Showing it, and keeping it alive

A rulebook you have shown someone is worth ten you have kept private, because now you are accountable to it, and because it starts a conversation your organisation probably needs to have.

Show it to your manager first. Not for approval; for information. "This is how I am using AI, and this is what I am not doing." Most managers will be relieved. Some will want the team to do the same. A few will realise there is no policy and that there should be, and you have just made that easier for them.

Then keep it alive. Tools change, licences change, your role changes. Every three months, reread the page, check the settings on every tool, and update any line that is no longer true. Ten minutes, four times a year.

In practice. An operations manager showed his rulebook to his director, who had been quietly worried about AI use across the department and had not known where to start. The rulebook became the template. Six people wrote their own within a month. The director says it was the first time an AI conversation in the department had been about practice rather than fear.

At your desk. Show your rulebook to one person: your manager, your team lead, or your data protection contact. Note what they asked. Put a reminder in your calendar, three months from now, to reread and update it.

Write it down.

• Who I showed it to:
• What they asked:
• My next review date: