CLEARANCE CHECK (SOP Step 3): HOLD. Same open items as Post 1: Qasim Naqvi is not yet marked Cleared to credit, and naming Layisha Paerhati, Ayanyol and the Toronto B2B Marketing Community needs clearing. PASS on the rest: no photos of Charysse, no travel or lifestyle or event-experience content, nothing from one-on-one conversations, the six questions are rephrased and the framework is credited. Delete this note before publishing.
In my last post, I shared an exercise from Qasim Naqvi's masterclass at the Toronto B2B Marketing Community's AI event on why the best AI isn't always the best investment. [Link to Post 1 once published.] This one is the practical follow-up: what he says leaders should demand before funding anything serious.
His answer is a one-page memo. Before the money moves, the proposal should be able to answer six questions:
- Value. What problem are we solving, and what is it worth in numbers?
- Change. What exactly will AI change, compared with how things work today?
- Capture. What has to change in the workflow for the benefit to show up?
- Adoption. What would we see people doing if they truly rely on it?
- Impact. Which operating or financial number moves if we're right?
- Next bet. What's the cheapest test of our shakiest assumption?
If the page can't answer them, the proposal isn't ready to fund.
For small specialist firms, question three is where plans most often break. Buying the tool is the easy part. The hard part is that nobody has written down how the work really gets done, so there is no baseline, no clear owner, and no way to see whether people rely on the tool or route around it. Questions two, four and five all depend on that baseline. That's why documented processes aren't paperwork. They're what make an AI investment something you can measure.
He also made a point about where this ends up. AI adoption isn't a project with a finish line. It's a capability that compounds. The question isn't "are we done adopting AI?" It's "is our rate of getting better still accelerating?" A firm with a written baseline and a habit of small, cheap tests will keep improving. A firm that bought a tool and moved on won't.
Try it this week:
- Pick one AI tool you already use, or are thinking about buying.
- Write the six answers on a single page.
- Notice which one you can't answer. That's your next piece of work, not a reason to stop.
If question three or question two stopped you, take the GRIC checkup and send me a message with what you find.
Ideas shared from Qasim Naqvi's "The AI Gold Rush: Where Is the Value?" masterclass at The New National AI for All Strategy, presented by the Toronto B2B Marketing Community and hosted by Layisha Paerhati of Ayanyol. Follow Qasim Naqvi on LinkedIn.
Related: "Culture You Can Score."