rganizations must confront the implications of generative AI in their workflow, whether they like it or not. Generally, that’s where the debate begins: do business leaders like the technology or not?
More specific questions follow. How do AI-driven insights influence decision making? How can business owners and executives integrate AI tools into strategic planning and forecasting? What is the evolving role of leadership in an AI-driven organization? And how should leaders navigate the ethical considerations and risks associated with AI implementation?
Across industries, Alaskans are formulating guidelines for safe and effective integration of generative AI.
More importantly, AI can align an entire executive team, from finance and marketing to sales. “By delivering customized insights to each leader, it breaks down departmental silos and ensures that collaborative decisions are made from a shared understanding of the facts,” Machuca says.
AI also can enhance teamwork by combining its analytical power with human creativity and judgment. This combination improves team dynamics significantly. Machuca explains, “Data can highlight ideas from quieter team members, bring diverse perspectives to the surface, and challenge personal biases with objective facts. This transforms leadership meetings from passive presentations into interactive, inclusive workshops guided by real-time data.”
GCI
Goldie believes GCI is intentional about balancing human intuition and experience with AI insights. “AI provides us with data-driven recommendations, but it’s still up to us as leaders to interpret and act on them,” Goldie says. “We use that data as a guide, but personal engagement and experience are still an essential part of the decision-making process.”
AI tools also make a difference at Thompson & Co. Public Relations (T&C). While the technology has not altered how T&C makes decisions, AI has changed how quickly the agency can “get to the good stuff,” according to President and COO Heather Handyside. “We use AI to handle routine tasks like organizing research or generating early drafts of background materials,” she explains. “It frees up our team to spend more time thinking strategically and being creative. That gives our clients a better value for their investment.”
Effective leaders, Machuca says, now recognize the complementary strengths of humans and machines, leading with a mindset that values scalable AI tools and uniquely human qualities like critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and adaptability. Consequently, leadership roles are being redefined and restructured. The emergence of chief AI officers and AI transformation leaders reflects the need for strategic orchestration of AI, aligning organizational vision, governance, and measurable return on investment with the latest software available.
“At its core, this evolution isn’t just technological—it’s ethical and cultural,” Machuca says. “Leaders take on responsibility for AI governance, fairness, explainability, and human oversight. They must also adopt a mindset of continuous reinvention.”
GCI is reshaping its leadership methods in the face of AI. “A big challenge for leaders in the telecom industry is finding ways to efficiently measure potential impacts of proposed projects without investing a significant amount of resources,” Goldie explains. “Through the use of AI, we’re now able to demonstrate in real-time what we can accomplish without the heavy lift of traditional IT development cycles. We can start with the base structure of a plan, which I can then hone to the exact message and intended objective.”
Integrated AI tools are also changing how GCI captures and shares insights from meetings and throughout the planning process. “Automated notetakers and meeting assistants can show how our team members are contributing to the dialogue and help summarize discussions clearly, making collaboration more efficient,” Goldie says.
Thompson & Co. Public Relations
For Handyside, a GCI executive herself until she joined T&C last year, AI serves as a useful brainstorming partner. When working through a complicated business decision, she sometimes employs AI to pressure-test her ideas. “It’s like having a wise business colleague who’s always available for a second opinion,” she says. “So while it sometimes helps inform the decisions I make as a leader, it hasn’t changed my style or the way I lead.”
Business leaders can capitalize on various AI-powered tools to enhance their strategic planning and forecasting efforts. For strategic planning, meeting assistants are incredibly impactful. Tools like Plaud Note and its wearable version, NotePin, handle all the documentation, allowing teams to focus on discussion. They record and transcribe conversations, then automatically generate summaries, mind maps, and action items. “This enhances creative problem-solving and supports faster, data-informed decisions,” Machuca explains. “For forecasting, the AI goes a step further by analyzing the dialogue to surface key insights and even provide forecasted scenarios and fresh ideas, making it a powerful partner in the strategic process.”
Virtual collaboration tools like MeetGeek and Google Meet’s Take Notes with Gemini integrate these features directly into online meetings. On the data analysis front, ChatGPT’s Data Analyst offers an affordable and powerful solution for executives. Machuca explains, “With a simple dataset upload, leaders can ask questions, run forecasts, visualize trends, and simulate scenarios—all without any coding or statistical expertise. It serves as an effective bridge between raw data and actionable executive-level insights.”
