In Q4 of 2024, using generative AI is ubiquitous. Content creation, customer service, software development, data analysis and insights, and language translation and localization all get a boost from new capabilities being launched nearly every day.

But what about high-level planning and decision-making to help shape the overall direction and long-term success of your organization? Can AI be effectively used to analyze your business environment, set goals, or determine the best approaches to achieve desired outcomes?

You bet it can.

Beyond churning out more inspired copy, we’re now pushing AI to engage in effective problem-solving, strategic thinking, and complex design so our teams get an edge on efficiency and innovation while (hopefully) reducing (human) bias.

Use AI and drive strategic output

You can leverage AI’s power to stretch far beyond savvy prompt engineering practices. As your teams approach projects requiring sophisticated problem-solving skills, consider using AI to equip your teams with a strategic boost.

AI can assist your teams with important challenges like:

• Sifting through large datasets to reach smart analysis and insights.
• Forecasting multiple future scenarios based on variables like future trends, market conditions, and potential outcomes of different choices.
• Monitoring competitors, market trends, and industry news to stay current.
• Targeting customer data to identify distinct segments and personalized strategies for future engagement possibilities.
• Processing language to gain insights from social media, customer feedback, and industry reports.
• Determining resource allocation to meet intended outcomes.
• Evaluating potential risks of strategic options and suggesting mitigation strategies.
• Identifying new market opportunities, product ideas, or business models by analyzing trends and cross-industry innovations.
• Tracking key performance indicators in real time, allowing for faster strategic adjustments.

Of course, these applications are rapidly evolving. As our teams integrate generative AI into workflows to assist with strategic thinking, they’re also enhancing productivity and enabling new capabilities for both the machine and the people using it. [Reminder: AI’s output is only as good as its input.]

AI in action: Forecasting future scenarios

Let’s say your company needs to make decisions about product development, market expansion, and resource allocation for the next 3-5 years. 

Enter AI to assist your team with strategic forecasting and decision-making:

• Feed AI with core data: Company performance metrics, industry reports and market research, economic indicators and forecasts, competitor analysis, tech trend reports—all relevant information to generate more robust models.
• Work with AI to identify and assign value to key variables: Consider remote work trends, emergence of new competitors or technologies, economic fluctuations—all factors that might shift potential outcomes.
• Prompt AI to generate multiple future scenarios: Indicate your team’s most important variables or pressing concerns so you’ll be able to explore different aspects of each scenario, and create your short list of potential bests.
• Ask AI to conduct a comprehensive analysis: Consider ROI, resource allocation, competitive advantage assessment, and potential risks and mitigation strategies, among other elements you need to make good decisions.
• Based on your team’s direction, request AI to continue its work: Monitor real-time data streams to identify early signals of scenario shifts, adjust probabilities and impact assessments as new info emerges, and provide regular updates and suggest strategy refinements to guide better decision-making.

AI in action: Wordsmithie client success story

Long before generative AI appeared in our daily lives, Wordsmithie had already been leveraging assistive technology via editing and project management tools. We keep up on the latest in prompt engineering, provide industry-wide thought leadership on AI best practices, and use it as a launchpad to guide our own compelling, strategic work. 

One of our media industry clients requested white paper support (writing, editing, designing). Our team used AI to generate tailored questions for an interview with a key leader on the evolving role of AI in personalized video advertising. We prompted AI for additional language and template suggestions, and for concepts for the report cover, iconography, and inside pages to seamlessly align with our client’s visual brand identity. 

AI gave our team a boost in operational ease—from creativity to task completion. We didn’t use everything AI spit out but used that output as a place to get started quickly and efficiently.

The end result? Positive impact for our client at major ad tech conferences!

AI: Building blocks of strategic design

As McKinsey reports, AI isn’t the whole strategy—but it sure is a terrific launchpad to feed yours.

Build your foundational approach to strategic thinking and design, and guide your decision-making by adopting AI. You’ll increase operational efficiencies, improve work quality, and grow your capabilities while unleashing your team’s power to innovate from a solid starting point.