5 Ways AI for Executives Enables Faster Decision Making
The following contribution is from the Crossover portal, which defines itself as follows: Crossover is a global recruiting firm specializing in full-time remote jobs with AI-first technology companies. We facilitate access to the top 1% of global talent.
The author is Murray Brennan Elphick
Murray is a content scientist working at the intersection of innovation and creativity. With a master’s degree in innovation, he began his career in corporate innovation before immersing himself in the world of educational technology and content production. Currently, at Crossover, Murray has the exciting mission of integrating AI with human creativity, creating systems that produce meaningful, high-quality content. Inspired by Ethan Mollick’s vision of centaurs and cyborgs, Murray is dedicated to empowering people to harness the power of AI, making the creative process more dynamic and accessible.
AI for executives is about much more than writing better emails: it’s about making better decisions.
While most use AI as a powerful word generator, market leaders are using it to outperform the competition.
Turning AI into Strategy
It’s time to turn AI from a mere grammar keeper to a strategic co-pilot.
As an executive, there’s one critical metric: your ability to make GREAT decisions.
We’re not talking about to-do lists. We’re talking about the organizational decisions that keep you up at night, the ones that guide your company’s path into the future.
Every executive decision you make influences hundreds of employee realities.
From the frontline employee wondering about their job security to the senior manager planning their team’s next strategic move.
And these decisions are getting harder.
The market is more complex. Customer expectations are sky-high. And your margin for error is shrinking every day.
Artificial intelligence is the industry-defining force transforming how top executives manage chaos.
The use of generative AI nearly doubled in the first six months of 2024, with 75% of knowledge professionals worldwide adopting it in their roles. But most leaders have NO IDEA how to use it as anything more than a sophisticated email editor.
While traditionalists waste AI’s potential on grammar checks, savvy executives are using it to make more accurate decisions faster than ever before.
Ready to improve your decision-making? Here are 5 ways AI (for executives) enables faster decisions.
Path #1: Faster insights from multiple stakeholders
Decision-making can’t be done in isolation. And gathering diverse viewpoints in real time, for every decision, is impossible.
Artificial intelligence is your path to diverse perspectives at scale.
It puts you in the shoes of your various stakeholders, giving you a high-resolution view of potential impacts and outcomes. And you can do it RIGHT NOW, without delay.
You still need to understand the human side perfectly. But by combining your human understanding of the real world with AI’s ability to generate new insights at scale, you get faster, high-impact decisions.
Method #2: 24/7 Strategic Advisor
When faced with complex decisions, having someone to bounce ideas off can make the difference between decisive wins and costly mistakes.
That’s what conversational AI brings: a 24/7 partner who challenges your thinking and detects your blind spots before they become strategic vulnerabilities.
Run what-if scenarios. Test assumptions. Explore edge cases. All in real time, without scheduling a single meeting.
It’s like having a tireless, infinitely patient strategic advisor who has read every business book ever written and never tires of making decisions.
Method #3: Anti-Decision Fatigue Co-Pilot
We all know that decision fatigue is real.
If you have too many options, you suddenly run out of energy instead of integrating information. That’s where AI comes in as your cognitive force multiplier.
Custom projects allow you to create a personalized assistant, trained in YOUR decision-making frameworks.
Delegate the heavy lifting—tracking variables, flagging inconsistencies, identifying critical dependencies—and free up your mental capacity to think at a higher level.
You don’t need to strain at every step of the process.
Method #4: Data Overload for Actionable Insights
Nearly half of decision-makers say AI will revolutionize analytics, and 45% believe it will accelerate problem resolution.
And they’re onto something BIG.
AI’s data analysis capabilities have grown exponentially.
It can now sift through mountains of operational data, create accurate visualizations, identify relevant patterns, and write executive summaries that give you an edge.
Instead of diving into spreadsheets for hours (or days), you can replace data overload with insights that will help you make better decisions, faster.
Method #5: Rapid Decision Analysis
What if you could test your decisions before investing resources?
