Welcome to the 49th edition of The Pulse, your bi-weekly newsletter of Insights for Strategy Leaders. Elate is a strategy execution platform that helps strategy, operations, and chief of staff leaders align teams, execute plans, and see real results without the chaos of disconnected tools.

In this edition:

• Why planning is broken (and how AI helps fix it)
• A first look invite, exclusively for Pulse subscribers

First, welcome to all the new subscribers who’ve joined over the past few weeks, I'm glad you're here. If you'd like to catch up on past editions, you can find them all here.

This week’s Pulse is one of the most important I’ve written, because it gets to the heart of why strategic planning is broken and how AI can help rebuild it. It’s also been a huge area of focus for us at Elate these past few months. And if you stick with me to the end, you’ll find a special invite-only event just for Pulse subscribers.

I've got a lot to share, so let's jump in.

Strategic Planning is Broken. AI Can Fix it.

For many organizations, today’s strategic planning process looks eerily similar to the one they used three, five, or even ten years ago.

So while there are few things more critical to an organization’s success, we are often relying on a process that has been broken for quite some time.

Which is why I believe that the way organizations go about strategic planning and execution is a prime candidate to be disrupted by AI.

In the last Pulse, I shared some of my thoughts on how AI will alter the way Strategy Leaders think about their role and the practical approach we are taking in introducing AI at Elate.

There is no question that change is coming, and I wholeheartedly believe that for Strategy Leaders it will be for the better.

One of those areas I feel confident AI can elevate is the process of building and rolling out your strategy.

This is particularly timely as fall quickly approaches, because for many organizations 2026 planning is right around the corner.

With planning season comes the almost ceremonial process of coordinating calendars, booking an offsite location, and rallying team members around 2026 Planning and why “This year will be different!”

I say ceremonial because for far too many organizations, strategic planning is more of a check-the-box exercise. While everyone has the best of intentions, the reality is that as Leaders we’ve seen this movie before...

We spend all this time, energy, and effort building the plan, only to let it fall by the wayside in Q1. Or, let’s be honest, oftentimes our strategic plan never makes it out of the starting gates.

Some organizations might change things up by bringing in a consultant to provide some support. But too often, that guidance gets delivered in a proverbial “binder" (physical or pdf, is there really a difference?), followed by a handshake and a “Good luck! Call us when you’re ready to spend more money!”

The process is broken.

Strategic Planning, as it stands today, is static, siloed, and overly reliant on the ideas and creativity of the Leaders directly in the room.

And let me be clear, humans are the purpose behind the strategy and the catalysts of a vision brought to life. Without humans in the process, at best you’ll have a shell of a strategy that lacks the substance to execute.

But what if technology could serve as a thought partner to build the best plan, and execute it with confidence? To shift from static to dynamic, and empower team members to prioritize the right things?

That is what we believe AI can facilitate for every organization in the planning process.

Let's talk about how.

Unlocking the Past to Shape the Future

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with a CEO who shared that he’s skeptical about AI’s ability to lead their strategy.

Rightfully so.

AI isn’t at the point where it can, or should, lead your strategy. Frankly, I don’t believe it ever should.

But that doesn’t mean it can’t be a thought partner.

One of the challenges facing this CEO is that they are in the process of onboarding a new Leadership team. So as they prepare for 2026 planning, he feels the weight of representing a lot of past decisions that have been made and the context behind those decisions and market dynamics.

This is not an uncommon scenario.

Employee turnover happens all the time. Leadership changes every couple of years for many organizations.

Which is where domain-specific AI focused on strategic planning and execution comes into play.

Envision uploading all past strategy documents, quarterly board reports, company KPIs and other relevant information that provide visibility into past performance and decisions to help shape future direction.

That's the practical application of AI.

Will this process spit out a foolproof strategic plan, ready to be rolled out across the organization? No. But can it help provide guidance on the parameters that identify potential pressure points, unrealistic targets, or overly aggressive timelines? Absolutely.

However, to effectively implement this approach, it requires an intentional partnership between AI along with best practices, benchmarks, and guidance from domain expertise. It’s this approach that sets the foundation for Strategy Leaders to build upon, unlocking past insight to power future decisions.

