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AI Transformation
Everyone is talking about AI. Everyone is doing their own thing. How do we set this up wisely?
MLI combines strategic perspective, technical judgment, and leadership expertise. This helps leadership teams prioritize the most important areas of value creation and structure their AI transformation.
Our promise
The AI shift confronts leadership with three risks: making the wrong decisions at the start, waiting too long, or creating chaos through rushed action.
AI is changing business models and organizations. It calls for a fundamentally new approach that brings rapid technological development into line with people’s capacity for change.
MLI gives leadership teams, quickly and effectively, a neutral strategic perspective, a technological overview and a value-oriented, systematic approach.
In a workshop we clarify the levers of success for your company and support leadership teams in setting up and throughout the AI transformation.
What it is about
Many companies have long had assistants, pilots and platforms in place. But activity alone does not create impact. Quite the opposite: quickly generated AI documents can paralyze collaboration, because people still have to read them.
Business impact with AI means:
The entry point
What. A compact workshop for your management team — top management and selected key people.
With whom. MLI experts who, as neutral sparring partners, cover all relevant aspects — strategy and leadership, AI architecture, AI strategy. Experience meets experience, business expertise meets transformation know-how.
What for. The right moment for a common thread to emerge — more than that: clarity and structure. At the end there are decisions rather than declarations of intent; what comes next follows from them.
Send us an e-mail — you will receive a proposed date and the preparation materials.
The agenda · an example
We adapt the sequence to your situation — taking stock always remains the core.
On request
MLI has proven expertise in making the best use of the experiential knowledge of large groups. If you want to develop a shared AI target picture with employees or all your leaders, this offering could be the right one.
An activation format for up to 100 people with facilitated groups, design-thinking methods and an aggregated stocktaking. The fee depends on group size and facilitation design.
Request the Future WorkshopWhat you should clarify at the start of the AI transformation:
Why it matters
If you disagree, we are glad to argue the point. Provided you really want to move something.
Those who do not lead AI will be led by it. The technology is developing so fast that companies without AI practice quickly fall behind. Or they rely on external vendors without a decision compass of their own.
In the past, people shone through knowledge. Today, AI knows almost everything. What counts is practical experience. An AI transformation has to treat AI like an intelligent new colleague with whom you quickly and practically try out working together.
AI agents can scale the capabilities of employees many times over. But they have to be led. Someone must take responsibility for what they do. And they should create measurable value.
The expert team
Three perspectives that should not come from providers with vested interests.
Managing Partner of MLI, twenty years of management consulting and executive coaching, more than 60 strategic transformations accompanied; co-founder of the Zukunftsallianz Mensch & KI, an alliance on humans and AI. In the mandate: leads the process, facilitates the leadership team and is responsible for the execution rhythm.
Waiting is not a neutral position. Those who do not lead will be led.
Principal Enterprise Architect Data & AI at Porsche AG, where he is responsible for building the group-wide GenAI platform for some 60,000 employees; PhD in computer science (TU Darmstadt), more than 30 patents. In the mandate: examines questions of architecture, data and governance and makes effort estimates realistic.
You swap models in days. Your terms, processes and rules — not so.
Founder and CEO of the AI Strategy Institute, Faculty Member for GenAI at Boston Consulting Group, lecturer at the Technical University of Munich; author of AI Native (Hanser). In the mandate: assesses use cases by business benefit and brings market comparison into prioritization.
Whoever instructs an AI is also responsible for what comes out of it.
The evidence
Techpilot — From an AI roadmap to an AI-native business model
Europe’s leading procurement platform for mechanical engineering wanted to assess the opportunities and risks of AI for its business model — many ideas, but no shared target picture and no prioritization.
Compass assessment, one-day future workshop with the management team, prioritization with the AI Utilization Matrix, AI roadmap with accountabilities.
Result: On this basis, Techpilot developed its business model further into an AI-native one within nine months and opened up a new market: increasingly automated procurement processes.
For decision-makers: AI can open an existing business model to new customer groups — beyond process automation.
Financial software — From slow development to market-ready output
A market leader in financial software for German mid-sized companies with slow development, a complex process and a three-year backlog of requirements.
Organizational analysis in the CIO and CPO units, a shared AI vision, new roles and ways of working, integration of AI agents, support for the leadership team.
Result: The three-year backlog was cleared; the time to market for new product features fell from 24 to 7 months.
For decision-makers: The value comes from the interplay of technology, roles, development process and leadership, not from additional tools.
