Hi there,
You might think AI hasn’t really arrived in your business yet. It has. Someone on your team is already using it. They just haven’t told you.
It’ll be small things. Tidying an email. Summarising a document. Maybe pasting something into a tool you’ve never vetted, with a client’s name still in it. Not out of carelessness. Because it works, nobody said not to and there’s nothing written down.
That’s not a discipline problem. It’s a leadership gap, one of the most fixable ones you have. This week, how to close it. By this afternoon, if you like.
This week in AI
An update we owe you. Claude Fable 5, the top-end model we told you had been switched off by a US government order with no return date, came back on 1 July. The export controls were lifted after nineteen days offline. Good news. It’s also the same lesson from a different angle. The tools switch off and on above your head. The rules you write down for your own business are the only part you control, which brings us to this week’s job.
The practical bit
Three lines and an amnesty.
Shadow AI, the tools your team use that nobody has approved, doesn’t get fixed with a ban. Ban it and it goes quieter, not away. It gets fixed with a rule so short everyone actually knows it, plus one honest conversation.
The rule is three lines. Write them today.
- What’s fine. Drafting, summarising, research, first versions of anything you’ll rewrite. Use it freely.
- What needs a second pair of eyes. Anything going to a client, a supplier or the public. A human reads it before it leaves.
- What never goes in. Client data, personal information, anything you wouldn’t put on a postcard. Not into any public tool, ever.
Then the conversation. Ask your team what they’re already using AI for. Make it an amnesty, not an audit, so nobody gets told off for what they say. You’ll learn more in twenty minutes than any survey would tell you. Some of what you learn will genuinely impress you.
The goal isn’t to police AI. It’s to make the safe path the easy path. Three lines and one conversation gets you most of the way.
Free resources
What Makes a Good AI Use Case (and What Doesn’t)
Once the rule is written, the next question is which job you hand someone first. Pick badly and your team’s first taste of AI is a flop. Too big, too vague, too dependent on perfect data. This free guide gives you four simple criteria for choosing a first job that works.
New here? You’ll set up a free community login on the way in.
Thank you for coming on 9 July
Thank you to everyone who came and built with us in White City on Thursday. And to Mahdi Shariff and Hannah Morris for two brilliant talks. A room full of business owners writing their own AI strategies is exactly what this whole thing is for.
What’s on
The sessions below ran in July 2026. For what is coming up, see upcoming events.
13.00. One hour online. It picks up exactly where this issue leaves off.
Staying Safe with AI
14 July · Online · 13.00 to 14.00
Most AI security advice boils down to “be careful”. This session does the opposite. It shows you how to use AI properly across your business without it landing you with a fine or a data breach.
Where your data actually goes, the shadow AI already in your business and the one-page policy that fixes most of it. With Dan Mousley and Bob Chen from Upmotion AI, both members of the Foundry community. No technical background needed.
Free, live, no jargon
More sessions
The sessions below ran in July 2026. For what is coming up, see upcoming events.
Also coming up
Two more free sessions this month, both online and open to anyone.
If you don’t set the rule, the rule sets itself.
Your team is going to use AI either way. The only choice you actually have is whether they do it inside three lines you wrote or inside habits nobody agreed to. Write the lines. Have the conversation. Make it an amnesty. That’s a proper piece of leadership done before lunch.
Next week, the AI your team already has sitting inside the tools they use all day and how to get something useful out of it.
Hit reply and tell me what your team’s amnesty turns up. I read every reply.
Know an owner who thinks their team isn’t using AI yet? Forward this on.
Understand first. Then act.
Richard