Organizations are also developing custom AI assistants, such as generative pre-trained transformers (a type of large language model, of which ChatGPT became the superstar when version 3.5 launched in 2022) or Google Gems, tailored to specific projects or tasks. These assistants can execute strategic frameworks, generate scenario plans, draft and refine strategy documents, and even coach leadership teams through decision-making processes. “By embedding organizational knowledge, datasets, and strategic priorities, they become invaluable, always-available partners in planning and forecasting—adaptable to the unique needs and culture of any leadership team,” Machuca says. “At the AI Resource Program, we guide executives in designing, building, and implementing these AI assistants effectively, ensuring they align with strategic goals and deliver measurable impact.”
The company is also beginning to use AI to analyze which tactics will deliver the most impact for messaging campaigns—what platforms are likely to reach the right audience and where clients will get the best return for the budget. “It’s a helpful way to sharpen our media strategy and make smarter use of our clients’dollars,” Handyside says. “That said, a lot of our work still depends on human insight—understanding context, tone, culture, and relationships. AI gives us more input, but it doesn’t replace the experience and instincts we’ve built over years of working in Alaska and beyond.”
T&C ensures that AI is being used to enhance its work, not replace what makes it valuable, Handyside emphasizes. “If a tool helps us save time or work smarter, great,” she says. “But if it gets in the way of authentic storytelling or trusted relationships, it doesn’t belong in our process.”
Much of T&C’s focus is about helping clients build human relationships. “We have a talented and experienced team who know our clients, understand the audience, and can read the room,” Handyside says. “That’s not something AI can do.”
GCI uses AI and predictive analytics to improve business decisions and enhance efficiency. For example, when part of its telecom network isn’t operating at an optimal level, identifying and diagnosing the issue can take time. “By leveraging AI to help us troubleshoot,” Goldie says, “we’re reducing the amount of time that process takes, which reduces the time to dispatch teams and the time it takes to repair.”
AI also plays an increasingly important role in forecasting everything from network activity to personnel needs at GCI. These insights help the company stay ahead of demand, efficiently manage its resources, and ensure it delivers the best possible service to customers, according to Goldie.
The company has also used AI to analyze employee feedback. “We utilized AI to summarize main points and establish initiatives to address,” Goldie says. “This significantly accelerated our feedback on what we heard from our teams and our ability to put actionable plans into place to improve our employee experience.”
Integrated Project Services, a management consulting firm in Anchorage, is using AI to improve cash flow forecasting. The company developed a tool in Microsoft Excel Visual Basic for Applications that helps monitor and forecast expenses. “The model runs the cash flow by the day, so we can get very accurate down to the week on what to expect,” explains managing partner Thad Phillips. “We use the weekly reports to look at if we will need to request a [line of credit] draw from the bank this month or if we think we will make it without the draw.” Further, the tool can re-run the model to account for any changed variables, with results in minutes.
Phillips collaborated with the SBDC’s AI Resource Program to develop the cash flow model, which has significantly benefited IPS. “Integrating AI into our operations with Carlos and his team’s training has dramatically increased our efficiency,” Phillips says. “We’ve cut document creation time by half and accelerated our Excel processes, among other improvements. This has saved us an impressive $174,570 annually per team member. With full team adoption, we anticipate savings exceeding $523,710 per year. This technology has transformed weeks of work into days, making a significant financial impact.”
Considering Ethics, Risk, and Alignment
Alaska SBDC
Leaders should adopt established AI risk guidelines, such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework. As well, they should systematically embed ethical checkpoints throughout planning, deployment, monitoring, and retirement of AI tools. “These guide teams to define clear principles [fairness, transparency] while operationalizing bias mitigation, explainable models, and real-time drift detection,” Machuca says.
Businesses should think beyond compliance; they should embrace corporate responsibility proactively. “Since AI and its risks evolve rapidly, leaders must commit to continuous learning and framework refinement—keeping policies up to date with emerging norms, regulations, and technologies,” Machuca says.
Ensuring that AI aligns with organizational values is also crucial. For T&C, this means prioritizing trust, creativity, transparency, and results. “Any technology we bring in, including AI, has to support those values, not compromise them,” Handyside explains. “That’s why we have strict internal guidelines around how and when we use AI, especially when it comes to protecting client information and fact-checking information.”
For GCI, its customer-first mindset dictates that AI should be a tool that enhances customer experience. “It helps us solve problems more quickly, which allows our employees to focus on the bigger picture and plan for the future,” Goldie says.
He adds, “It’s an exciting time. We have the opportunity to define how AI will enhance the way we work, lead, and innovate.”