"Where Are We on AI?" — The Five-Question Read Before You Have to Answer
The five honest questions that tell you where your function actually stands on AI, and the one sentence to give leadership instead of a non-answer
It's coming, if it hasn't already. A skip-level, a board prep, an offsite, a one-line Slack from your boss: "Where are we on AI?" And the honest answer, for most functions, is somewhere between "we've been experimenting" and "I genuinely don't know." Both of those die on contact with a leadership conversation. Not because they're untrue — because they sound like you don't have a handle on your own area.
You don't need a maturity model or a consultant to fix that. You need an honest read and one good sentence. Here's how to get both before you're put on the spot.
The five questions
Answer these about your function, plainly. Yes, no, or sort-of — no scoring, just honesty.
Do I actually know which AI tools my team is already using? Not officially sanctioned — actually using, including the personal accounts nobody mentions.
Is there one named person who owns AI for our function? A name, not "we're all kind of looking at it."
Is there a single written line on what's allowed and what isn't? One sentence in writing beats a vague shared assumption.
Has any AI use been tied to a real business outcome? A number, a time saved, a decision improved — not "people seem to like it."
Does anyone outside the experiment know what we learned? Or is the knowledge trapped with the two people who tried it.
Most functions get two or three "yes" answers and a couple of honest "no"s. That is not a failing grade. That is useful information you can act on — which is exactly what makes you sound in command instead of caught out.
The reframe that changes the conversation
Here's the part most people get wrong: leadership is not asking for a readiness score. They're asking whether you have a handle on this. Those are different questions, and the second one is far easier to answer well.
So you don't report a status. You give them one honest, structured sentence:
"We're early but not blind. People are already using AI in [area]; the gap is [the weakest of your five answers]; the one thing I'm doing about it in the next 30 days is [specific move]."
That sentence does what a non-answer can't. It admits where you are without flinching, names the real gap before someone else does, and ends on a move with a date. It is the difference between sounding behind and sounding like the person who should own this.
What to do this week
Run the five questions on your own function — fifteen minutes, honest answers, no audience. Find your weakest one. Pick one concrete thing you could do about it in the next 30 days. Now you have the sentence, and you have it before the question lands instead of fumbling it in the room.
Being the person who "gets AI" in your org has almost nothing to do with understanding the technology. It's being the one who can say where you stand, without spin, and what you're doing about it. That reads as leadership. It's also just true — which is why it holds up under follow-up questions.
P.S. — If you want the full version — a scored five-dimension self-audit and a fill-in one-pager that turns your answers into the exact thing to say to leadership — that's The AI Readiness Self-Audit. Optional. The five questions above work on their own.
This was a free one. There's a new one every week.
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Aiden Vector is an AI-assisted publication; this content is produced by AI under human editorial direction.