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My2ClicksWorth on AI · with Timothy J. Hitchens

The technology is the easy part.

What I'd do today if I were a CTO doing AI.

I've spent forty years in technology, twenty-five of them in technology leadership, six times a CTO, and I'll tell you what I tell every business owner who asks me what AI should actually do for them. The ones who get it right don't have better tools. They've got somebody who actually made the decision. This is a show about that decision, from someone who's had to make it, more than once, with real money on the line.

One question a week, 15 to 20 minutes. My honest answer.
What I'd actually do about it.
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Creatorof the AI Operating Map
40+ yearsin technology
25 yearsin technology leadership
6× CTOacross seven countries
Nearly 7 yearsHead of Solution Architecture, AWS APJ
Things you'll hear me say, probably more than once
AI doesn't fix leadership.
It exposes it.
Technology is not the hard part. Deciding where it belongs is.
The saving might be $100. The cost of getting it wrong might be $50,000.
What an episode is actually like

I'll tell you what I'd actually do.

People ask me all the time whether I'd use this tool or what I think of that one. So each episode I take one question, give you my answer, and say who in the business should own the decision. Sometimes it's a practical governance call. Sometimes it's a strategy call, like whether to run small local models or big cloud ones. A short story might come up along the way, but the point is my answer.

  • One real question. The kind people actually ask me, changed just enough that nobody is identified.
  • What I'd actually do, and who should own it. Not a committee. A name.
  • What would change my mind. So you know when the answer stops being right.
  • Then you're done. No homework, no ten step plan. One thing to think about this week.
The lens every episode runs through

Six areas every business should have an answer for.

AI can already do the doing. It drafts, calculates, generates and executes faster than any of us ever could. What it can't do is the deciding: the judgment call on where it belongs, the accountability if it's wrong. That's still you. These six areas are how you actually exercise that, the same common thread that runs through the AI Operating Map, the AI Framing Sprints, all of it. Know where AI operates. Know where it could. Know where it should.

People & RolesWho owns the work
Processes & WorkflowsHow the work moves
Data & KnowledgeWhat AI can use
Tools & AgentsWhat performs the work
Governance, Risk & SecurityHow the work stays controlled
Outcomes & ValueWhat the work achieves
When you can answer that for all six, not just the one everyone rushes to first, that's what winning at this actually looks like. Most businesses can answer one. Maybe two.

The AI Operating Map is where these six areas get worked through against your actual business, not just described in an episode. Self serve access is a one time payment, no annual fee.

Explore the AI Operating Map →
Do you know the answer to any of these?

Here's the kind of thing I mean.

Pick whichever one sounds closest to what's already happening in your business.

Where is it operating
The AI nobody signed off on

Somebody in your business is already using AI. You just don't know who.

Not an IT problem. A visibility problem. And you can't govern what you can't see.

People & Roles
Where could it
The million dollar use case

The million dollar use case sitting in a spreadsheet

Everyone wants the chatbot. The money's in the boring task nobody thought to look at.

Processes & Workflows
Where should it
The project with no one in charge

The AI project that had no one in charge

Most AI failures aren't technology failures. They're ownership failures.

Governance, Risk & Security

If you'd rather find out where you stand than wait for the episode that matches, the scorecard's free and takes ten minutes. It's the same three questions.

Take the free scorecard
People who've sat across a table from me on this

Don't take my word for it.

“TJ made us think about AI as a leadership and operating issue, not an IT project. That distinction has stayed with me.”

— Daniel, Australia

“We weren't being sold AI. We were being taught how to think about it.”

— Anika, India

“We stopped asking ‘what can we do with AI?’ and started asking much better questions about the work itself.”

— Claire, United Kingdom
Who's talking

I've spent most of my working life being the one who had to decide.

Forty years in technology, twenty-five of them in technology leadership, six times a CTO, across seven countries. Nearly seven years at Amazon Web Services, where I ended up Head of Solution Architecture across Asia Pacific and Japan. I've built things that worked and a few that didn't, and I've sat in enough boardrooms to know the technology was almost never the reason either way.

The moment that convinced me was watching the same shift happen sprint after sprint. Leadership teams walk in wanting a tool recommendation and walk out asking a completely different question: not what AI could do for them, but where it was already operating in their business without anyone deciding it should be. When Garth Wallis brought me in to run TigerPak's AI Framing Sprint, that shift is exactly what gave his team governance and policy in place from day one, instead of after something went wrong.

These days I work with CEOs, chairs and family business owners on what AI should actually do in their organisations. Mostly they find me because someone they trust told them to. This show is me trying to get to you a bit earlier than that.

Timothy J. Hitchens
6× CTO · 40+ years in technology · ex-Head of Solution Architecture, AWS · creator of the AI Operating Map

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That's the whole deal. No "exclusive insights," no ten part welcome sequence.