Artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool, transforming various aspects of our lives. In the business world, it is revolutionizing strategic planning and employee engagement, offering unprecedented opportunities for growth and innovation.
Leveraging AI, one company at the forefront of this technological advancement is Blendification, led by CEO Dan Bruder.
Blendification has recently launched an AI-powered software platform designed to empower workplace organizations and drive positive impacts on employees, customers, and communities.
This innovative platform seeks to leverage AI technology to enhance strategic planning processes and foster employee participation at every level of the organization. The core mission of Blendification is to leverage workplace organizations to create positive impacts on employees, customers, and communities.
In this interview, we explore the profound advantages offered by AI-powered strategic planning over conventional methods, delving into the unique benefits that AI-driven interviews bring to the table, enabling substantive discussions and gathering meaningful information tailored to each employee.
TE: What inspired the launch of your recent AI-powered software platform?
DB: Our cause is to leverage workplace organizations to impact employees, customers, and communities positively. This starts by engaging employees at every level of the organization in their work and enabling work to become a place where people learn and grow. Unfortunately, professional consulting and coaching platforms are seldom available to most employees.
Generative AI changes that. AI provides the technological capability to have dynamic interviews with every employee in the company, so everyone has a voice and can contribute to the company’s success. As a result, employees experience learning and growth and become more fulfilled in their lives through their work.
AI extends our ability to reach more people in companies and more companies.
TE: How does the utilization of AI-powered strategic planning provide distinct advantages over conventional methods in terms of efficiency and effectiveness?
DB: Historically, strategic planning has been reserved for the executive team. A company would dedicate internal resources to planning, hire expensive consultants to lead strategic planning, and manually summarize and analyze the data.
AI strategic planning replaces about 80% of what traditional consults or internal resources do in strategic planning, thereby reducing the time to conduct and complete strategic planning to days rather than months. Correspondingly, the cost comes down.
With AI planning, more employees can be included in strategic planning and execution, creating greater employee engagement and better, less biased decisions (than traditional methodologies). In summary, AI-powered planning takes less time, is less expensive, includes more people, and is less biased than smaller internal teams and consultants.
TE: Could you elaborate on how AI-driven interviews have the potential to enhance engagement for individuals involved in strategic planning, and what unique benefits they offer compared to traditional interview methods?
DB: AI enables companies to interview everyone and embrace greater involvement in planning the company’s future. When people are involved in planning, they take on a greater interest in the outcomes. The AI interviews enable employees at all levels to participate in the planning, and, as a result, the employees become more interested in the company’s direction.
Traditionally, employees have not been involved in the company’s strategic planning efforts (because it is too time-consuming and expensive). They then become disconnected or lack ownership of the company’s desired outcomes.
The key benefits of AI planning are greater engagement on the front end (planning) creates, greater ownership on the back end (outcomes), and more personal fulfillment. As mentioned, AI can do this very efficiently, reducing time and cost while increasing effectiveness.
The AI Interviews are designed to engage employees in substantive discussions. This differs from a survey where every question is the same for each employee. The AI interview is dynamic, and no two interviews are the same.
The AI asks questions based on the employee’s response and drills deeper into various topic garnering meaningful information.
TE: In what ways does this technology enable small and large companies alike to engage in structured strategic planning more effectively, and how does this level the playing field for businesses of different sizes?
DB: The AI is directed to follow a structure in interviewing employees (just as you would train consultants). Imagine an army of consultants descending on a company with the specific purpose of interviewing employees to understand better the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses, the external factors that will impact the company, and each employee’s recommended strategic focus.
That is what the AI does. It is a professionally trained AI that interviews everyone, and the AI has a structured purpose of identifying key success factors from each employee.
The interview structure aligns with the structure of the strategic plan. We use the Strategy Whiteboard as the framework for strategic planning, so the AI interviews align with the Strategy Whiteboard structure for planning and implementation. The AI has the ability to ask questions based on responses, analyze interviews, and identify themes without substantial bias placing the information in a structured framework and creating greater transparency and ownership.
In the past, only the largest companies utilized professional consultants to interview employees and analyze data related to strategic planning, and the interviews focused on a small percentage of the organization. For smaller businesses, the sheer cost of having consultants conduct interviews kept them from participating, and they lost the benefit of having insight into employees’ views of the company.
With AI, large and small companies can benefit by having everyone participate in strategic planning at some level. The cost and time to use the AI interview are a fraction of what it used to be.
Large companies can interview thousands, and small businesses can now obtain input from members of their teams. It is anticipated that the ability to gain greater insight from employees and quickly convert it into plans and actions will accelerate companies of all sizes’ aptitude to adapt to changes. For those that take advantage of the technology, it will level the playing field.
TE: With the introduction of such interviews and analysis capabilities, what disruptions do you foresee in the traditional management consulting industry, which is valued at over $100 billion, and how do you believe AI will reshape the landscape?
DB: I teach in the MBA program at the University of Colorado, and we discussed this recently. I anticipate that the analyst’s role at a consulting company will greatly diminish since AI can process much more information and do it more rapidly than people.
Our estimate is that somewhere between 60% and 80% of traditional strategy consulting (and potentially other areas of consulting) will be impacted by generative AI. While the consulting industry as a whole will be challenged, there will be tremendous benefits to businesses that historically didn’t have the ability to spend a lot of money to engage in expensive consulting engagements.
Of course, consulting companies will have the opportunity to embrace the technology and then increase the number of companies they will work with, albeit at a lower revenue per customer.
TE: What specific advantages does Blendification’s software platform bring to the table in terms of automating and streamlining strategic planning processes, and how does it address the limitations of traditional methods?
DB: Blendification uses the Strategy Whiteboard as the framework for connecting culture, strategy, and execution in companies. Our objective from the beginning has been to increase employee engagement through meaningful efforts within one’s job. Our AI is also built on the Strategy Whiteboard framework, which is a proven structure for planning and executing strategy.
The AI simply allows us to expand our impact and increase participation – more companies and more employees. It also provides a roadmap and process for companies to plan and execute (AI enhances the capability). Most of the new generative AI products are focused on a person asking the AI questions, and then the AI provides an answer. While our software has that capability, the primary innovation is flipping this and having the AI be the one asking questions and the employee answering.
This automation will substantially change how companies approach planning, making it more dynamic and responsive. Traditional planning methodologies are generally time-consuming, expensive, stagnant, and include very few people in the process. AI instantly overcomes these challenges.
TE: Can you discuss the potential long-term implications of AI-powered strategic planning and how it may revolutionize the way companies approach their decision-making processes, particularly in relation to adaptability, accuracy, and scalability?
DB: We need to start thinking about change and adaptation differently. What used to take a year can now be done in days or weeks with generative AI. The time to collect data and information, the time to process and analyze, and the time to convert knowledge into action is insanely fast. Decisions will be based on less biased information from more people and can be made quicker. With the ability to adapt faster and more efficiently comes even more rapid change than we have ever witnessed. We will see companies’ cultures become focused on rapid planning and execution cycles.
Essentially culture, strategy, and execution will become completely unified or blended. While this sounds exciting, not everyone will embrace this, and I am afraid we will see a greater widening gap between those that succeed and those that don’t.
Companies that integrate Artificial Intelligence into their processes will adapt substantially faster and scale more rapidly since they will have access to more accurate and large quantities of data that enable them to make better and faster decisions leaving others behind. Generally, with the ability to plan and adapt faster brings accelerated change requiring the need to plan and adapt faster. That’s the cycle.
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