Strategy and the business model
How AI changes what you are paid for, from headcount-based pricing to the real cost of AI agents.
AI Sherpa for CEOs and executives
You lead the climb. I know the route.
One-to-one guidance for CEOs and executives leading their organisations through AI. Independent, confidential and grounded in having walked this path many times.
The view from the top has changed
Your board wants AI results this year. Your organisation is experimenting in a hundred directions. Vendors promise a platform that solves it all. And the business model you have run for years is quietly shifting underneath you.
Most CEOs I work with have the same problem. They have decades of judgement about people, markets and organisations. What they lack is the time to understand a technology that changes every week, and a place where they can ask the basic questions without losing standing.
What lands on your desk
- Pressure to deliver savings now, without a clear route to them
- A business model built on headcount, in a world of AI agents
- Governance questions arriving before anyone owns them
- Too much noise, too little independent advice
The role
Not a coach. Not a consultant. A Sherpa.
A Sherpa does not climb the mountain for you, and does not sell you equipment. A Sherpa has been up the mountain many times, knows the route and its dangers, and walks it with you. The summit is yours.
I know the route
I have guided more than 500 CEOs and senior leaders through what AI means for their organisations. I know where leaders get stuck and where they turn back too early.
I read the conditions
I stay close to the technology, the tools and the market, so you get a clear, current picture in plain language. Enough to decide well and to challenge anyone selling to you.
You lead the climb
Your agenda sets every conversation. The decisions, the direction and the credit stay with you.
The lens
H-AI-brid Leadership
Leading in the AI age means leading people and intelligent systems at the same time. H-AI-brid Leadership is the framework I developed for exactly that, and the subject of my forthcoming book.
It gives our work three questions to come back to:
What does this mean for me as a leader?
What does it mean for my team and how we work together?
What does it mean for how the organisation is run, governed and paid for?
What we work on
Every engagement follows your agenda. These are the territories CEOs most often bring.
Organisation and roles
How roles, skills and the work of each team change, and what that asks of your leaders.
Governance and responsible AI
Who decides, what is allowed, and where accountability sits when systems act.
Big bets and everyday momentum
Why the small, everyday uses of AI often carry the transformation, and how to govern each level differently.
The technology, in plain language
Agents, models, hosting and data sovereignty. Enough to decide with confidence and see through vendor claims.
Your own leadership
Staying credible and current, raising your organisation's learning speed, and leading people through uncertainty.
How I work
Ways to work together
I work with a small number of executives at any one time. Every engagement is one-to-one and private.
The main route
One-to-one CEO advisory
- Six months of regular one-to-one sessions, every two weeks, virtual or in person
- A short assessment of where you and your organisation stand at the start
- Executive briefings between sessions on what is moving and what it means for you
- A direct line for questions that cannot wait
- A strategic outlook at the close: what has changed and where to go next
No fixed curriculum. If the week brings something urgent, that is where our time goes.
By invitation
Your top team
- For CEOs who want their executive committee on the same path
- Individual one-to-one work with each member of the top team, aligned with yours
- Private working sessions with the full team when decisions need to be made together
- By invitation, following a CEO engagement
Setting out
How it begins
A private conversation.
Thirty minutes to understand where you are and whether I can help. No pitch.
Setting the route.
A short assessment of where you and your organisation stand, and what matters most in the next six months.
The climb.
Regular one-to-one sessions, with briefings in between.
Taking stock.
What has changed, what you have built, and what comes next.
CEO, European automotive technology company, around 850 people
From the field
The situation
The group wanted large efficiency gains immediately. AI usage costs were rising by around a fifth every month. And the company's business model still billed clients by headcount.
The work
Fortnightly one-to-one sessions in his own language. We built a working command of the technology, separated everyday AI use from the big integration projects so each could be governed properly, and worked through how to price software work when AI agents do part of it.
What changed
He moved from treating AI costs as someone else's problem to managing them as a strategic lever, and he asked to extend the engagement after the first four sessions.
Photograph to be added
AI Sherpa
About me
I am Michael Alf, founder of Alf Global Services. I have worked face to face with more than 500 CEOs and senior leaders across Europe and the GCC, including board and executive teams in telecoms, financial services, insurance, the public sector and family-owned groups.
Before this I spent twelve years at Capgemini and ran a PMO overseeing around 60 projects. My first leadership role was as a platoon leader, responsible for around 30 vehicles and their crews. I learned early that people follow a leader who knows the route.
I am independent of every technology vendor. I work in English and German, from Lisbon, across Europe and the Gulf.
- 500+ CEOs and senior leaders
- Europe and GCC
- Vendor-independent
- Faculty with Nova SBE Executive Education and Emeritus
- Certified High Performance Coach (CHPC)
- Author, H-AI-brid Leadership (forthcoming)
Before we talk
Is this for you?
This is for you if
- You lead an organisation or a major unit where AI is already changing the economics
- You want a thinking partner outside your own hierarchy
- You would rather ask the basic question in a private room than bluff in a meeting
- You want to make the decisions, not be sold a solution
This is not for you if
- You are looking for a training programme or team workshop
- You want someone to implement a tool for you
Questions
Questions executives ask
The route is clearer with someone who has walked it.
If you are leading your organisation through AI and want an independent guide beside you, let us talk.