Reading list · 17 pieces

Twelve things worth reading before you spend money on AI.

What this is

A curated reading list — not a content library. Each piece earns its place: it either gives away the framework we use inside paid diagnostics, or it names a problem your buyers actually feel. No vendor reviews, no listicles, no theatre.
White Papers

The AI Operating Intelligence Manifesto

Why disconnected AI tools stall, and how diagnosing the operating system first turns scattered experiments into real business value.

14 min read

Field Guides

The Operating Friction Field Guide

What operating friction is, the ten symptoms to watch for, where it hides, and how it quietly becomes revenue loss and retention risk.

13 min read

Playbooks

The AI Readiness Playbook for Messy Businesses

You don't need perfect data to start using AI — you need workflow clarity, ownership, and decision discipline. A practical 14-day readiness sprint.

11 min read

Playbooks

How to Prioritize AI Opportunities by Business Value

A practical framework for ranking AI ideas by impact, effort, and dependency — instead of by whichever vendor demo landed in your inbox last.

8 min read

Playbooks

The AI Opportunity Scorecard

The exact scoring rubric we use inside diagnostics to rank AI opportunities by impact, effort, dependency, and reversibility. Steal it.

9 min read

Playbooks

The AI Adoption Playbook for B2B Services

How agencies, consultancies, and professional services teams should sequence AI adoption without breaking client delivery or partner trust.

12 min read

Field Guides

Workflow Audit Field Notes

What we look for when we walk a workflow: handoffs, silent rework, tribal knowledge, and the seven questions that surface the real bottleneck.

10 min read

Field Guides

The Revenue Leak Diagnostic Checklist

Twenty-two places revenue quietly leaks out of B2B businesses — from renewal blind spots to onboarding drop-off to pricing exceptions no one tracks.

9 min read

Playbooks

The Decision Packet Template

A one-page template that gets partners and founders out of the weekly pricing-and-scope loop. Includes the four fields that matter and the two that don't.

6 min read

Field Guides

The Founder's Guide to Fractional AI Leadership

When to hire fractional AI leadership, when to build in-house, and what a good engagement actually looks like month to month. Written for operators, not agencies.

11 min read

Funding

Canada's AI for All strategy, translated for operators

What Canada's AI for All strategy means for operators: BDC LIFT, PacifiCan's Regional AI Initiative, and how to package a diagnostic as the business case.

9 min read

Product Leadership

What a Fractional CPO Actually Does

The real scope of embedded product leadership — what it owns, what it refuses, and the three situations where hiring one is the wrong call.

10 min read

Product Leadership

The Product Operating Review: A Working Agenda

A monthly ninety-minute review that produces decisions instead of demos. Six blocks, the order that matters, and the two blocks teams always cut first.

8 min read

Product Leadership

How to Prioritize When Everything Is Urgent

A scoring method that survives a founder, a board, and your largest customer all pushing at once — plus what to do when the score and the politics disagree.

9 min read

Product Leadership

Signals Your Product Org Has Outgrown Its Founder

Seven observable signals that founder-led product has hit its ceiling, and the sequence for handing the function over without losing the instinct that built it.

9 min read

Product Leadership

AI in the Product Roadmap: Deciding What's Worth Building

How to tell an AI capability that belongs in your product from one that belongs in your operations — or nowhere. Feasibility, evaluation, and failure behaviour.

11 min read

Tools

The Operating Friction Score Assessment

A 10-minute interactive self-assessment across 6 operating domains. Get a scored map of where workflow, data, revenue, and decision friction is hiding.

10 min interactive