The book
Take charge of AI in your organisation
The method for closing the AI Empowerment Gap. Rethink Press, November 2026.
On sale in November. Register now and you get the Kindle edition on launch day for $0.99, with a signed print copy and two online clinics.
Why this book
Your people are adopting AI. Your organisation is not working any differently.
A proposal goes out under your name and the author cannot explain the claim inside it. Bids that used to win on the quality of their thinking now read like anyone could have written them, for anyone. Junior people asking the AI the technical questions they used to bring to senior colleagues, and getting confident answers nobody has checked. A pilot that a handful of people use to tidy emails. And underneath it, usage you cannot see, in tools you never approved.
Every day that AI spreads unmanaged through your organisation, you lose more control and competitive ground.
AI Empowerment for Business Leaders gives you the clarity, confidence and direction to take charge of it, through a seven-step method that turns the scattered use of AI into lasting organisational capability.
Read this book to
- See where your organisation stands, beyond the illusion of adoption
- Stop pouring money into initiatives that were never going to work
- Uncover the value of AI in your business, and see exactly what it is worth to you
- Put the people doing the work in charge of building the capability, with leadership owning the direction
- Make your AI capability permanent and compounding, regardless of who comes or goes
We had two hundred people using AI and nothing to show for it. This is the first book that explains why — and what the leadership team was supposed to be doing about it.
Who it is for
Leaders of knowledge-work organisations, from fifty people to five hundred, and heads of divisions inside larger ones, in any sector. What matters is whether your people do knowledge work and AI is spreading through it without structure. It is a book about leadership and management, not about tools.
I read it in a weekend and cancelled two initiatives on the Monday. The chapters on where the value actually hides paid for the book a hundred times over!
Inside the book
- Introduction
Adoption Is Not Empowerment.
How AI entered your organisation, and why more usage is not the answer.
- 1
The Cost of Bottom-Up.
The hidden taxes you are already paying, and why nobody below you can close the gap. Built on the AI Empowerment Scorecard, which is free to take on this site.
- 2
The Outside-In Trap.
The five approaches leaders reach for, why each one stalls, and the single flaw they share.
- 3
From the Inside Out.
Why the intelligence you need can only come from your people's actual work.
- 4
Discover the Value.
Where AI's real value is hiding, and why your people cannot see it.
- 5
Size the Value.
How to find AI use cases without your people needing to understand AI at all.
- 6
Learn to Build.
The three things your people need to learn before they build anything.
- 7
Build to Learn.
How competence forms through building, and how it transfers.
- 8
Capture the Signal.
Why building with AI finally produces the documentation you always wanted.
- 9
Expand to Absorb.
The five parts that make your AI programme permanent.
- 10
Nine Months Later.
What the nine months look like from inside, including the dip nobody warns you about.
- Conclusion
The Cost of Waiting.
Why "not yet" is the most expensive decision you can make about AI.
Every chapter closes with an Executive Empowerment section on the shift each step asks of you, and Clarity Questions to answer before moving on. One company runs through the whole book: a thirty-year-old civil engineering consultancy whose starting point will probably sound familiar.
Finally a book for the person accountable for the outcome, not the person excited by the tools.