How to Supercharge Your Strategic Planning with AI (And 7 Traps to Avoid)

As we approach the end of the summer, attentions turn to planning for the upcoming year and strategic planning becomes a priority process for most firms. 

One of the most common questions we hear when working with leaders in their planning is, “To what extent can we (should we) use AI?” 

Incorporating AI into your strategic planning can significantly enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and accuracy of the process. It is a useful thought partner that can save time and provide new perspectives. 

As much as AI can be helpful, it also has dangers and limitations that frequently plague leaders’ planning efforts. This guide presents both positives and negatives of AI; be sure to address both as you prepare for your upcoming activities. 

First, let’s consider seven practical ways to use AI in strategic planning. Four will help you prepare, two are techniques to use during your planning process, and one is for implementing your new plan. 

Preparation 

1. Data Analysis & Insights Generation 

AI can process large volumes of data to identify trends, correlations, and patterns. Try analyzing market data, financial reports, internal performance metrics, or other relevant data. This will arm your team with key insights for improved decision-making. This analysis often outperforms human interpretation for more accurate data-informed analysis. 

2. Customer and Market Segmentation 

AI can segment customers and markets more precisely by analyzing demographic, behavioral, and transactional data. This can yield personalized strategies as you tailor approaches for competitive advantage and enhanced engagement. 

3. Competitive Intelligence 

AI tools can monitor competitors’ activities, industry trends, and market conditions in real time. For weeks preceding your strategic planning, track news, social media, and other digital footprints of firms with which you compete. This information will help your team anticipate their actions. 

4. Sentiment Analysis & Stakeholder Feedback 

AI can evaluate customer and employee feedback, social media posts, and other qualitative data to gauge sentiment and perceptions. It is a powerful complement to data analysis listed above. This can produce early issue detection and inform strategy adjustments, for example. 

During Strategic Planning 

5. Scenario Planning 

AI can simulate multiple future scenarios based on different variables such as economic conditions, market trends, or regulatory actions. Use it to be an effective thought partner in guiding your team through potential situations. It will allow you to prepare for possibilities, reducing uncertainty and risk. It’s also handy to test strategies in a virtual environment. 

6. Innovation & Brainstorming 

AI is adept at generating many ideas (of all degrees of quality). Use it as another member of your team as you conduct ideation exercises. Increase creativity and expand possibilities as AI suggests ideas that may not have been considered. This can accelerate your innovation process, as well. 

Implementation 

7. Reporting & Visualization 

AI can automate the generation of strategic reports and dashboards, visualizing complex data in a way that is easy to understand and act upon. Similarly, it can build reports based on internal and external input. This capability may be a significant time savings for your team, in addition to enhancing clarity and understanding. 

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It is important to be aware of potential risks and downsides of using AI for strategic planning. Certain aspects of the planning are best reserved for a trained facilitator who can navigate complex interpersonal dynamics, interpret nuanced information, and guide the process with a human touch. 

Here are seven reasons to rely on a facilitator to augment any use of AI. 

1. Lack of human intuition and judgment 

AI lacks the ability to understand the subtleties of human behavior, organization culture, and interpersonal relationships. A facilitator can read the room, manage conflicts, and ensure all voices are heard. This is especially vital for discussions that require empathy, emotional intelligence, and understanding of human dynamics. 

2. Inflexibility in unstructured situations 

AI will struggle with unstructured, ambiguous, or unprecedented situations that often arise in strategic planning. A facilitator can guide your team through complexity and ambiguity, help them explore different perspectives, and build consensus on the way forward. 

3. Potential for groupthink or confirmation bias 

AI tools have the tendency to reinforce existing biases or encourage groupthink by putting forth information that relies on past decisions or prevalent opinions, rather than challenging them. A facilitator will encourage diverse thinking and will challenge assumptions. Ensure that prevailing mindsets are questioned and strategic planning is not constrained by narrow or biased thinking. 

4. Ethical or privacy concerns 

The current state of AI is suspect to ethical, data privacy, and transparency concerns. There still is potential for misuse of sensitive information. Add human intervention so that ethical and security considerations are fully integrated into the planning process and that decisions align with the organization’s values. 

5. Dependence on technology 

Even though there are numerous positive uses of AI, an over-reliance on it can undermine the organization’s ability to make decisions independently of technology. There are many situations where this can be problematic. Use a facilitator to support flexibility and adaptability outside the scope of technology; the role can ensure that your team can pivot and make decisions even when technology “fails”. 

6. Loss of human creativity 

While AI can be a worthy generator of ideas, it may not match the creative and innovative thinking teams bring to strategic planning. AI tends to work within existing patterns and may not exceed certain boundaries. However, a facilitator can inspire non-traditional perspectives, encourage experimentation, and guide activities that elicit desired innovation. 

7. Challenges in communication and buy-in 

The lack of AI transparency has hindered many leaders’ trust in the tool. Its recommendations sometimes are hard to embrace without associated reasoning. Facilitators can use various methods to clarify and promote acceptance of planning outcomes. They can help the team and the rest of the organization embrace the decisions made. 

The key takeaway and our recommendation is to wisely leverage AI in your strategic planning activities. In addition, secure a professional facilitator to ensure your exercises and output are not degraded by AI limitations. An AI/facilitator combination can be a powerful duo to generate a path forward toward a successful 2026. 

If you would like to learn how Thrivence can help you throughout the strategic planning journey, please contact Gary McClure at gary.mcclure@thrivence.com or check out our strategy page. We offer you a full suite of planning services, from in-depth discovery and planning activities to implementation and communications expertise.