Great Books on Navigating AI for Leaders

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having a significant impact on various industries, including manufacturing, retail, healthcare, travel, and more. Many organizations are either implementing AI or are planning to do so. However, it’s worth noting that 70 percent of digital initiatives fail to meet their objectives. Therefore, it’s crucial to have experts who can help organizations bridge the gap between transforming their operations and achieving their strategic goals. These authors specialize in providing the necessary support to make digital transformation a success.

1. “Digital Transformation Success: Achieving Alignment and Delivering Results with the Process Inventory Framework,” by Michael Schank. The struggle to adapt to the ever-shifting digital landscape becomes even more apparent for organizations that have grown complex and bureaucratic over time. Schank, a management consultant in the financial services industry, shares how to set up a transformation program that drives a new level of operating efficiency and agility necessary to thrive in this digital era. Weaving in real-world scenarios that illustrate both high level and detailed methods, he lays out a strategy that not only establishes a common language but also aligns resources throughout the organization, driving a new level of operational efficiency.
2. “The AI Survival Guide: Scraped Knees, Bruised Elbows, and Lessons from Real World AI Deployments,” by Sol Rashidi. Since her involvement in launching IBM’s Watson in 2011, Rashidi has been helping prominent companies to integrate AI. The AI Survival Guided emphasizes AI for business leaders and shares first-hand knowledge of the ups, downs, and change management intricacies in navigating a successful deployment. Rashidi delivers advice that’s fully practical and thoroughly ground-proofed in accessible, user-friendly language. She describes her crawl, walk, run approach (“because I’ve seen what happens when you try to run without crawling first”). Step-by-step, she takes leaders through an achievable AI journey designed to maximize their chances of successful and profitable AI deployment.
3. “The Innovative Leader: Step-by-Step Lessons from Top Innovators for You and Your Organization,” by Steve Wunker, Jennifer Luo Law, and Hari Nair. The authors — each celebrated experts of innovation themselves — reveal the secrets of 50 esteemed leaders as a backdrop for exploring innovative strategies that deliver. From Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, to Panera Bread’s Ron Shaich, Levi’s Chip Bergh, and several more, The Innovative Leader unveils secrets that make these industry giants the world-class trailblazers that they are. Now, with AI on steroids, leaders must be more innovative than ever before, as what got them where they are now won’t get them where they want to be in the years, or even months, ahead.
4. “Data-Driven Decision Making in Entrepreneurship: Tools for Maximizing Human Capital,” by Dr. Nikki Blacksmith. As CEO of a behavior science consultancy, an adjunct faculty member at American University in Washington, D.C., and a scientist-practitioner focusing on psychometrics, selection, and entrepreneurial performance, Blacksmith asserts that an organization’s success hinges on people more so than products. She advocates tracking important non-financial metrics to maximize returns. To ensure the people behind the products are the right ones, a variety of assessments — including individual contribution rates, skills gap analyses, and team diversity audits — will unlock insights and identify bottlenecks. The data can then be used to craft personalized development plans, mentorships, workshops, and more. Data-driven decision making puts an organization’s human capital front and center and positions it for long-term success.
5. “Data and Diagnosis-Driven Selling,” by Mark Petruzzi, Bob Scarperi, Ray Rike, and Paul Melchiorre. The authors, all senior tech leaders and experts in data-driven revenue growth, combine their data-based solutions expertise to increase the effectiveness of sales teams. Along with advice from industry titans, the authors present a modern selling guide that leverages data, AI, and metrics in ways not possible just a few years ago. Their practical approach utilizes contemporary data sources that let the numbers do the talking, transforming selling into science opposed to just the art of persuasion. By embracing the step-by-step process and technology changes they describe, companies and their sellers can increase sales velocity significantly.

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