AI Operating Map
The methodology behind the Map.
The AI Operating Map is a methodology and platform for knowing where AI operates in your business, where it could, and where it should. This page is the whole system on one page: what it asks, what it examines, what it does, and how you work it.
Where is AI operating in your business?
Where could it be operating?
Where should it be operating?
Most leaders can't answer the first one.
The methodology exists so you can answer all three, any day you're asked.
Six domains
The Map examines your organisation across six domains, the same six segments in the mark: People and Roles, Processes and Workflows, Data and Knowledge, Tools and Agents, Governance Risk and Security, and Outcomes and Value. Every AI tool, agent or workflow in your organisation sits somewhere in these six, whether you've tracked it yet or not.
Three jobs: GEM
The Map exists to do three jobs. We call it GEM: Govern the risk, Enable the teams, Measure the value. Most organisations lean hard on one letter and neglect the other two.
Govern the risk
Enable the teams
Measure the value
Miss one and you've got a shiny register. Hold all three and you can stand behind your answer.
Frame, Activate, Advance
Wherever you are, you're in one of three phases. You don't graduate from the journey, you cycle it.
Frame
Frame what exists: get the current state of AI in your organisation onto the Map.
Activate
Activate what should: move the right use cases from idea to approved and live.
Advance
Advance what works: measure, refine and grow what's earning its place.
↩ then back to Frame, because you cycle it, you don't graduate from it
The starter kit
Standing up your first map needs four things. We call it the starter kit, SOAP for short. You build it in reverse, purpose first, and every purchase includes Map Foundations, three live sessions in your first month that walk you through exactly this.
SOPs
How things are done today, so there's something real to govern against.
Org chart
Your people, roles and tasks, entered in your map.
AI Champion
A named person who owns AI governance internally.
Purpose statement
Why you're adopting AI, in a sentence or two. Every governance decision traces back to it.
I ask every leader three questions: where is AI operating in your business, where could it be, and where should it be? If you can't answer, you need a methodology, and that's the AI Operating Map, which examines your organisation across six domains. It exists to do three jobs, govern the risk, enable the teams, measure the value. There's a platform that runs the whole thing, one payment, and you can start today.
Timothy J. Hitchens, creator of the AI Operating Map.
