How to read your scorecard in five minutes

If you have an AI Readiness Scorecard in front of you, read it in three steps: find your lowest pillar, find the sub-score dragging it down, and read the evidence behind it. That takes about five minutes and tells you what to fix first.

What is on the page

The scorecard has ten sub-scores, grouped into three pillars.

• Information & Data Foundation covers your files, records, and access.
• Business Direction covers the problems you want to solve and who owns them.
• People & Tool Readiness covers skills, platforms, and policy.

Each sub-score gets a grade. The pillars and the overall grade roll up from those ten letters. You do not need to read them in order.

What the grades mean

Grade	In plain words
A	Ready. Start AI projects now.
B	Nearly ready. Small fixes, then start.
C+	Workable with a short list of fixes first.
C	Gaps that will slow or sour a first project.
C-	Real risk. Fix before you buy licenses.
D	Foundational work needed before any AI project.
F	Missing or unsafe. Start with the basics.

Most organizations we see for the first time land between C+ and C-. That is normal. The grade is a starting point, not a verdict.

Step one: find the lowest pillar

Look at the three pillar grades. The lowest one is where your readiness is weakest.

It is often not the one people expect. Leaders who worry about “the technology” frequently find that the gap is direction or policy instead.

Step two: find the sub-score dragging it down

Inside that pillar, one sub-score is usually a full letter below the others. That is the single most useful thing on the page.

Do not chase every C. Chase the one that pulls the pillar down.

Step three: read the evidence

Every grade lists what we saw: what we found in your systems, documents, and interviews. If a finding surprises you, that is worth the most. It means something is true about your organization that you did not know.

Bring your questions about it to the readout.

Then read the roadmap

The roadmap puts fixes in the order that moves your grade fastest. Two things to keep in mind:

• The order matters. A quick fix that lifts a D to a B often comes before a longer one, even if the longer one feels more important.
• Targets are goals, not promises. They tell you what a fix is aiming for and how you will know it is done.

Each fix maps to a remediation engagement with a defined scope and a typical duration. You can hire us for it, hire someone else, or do it in-house.

What to do this month

1. Read the scorecard using the three steps.
2. Pick the one lowest sub-score.
3. Name an owner for it.
4. Look at what done means for the matching fix, and decide when to start.

See it before you commit

If you would like to see what a scorecard looks like, you can download two samples, one for a company and one for a city or county. Both use fictional clients. When you are ready to see your own, read how the assessment works.