The Future Of Work with AI: AI For Business Strategy and Leadership in 2025 with Kevin Surace

This SME Strategy Podcast episode features technology and leadership innovator Kevin Surace, offering expert guidance on leveraging generative AI to enhance content creation and drive strategic planning and strategic growth.
Learn how to make better decisions as a leader, improve your customer experience, and cultivate a culture of joy in work that supports your business strategy.
Strategic Leadership Applications
- Strategic Planning: AI acts as a tool to power informed strategic planning, and can be used for opportunity and risk assessment. While a strategic planning facilitator is key to achieving organizational outcomes, AI is a tool that can be used to expedite analysis.
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- Data-Driven Decisions: For senior leaders, AI offers the capacity to analyze complex data to make informed strategic decisions.
- Enhanced Customer Experience: The personalization of interactions can be improved through AI, improving loyalty and strategic market position.
- Enhanced Capabilities: Surace provides concrete examples of AI's impact, such as training sales teams and dramatically improving software bug detection, showcasing its diverse applications.
- AI as Automation: AI functions as a powerful form of automation, enhancing efficiency in ways similar to industrial machinery.
- The "Giving Up Math" Analogy: Surace draws a parallel to the adoption of Excel, suggesting that just as we accepted its superiority in math, we should embrace AI's capabilities in areas like language and visual content creation.
Leading Through Organizational Change:
The adoption of AI necessitates proactive organizational change and effective change management strategies.
Leadership needs to guide teams through this transition, fostering adaptability and a commitment to leveraging these capabilities for strategic advantage.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Kevin Surace and His Work
03:00 The Role of AI in Modern Business
06:02 Generative AI: Transforming Content Creation
09:04 AI In Leadership and Decision Making
11:46 The Joy Success Cycle: Finding Joy in Work
18:00 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
If you're leading a strategic planning session of your own that may include leveraging AI for business strategy and leadership, use this practical sample strategic planning agenda to kickstart your process.
DOWNLOAD YOUR SAMPLE STRATEGIC PLANNING AGENDA
LISTEN TO THE FULL PODCAST
To hear the full conversation with Kevin and Anthony, tune in to the SME Strategy + Leadership Podcast.
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About Our Guest: Kevin Surace
A Silicon Valley icon, Kevin Surace is a serial entrepreneur, CEO, and futurist celebrated as the father of the Virtual Assistant. With 94 patents spanning AI, sustainable building, and early mobile technology, he's been recognized as INC's Entrepreneur of the Year and a CNBC top Innovator.
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