I wish I’d had it as a CEO

Some of the hardest decisions you make as a CEO don’t come with a clear answer. Many first-time leaders step into the role without a playbook or handover, and often without experience of the decisions they are suddenly expected to make.

You have a leadership team bringing different capabilities, experiences and perspectives. Multiple systems and data sources. Competing priorities. Assumptions about what might happen next. And often, significant consequences whichever lever you choose to pull, or indeed, not pull.

In today’s volatile market, one of the biggest questions is: what if something completely outside our control disrupts the assumptions we’ve built our plan around?

How do we build a robust financial plan that can sustain the shocks that are now so common in operating a business?

Traditionally, answering those questions takes time. Change one assumption and you can trigger another round of modelling, spreadsheets, analysis and discussion.

But fuel prices can change overnight. Climate events can dramatically impact supply chains. New viruses can affect crops, animals and people. Governments change tariffs, policies and regulations. Any one of these can quickly change the assumptions on which a business has built its plan.

Inevitably, many of us operate in a constant state of reaction.

Yet when an issue or crisis arises, a leader is expected to have an answer. Immediately.

So, at some point, you make the call. You combine the information available with the expertise around the table, your own experience and judgement, and decide.

I think AI is fundamentally changing what CEOs should expect from that process.

Indeed, should that even be the process anymore?

What if you could imagine the possibilities with your team, model the scenarios quickly and build them into your planning?

Then, should that scenario arise, understand the impact immediately. At an organisational, category or product level. To take up to the board or translate into decisions about workforce, production, procurement, inventory and pricing.

Imagine being able to keep asking questions and build a growing, constantly evolving set of scenarios and responses.

Challenge an assumption. Model an alternative. Stress-test a recommendation. Understand the financial implications. Then ask another question.

In real time.

Not to replace the judgement of the CEO or leadership team, but to make that judgement better informed.

It’s almost like adding an AI leader to the table. Not a Chief AI Officer responsible for strategy and governance, which is also essential, but an instantaneous modeller of assumptions and scenarios, surfacing recommendations and their potential impact.

That, for me, is one of the most interesting applications of AI in business.

It’s not about giving leaders the answer.

It’s about giving them the ability to ask far more questions before they have to make the call. To be prepared. To be proactive. To have an answer when the inevitable shock occurs.

Having sat in the CEO chair, Divi is something I wish I’d had.