“Together with Sebastian Morgner and MLI, we worked out the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence for our business model. It was a perfect mix of structure and inspiration. We received strategic input, but we also saw very concrete examples of the intelligent use of AI. In the process, we recognized new possibilities. By the end of the workshop, our management team had a shared picture of how to use AI, prioritized use cases and a clear plan to embed and execute the topic systematically.”
What we do
From the framework to the reimagined organization — in the order that has proven itself in practice.
MLI takes responsibility for the process of deriving strategic use cases and for facilitating and designing the execution mechanism. Technical implementation is delivered by your internal teams or specialized implementation partners. If needed, we help clarify requirements and select suitable partners, and receive no commission for doing so.
Typical challenges
The same technology, two directions — depending on whether leadership sets the course. None of the patterns on the left is a technology problem; behind each lies a leadership decision that no one has made yet.
Which of the two pictures is your company currently extending, and how can you tell?
1 MIT NANDA, The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 — analysis of 300 public AI deployments, 150 interviews with executives. 95% of pilot projects without a measurable effect on operating results.
2 BetterUp Labs and Stanford Social Media Lab, Harvard Business Review, September 2025 — survey of 1,150 employees in the US: 40% received workslop in the previous month, with an average of 1 hour 56 minutes of extra work per incident.
Who it is for
The entry point pays off in a particular situation — we would rather say so before than after.
A good fit
Not such a good fit
The next step
30 minutes
A first meeting, an exchange about your needs, not a sales pitch. Choose a time directly in the calendar, with no intermediate step and at no cost.
Choose a timeFive fields
Describe your topic briefly: one or two sentences are enough. We reply within two business days.
Prefer to talk? +49 8807 244446-0
PDF · 21 pages
Methodology, survey instrument, reference architectures, fee models and network profiles — for forwarding internally when an initiative still needs to be justified.
Download the dossierWorkbook · free of charge
Where do you stand in the AI transformation?Take stock across eight fields of action, assessed on the verifiable current state, not on intentions.
Questions and answers
Five short answers. In more depth, gladly, in conversation.
The AI Leadership Compass is a structured instrument for reflection and dialogue in leadership teams, giving a complete picture of where the AI transformation stands. It covers eight relevant fields of action and 48 statements. Key people assess these against the verifiable state of the past six months — first alone, then in comparison across the team, where the divergence matters, not the average. It is not a validated diagnostic test and not a maturity model, but a strategic instrument for recognizing the levers of a successful AI transformation.
The conditions for AI transformation are changing rapidly right now. You cannot formulate a long-term strategy; you need clear principles and continuous iteration to meet this challenge. The AI Course Setting is a strategic pit stop in which a leadership team systematically assesses the relevant levers and decides which next steps create the greatest value for the company.
What helps here is the discussion with experts who have an overview of current technological developments and of what has worked in other companies and organizations. The distance between a strategic decision and demonstrable activity is regularly the real subject.
MLI sells no software, no licenses and no implementation, and receives no commission when we help select implementation partners. That is why we can also advise against an investment. In MLI mandates, our experts work exclusively in an advisory role; should a recommendation touch on the interests of anyone involved, we disclose it on our own initiative before a decision is made.
The AI Course Setting costs a flat €9,500 — for two MLI experts, preparation, delivery and documentation of results, plus VAT and, where applicable, travel expenses; we charge none in the Greater Munich area. The AI Future Workshop for the entire leadership level is quoted according to group size and facilitation design. What comes next is your decision: a follow-on mandate is neither a condition nor the purpose of the session.
We treat co-determination as a prerequisite, not an obstacle: employees and their works councils belong at the table early, otherwise the transformation tips over later. Four statements in the compass concern minimum requirements such as an inventory of applications, named responsibility and shutdown procedures — we read them individually, not as an average. This does not replace a legal or data protection review; the reference to the AI Act is a pointer, not legal advice.
That depends on the context and the starting conditions. In our work, this sequence has proven itself: first, define the ambition, that is, top management’s acceptance criteria; second, open the learning journey, so that all employees read the effort as an opportunity; third, a Big Think Day at which the strategically most important use cases are prioritized; fourth, mission-driven teams that pilot these cases, released from other duties; fifth, a sprint rhythm on a quarterly or four-monthly cycle; sixth, bundle the knowledge into AI identities, that is, assistants for each area; seventh, rethink the organization, with new task profiles and led agents.
The Leadership Insights article Seven stages, in this order describes this in detail.
More of what we offer
Strategy Activation
Align key people, introduce an execution rhythm, hand over internally.
Coaching
Support for board members, managing directors and key people, individually or as a contingent.
Leadership Development
Programs for entire leadership populations, 6–18 months, embedded in the work.