What I do, in five lines
Every one of these ends with something written that a board can hold you to: which decisions the machines may make, who can stop each one, and how you would know if it went wrong. That is what you are buying. Control you can show, rather than advice you have heard.
A second opinion on your AI strategy. Send me the strategy you have built and two working days later you have an independent written view: where you are not in control, which decisions machines are already making in your name, who can stop them, and how you would find out if one went wrong. A fixed fee, agreed before you send anything. Send it.
Rules Before Tools. One day with the executive team. The rules, written in the room’s own words, before another tool is bought: what the machines may do, who can stop each one, and how the organisation would know if it went wrong. The session.
The Drift versus Design review. Across a function or the whole organisation. A written view of where you are designing the relationship between your people and these systems, and where you are drifting into one. The instrument.
Standing advisor. Monthly. The trusted second opinion as the decisions arrive, and a written brief each month on what has changed and what it means for you. A handful at a time, never more. How it works.
For boards. A briefing, a view on one decision, or a non-voting seat held over a period. Board advisory.
Advisory assignments are scoped, and most are five-figure. Retainers are monthly, and I take on no more than a handful at once.
Is this AI strategy? Not the kind you think you want
The tools and the pipes you can buy anywhere. This is the half that decides what they are allowed to do, and who answers for it.
The argument was set out in Rules Before Tools in August 2025: four layers, ten rules, and the instruction to write the rules before another tool is bought, because the tools slot into a system that has been designed and fall out of one that has not. A year on, McKinsey’s survey of 1,491 organisations found the two things most associated with profit from generative AI were the chief executive owning the rules and the redesign of workflows, held by 28 and 21 per cent. Neither is a roadmap.
An independent second opinion on the strategy you have built
Send me your AI strategy. I sell no software, take no vendor’s money and will not build anything, so nothing in the read depends on what you decide. That is the whole of what makes it objective.
In 48 hours I will tell you where you are not in control: which decisions machines are already making in your name, who can stop them, and how you would find out if one went wrong. A fixed fee, agreed before you send anything. Private, and it ends with a list rather than a proposal. Send it to rahim@thesuperskills.com.
If it is urgent, send me your mobile number and how soon you need a reply: within the hour, within six hours, or today. Same address, subject line “Please call me”. I will call or WhatsApp you in UK working hours.
The Rules Before Tools session
A day with the chief executive and the executive team, applying the ten rules to this organisation. The morning maps the decisions the organisation makes and marks each one: the machine may inform, recommend or execute, or it may never own it. The afternoon puts a name against each, decides what the organisation keeps practising unaided so that somebody can still tell when the machine is wrong, and settles how the disagreement rate will be measured.
The output is the rules, written, in the room’s own words: what the machines may do, who can stop each one, and how the organisation would know if it went wrong. Not a deck. Something a board can hold the executive to.
I have done this job
I am not an AI engineer, and this is not an engineer’s advisory. I have run, grown, bought and advised businesses with AI in them: growing a business by putting AI to work across it, leading the acquisition of an AI company and directing it afterwards, scaling a business whose thesis rested on what AI could do with its data, and advising early-stage AI-first companies I cannot name. The fuller record is at AI adviser to CEOs and boards.
What sits outside it
No Copilot rollout, no AI roadmap, no vendor selection, no model choice, no agent deployment, no data architecture. Those are real disciplines, done well by firms built for them. The rules make them easier to buy well, which is the reason they come first.
On stage at, on air and in print
- Echo360
- EdtechX
- CIPD Festival of Work
- London Tech Week
- Korn Ferry
- BehSci Meets AI
- Imperial College
- Dubai Arbitration Week
- The Oystercatchers Club
- BBC Radio 5 Live
- BBC World Service
- The Observer
- Bloomberg
- The Telegraph
- Entrepreneur
- The European Business Review
- CEOWORLD
- Arab News
Eleven BBC appearances in three months in 2026, and endorsements from Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School, co-author of Competing in the Age of AI; Sherry Coutu CBE, non-executive director; and Rudy Karsan, formerly chief executive of Kenexa, among others. The full record is on the media page and the speaking record.
