We built the answer we couldn't find anywhere else.

Groundwork Systems exists because independent firms needed a credible way to prove their AI use is governed — not a compliance checklist borrowed from a much bigger company.

Why this exists

It started with a client asking, mid-call, how we used AI on their account. We had a real answer. Most of the firms we talked to afterward didn't — not because they were doing anything wrong, but because nobody had ever asked them to write it down. Enterprise companies have entire teams built to answer exactly that question. Independent firms don't, and don't need to. Groundwork Systems exists to give them the same rigor without the department behind it.

Jeanne Francis

Founder & Principal

Jeanne Francis has spent nearly three decades in business development — in house at Earthlink, IBM, and Hustle Smarter, independent since 2008 — watching how firms actually build and lose client trust. She founded Groundwork Systems for firms navigating AI disruption, cross-generational teams, and constant change, and built AI Ready from that same pattern: plain-language, no jargon, sized for a firm that runs on reputation rather than headcount.

Core Strengths: Translating organizational complexity into actionable clarity. Her approach: decode what’s actually broken, then rebuild it to thrive when strategy meets reality.

Approach: Her work is about decoding misalignment, restoring clarity, and building operational strength in organizations facing perpetual change, AI-era disruption, and cross-generational complexity.

Bring Jeanne in for expert speaking and facilitation for your organization:

Leadership Off-Sites and Retreats
Executive Roundtables & Summits
Conferences and Corporate Learning Platforms
Workshops & Team Interventions

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We work with leaders who are ready to:

Identify weak points before they become breaking points
Strategically prepare for growth in an era of constant change
Make confident decisions when the playbook doesn’t exist
Fix the disconnect between strategy and daily operations

Firms where reputation is the real product: marketing agencies, creative studios, PR firms, boutique consultants, research practices, executive search firms. Firms whose clients are already asking how AI is used — and who don't yet have an answer they'd trust themselves.

For firms like these, credibility isn't a marketing angle — it's the entire business model. A missed deadline can be recovered. A client who finds out you weren't straight with them about how their work gets done is a harder thing to walk back. AI Ready exists because the firms who get ahead of that question keep the trust that everything else depends on.

How We Work

Assess: We don't start with a framework.

We start with what's actually happening — where AI shows up in your workflow, where the real risk sits, and where your team is already exposed without knowing it. The self-assessment is the tool; the questions underneath it are what matter.

Apply: Self-certification tells you where you stand.

Advisor review is where we get into the actual mechanics of your firm — how decisions get made, where policy and practice diverge, and what has to change before AI use is governed instead of just documented. That's the Pro track, and it's where the broader organizational work lives.

Adjust: A one-time answer doesn't hold.

AI changes fast enough that governance nobody rechecks quietly turns into the exact liability it was supposed to prevent. The annual review keeps it current.