Making It Work
A Realistic AI Strategy for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses
You've been told you need an AI strategy. The people telling you this have never run a business like yours.
The vendor presentations assume clean data you don't have. The conference case studies describe companies nothing like yours. The enterprise frameworks were designed for firms with IT departments and transformation budgets. The maturity models want to score you on a scale that wasn't built for a firm where the managing director is also the IT department, the change management team, and the strategic planning function — all before lunch.
Making It Work starts from the other end. Not from the technology. From your business.
What's in it
The book opens with what's actually happening for small and mid-sized firms — stripped of the enterprise hype. What AI tools can do now (more modest than marketed, but genuinely useful in specific applications). What they can't do yet (more than vendors admit). Where small businesses actually stand with adoption, and why the gap between knowing AI matters and doing something about it has been widening for two years.
Then the Business Reality Audit — five practical lenses on your firm: where your time goes, where your information lives, where your money goes, where your risks sit, and where your people are. If you've used the Business Reality Audit on this site, the book builds the full thinking around it. The output isn't a score or a readiness level. It's a portrait — your firm, seen honestly.
From there, a readiness filter for evaluating any AI tool against your reality, not against a demonstration. A full chapter on the staff conversation — the hardest part of AI adoption for most business owners, given the space it deserves. And a three-phase first-year plan built from your own starting point, moving at a pace your business can absorb.
Then the chapter that may save you more than all the others combined: what to ignore. The urgency. The maturity models. The comprehensive strategies. The vendor comparisons. The predictions. The permission to not do things is the most distinctive thing this book offers.
The principle that runs through it
Commit to tools slowly, commit to skills quickly. The tools will change. The capacity to evaluate, adopt, and adapt will not.
Who it's for
Owner-managers and senior managers of firms with five to two hundred and fifty employees. The person who is responsible for operations, revenue, staff, and — frequently — everything else. You don't need technical knowledge. You need to make a business decision about technology, and you've been doing that with every other tool you've ever adopted. This is the same judgment, applied to a new question.
Who it's not for
Large organisations with dedicated IT teams — you have resources this book doesn't need to provide. Entrepreneurs building AI-native businesses — that's a different energy, served elsewhere.
The details
27,300 words. Available at major ebook retailers. £7.99 / $8.99.
The companion to The Next Move: An Honest Guide to AI and Your Career. The two books address the same disruption from different angles — one for your career, one for your business. Many readers are both.
For organisational copies — teams, member distribution, training programmes — contact books@youandai.help for volume licensing.
Also available on Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.