KI-Kompass.
AI is a leadership task, not an IT project. A modular sprint for CEOs, COOs and founders in the Mittelstand — online or on-site. KI-Kompass diagnostic, clear AI decisions, Decision Charter.
Three AI projects running — and not one AI decision made.
Things get tried, tested, piloted. IT builds. The business units experiment. Leadership waits for “results”. No one decides what AI should do in the company — and what it shouldn’t. That’s exactly where growth burns. Not in the hype. In the blur.
AI isn’t a tool problem. AI is a decision problem dressed up as a technology question.
Three signals that leadership is missing.
Pilot graveyard.
Three to five AI pilots in the house, but none has landed in the core business. No one can say why.
Tool inflation.
ChatGPT licences, Copilot accounts, an internal RAG system. But no shared logic for what should be used for what.
Governance gap.
Who is allowed to feed which data into which AI is unclear. Compliance has one opinion, IT another, leadership stays silent.
It isn’t a technology problem.
Most leadership teams treat AI as an IT topic. It isn’t. It’s a decision problem, dressed up as a technology question. Until the leadership team has decided where AI creates value, where it creates risk and who is allowed to make which AI decision — no additional pilot, no new tool will move it.
This is where the real lever sits.
Online or on-site. As deep as you want.
From the compact diagnostic to a full day — how deep, we clarify in the discovery call.
Four modules. One logic.
KI-Kompass diagnostic
Where does your leadership team really stand on AI maturity? The diagnostic measures six dimensions: strategy, governance, competence, culture, data, use cases.
Value vs. risk
Which AI use cases create value? Which create risks that threaten the business model? We cleanly separate what happens and what doesn’t.
Decision Charter
Who decides what on AI? A compact charter clarifies the top five recurring topics: data access, tool selection, compliance sign-off, employee use, external AI partners.
People & culture
How do we want to shape AI use across the company? Three behaviour anchors for leaders, three for employees. Concrete. Observable. Repeatable.
No AI buzzword bingo. No tool comparison.
Clarity.
A shared view of where AI creates value in your business — and where it doesn’t. Three strategic AI bets. Three AI no-gos.
Commitment.
Three concrete AI decisions with owner, deadline and success indicator. No “we’ll look into it” filler.
Decision Charter.
A one-page charter that settles who decides which AI question. So not every tool request lands on leadership’s desk.
It isn’t about understanding AI. It’s about being able to make AI decisions.
The KI-Kompass · six dimensions.
The diagnostic measures AI maturity across the leadership team. Six questions per dimension on a 5-point scale, the full picture as a spider chart, read out live in the sprint.
| Dimension | What we measure |
|---|---|
| Strategy | How clear is it where AI creates value in your business? |
| Governance | How clear are the decision paths for AI matters? |
| Competence | How fluent are leadership and team on AI topics? |
| Culture | How openly are AI topics handled day to day? |
| Data | How accessible and high-quality is your data for AI? |
| Use Cases | How concrete are your AI use cases in terms of value? |
Two checks that focus the view.
You don't lead AI through tools — you lead it through the right questions. These two checks get the leadership team thinking about the dimensions that actually matter: how mature your handling of AI already is, and where uncontrolled shadow AI is taking hold.
Who’s behind it.
Two Growth Advisors facilitate — Olaf Sell and Georg von Laffert.
Olaf Sell
20+ years of strategy and growth guidance in European Mittelstand companies and scale-ups. Focus: translating strategy into everyday practice.
Georg von Laffert
An operator with scaling DNA from industry and tech. Guides leadership teams between strategic clarity and hard execution.
JUSTGROW works on the leadership mechanics (decisions, governance, culture) — no coaching, no classic consulting. Olaf is also co-founder of millionsteps: when sprint decisions turn into a technical build, there’s a direct path.
Frequent questions.
Is this a technical workshop?
No. It’s a leadership workshop where the subject is AI. No model comparisons. No prompt engineering. No tool demos. If a CTO joins — welcome, but not the target audience.
Do we need technical background?
No. We assume an informed Mittelstand CEO who has used ChatGPT at some point. Nothing more. The KI-Kompass is explicitly answerable without technical background.
How many participants are ideal?
Sweet spot: 6 to 12 people. The extended leadership circle from C-level. With more than 12, the Decision Charter gets thinner.
What happens to our KI-Kompass answers?
They stay anonymised within the team. We don’t share individual data. The aggregated read-out is yours.
What does it cost?
On request — depending on format, number of participants and travel. The discovery call gives you the transparent logic.
What happens after the sprint?
Minutes plus Decision Charter within 24 h. For the full-day format: a 30/60/90-day follow-up as a binding mechanism. Optional: a bridge to millionsteps for the technical build.
Online or on-site?
Both work. On-site is usually clearer for the Decision Charter module. Online needs tighter facilitation.
Related sprints.
Ready to treat AI as a leadership decision?
If you’ve got three AI pilots running and no one can name the strategic line — then the KI-Kompass isn’t “nice to have”. Then it’s the missing piece.
Book a discovery call →