llms.txt — optimised for ingestion, no visual chrome, same content.
A five-phase map of what good looks like when a business absorbs AI — from the first person drafting an email with a chatbot to an entirely new product born because the tools made it possible.
Most AI frameworks measure individuals. That is useful for hiring. But the question readers keep asking us is different: where is my organisation, and what should the next phase actually look like? This framework answers that. It uses four components — Mindset, Strategy, Building, Accountability — and hangs them on the five phases we see organisations move through as AI stops being a novelty and starts to reshape what the business is.
A phase is not a checkbox. At every stage, ask the same four questions. Weakness in any one of them is what stops organisations moving to the next.
Do people treat AI as a tool, a threat, or a colleague? What does leadership model? Is experimentation rewarded or punished?
Is there a deliberate view of where AI belongs in the business — or a hundred tactical decisions nobody has joined up?
Can the organisation actually ship things with AI? Prompts, workflows, agents, products — what gets built, how fast, by whom?
Who owns the output when AI did most of the work? How is quality checked? Where is the judgment that stops bad things shipping?
Rows are the five phases of the journey. Columns are the four things to look at inside every phase. Read across a row to understand a phase; read down a column to understand how one concern evolves as an organisation matures.
The hundred small things. Everyone starts here.
Self-reported usage above 60%. License utilisation matches license count.
People are talking about different tools this month than last month. Vocabulary is drifting forward.
High adoption, no aggregation. Everyone is faster in private; the business looks the same in public.
From conversation to architecture.
At least one shared asset per team, with measurable reuse.
The library is growing and — critically — things are being retired from it.
The "plz fix" law firm partner. Standardised inputs, unchanged process around them.
From "AI helps me" to "AI does the process."
Three or more multi-step workflows running reliably with agents in them.
Workflows are being retired because something better replaced them — not because they broke.
Impressive demos, PowerPoint diagrams, nothing in production. Or production systems nobody trusts.
Different structure, not the same people with better tools.
Headcount-to-output ratio has moved in a way the board can see.
New roles are being invented faster than old ones are being deleted.
Efficient teams, hollowed-out junior ranks, nobody being trained into the judgment the seniors are now selling.
Do something different, not the same thing faster.
A revenue line from an AI-native product that didn't exist twelve months ago.
The product pipeline is getting longer, and the firm's self-description is changing.
A "product" that is really a consulting engagement wearing a software hat. Or a launch that is still, eighteen months later, the only launch.
The most useful thing any maturity framework can do is assess trajectory, not current state. The same is true for organisations. A business sitting solidly at Phase 2 and experimenting into Phase 3 is a better bet than one nominally at Phase 4 but which stopped moving eight months ago. When you use this framework, mark where you are — then mark where you were six months ago. The gap between those two marks is the signal. Stillness at any phase is a warning; motion, even from a low base, is the thing worth backing.
Three entry points, depending on what you actually want to do with it.
For each phase, score your organisation 0–3 on each of the four components. Weakness in any column tells you where the next unlock is. Don't average the scores; the lowest one is the one that's holding you back.
Compare your scores to where you were six months ago. The delta matters more than the absolute. Flat scores at any phase mean you're stalling. Moving scores at any phase mean you're on the journey, even if you're not where you'd like to be.
Do not try to move on every phase at once. Pick the next phase, pick the weakest component within it, and invest there. The organisations that move fastest are the ones that refuse to spread their effort.
Twenty questions, about eight minutes. Four per phase — one for each component. Answer honestly for the organisation, not for yourself. The result will show where you actually sit, where you're weakest, and where to push next.
Pick the statement that best matches your organisation today. If two feel true, pick the lower one — be harder on yourself than you'd like. The result is only useful if the input is honest.
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Slope beats snapshot. Retake this in six months. The gap between the two scores is the thing that matters.
llms.txt — optimised for ingestion, no visual chrome, same content.