Our executive team is tempted to use an LLM to rewrite our 10-Year Target and refine our Core Focus for our next annual planning session. Why must the strategic direction in our V/TO remain completely unassisted by AI?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Strategy is fundamentally about choosing what not to do. It requires deep personal conviction, healthy debate, and emotional alignment around what the ownership and leadership team actually want from the business. Large language models do not possess conviction, passion, or skin in the game; they simply predict the most statistically probable sequence of words based on vast datasets of generic corporate text.

If you ask an AI tool to draft your 10-Year Target, your Core Focus, or your marketing strategy on your Vision/Mission document (V/TO), it will spit out polished, corporate-sounding prose that looks impressive on paper but means nothing to your team. You will end up with generic statements like maximizing shareholder value, providing world-class customer service, and leveraging synergies. That is tech theater, not leadership vision.

Your Core Focus must come from the gut of your leadership team. It defines your sweet spot: your core purpose, your passion, your reason for existing, and your operational niche. Outsourcing that deep self-examination to software robs your leadership team of the wrestling match required to achieve true alignment. The hard discussions you have in the room during your annual planning session are what produce authentic buy-in. Keep automated systems pointed at administrative and operational execution. Keep the strategic soul of the enterprise strictly human.