AI LEADERSHIP IN TRENCHES OF ADOPTION: Beyond the AI Hype (AI Adoption, Scale, Deploy, Transform, and Governance)

If you are an executive, a leader, a manager, or a technology director, you’ve seen the vendor slide decks: AI will revolutionize your business overnight. But in the real world, the one with legacy tech debt, middle-management sabotage, and legal teams that say "no" to everything, the revolution is stalling. Enterprise AI and Data Leader Johnny Malik strips away the Silicon Valley magic to deliver a brutal, honest, and deeply practical field manual for the modern enterprise. This isn't a theoretical book about how Large Language Models work; it’s a battle-tested guide on how work actually happens when intelligence becomes a commodity. Johnny reveals the silent killers of AI ROI. Inside, you will discover: The Transformation Delusion: Why treating AI like "Digital Transformation 2.0" is a guaranteed path to failure. The Culture Tax: The real cost structure nobody puts in the slide deck, including the psychological safety and political inertia that kill adoption. Neutralizing the Anti-innovation How to turn Legal, Compliance, and IT from the "Department of No" into your strongest allies. The Ugliness Scale: Why the most boring, complex workflows hold the highest profit margins—and why chatbots are a glamour trap. Runtime Governance: Why static AI policies are theater, and how to govern autonomous agents at the point of execution. The next decade of business will be defined by a simple choice: You will either architect your AI-native future, or you will inherit someone else’s broken operating model. Learn how to survive the dip, scale your impact, and rebuild your organization for the new era. What You Will Master in This Book: PART I: Escaping the Transformation Delusion Understand why Generative and Agentic AI require a complete teardown of legacy operating models. You will learn why orchestration is the "duct tape" of the AI era, and why you must shift your leadership focus from managing people to managing cognition. PART II: Breaking Through the Friction and Antibodies Johnny exposes the "Corporate Dumpster" of data reality and the "Infrastructure Trap." You will learn how to identify and neutralize the three enterprise antibodies: The Department of No (Legal), The Gatekeepers (IT/Security), and The Permafrost (Middle Management). You will finally understand the "Goldilocks" Risk Model and how to surface risk without killing momentum. PART III: The Human Side of the AI Discontinuity AI is not a Jira update; it is a labor restructuring. Discover the uncomfortable truth about the tools we buy and the managerial void they create. You will learn why the "Syntax Specialist" is dead, what the New Talent Stack actually looks like, and why HR is the most critical alliance technical leaders need to forge today. PART IV: Finding Value and Measuring What Matters Stop building science projects. Learn the "AAA Framework" to definitively choose between Assistance, Augmentation, and Automation. Johnny teaches you to build your AI portfolio like an investor, evaluating the "Micro-Economics of Inference" and finding high-impact opportunities using the "Ugliness Scale" of workflow design. PART V: Governance, Risk, and Architecting the Future Your current AI governance isn't failing, it never existed. It is Governance Theater. As autonomous agents enter the workforce, static policies will break. Learn the critical principles of Runtime Governance, the "Blast Radius Principle" for safe autonomy, and how to stop overprotecting the least dangerous things. Get your copy of AI Leadership in Trenches of Adoption today and learn what actually works.