# This is the version I now print and walk into AI strategy meetings with.
Canonical: https://social-archive.org/tgroenwals/tM5PraazyD
Original URL: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-wernfeldt-82894b58_this-is-the-version-i-now-print-and-walk-share-7477241870293848064-WOTO/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAAUj9ABA6XwLJ3RcHE4FACjTijtAT4klvY
Author: John Wernfeldt
Platform: linkedin
## Content
This is the version I now print and walk into AI strategy meetings with. Last week, forty minutes into a diagnostic call, a CDO stopped me. She told me her entire customer analytics pipeline depended on one Excel file maintained by one person. This kind of happens on almost every call I have run this year. The team always wants to start at the AI layer. I keep pulling the conversation down the stack, and we usually do not make it past Operational Reality. Excel files, Slack threads, one person who knows how it works. That is where AI in production fails, not at the model layer. What is your one Excel file?