout, and a 90-day roadmap that can stand up in front of the board.
Scoring, Practically
Not from interviews compiled later. The conversation is the evidence; the variance across the table is the most useful data we collect.
Disagreement on a dimension is an alignment gap. Until that gap is closed, the higher scorer’s position is not the firm’s position.
A firm at Level IV overall but Level II on governance has a specific, addressable problem. The dimension-level shape is what gets written into the readout.
What You Walk Away With
Three pages or fewer, written in the language your board already speaks. Designed to be forwarded between executives, not reread by you alone.
One sentence the executive team can repeat in their next board update. Specific, defensible, and actionable.
The three things this organization is meaningfully ahead on, and the three places it is most exposed. Ranked by impact, with evidence.
A 10-dimension readout showing where the firm is consistent, where it is uneven, and where the executive team disagrees with itself.
Five named moves the executive team can make in the next month without a full transformation program.
The structural moves (Align, Prioritize, Operationalize) sequenced so each phase makes the next one easier.
Adoption is concentrated in two desks. Manager-level fluency is the binding constraint, not data, and not governance, though governance will become one inside six months if the use-case pipeline is not actively managed.
Get In Touch
We will help confirm the right path: a fast workshop for alignment or a deeper readiness assessment with interviews, evidence review, and a board-ready roadmap.