The Stack: Brief Your Leadership in 10 Slides

What it is

Most AI transformations fail for a reason a leadership team can grasp in ten slides. MIT's NANDA team found that 95% of corporate AI transformations returned zero measurable impact on profit and loss, and the cause was never the model. It was a learning gap: the tools could not absorb how the company actually works. This deck is the version of that argument you can present.

It is a 16:9 landscape deck built to be opened by a manager and shown to the people who sign the cheque. It reads the three famous autopsies (McDonald's × IBM, Air Canada, Klarna) as a process, a governance, and a vision failure; draws the five-layer Stack and the arithmetic of the exponent; and lays out the six moves, the 90-day protocol, and the four audit bands. Twelve slides, one idea each, every figure sourced.

What’s inside

• 01The 95%The mortality rate, on one slide, and why adoption past 78% still leaves the result in the method, not the tool.
• 02Three autopsiesMcDonald's × IBM, Air Canada, Klarna: a process, a governance, and a vision failure, side by side.
• 03The Stack and the exponentFive layers as a topology, and why 2^10 and ½^10 decide whether the roof compounds or collapses.
• 04The six moves and the 90 daysBuy, aim, clean, keep, redeploy, cancel; then diagnose, fix the base, compound.
• 05Where you standThe four bands out of 200, and three concrete actions to run before the meeting ends.

How to use it

1. Open it, read it once, then present it to your leadership team: about ten minutes of slides.
2. Land on the four bands, name your red layer, then run The Index for a measured read.