Three decisions to make in January, before anything else
Not a strategy. Three answers that make every later AI question easier, and one deadline that makes them urgent.
2 February is five weeks away. It is the only fixed date on your AI calendar, and it is a light obligation. Use it as the reason to settle three things that would otherwise stay open all year.
Decision one: what may be entered
One paragraph, concrete, naming your own material. Not « no confidential data », which everyone interprets differently. Something closer to: public information and our own draft text, yes. Customer names, contract text, personnel files, pricing not yet published, no — unless you are in the approved tool.
Concrete beats complete. A rule people can apply beats a rule that covers every case and gets ignored.
Decision two: which actions require a person
You will be offered agents this year, inside software you already pay for. Decide the boundary now, while it is abstract and cheap.
The workable line: an automated process may prepare anything and complete nothing irreversible. Drafting, sorting, summarising, flagging — no approval needed. Sending externally, moving money, deleting records, publishing, committing to a customer — a named person confirms.
Write it once and it answers every agent question for the next two years.
Decision three: who owns this
One name. Not a committee and not the IT provider. Someone inside the company who keeps the tool list current, answers the « may I use X? » questions, and reviews the page twice a year.
In a thirty-person firm this is a few hours a quarter. Without it, the list goes stale by March and nobody notices until something goes wrong.
Why these three and nothing more
Because they are the questions every later decision depends on, and because a short document that exists beats a thorough one that is still being drafted in June.
Everything else — which model, which vendor, which use case — can be decided later, changed cheaply, and reversed. These three are the ones that are expensive to retrofit after an incident.
An afternoon in January. That is the entire recommendation for 2025.