Get real-world business results with AI-minus all the hype.Well-credentialed AI experts bombard you with flashy presentations and tech speak about AI, automation, analytics, algorithms, and machine learning to keep you under their spell. They use hype and fear to control you and slow your AI success in order to keep lining their pockets with money.
Break free of the hype and fear and start enjoying the tremendous benefits of artificial intelligence today with no technical expertise required!
In AI Bullseye Tactics for Non-Technical Business Leaders, AI-for-business expert Thomas Gilbertson shares real-life, insider stories to illustrate unique concepts culled from his thousands of hours of experience delivering AI projects for Fortune 10 companies. This guide uncovers Gilbertson’s 12 core business principles for deploying AI effectively and guarantees to forever change how you think about getting business value from AI. Let others debate what AI is, while Gilbertson shows you what AI can do for you, your business, and your career.
You’ll learn how to
- Identify AI opportunities, quickly evaluating their potential to drive profits or reduce costs successfully and across all industries.
- Create a top-notch, value-delivering AI team by learning the team positions and required skills-success here is not what you have been told.
- Simplify how you view all AI techniques by grouping them into just 5 proprietary, business-useful categories.
- Ask the one “secret sauce” question that is guaranteed to uncover a great opportunity to apply AI in your organization today.
- Avoid 60 specific ways that you can fail to deliver value with AI.
Tactical, user-friendly, and irreverent, this book sidesteps the hype and shares the secrets to gaining a competitive advantage over your peers. Get the AI-for-business book for everyone from CEOs to department managers, from entrepreneurs to MBAs. AI Bullseye Tactics for Non-Technical Business Leaders will give you the path and confidence to effectively apply AI in your business today.
Bob Schatz, D.Mgt –
This is a great read for anyone trying to understand the AI landscape from the view of its ability to drive business outcomes. Thomas writes in a practical, pragmatic, humorous style with great analogies throughout the book. There are relevant examples provided, and you are presented with good questions to ask yourself and your organization about AI initiatives you might be considering. Oh, this review was not written by ChatGPT!
Bpwbpw2000 –
Though you can read articles that cover this and that about AI, none brings it all together like this book does. I understand what my role should be on AI projects similar to understanding the roles on a software development team. Tons of project examples, so I can see what a proposal looks like, what questions I should ask and what completed projects look like. Really helpful book – I enthusiastically recommend!
Drew –
When I first heard about this book, I was expecting a lot of theory but no practical experience.I’m glad I was proven wrong – Tom lays out a very clear path on what steps a business leader or team needs to take to ensure a successful implementation of an AI product. He lists out very easy to understand the five major steps one should take; to minimize project risk. There is no AI hype – just real-world experience.Tom has a very easy-to-understand writing style that makes you want to just relax and read. While reading I often felt that I was listening to a friend just talk about their AI experience versus reading a book.AI Pilot Line – this in my mind is probably the most important part of what Tom writes about. In my industry, I have seen AI projects start with no clear definition goal – “It’s AI so it should work” – The Grayson theory (you need to read Tom’s book to know what I’m talking about).Finally, after reading Tom’s book I now have the tools to discuss AI concepts in a more meaningful way. I would highly recommend this book to both business and technical team members. There is something for everyone here!I did not receive an advanced copy and purchased this book.
Jake –
In this very clear and well written book, Tom has done a really good job in giving us some meaningful definition and perspective on the world of AI, with clever analogies and well described business use cases. This was an easy read on a complex topic and I know I will be using this book as a consistent reference as I do my work in this space.The five AI outcomes that are defined in the book are very helpful in allowing classification of opportunities, allowing some simplification in the understanding of AI and serving as input into looking for use cases that fit well with AI capabilities.The definition of the pilot lines that need to be in place and the recommendations on how to think about the structure of the team with critical roles is great for those embarking on or looking to tweak and modify existing AI related initiatives. This combined with other frameworks throughout the book really makes this a useful guide to not only embark on AI initiatives but to also minimize the risk.Overall – a high recommendation for a very understandable, thoughtful, innovative and provocative book in a space too often mired in hype, overcomplexity and foreign terms.
