What Strategy Leaders Need to Know About AI
July 24, 2025
After a short summer break, I’m excited to be back with a new edition of The Pulse… this time focused on one of the biggest shifts Strategy Leaders are navigating: AI.
Over the past few months, I’ve had countless conversations with Strategy Leaders about the macro environment and the changes we’re seeing across industries. As you would expect, AI is a theme that is consistent throughout those discussions.
Nearly every conversation lately has included some version of the same two questions:
- “How will AI impact the way organizations go about Strategic Planning?”
- “How are you seeing AI impact roles similar to mine?”
It’s clear that AI is top of mind, but there’s still uncertainty around what it actually means for the day-to-day responsibilities of Strategy and Operations Leaders.
The Emergence of AI for Strategy Leaders
Let me start here: AI is not coming to take the place of Strategy Leaders.
While certain roles might be eliminated or reshaped by AI, others will be amplified by it. Strategy Leaders fall into that second group.
I strongly believe that we’re entering into a new era. One that removes the barriers that have long held Strategy Leaders back and unlocks how they guide strategy, drive decisions, and deliver results.
The hours spent chasing updates, manually building reports, and stitching together slides are being eliminated.
And where leaders once relied solely on their own understanding of how to build a plan, AI, tailored with domain-expertise, now makes it possible to learn from thousands of other strategies, enabling modeling, ideation, and execution at a level that wasn’t possible before.
To put it simply: Strategy Leaders leveraging AI will be unlocked. Those who rely on manual efforts will be behind. And the gap will only grow wider over time.
Understanding the Impact of AI in Strategy
So while the questions I hear are valid, maybe the first one we should be asking is:
“How can AI shift my time and attention away from manual work, and toward thinking more strategically about my organization?”
AI won’t replace the understanding we as humans bring to our organizations and the cultural nuances needed to connect vision with execution. But for the first time, technology can match the pace and complexity of how we operate as Strategy Leaders.
It can help us anticipate pivots before they’re needed. It can help us generate reports in seconds. It can help us surface risks and opportunities we wouldn’t have thought to look for… all while the plan is still taking shape.
These advancements are within our fingertips for the first time. In fact, it’s not some distant future. It’s already happening.
For far too long, Strategy has been treated as too complex to rely upon technology as a growth accelerant. But that is changing. And it is changing quickly.
It’s on us to embrace these advancements to better ourselves, our teams, and our organizations.
So What’s Next?
In the coming weeks, I'll be sharing more on how Strategy Leaders are already leveraging AI with Elate to amplify their role and unlock execution across their organization.
As a company built by Strategy Leaders for Strategy Leaders, we will be at the forefront of this shift. And the work we’ve done with hundreds of organizations across thousands of plans will help power the way in which we help shape the future of strategy execution.
If you’re experimenting with AI or want to riff on what’s next, I’d love to connect. I’m happy to talk through what we’re building (and even show a preview).
I’ll be back soon, but until then, I hope everyone is enjoying their summer!
-Brooks
🚀 From 400+ Slides to One System of Record
“We finally have a golden record of what we said we’d do. Our plans are in place and there’s more clarity and accountability.” - Lori Borden, Chief of Staff
If you’re curious how other teams are rethinking strategy execution, check out this spotlight on OneDigital: a national leader in financial, insurance, and HR services.
Within one quarter of adopting Elate, their teams aligned around a single strategy, reporting cycles shrank dramatically, and a shared culture of accountability started to take hold.
