ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the fundamentals of people, culture, strategy, and execution for leaders and decision-makers. Getting these fundamentals wrong makes for the primary gaps between having an artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics program that fails and having a successful AI and analytics program. The root cause of failure in AI and analytics programs is a lack of execution. Execution must be enmeshed in every fiber of the organization. Execution is the primary role of the leadership team. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is a meaningful tale of a leadership misstep. Leadership is about trusting people, assuming they are going to do the right thing and at the same time knowing that people are flawed. Leaders have to live and breathe their businesses. Sometimes, leaders do not pay enough attention to people because they are too busy thinking about the end game; like how to make their companies bigger, improving margins or more taking market share.
