Constantine Consulting

Your first three months, step by step

Most firms install the tool and leave. We start with a three-month engagement, and we build it so that by the end of it you can decide what happens next from evidence rather than from a brochure — including deciding you don't need us. Five phases. Click through them.

Why three months, and why a decision at the end of it

Installing it is the easy part. It's what the tool starts next that needs managing.

Put in a CRM and you have a CRM. It sits there. It does the job you bought it for, and in a year it is doing the same job.

AI does not behave that way. Within a month of giving capable people a capable assistant, two of them are building things nobody approved, two departments are solving the same problem separately, spend is moving in a direction nobody is watching, and your leadership team cannot see any of it. That is not failure — it is what early success looks like, and almost nobody plans for it.

So three months is not a trial. It is the length of time it takes to set the rules, configure the thing properly, train the people who matter, and find out which of them can carry this without us. At the end you know something you cannot know now: who your champions actually are.

We have walked this path with a dozen companies. You have not walked it at all. That is the whole of what you are hiring.

The path

Five phases, and what each one is worth to you.

Reading the matrix

Four groups, and what each one asks of you.

The chart in phase three plots two scores per person — how willing they are, and what they can actually do. Not everyone in the building: the people you put forward as key to this, the ones who need to be able to do it.

The surprises are the point. The person everyone assumed would lead this is often waiting to be convinced. The one already doing it at weekends is usually not in the office. And the owner is very frequently in the overreach box, which is a conversation worth having early.

The cut lines sit at ability 4.5 and willingness 5.5, not through the middle — ability is scored against what someone has actually built with AI, so daily chat use alone cannot climb past 4. Your leadership sees the chart. Nobody sees an individual's answers, and we say so on screen before anyone answers.

Champions

Willing and able. Go deep with them early — at month three, these are the people who can take the reins.

Overreach risk

All the enthusiasm, not the judgment yet. Left alone they take on more than they should, and it is often the owner.

Sleepers

Entirely capable, not yet interested. Frequently your strongest future advocates, once someone answers the objection they actually have.

Adoption risk & on the fence

Not there yet, or genuinely undecided. We will tell you where they sit and why. What you do about it is a management call, not ours.

How far you take it

Four layers. Most companies start with the first two.

These are separable. You are not required to buy all of it, and we will tell you plainly when a layer is not worth it for a company your size.

1

Training your people

Assessment, three sessions each, reassessment at the end. This part looks similar in every industry, and it is the layer that pays back fastest.

2

Implementation

Policy, configuration, and shaping the platform around how your company actually works. Judgment applied to your specifics — not a template with your logo on it.

3

Building what you need

The dashboards, tools and workflows that come out of your own idea queue. This is the bespoke layer, and the one we scope with you rather than promise up front.

4

Executive coaching

Once you have a capable team and a tool generating more tools, the hardest questions become yours: what the company is for now, what you sell, who does what. A different conversation, and the one that lasts.

Month three

Three ways forward, and you pick with evidence.

1

Hand the reins to your champion

If the matrix has surfaced someone willing and able, and they want it — the internal owner is the best outcome available. We hand over, stay reachable, and stop billing you monthly.

2

Continue month to month — what most clients do

The queue does not empty; it fills. Most companies keep us on to project-manage and implement what their own people asked for, and to keep training as new staff and new capability arrive. Month to month, so it stays your call every month rather than a year you have to escape.

3

Stop here

You keep the policy, the configuration, the training record, the assessment scores and anything we built. Nothing is held hostage, and nothing stops working.

None of this is built to trap you — the handover is real, and so is stopping, which is why it is on the list at all. In practice most companies keep going, because the list of things worth building gets longer rather than shorter, and it moves faster with someone project-managing it who has done it before.

johnconstantine.ai