Advisory · For enterprise leaders handed a transformation
Most do. Yours doesn’t have to.
Independent transformation counsel for the leader accountable for the result. We read the plan and find where it fails, before it does, so you can be the leader who’s confident in what’s next and deliver the transformation you were handed. Advice only: no implementation, no framework, no vendor.
What you were handed
Your name is on the AI program. The plan came from a vendor, a consultancy, or a deck that was written before anyone knew what the work was. Everyone you can ask has something to sell you afterward, and the people with “extensive enterprise AI experience” in the job ads don’t exist yet.
We’ve been handed transformations everyone assumed we knew how to run, and we watched Agile transformations fail for twenty years for reasons nobody in the room wanted to say out loud. AI is the same transformation with a faster engine. It can move you in the wrong direction faster than anything before it.
If you are not the leader accountable for the result, this isn’t for you. The person who answers for it is the person we talk to.
How it works
Every read is a written answer to a question you already have. Each is a fixed fee, stated in the first conversation, earned on delivery.
A proposal, a vendor commitment, or a key hire. You get a written answer: take it, change it, or walk, and why.
Fixed fee · two weeksWhere it fails, in what order, and what to change first while you can still change it. The read most leaders call for.
Fixed fee · three to four weeksWhat the results support, what puts them at risk, and which decisions change the outcome from here.
Fixed fee · six weeksTwo sessions a month, access between them, and the plan re-read against results each quarter. Six-month terms. Five seats at a time, so the calls get answered.
Not offered, by design: implementation, training, certification, a fractional role, or a framework. If a read says you need those, we’ll say who to call.
Before you ask
You send nothing before the conversation. In thirty minutes you describe the plan or the decision, or the program as it’s running, and you hear which read fits, or that none does. If one fits, the fee is fixed and stated before you decide. The read is written for you alone. No one at the vendor, the consultancy or the board sees it unless you show them. We take nothing from the other side of your plan: no vendor fees, referral fees or commissions. We don’t implement, train, certify, take a fractional seat or sell a framework. Advice only.
The first conversation is free. Every read is a fixed fee, stated before you decide and earned on delivery, never hourly. The number is said in the conversation, not here, because it depends on which read fits. A Second Opinion takes two weeks, a Pre-Mortem three to four, a Program Review six.
The leader whose name is on the result: handed an AI transformation with a deadline, a budget, and a plan written by someone who sells the next step. On paper, or already under way: a plan you haven’t signed yet, or a program six months in with a dashboard that says on track. The same read fits a cost or operating-model restructuring, an ERP or core-system program, or a merger integration. It is not for the vendor, the consultancy, or anyone who wants it implemented.
Who’s reading your plan
Josh Aragon has spent thirty years inside the largest transformations in the world — sixty-plus enterprise launches across twelve industries, sixteen thousand leaders trained on three continents, and the exams that certify the trainers in his field written partly by his hand.
For most of that time he was the one hired to make the transformation work. He knows what the vendor’s plan leaves out, because he used to write them. Now he reads them for the person whose name is on the result, and he has nothing to sell you when he’s done.
Author of Everyone Assumed You Knew, written for every leader who was handed a team, a transformation, or a deadline and assumed to know the rest — from the first-time lead to the CEO. The afterword is about leading into AI.
Start with the book
Twelve disciplines, each taught inside a real room from three decades and more than sixty enterprise transformations, with the CEOs, CTOs and first-time leads who were standing in them, plus an afterword on leading into AI. If you were handed the AI transformation and everyone assumed you knew how to run it, start here.
Worried your AI transformation plan will fail? Most do, and yours doesn’t have to. We read the plan and find where it fails, before it does, so you can be the leader who’s confident in what’s next and deliver the transformation you were handed.
One door
Thirty minutes, no obligation. You bring the plan or the decision. We tell you which read fits, or that none does.
If you’re worried your AI transformation plan will fail, a Pre-Mortem is the right decision. If you’re not sure yet, the conversation is.