AI in the Enterprise: The Hard Lessons To Doing It Right

Most books about enterprise AI will tell you what's possible. This one tells you what's required.

AI in the Enterprise: The Hard Lessons To Doing It Right is a comprehensive, practitioner-built guide for executives and operational leaders who are done with pilot projects that go nowhere and are ready to build AI programs that deliver real, lasting results. It covers the complete arc of enterprise AI deployment — from defining the right problem, to selecting the right approach, to building the governance architecture that keeps agentic systems under control, to constructing the organizational culture that makes AI a compounding advantage rather than a recurring crisis.

Built around the Enterprise AI Success Framework, the book walks readers through every phase of deployment with brutal honesty about what fails, why it fails, and what to do instead. You'll find plain-language explanations of every major AI approach — chatbots, fine-tuning, RAG, and autonomous agents — alongside concrete frameworks for deciding which is right for which problem. You'll get governance tools that actually work in production: an Agent Deployment Governance Checklist, an AI Governance Charter Template, an AI Readiness Assessment, and a complete Glossary of AI Terms for Business Leaders.

The book also confronts the regulatory landscape head-on — the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001 — and shows how governance done right becomes a competitive advantage rather than a compliance burden.

What you won't find here: vendor pitches, breathless forecasts, or assurances that any of this is easy. What you will find: the honest account of what enterprise AI actually requires, from someone who has built it.

For executives making strategic AI decisions. For leaders responsible for deploying AI in their organizations. For anyone who has watched an AI initiative fail and wants to understand why — and what to do differently.