Days 1-30: Inventory
You cannot lead what you cannot see. Catalogue every AI-adjacent project, every shadow-IT LLM subscription, every data science hire in the last two years. Publish it.
Days 31-60: Governance
Stand up a working group with legal, security, and business ownership. Publish an internal policy that answers the three questions employees are asking today: what tools can I use, what data can I put in, who approves exceptions.
Days 61-100: Two wins
Ship two production use cases. Not proofs of concept — production. Pick use cases where the business owner is already asking, the data is clean, and the failure mode is bounded.
What to avoid
Centre-of-excellence theatre. If your AI team does not have P&L exposure by day 100, you have built a cost centre that will be defunded by day 300.