Books · Frank “Rio” Shines
Four published. Two on the way.
A career-long argument that the math of business is, in the end, a human story — and someone needs to tell it that way.
4
Published
2000 — 2025
2
Forthcoming
Enterprise Playbook · Slave House to White House
4
Forewords
For Forrest Breyfogle & Smarter Solutions
January 2025 · Analytics AIML, LLC
AI or Die
The Caveman’s Visual Guide to AI for Everyone · Co-authored with Umer Qureshi
A groundbreaking visual guide that makes artificial intelligence accessible to everyone — without diluting the substance. Drawing on my journey as an Air Force Academy graduate, a USAF student pilot, an IBM/EY award-winning consultant, and a J&J GenAI advisor, the book weaves together lessons from my great-grandfather K.D. Stroud (who escaped a post-Civil War Texas slave plantation at nineteen to become a polymath), insights from Olympic athletes I trained with at USAFA, and three decades of consulting practice.
It treats AI as a generational literacy technology, not a productivity hack. Co-authored with Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Umer Qureshi, we demystify the technical scaffolding through intuitive visuals and practical examples — showing non-technical professionals how to thrive in an AI-driven future while keeping their humanity intact. From cave paintings to ChatGPT, from spaceships to sustainability.
In this book
AI as literacyVisual learningPattern recognitionThe Caveman’s guideOlympic disciplineThe Stroud arc
2020 · Self-Published
Let in But Left Out
Leadership, Faith & Knowledge in the Age of AI, Coronavirus & Fake News
I wrote this around the clock during the coronavirus lockdown. Fake news can fool people, but it can’t fool a pandemic. We were chasing a vaccine for the virus — what is the cure for an infodemic? COVID accelerated every tech trend, amplified misinformation, and exacerbated every social inequality we hadn’t yet bothered to fix.
The book is half memoir, half systems critique. It includes a long chapter — Transatlantic, Trail of Tears & the Rockies — on the Stroud family arc from slavery and the Trail of Tears to the Olympic trials and the Apollo missions. And it lays out the pattern I keep seeing in American life:
The Pattern
Let in tech disruption · left out people transitionLet in virtual · left out realityLet in inequality · left out upward mobilityLet in fake news · left out critical thinkingLet in diversity · left out inclusionLet in personal gain · left out collective purposeLet in COVID bioscience · left out social science
2007
The New Science of Success
2007 · New Science of Success
The New Science of Success
How to Outsource-Proof Your Job & Prosper in a Web 2.0 Economy
Written at the dawn of Web 2.0 and mobile, when the words “smartphone” and “the cloud” still felt experimental. I had been chronicling the AI moment since the mid-2000s, and this book was my first attempt to translate the trends into a career-survival guide for working professionals.
It combines economic analysis with tactical advice on future-proofing your skills — mastering your craft, sharpening your statistical literacy, and using emerging digital tools to compound your value. Most of it has, in honest retrospect, aged into the present tense.
In this book
Outsource-proof skillsThe Web 2.0 economyCareer strategyDigital literacyApplied statistics
2000 · 2nd Edition · John Wiley & Sons
The Controller’s Function
The Work of the Managerial Accountant · Performance Measurement Section
Contributed to the canonical Wiley reference for managerial accounting and performance measurement. This was the technical foundation under everything that followed — the discipline of measuring what matters, defending the measurement, and translating it back into operating decisions.
It’s the book that taught me one of the principles I still teach: what counts can’t always be counted, and what gets counted isn’t always what counts. The job of the controller — and of any modern AI leader — is to know the difference.
In this book
Performance measurementManagerial accountingOperational metricsWiley canonical reference
2000
The Controller’s Function
On the Runway
Two books I’m actively writing.
Forthcoming · 2026–27
In Development
AI or Die: Enterprise Playbook
The follow-up to AI or Die, this one for the C-suite. The AIM-IT framework in practice — the discipline layer between an enterprise’s ambition for AI and the result it has to deliver. With case patterns from J&J, Risepoint, ADB, and a generation of Six Sigma practice.
In Development
Slave House to White House
A nearly 400-year American story, traced through the Stroud family — from Sambo Game’s 1670 manumission in Somerset County, Maryland, through Texas, the Trail of Tears, the Rockies, and into the present. The book the family has needed for a long time.
Forewords & Reviews
Introductions written for the people who taught me.
My long-time mentor Forrest Breyfogle — ex-IBMer, Crosby Medal recipient, founder of Smarter Solutions — has been one of the country’s leading authorities on Lean Six Sigma and applied statistics for forty years. I’ve had the honor of writing introductions and recipient forewords for four of his books on Integrated Enterprise Excellence.
Foreword
By Frank “Rio” Shines
Management 2.0
by Forrest W. Breyfogle III
Foreword
By Frank “Rio” Shines
Leadership 2.0
by Forrest W. Breyfogle III
Introduction
By Frank “Rio” Shines
Implementing Six Sigma
Second Edition · Statistical Methods · by Forrest W. Breyfogle III
Foreword
By Frank “Rio” Shines
Integrated Enterprise Excellence
by Forrest W. Breyfogle III
Bulk orders & speaking
Want the books for your team — or the author in the room?
I do bulk-order conversations for boards, leadership teams, and university cohorts, and I pair every AI or Die engagement with optional workshop or keynote. Tell me a bit about the audience.