That’s exactly what AI-powered decision analysis offers. Feed AI your variables, set constraints, and watch it construct multiple possible futures.
Then, explore those scenarios dynamically, asking questions and testing assumptions in real time.
AI has given you a risk-free testing environment for your biggest strategic bets.
AI for Executives: Your Decision-Making Edge
AI isn’t just changing the way decisions are made; it’s revolutionizing decision science.
A staggering 96% of business leaders know there’s room to improve their decision-making processes. And 80% say they’re overwhelmed by the amount of data they need to process for each decision.
This is a challenge for RIGHT NOW.
The market signals are clear:
70.5% of organizations are doubling down on their investments in AI and business intelligence.
61% of those who have already made the leap report a radical improvement in their decision-making processes.
The gap between the average and those who have improved with AI is widening. While some senior executives still treat AI like a sophisticated email editor, market leaders are using it to multiply their decision-making power.
It’s time to choose who you’d rather be.
Your competition has already begun its evolution toward structured decision-making.
The tools are ready. The advantage is clear: strategic AI for executives.
It’s time to turn AI from a grammar guardian into your strategic copilot.
How AI Is Changing Executive Decision-Making
The following contribution is from the Quantive Blog Board, which is defined as follows: Platform Overview
Strategic AI
The strategic management platform for planning, executing, and adapting your business to the pace of change.
Article Summary
Why executives need to change their approach and pace of decision-making
Current challenges in executive decision-making
Why executives should adopt AI tools for decision-making
How AI helps solve executive decision-making challenges
The consequences of delaying AI adoption
How to adopt AI tools for executive decision-making
Transform your decision-making with AI
The days of pondering decisions for weeks or months are no longer an option.
As executives, you must meet challenges with unprecedented speed: assessing, planning, executing, evaluating, and adjusting decisions on the fly.
This can be overwhelming, especially in industries with vast amounts of data and complex decision-making processes.
However, all is not lost. The rapidly evolving business landscape has its advantages, such as the use of AI for decision-making.
AI can drive decision-making by tailoring insights and recommendations to your business information.
Therefore, you can use it to streamline decision-making and act based on real-time information, not just data.
In this article, we’ll explain the what, why, and how of using AI for decision-making and strategic management, covering:
– Why executives need to change their approach and pace of decision-making
– Current challenges in executive decision-making
– Why executives should adopt AI for decision-making
– How AI helps solve executive decision-making challenges
– The consequences of delaying AI adoption
– How to adopt AI for executive decision-making
– Why executives need to change their approach and pace of decision-making
Evolving executive decision-making is more crucial than ever
Market dynamics are changing rapidly, and the pace of business management is increasing rapidly due to:
Changing customer expectations: The digital mindset and demand for convenience, personalization, and rapid responses are redefining customer expectations.
Globalization: Competition is increasingly global, with cultural differences, new legal requirements, and geopolitical risks altering market dynamics.
Cyclical technological disruptions: Rapid innovations demand rapid adaptation and strategic execution.
However, executive decision-making struggles to keep pace with business acceleration.
This occurs despite organizations being inundated with data and spending more than $29 billion annually on business intelligence.
The McKinsey Global Survey revealed that only 20% of respondents
believe their organizations excel at agile decision-making and change management, and the majority report that the time they spend on decision-making is ineffective.
“For managers at an average Fortune 500 company, this could translate into more than 530,000 lost workdays and approximately $250 million in wasted labor costs annually.”
— McKinsey
But why do executives struggle to make informed decisions at the required pace?
What makes informed decision-making such a laborious and challenging task?
Current Challenges in Executive Decision-Making
Rigid Decision-Making Process
The executive decision-making process hasn’t evolved much.
It’s typically a slow cycle of data collection, meetings, and report review.
This becomes inefficient and ineffective when rapid adjustments are necessary based on changing market dynamics, often leading to delayed and inappropriate decisions.
To further complicate matters, these inefficiencies are compounded internally, as organizations often progress faster than executives can keep up.
Consequently, executives like you must avoid becoming bottlenecks in the decision-making process, while maintaining control over strategic decisions.
