Give Every AI Tool an Owner

Here's a guardrail so simple it feels like cheating: every AI tool your business uses gets one named owner.

Not a committee. One person. Their job isn't to be the expert — it's to answer four questions:

1. Who's allowed to use this tool?
2. What are we allowed to put into it?
3. What do we check before we act on its output?
4. When do we review whether we still need it?

That's it. One page, four questions, one name at the top. When something goes sideways — and eventually something will — you don't get a meeting full of shrugs. You get one person who knows the answers.

Small teams skip this because it feels like big-company bureaucracy. It's the opposite. Big companies have compliance departments to absorb confusion. You don't. A named owner is how a five-person team gets the same clarity without the department.

Go through your tools today — AI and otherwise — and write a name next to each one. The ones with no name are the ones most likely to surprise you.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.