A&J Group, and AI at work
Leadership
For the last six years I have been doing the thing my research studies: making decisions with incomplete information, for a team that would quite like an answer by Friday.
Running A&J Group
Since 2020 I have been chief operating officer and a partner at A&J Group, the London-based international education company behind A&J Education and A&J School. We reached seven-figure revenue in two tax years without outside investment, and built our own teaching platform along the way, which is harder than it looks.
The operational side is mine: the quality framework, the KPI scorecard, and the team of coaches and tutors who make the numbers mean something.
Accreditation and The King’s Award
As headmaster of A&J School I took it through accreditation with WASC, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which runs to 2031, and with Array Global. The school teaches the Cambridge International and Pearson Edexcel curricula. Accreditors read everything, including the parts you hoped they would skip, and I recommend the experience to anyone who believes their organisation is well documented.
In 2024 A&J School received The King’s Award for Enterprise (International Trade), the highest official honour a British business can receive.
AI adoption, in practice
Since 2025 I have led AI adoption inside companies. The most recent programme was for a Portuguese logistics group: 49 employees in two four-hour cohorts, a working guide and starter pack for every team, and a pitch day at which the teams presented their own AI use cases to the company’s leadership. All of it sat inside the company’s AI policy and the risk levels of the EU AI Act, which is less glamorous than a demo and considerably more useful.
Where the research comes in
Most AI programmes measure what the tool produces. The more expensive question is what the people using it stop being able to do, and that bill arrives late, in places no dashboard looks: the junior analyst who never learns to build the model, the manager who can no longer write the memo unaided.
My current research asks when AI assistance leaves people more capable after it is switched off. It is at an early stage, and my working view, held with the caution it deserves, is that the answer depends on how the tool is introduced. If that is right, it is a leadership decision, and one that most organisations are currently taking by accident.
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