“If you’re good at course correction, making mistakes can be less costly than you think, while being slow will certainly be expensive.”
— Jeff Bezos
Data Overload
Data is a gold mine, but its volume can quickly become a double-edged sword. As executives, you must not only monitor the continuous flow of data but also discern its relevance and applicability.
Without context, an abundance of data isn’t much use.
While they may have all the individual pieces at hand, not knowing where they fit, what they represent, or what the complete picture should look like can be disorienting.
An overload of erroneous, misinterpreted, or duplicate data can lead to decision paralysis, data distrust, reliance on outdated information, and ineffective decisions.
In fact, a Salesforce study found that 41% of leaders are unaware of data because it’s too complex or inaccessible.
«Finding ways to control the flow of data at their fingertips, to help businesses distinguish between signal and noise, is a crucial first step.»
— Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Misinformation and Poor Data Quality
As the foundation of all strategic decisions, executives must prioritize data integrity, accuracy, and reliability, ensuring it remains error-free.
Neglecting this can lead to poor decision-making, something that occurs more often than you might think.
A CMGA study revealed that 80% of respondents made strategic decisions based on misinformation in the past three years.
This can be quite costly, as Gartner reports that companies waste an average of $15 million annually due to poor or erroneous decisions.
Internal Business Complexities
Internal business dynamics add another layer of complexity to executives’ decision-making capabilities. These include:
Overlapping Responsibilities: Decision-making roles are often unclear, as multiple individuals or teams share responsibilities.
This can lead to confusion, delays, and conflicts during decision-making.
Interdependencies: Decisions in one area of the business affect others and, if mismanaged, can negatively impact the broader organizational ecosystem.
Individual Biases: Personal beliefs can influence decision-making, sometimes leading to decisions that align with individual opinions rather than the organization’s interests.
Why Executives Should Adopt AI Tools for Decision-Making
AI tools offer numerous advantages, allowing you to go beyond analyzing metrics to utilize unstructured information in real time and at scale.
The right combination of AI technologies can provide contextually relevant answers to executive questions, impact forecasts, and even recommendations on next steps.
The evolution, democratization, and convergence of the following technologies make this possible:
– Natural language processing (NLP) understands human language, enabling the automation of tasks such as customer service, data analysis, and sentiment analysis.
– Predictive analytics identifies patterns and connections in data to create future forecasts, such as seasonality.
– Prescriptive analytics provides actionable recommendations by processing data, trends, and context.
Generative AI processes large volumes of information, understands concepts, identifies relationships, and generates insights at a much larger scale, and faster than any human.
As these AI capabilities converge, businesses can better connect data, metrics, strategy, and operational activities to achieve greater efficiency.
This can:
Free up 60% to 70% of employees’ time (McKinsey)
Reduce costs by 10% or more (Fortune)
Increase and maintain a competitive advantage (MITSloan Management Review)
Increase productivity by 66% (Nielsen Normal Group)
Reduce errors by 20% (Forbes)
However, we expect the most significant impact of AI to be on decision-making.
AI’s ability to use elements such as predictive models to analyze large data sets, detect patterns, and offer data-driven recommendations allows it to draw insights from areas such as sales, customer experience, and business strategy to create a pipeline of ideas, insights, and actionable ideas that benefit you as decision-makers. How AI Helps Solve Executive Decision-Making Challenges
AI systems offer a range of capabilities that address key executive decision-making challenges:
Pattern Recognition and Anomaly Detection
You can apply machine learning techniques, such as deep learning models, to your company’s historical data to identify patterns, correlations, and anomalies across the organization.
Given the sheer volume and complexity of data, it may be invisible to human analysts.
Real-Time Information Analysis
You can use AI to analyze incoming data and interpret continuously updated information. This facilitates timely and well-informed decision-making, eliminating delays and keeping your business aligned with market fluctuations.
Data-Driven Recommendations and Interactions
Machine learning algorithms can help you analyze historical business decisions and large data sets to offer actionable recommendations and answer data-driven queries, demonstrating the power of A
