TheWinning AI PlaybookBook a call

The new book from Patrick Laughlin.

Get past the AI hype. Build something that lasts.

Ninety-five percent of companies got nothing back from AI. The Winning AI Playbook gives CEOs and owners a five-step plan for building a company that wins in an AI-first world, without cutting the people who got them here.

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The Winning AI Playbook: Why Most AI Efforts Fail and What to Do About It, by Patrick Laughlin

Patrick LaughlinFounder, Elite Workflow

200+
companies he’s helped put AI to work
Inc. 5000
with the recruiting firm he ran with his dad
EO, YPO, Inc.
rooms where he’s taught this framework

Five steps, in the order that works.

Fix how the work gets done first, then build. Each win stacks on the last, and the order is the point.

  1. Find the Bleed

    Find what’s really broken in how your company does its work, usually in about thirty days, and turn it into one clear priority.

    Chapter 3

  2. Deliver Without Drama

    Land a first win your team doesn’t have to learn anything new to use, so they see results before you ask them to change.

    Chapter 4

  3. Stack, Don’t Scatter

    Decide what to build next and what to cut, on one roadmap where each win makes the next one easier.

    Chapter 5

  4. Automate the 80%

    Take the copying, pasting, and chasing off your best people’s plates, and turn the hours you free up into revenue.

    Chapter 6

  5. Dig the Moat

    Capture what makes your best people good and build it into the way the company runs, so everyone works more like them.

    Chapter 7

Only 5 percent got a return. This book is what they did differently.

In July 2025, MIT’s NANDA group found that 95 percent of organizations were getting zero return on the $30 to $40 billion they had spent on AI. They bought the licenses, ran the pilots, and hired the consultants. The few getting results treated AI as a systems problem, not a purchasing decision.

One dot per company. Source: MIT NANDA, “The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025.”

I was in the 95 percent too.

When ChatGPT came out, I put the rest of my work on hold and tested more than 500 AI tools in three months. The worst was a $20,000 recruiting tool that promised to save every recruiter 20 hours a week. Two months later we killed it and paid the bill. Zero return.

What finally worked was the opposite of buying. I sat with my team, watched how they actually did the work, and asked what was breaking. We rebuilt the one job that was bleeding the most hours, with AI running quietly in the background.

My recruiters got back 10 to 15 hours a week each. The firm held steady through one of the worst stretches the staffing industry has seen, and we didn’t lay off a single person.

AI doesn’t create transformation. Systems do.

Written for the people who decide how a company runs.

CEOs, owners, private equity operators, and executives, especially at small and mid-size companies that move fast and are willing to change how they work.

In these pages, an engineering firm grows its EBITDA 30 percent without adding headcount, and a sales team goes from closing 20 percent of its deals to 50.

One company, start to finish
Chapter 8 follows a real business through all five steps, setbacks included.
The six mistakes after a first win
What stalls momentum right when it starts, and how to keep it.
A 90-day plan
Week by week, starting with the five interviews you book on Monday.
The playbook on one page
Every framework in the book, by step, in a single appendix.
Patrick Laughlin

About Patrick

Patrick Laughlin is the founder of Elite Workflow, the AI transformation team that works inside growing companies, from the first strategy conversation through the build. Before that, he and his dad took their recruiting firm onto the Inc. 5000.

He has worked with more than 200 companies through training, strategy, advisory work, and speaking, and has shared this framework at Geoff Woods’s AI Leadership Conference and in sessions for EO, YPO, and Inc.

Patrick on LinkedInElite Workflow

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