The AI Leadership Playbook
What to Automate, What Stays Human, and How to Tell the Difference
Written by an operator, not an observer
Releasing December 2026
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About This Book
Most contractors are managing AI the way a bad boss manages people. Then they blame the results on the technology.
Only about a quarter of residential contractors meaningfully use AI, while three out of four say it is the key to running an efficient operation. The gap is not cost. Only three percent say price is the barrier. The gap is that nobody told them this is a leadership problem.
The argument of this book is simple and it changes how you use this technology. AI needs to be treated like a teammate, not a tool. Briefing it, trusting it, setting its boundaries, and verifying its work is the same process as doing those things with a person. Leaders who think the rules do not apply because it is only software get exactly the results they would get managing people that way.
For owners of trades, facility, restaurant, retail, and service companies.
Inside:
- Why the place work backs up in your company is never the cause of the backup
- The difference between verifying and supervising, and what it costs when you confuse them
- The two-part gate that decides what should never be automated at all
- How to find the rules nobody remembers making that are still costing you money
- A ninety day plan you can start Monday
Sample
Read Chapter One
When Leadership Becomes the Bottleneck. A Sunday at a street fair, a phone call, and the moment I understood that the place where work piles up is never the reason it piles up. Read the opening chapter before you decide whether the rest is for you.
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Join the Advance Reader Team
A small group gets the finished book before it goes on sale, in exchange for an honest review in the first week. If you run a trades, facility or service company and you will actually read it, I want you on this list.
Free
The AI Readiness Scorecard
Twenty questions. Four minutes. You will get a score across the seven places a service business leaks hours and margin, and a specific recommendation for the one system to install first.
This is the same diagnostic I run at the start of a paid engagement.
No cost. No call required.
Coming Next
ROBOTICS & THE FUTURE OF FM
Facilities Management 2030
Where facilities is heading, and why it ends up touching every other department in the building. Robotics, IoT, predictive maintenance, and the operating model that comes next.
LEADERSHIP
Executive Coaching Essentials
The coaching frameworks behind the systems. How to lead a team through change they did not ask for, and build one that runs without you.
Shawn Black is the founder and CEO of Onyx Facility Management. He has spent more than thirty years in the trades and facility management, the last ten in executive roles, and was named a Facility Influencer by Building Operating Management in 2024. He is Maxwell Certified in Behavioral Analysis through the John Maxwell Team. He is based in California.
More about Shawn