Governing Drift

AI rarely fails in one place. It drifts across the enterprise.

A pricing agent saves the commercial team hours, but the margin lands in finance. A model passes its tests, then meets real workload. A customer message is accurate and still makes a promise operations cannot keep. Each executive sees part of the decision, and no one sees all of it. Governing Drift is about that gap, and about what leaders must own when AI enters the work.

The book follows one decision across a single enterprise. Kestrel Group is a fictional company whose executive team takes an AI initiative from first proposal to board review. Each chapter takes one seat at the table, from CEO, CFO and General Counsel to CHRO, CIO, CMO, risk and the board. It sets out what that role must own, what it can delegate and what it must never let disappear.

Inside you will find:

• A clear account of enterprise drift: how accountability thins out as AI decisions move between functions, systems and suppliers
• Practical mandates for every executive role, written for leaders rather than technologists
• A working tool in every chapter, including the operating envelope, the drift register, the bounded-autonomy charter and the board evidence pack, each ready to use the following week, with blank versions in the Toolkit
• Real cases, from Knight Capital and the TSB migration to Air Canada and Zillow's pricing model, each read for the leadership lesson rather than the headline
• First-hand stories from more than twenty years of finance, risk and transformation leadership across Africa, Europe and the Middle East
• Grounding in current governance and regulation, including King V, POPIA, the UK Data (Use and Access) Act, the UAE PDPL, the NIST AI frameworks and the IIA Three Lines Model

Read it straight through, or start with your own role and follow the decision outward. It works best when an executive team reads it together, because what you see from your own seat is real, and it is incomplete.

Authority can be delegated. Accountability cannot disappear with it.

About the author
Keshav G. Maharaj is a finance and digital transformation leader with more than twenty years of global experience, and co-founder of an AI and digital transformation advisory firm. He has led shared services, ERP, risk and internal control work for multinational groups across three continents. He is the author of AI Demystified and The Prompt Jockey Handbook.