WISER Method Master Playbook

Build What Matters with AI First Principles, by Robb Wilson and Anthony Franco.

The method itself is free. The book is where it is worked in full: the 26 Plays, the templates beside the Plays that use them, and a case study that runs the method end to end. Buy it on Amazon.

Already have the book? Its templates are on the templates page.

A book you use

Every chapter builds on the last. By the time you reach the method, you have the mental models to use it. By the time you reach the case study, you recognize the patterns.

• 26 Plays, each with its objective, inputs, steps, success criteria, adaptations, and pitfalls
• 35 templates, free to download and ready for day one
• 5 Canons: Witness, Interrogate, Solve, Expand, Refine
• 22 chapters, from the problem through mastery

A full narrative case study. Wingman Services, a composite company built from real implementations, taken through all five Canons from discovery to deployment, mistakes included.

Two paths through one book

For leaders. Parts I, II, and III give you roughly 80 pages of strategic foundation: enough to sponsor well, fund wisely, and recognize when things go wrong. You do not need to run the Plays to lead the teams that do.

For practitioners. The whole book is your workbook. Part IV is where you will spend most of your time in the field. Each Play is written so you can pick it up cold, run it, and get a result.

The arc of the book

1. The Problem. Why AI projects fail. Not the technology: the habits, the assumptions, the playbooks built for a different kind of system.
2. The Worldview. What makes AI operationally different from software, and the mental models you need before the method makes sense.
3. The Case Study. One composite company, five Canons, discovery through deployment. Watch the method work before you run it yourself.
4. Starter Plays. The field manual: 26 Plays you can pick up cold. This is where practitioners live.
5. Mastery. Advanced frameworks, creating your own Plays, working alongside existing methods, and knowing when a system needs to be rebuilt.

About the authors

Robb Wilson

Co-founder and CEO of OneReach.ai, an enterprise AI runtime with deployments across more than half the Fortune 100, recognized by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC. Bestselling co-author of Age of Invisible Machines (Wiley). Contributor to Harvard Business Review. Co-founded Effective (acquired by WPP) and founded UX Magazine. More than 130 awards across design, technology, and AI. He coined the term organizational AGI (OAGI), and the WISER Method draws on his work on it.

Anthony Franco

Anthony Franco is Chief AI Officer at First Strategy, an AI strategy, training, and implementation practice for operating companies of 50 to 500 people. In 2005 he co-founded Effective Inc, a user-experience firm that WPP later acquired, and he brings the habit he built there to AI: start with how people actually do the work, then decide what the technology should do. He co-authored the WISER Method Master Playbook with Robb Wilson, whose work the method is built on, and is a contributor to AI First Principles, an open framework.

The book

Buy it on Amazon

ISBN 979-8-218-93145-2 · LCCN 2026902988 · Published by First Strategy in association with UX MAG · 262 pages, 8” x 10” · First Edition, 2026