Enterprise AI

    The 6-Point AI Governance Check

    The pilots that die in regulated industries don't die because the model was bad. They die the same six ways, every time. Run these six checks against your own pilot. Thirty seconds each.

    Talk through your pilot

    One page, no email wall. Print it, or book 30 minutes to work through it together.

    1. Owner.

    Can you say, out loud, the name of the one person who owns AI governance for this pilot?

    What yes looks like: A single named person, not a committee, who you could name in under five seconds. A committee can't be held accountable for what it misses. A person can.

    2. Early compliance.

    Has your compliance or privacy officer reviewed this pilot this month, not at go-live?

    What yes looks like: A review that already happened, with a name and a date attached. If the review is scheduled for "before launch," it's scheduled too late.

    3. Real BAAs.

    List every AI tool that touches this workflow, including the ones nobody officially approved. For each one, who signed the Business Associate Agreement?

    What yes looks like: A name against every tool on the list. Standard ChatGPT (Free through Team and Business) and Claude (Free, Pro, Max, Team) carry no BAA, and a cloud BAA never extends to chatgpt.com or claude.ai. The same frontier models are usually already available under your organization's existing cloud agreement, with a BAA already in place, covering GA services only, with preview features kept out.

    4. Definition of done.

    Pull up this pilot's written success criteria right now. Can you find it?

    What yes looks like: A document, written before the pilot started, naming an accuracy floor, a latency ceiling, how failure gets handled, and the one number it has to move. "It went well" is not a result.

    5. Audit trail.

    Pick one decision your AI made last week. Can you reconstruct why it happened, from logs, in ten minutes?

    What yes looks like: Every action the system takes produces two records: a log of what happened and an approval record of who allowed it. If you can't reconstruct a decision with ten users in a pilot, you won't be able to with ten thousand in production.

    6. The production team.

    Name the person who will run this system in production. Are they part of the pilot team today?

    What yes looks like: That person is already in the room, already knows the system, not meeting it for the first time at a handoff meeting. A handoff meeting at the end is usually where the pilot ends too.

    An owner. Early compliance. Real BAAs. A definition of done. An audit trail. One team. None of these are about the model.

    Talk through your pilot

    Thirty minutes, no cost. Bring your answers to the six checks, or bring the gaps.