Steph Locke
Co-founder, Nightingale HQ
Steph Locke is a co-founder of Nightingale HQ. She has spent over a decade helping organisations turn data and AI ambition into delivered outcomes, from regulated industries to fast-moving scale-ups. Steph writes and speaks widely on responsible AI adoption, team enablement, and building strategies that survive contact with reality.
Recent posts
Centre of excellence, federated teams, or hub-and-spoke? A guide to picking the shape that fits your organisation.
Blend leading indicators (pilot completion, data readiness, adoption) with lagging indicators (cost savings, revenue, efficiency).
Change management, communication, training, and involving staff early. Underestimating these is why AI strategies fail.
The honest answer is 'a portfolio of all three'. Here's how to decide which mode each initiative should use.
Strategy needs to state what you will and will not do with AI, not just what you can build.
IBM's Big Data & AI Maturity Model gives you a structured way to score readiness across strategy, governance, data, culture, and technology.
Skip the use-case brainstorm. The better first move is aligning on business goals, readiness, and what success actually looks like.
Top-down mandates, small leadership groups, and crowdsourced completion each have a place. The mistake is picking only one.
Maturity models get a bad reputation. Used well, they turn vague readiness debates into concrete investment decisions.
A step-by-step approach to turning AI ambition into a sequenced, funded, and accountable delivery plan.