AMZN Shopper –
This book is for anyone dealing with AI, might be dealing with AI, or are simply, “AI curious.” Whether a novice or a seasoned practitioner, you’re going to learn something new.AI Bullseye Tactics for Non-Technical Business Leaders is full of knowledge, wisdom, and strategies for designing and executing initiatives involving artificial intelligence. As a coach, consultant, and practitioner in the field, I say without hesitation that Thomas has created a masterful primer and guidebook. I learned several new approaches and gained a deeper appreciation for a game I’m already playing!Gilbertson has a warm and welcoming writing style with a knack for making the complex easily understood. He actively avoids the AI-hype machine and instead focuses on tangible value. You’ll find nothing intimidating in either the explanations or the knowledge that he imparts.In particular, his pragmatic approach to evaluating opportunities, specific approaches to employ at each stage of development, and importantly, when NOT to use AI in deploying a solution are all ideas that will bring tremendous value to individuals and organizations.
Christopher –
I finally feel I have clarity about what delivering business value using AI should look like.Tom uses analogies such as building bridge pilot lines and gunsmithing to provide a “no frills” approach to building AI teams that will actually save money and drive value.One major point outlined in the book is that AI delivers non-binary answers and thus all AI solutions need to be understood in this way so that business stakeholders aren’t overpromised and underdelivered.In a time when AI/ML has become just another buzzword, and something to throw corporate dollars at, it was great to cut through all of the fluff and see it as another tool that, if done right, can drive business value in a measurable and sustainable way.
M. Gep –
The book helped me change the conversation with my team. The author is candid about his experiences and helps the reader tune a conversation from tech concepts to business concepts. It helped our team see the adoption of AI as a human transition. For that reason, this will be an excellent read.
Joanne McCarthy –
In a first of its kind, AI Bullseye Tactics For Non-Technical Business Leaders tackles Artificial Intelligence, an infamously lofty, vague, and difficult topic, and manages to turn it into something that is not only tangible, but also accessible to even the least technically adept of us all. From the very start of the book, Gilbertson offers his readers a perspective that has the power to dramatically shift your understanding of AI and how to deliver business value with it almost immediately on its own. And the best part? That new perspective is incredibly easy to understand – you need to take yourself from focusing on what AI *is* and start addressing what AI *does*.As you progress through the book, Gilbertson masters breaking down AI and delivering business value with AI in similarly easy to understand concepts. Gilbertson calls these the “Black Coffee AI Principles” and he provides 12 principles as you advance; the main idea being that these principles are like black coffee – simple enough to work with and enjoy alone, but able to be built into a myriad of complex, tasty beverages. It is these exact “black coffee” principles that allows Gilbertson to not only deliver on his promise of this book being for non-technical leaders, he absolutely crushes it. With these principles in addition to his concept of the “AI Pilot Line”, Gilbertson masters the role of teacher throughout his book as he leads you on a journey to be able to understand how to not only create, plan, and execute an AI project, but more importantly how to deliver business value with an AI project without giving in to being a hypemaster. An important theme and lesson that Gilbertson returns to throughout his book is how to detect AI hype and hypemasters – the AI “experts” who use their flash and flair to overload you with technical jargon without ever being able to actually tell you what their AI product *does*.Whether you’re already a well-versed AI expert, need guidance for a pre-existing AI project, or need a place to begin on your AI journey, I simply cannot recommend this book enough. No matter your level of AI knowledge prior to opening this book, I can guarantee you will close this book with a new found confidence in your ability to not only expand on what AI does, but also a new found confidence in realizing ways you can implement AI in your career starting right now. As we watch the AI boom in industries around the world, this book is bound to go down as a foundational text for AI Business Value. I was lucky enough to receive an early copy of this book via PDF to read, and I can safely say that I will definitely be buying a physical copy to keep by my side as my career grows – cheers to the future of AI beyond the hype!
