Most AI programs start with the technology and end with a pilot nobody can value.
This book starts with the people the technology is meant to serve. It gives you the questions, the sequence and the tools to make AI produce something your board can see.
The biggest mistake in AI transformation is starting with AI.
of chief executives say AI has brought them no cost or revenue benefit yet.
PwC Global CEO Survey, January 2026, 4,454 CEOs.
of organizations see significant returns from AI, while 88% are using it.
McKinsey, The State of AI 2026, August 2026.
The technology works. Those returns come from decisions, not from the tools.
The questions most programs start with
- Which model?
- Which vendor?
- Which pilot?
- Why haven't we started?
The questions this book starts with
- What are you trying to make better?
- For whom?
- How will you know they felt the difference?
- What value should that create?
- And only then: where can AI help?
This book could potentially be written for you.
You run something. You own a number. And at some point in the last eighteen months, someone made you accountable for what your organization does about AI. Soon, someone will ask you what benefit you created with AI.
Does this sound familiar? Then this book is written for you and your allies.
Start at Chapter 1. The whole book is written in your sequence: proof problem, strategy, business case, first use cases, playbook, scale.
You have the job, often without the power to do it. Much of this book is written to be handed upward.
Chapter 4 and the Ten Commitments in Chapter 9 are yours.
You don't need the whole company behind you. One journey, one metric.
Chapter 6 is written for you.
Go straight to Chapter 9. The Ten Commitments are the questions to ask.
If you want to get personally better at using AI in your own work, this is a different book.
Meet Annie & Max.
Leading an organization into the AI era is thrilling, historic and occasionally terrifying, sometimes all three before lunch. We've been in that room. So we put two C-level leaders in the book who are in it with you.
They appear in every chapter. Not to lecture. To walk beside you through every messy whiteboard, every governance hurdle and every real win.
Do AI now. Where's the strategy? Why haven't you started?
When everyone has the same models, human leadership is the part that's still yours.
Experience-led. Value-driven. AI-enabled.
A practical guide for leaders bringing their organizations into the AI era, with people, experience and value at the center: the frameworks, questions and tools to make better decisions and measure what actually matters.
Not started yet? It gives you the structure to set up what you need and decide on use cases. Already under way? Hands-on tools to complement what you have.
- Where do we start?
- How do we build an experience-led business case that creates value?
- How do we take our employees and customers with us on this transformation?
- How do we know it's working?
Whether you haven't started or are already under way, the book walks you through the same five stages, with a ready-to-use tool at each.
- AlignAgree what you are trying to make better, and for whom, before anyone talks about tools.
- DecideChoose the first use case worth doing, with ten questions that work on any of them.
- LaunchOne journey, one metric, one team that can actually ship it.
- ProveShow the board what it produced, in numbers people can feel.
- RepeatScale what worked, adapt or retire what did not, and continue your experience-led AI transformation journey.
Also insideA foreword by Dr Linden Brown, and perspectives from practitioners who have led this work.
AI is not the point. Value is. Experience is.
“Value is the point - and this is how we create a framework where experiences and AI interconnect to deliver it.”Dr. Alyona Medelyan, CEO & Co-founder, Thematic