Making AI Practical for Strategy Leaders
When Abby and I started Elate back in 2019, one of the biggest challenges we knew we would face was creating a brand, a platform, and a company that Strategy Leaders trusted.
This isn’t an uncommon challenge for any startup, as they are likely entering into a market where they see an opportunity to displace incumbents, but more importantly, change ways of doing work.
For us, we knew there would be a number of systems we would likely be going up against, because of the plethora of tools Strategy Leaders were trying to use to execute their strategic plan.
OKR tools, performance management tools, goal-tracking and project management tools, we tried them all. And let’s not forget all of the manual processes driven from Excel and Powerpoint to go on top of it all.
We saw firsthand the shortcomings of the above.
Though we had conviction in building a better way, one of the things that always stuck with me was a conversation with an early stage investor. They shared,
“You can’t build a platform for strategic planning, because it won’t be sophisticated enough. Strategy comes from people, not technology.”
There is certainly truth in that statement.
Strategy is driven, inspired, and ultimately executed by people.
But to think that the planning and execution of a strategy couldn’t be bolstered by the power of technology was something we fundamentally disagreed with.
In fact, Abby and I bet our careers on it.
AI as a Strategy Partner
At the heart of what we’ve sought to build at Elate is the idea that our platform can serve as a force multiplier for every Strategy Leader.
Not to replace the brilliant, amazing people behind the strategies, but to provide them with a greater degree of confidence in how they build, execute, and report on their strategic plan.
That is why we are on the cusp of something truly special…
We’ve been fortunate enough to work with hundreds of companies, analyze thousands of strategies, and lead countless offsite sessions.
Yet, for the first time since launching Elate, it is clear that technology, more specifically AI, has shattered the belief that technology can’t reinforce and guide the process of strategic planning.
Applying AI to Lift Up Our Organizations
Over the past few months, we’ve been partnering with customers, prospects, and Strategy Leaders to create the first strategy-specific, AI platform to help Leaders build stronger plans and execute with greater conviction than ever before.
Our intent was to build a platform that created a higher degree of trust and confidence in execution of an organization’s strategy by bringing together human understanding and ingenuity with automation and insight that’s amplified by technology.
In the weeks ahead, we will be sharing more on what we’ve been working on, but I truly believe it will alter the way Strategy Leaders think about building, executing, and reporting on their organization’s strategy.
However, what was more important than a flashy feature release to our team was practicality.
I know that might sound old fashioned.
Practicality is not a word thrown around by many of the organizations leading with AI.
But to us, that is at the core of how AI should be used.
It should answer the questions, “How does AI alter my day-to-day work?”, “How does AI amplify my impact?”, and “How does AI make our organization more efficient and lift up all of us?”
If we can answer these for Strategy Leaders, then we can ultimately alter the course of every organization we work alongside for the better.
Analyze, Navigate, Report
So as we think about the future of AI for Strategy Leaders over the coming weeks, I wanted to focus on three areas that have served as our north-star to introduce AI at Elate. More importantly, why are we introducing AI into the platform?
Those areas include the following:
- Strategic Plan Analyzer and Mapping - Using AI to identify patterns and insights in past and current strategy docs when importing plans to Elate
- Risk Navigation and Intervention - Surfacing early warning signs with recommended next steps to keep priorities on pace
- Reporting Assistant and Executive Update Summaries - Using AI to generate reports with the right message, for the right audience, in the right tone in just minutes
While these areas of investment will have a direct impact for our customers and prospects, I believe that Strategy Leaders should be fundamentally rethinking each of the above parts of their planning and execution process.
An Inflection Point for Strategy Leaders
Since launching Elate, there hasn’t been a more pivotal time than this moment for the future of strategy.
While it might feel like we are in the early days of fully understanding AI, it’s clear that the train will be leaving the station sooner than many of us might expect.
The organizations willing to embrace AI and seek to better understand how it can practically be integrated into their planning and execution process will be far ahead of those that sit on the sidelines.
Just last week I was in Chicago for an investor and portfolio companies summit. One of the investors was the former CEO and Founder of a Fortune 500 organization. They shared,
“If companies don’t feel the pressure internally to embrace AI, then wait until they feel the pressure from Board Members. Unfortunately, that likely won’t be a pleasant one. AI will help all of us, but the best companies will be the ones seeking out answers to ‘how’ it will impact us. The best companies over the next decade will be the ones that embrace that question.”
I can’t imagine doing anything more exciting than partnering with Strategy Leaders to answer this question, and over the coming weeks I’m looking forward to sharing more about how to put this into practice.
Until then, please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any thoughts, questions, or would like a sneak peek into what we’ve been building.
It’s going to be an exciting couple of months here at Elate, and I’m grateful to be on this journey with everyone following The Pulse.
- Brooks
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