Strategy Officers Rethink Long-Term Plans as AI Accelerates Change

Three chief strategy officers gathered at Harvard Business Review's first Strategy Summit this year to lay out how they are adapting long-range planning for an era where artificial intelligence reshapes markets faster than traditional forecasts can track. Sherry Sanger runs strategy at Penske Transportation Solutions. Jennifer Moll holds the same role at DTEX Systems. Maran Nalluswami, chief strategy officer at a technology company, also took part. The session was part of HBR's Executive Live event series.

Sanger said her team focuses on scenario planning that assumes AI will change logistics sooner than most competitors expect. She does not treat AI as a single tool. She sees it as a bundle of capabilities – automation, prediction, routing optimization – each with its own adoption curve.

Moll, whose company works in insider-risk detection, described a different tension. AI lets DTEX find patterns across massive datasets. It also introduces new attack surfaces. Her team mapped those surfaces before integrating AI into the product line. The result was a slower rollout that cut rework later.

Nalluswami talked about talent. Strategy officers cannot just buy AI tools, he said. They have to hire people who can ask the right questions of those tools. His firm rewrote job descriptions for data scientists and analysts to emphasize business judgment over technical fluency.

All three agreed on one point. The horizon for strategic bets has shortened. A five-year plan once felt safe. Now the assumptions behind any long-range forecast can shift in six months, they said. Sanger said Penske revisits its capital expenditure plans every quarter, not annually. Moll uses rolling 18-month roadmaps instead of hard annual budgets.