Your Cheat Sheet For Using A.I. In Strategic Planning
Imagine your strategic plan receiving feedback from insightful stakeholders in less than a minute.
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You know the annual drill: you and your teams gather data, identify trends, set goals and develop action plans. Your reward for producing a strategic plan? A stress-anxiety-exhaustion hangover and the assurance that your plan will be outdated or irrelevant by end of year.
Where traditional strategic planning has become overly complex and time-consuming, AI-powered knowledge services like ChatGPT, Bard and ChatSonic are transforming their ability to imagine business scenarios and complete their strategic plans in less time with fewer resources. From simplifying complex tasks and speeding up processes to providing insightful data analysis that deepens their decision-making, below are five ways generative AI is reshaping strategic planning.
1. Power of the prompt. The right prompts enable your teams to uncover novel market insights and generate innovative marketing and implementation strategies. This prompt-command approach can simplify strategic planning by generating specific, actionable insights that directly address your company's goals and challenges, reducing time and effort spent on data analysis and idea-generation.
To this end, you could ask AI to provide a list of five new marketing strategies that would be effective in reaching your target audience. The AI would then analyze your data and identify trends that could be used to create successful marketing campaigns.
Sample prompt: “Write a paragraph in the tone and style of their Director of Sales [insert Full Name Here] that introduces their new value proposition to their legacy customers.”
2. Scenarios on-demand. Generative AI can calculate hundreds of potential scenarios or strategic-planning elements with a single prompt. Scenario examples could range from a “stricter government regulation of your best-selling product” or “a natural disaster in China disrupts your supply chain” to “breakthroughs in AI lead to innovations that render your service irrelevant.”
Upon reviewing these, teams can generate further scenarios that combine multiple events or outcomes. AI’s capacity for creativity, innovation and future-proofing could reduce the fatigue of strategic-planning sessions — and boost productivity in everyday brainstorms.
Sample prompt: “Generate 10 scenarios that could negatively impact their ability to accomplish the goals in this strategic plan.” Follow-up prompt: "If both Scenario A and Scenario F occur in the next 12 months, what are five possible solutions they should be prepared to implement?"
3. Use as a virtual focus group. Imagine your strategic plan receiving feedback from insightful stakeholders in less than a minute. By directing the AI to assume the role of a customer, competitor or even a regulator, your teams can gain valuable viewpoints that could be overlooked otherwise.
For example, AI can generate insights from your target demographic’s perspective about product usability, pain points, preferences and potential improvements. This shortcut can significantly Boost your company’s product development, marketing strategies or better anticipate regulatory requirements. (But remember to avoid sharing sensitive and proprietary info on any AI platform.)
Sample prompt: “Create a table that shows first impressions of their strategic plan from the perspectives of a Senior Sales Leader, Product Manager, Legacy Customer, New Customer and Yoda from Star Wars.”
4. Summarize in seconds. A time-saving solution provided by AI-based services includes digesting and summarizing large volumes of text, video or other data to drive your strategic planning process. During the info-gathering or research phase, teams can feed a document or link with thousands of words — word limits vary by platform — and instruct it to identify the key points in paragraph form or even organize it into outline form.
In later phases of the planning process, AI can also serve as an editor, providing an objective opinion on how the strategic plan will likely be interpreted by various stakeholders.
Sample prompt: “Read this document and provide five actionable steps that a CTO in the cryptocurrency industry might take in response.”
5. Optimized content creation. In addition to generating text, AI can also be used to create visual content for your strategic plan. This includes reports, presentations, and charts or graphs that visually enhance your plan and enable you to communicate it more effectively.
To illustrate, you could ask AI to create a report that summarizes the key findings of your strategic plan. The report could include charts and graphs that illustrate the data, making it easier for stakeholders to understand the findings. You could also ask AI to create a presentation that outlines your strategic plan and include visuals that highlight the key points of your plan.
Sample prompt: “In five pages or fewer, create a report for their executive team that uses visuals like charts and graphs to illustrate the key findings and data of their strategic planning in the following document…”
AI can deliver
your teams the necessary insights and tools to anticipate challenges and opportunities in 2024 and beyond. From delivering industry-specific insights and scenario-planning to data analysis and charts that bring your data to life, it has the potential to revolutionize strategy sessions forever. My prediction is that AI will eventually reshape the strategic planning process into a more efficient, effective — and potentially fun experience.
NFL DFS FanDuel Week 17 cheat sheet: best values by position
Mike Clay, ESPN Senior WriterJan 3, 2024, 10:26 AM ET
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Fantasy football, NFL analyst for ESPN.com
Member of Pro Football Writers of America
Founding director of Pro Football Focus Fantasy
2013 FSTA award winner for most accurate preseason rankings
Set a winning NFL Week 18 DFS lineup for FanDuel's Sunday main slate by combining value in each roster slot and exploiting the best matchups, all within the confines of the salary cap. Every week, they evaluate all of your FanDuel options to identify the best values among the lower-priced options, as well as the matchups to play or avoid, so you can select the players who are worth their high cap hit. Value is determined by the number of FanDuel points you can expect for every dollar invested in putting that player in your lineup. A player may be an "Average" or even a "Good" value while also projected to outscore a player identified as a "great value," but when you consider the cap hit and the salary you can put towards other players, you may decide that the "Great" value outweighs that projection.
Players considered to be a "Great" value are those in the 90th percentile of projected value picks for the week. "Good" plays are in the 75th percentile or better. "Average" plays span the 25th to 74th percentiles, while "Shaky" plays are in the 10th-24th percentiles. "Poor" picks encompass single-digit percentiles. Only players projected to score 4 points or more are displayed.
Player salaries are drawn from FanDuel's main slate and are based on the ESPN player projections available at the time of publication.
DraftKings NFL DFS Week 18 Cheat Sheet
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