J. Williams –
This is not a technical explanation or a book explaining the nuts and bolts of generative or conversational AI, its a conversation with a mentor that is willing to share his experience and understanding of where AI can fit into the business world and some considerations (learned the hard way) on how to qualify an AI initiative as a viable project. You may or may not agree with every concept, but that’s not the point. As with any mentor, the point is to challenge yourself to answer questions that you either didn’t know existed or didn’t want to answer.The “ah ha” moments are called out with the ‘Black Coffee AI Principles’. Starting with the first principle you may find yourself conflicted, because by definition the principle is challenging the belief we’ve always had: investing in a given project will have a specific outcome. I’ve always believed in this less than binary world to begin with so it wasn’t a stretch for me, but being in sales I’ve seen how difficult it can be to commit to a decision with an uncertain outcome. While the author recognizes the practicality of this thinking, he points out how that can be limiting and inconsistent with AI strategies.I don’t want to give too much of the content away, but Black Coffee AI Principle #2 is the next “ah ha” moment and really the point when things take off. At this point you start to separate the technology from the outcome and looking at those as two different conversations: what AI is vs. what AI does. Its a seemingly easy question but I’ve seen firsthand how its easy to start with what it does but slide into ‘how’ its done without realizing. When planning an AI project, its critical to stay grounded in the ‘how’ to stay on track. There are 10 more of these Black Coffee AI Principles and if you are planning to roll out an AI solution there is value in checking with your mentor on how they might apply.Again, there are hundreds of books written to discuss the nuances of transformer languages and predictive models, this is not that book. This is a practical guide to look at how and where AI can be transformational to your business and how to step back from the hype and take a strategic approach to instituting AI projects that drive business value.
Ron Ozminkowski –
The title says this book is for non-technical business leaders, and the author imparts a great deal of wisdom to them. But that’s an understatement. As a researcher and leader of several analytic units small and large, I believe Thomas Gilbertson’s new book should be read by everyone working together to produce AI-based offerings (or any other offering, actually). His advice will benefit people in client relations, product development, data science and analytics, engineering, operations, marketing, and sales. Following Tom’s advice will help us collaborate better and put us all on the same value-inducing page.Gilbertson’s pearls of wisdom begin with a focus on what AI can do rather than what it is in a technical sense. Oh, how I wish my colleagues and I could have avoided so many unproductive conversations about whether something is ‘really AI’ or not in the past. Those were needless distractions that wasted time and money and failed to produce any customer value.Focusing instead on what AI can do will help everyone understand the value it can bring. Tom therefore stresses the need for businesspeople of many stripes to take direct accountability for AI value realization. Doing so requires executives, business leaders, and AI developers at all levels to focus their collective efforts on that singular, shared goal. The prize to be obtained with AI is customer value, not the perfection of any technical model.Optimizing client value using efficient processes also optimizes the contributions of the technical team and other contributors. Tom says all their efforts should be quantified and compared to the rewards AI-induced value can bring. This will help us allocate credit and maximize returns from our investments in AI.Gilbertson stresses the notion that “AI is a team sport” throughout his book. I know this is true, having experienced the value great teams can bring. Tom helps the entire team learn how to evaluate options, move forward, know when to stop, and avoid or address together the technical, business, and political challenges and roadblocks along the way. I have never seen these keys to success described as well or thoroughly as Tom does.Gilbertson’s wisdom comes from decades of experience described in compelling ways throughout this book. While he shows how people with limited or no technical training can evaluate and take advantage of opportunities that AI can bring, his advice is also well suited to data scientists and others in technical roles who help bring those opportunities to life.It takes a community to create AI value, and this book can teach us how.