Spotting Risks Before They Derail Outcomes

While there is a healthy level of skepticism around AI (security, hallucinations, disconnect between the orgs building the technology and end users), when harnessed appropriately, AI can serve as rocket fuel to an organization's efficiency and pace of decision making. 🚀

At Elate, we believe the power of past insight can be seen in how we anticipate where to persist or pivot in our strategic direction. However, it’s important to understand the difference between open-source AI and domain-specific AI. Or else we might fall into the trap of repeating those past mistakes.

If we are using AI correctly, we can train it on our habits, performance, and questions.

As Strategy Leaders, this will unlock our ability to identify future risk, spot unrealistic targets in our operating plan, and even uncover overcapacity departments and employees.

We think of it as an AI-engine constantly running gap analyses. In particular, we’ve found that there are basic principles often overlooked in building a strategy. A few examples include:

• Objectives without measurable outcomes
• A strategy that looks more like a list of activities or projects vs. a plan
• Initiatives not aligned with an operating plan or organizational goals
• Duplicative Objectives/Initiatives across teams
• Unidentified dependencies to plan success

While a great Strategy Leader could spot any of the above issues with a plan before it’s rolled out, the reality is that they are constrained by time and bandwidth to uncover these risks before the plan is finalized.

I believe that AI can solve this problem, and allow Leaders to build, finalize, and roll out their strategy with more confidence than ever before. However, it requires a combination of technology that has an understanding of where you’ve been, with built-in mechanisms that identify these risks at scale and with consistency.

That’s where Elate can help.

Leading with a Map > Leading with a Hunch

We’ve covered a lot of the benefits of how AI can elevate the Strategic Planning process, but for arguments sake, let's say we haven’t moved the needle yet.

Maybe you don’t have much historical strategy info to build upon. Or, let’s assume you have a team of strategists constantly scouring through your plan before it’s finalized to uncover every potential crack, coordinate the necessary collaboration sessions, and ensure Objectives are iron-clad in setting clear, measurable outcomes aligned with your operating plan.

How do you bring that picture-perfect plan to life?

Is it in disparate spreadsheets or hundreds of PowerPoint slides that require hours upon hours of work each month assembling for MBRs?

Maybe you have an existing OKR or Project Management tool that you can load every Objective into manually, only for employees to, at best, update them quarterly. Woof.

One of the ways we are innovating at Elate is leveraging AI to think about how we can take all of those offline documents (PDFs, Spreadsheets, Docs, Slides) and map them into a cohesive framework that shifts your strategy from static to dynamic.

Not only does that create a world where you can instantly create a unified view of your strategy, but it also helps mitigate the risk that your plan never makes it off the shelf.

Combined with the ability to set a foundation for how AI can help you leverage this information to provide future recommendations as discussed above, and it’s a win-win solution.

Making AI Practical for Strategy Leaders

While the above might sound like a distant reality, the truth is that we are already seeing this all brought to life with Strategy Leaders we are partnering alongside at Elate.

What I love most about what I’m fortunate enough to do day-in and day-out at Elate is partner with these leaders to shape the future of strategic planning and execution.

Many of the ideas above have been born out of past conversations with Strategy Leaders, as we look to solve the challenges preventing organizations from reaching their vision. Our focus is on helping these organizations shift from transactional tasks to purposeful work, and AI is an accelerator to bring that to life.

I'll leave you with this:

If you’d like a sneak peek of the AI features we’re rolling out in October, I’ll be hosting an exclusive demo webinar next Friday just for Pulse subscribers. It’ll be a 30-minute look at what we’ve been working on that makes these ideas real, and you’ll be one of the first to see it.

Details:

• 💻 Inside Strategy Advisor: The AI Engine Powering Strategy Execution
• 📆 Friday, September 26th
• 🕙 12:00 PM EST
• 🎟️ Reserve your spot

And if you can't make it, register anyway, and we'll send over the recording afterwards.

That's all for today, have a great rest of your week.

-Brooks

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