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Can ChatGPT write your strategies?

Tired of spending months writing a strategy or paying thousands for someone else to? Can ChatGPT do it for free?

ChatGPT is, on the face of it, a website which you can ask questions that will provide answers in real time.

That’s hardly revolutionary, but behind it is a natural language processing (NLP) machine learning model that's been designed to understand your questions and provide detailed responses to them.

Again this isn't entirly new, in fact its current NLP is known as GPT-3 which means that there were two versions that came before. It is considered by some to be the most advanced NLP yet though, so much so that Microsoft will incorporate it into some versions of Teams soon.

The people behind ChatGPT (Open AI) freely admit it will sometimes provide incorrect answers, and I found this chart produced by HFSResearch really useful in explaining its limitations.


What this tells me is that we shouldn’t be relying on ChatGPT to provide exact answers, however it is useful for things that don't need to be precise.

So for example when I asked it to

“Create a transformation strategy for an English local authority

It replied
Assess current processes and systems: Conduct a thorough review of current processes, systems, and infrastructure to identify areas for improvement and areas where technology can be leveraged to streamline processes.

Develop a technology roadmap: Create a technology roadmap that outlines the steps and timeline for implementing new technologies and tools to support the authority's transformation goals.

Engage with stakeholders: Engage with key stakeholders, including employees, citizens, and partners, to understand their needs and gather feedback to inform the transformation strategy.

Prioritize initiatives: Based on the results of the assessment and stakeholder engagement, prioritize initiatives and allocate resources accordingly.

Implement new technologies: Roll out new technologies and systems, providing training and support to ensure successful adoption.

Monitor and evaluate progress: Regularly monitor and evaluate progress against the technology roadmap, making adjustments as needed, and sharing results and successes with stakeholders.

Continuously improve: Continuously seek ways to improve processes and systems, incorporating feedback from stakeholders and exploring new technologies as they emerge.

The first thing to note is this isn’t a strategy, it’s an short summary of one. So I thought I’d drill down into the first point above by asking:
How can I conduct a thorough review of current processes, systems, and infrastructure to identify areas for improvement and areas where technology can be leveraged to streamline processes.

 

To which it replied
Define the scope: Identify which processes and systems need to be reviewed.

Gather information: Collect data on current processes, systems, and infrastructure, including documentation, user manuals, and any other relevant information.

Identify pain points: Look for bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas where improvements can be made.

Engage stakeholders: Talk to employees and stakeholders to understand their experiences and perspectives on the current processes and systems.

Analyze the data: Evaluate the information collected and use it to identify opportunities for improvement.

Evaluate technology: Determine which technologies can be leveraged to streamline processes and improve efficiency.

Develop a plan: Based on the findings, develop a plan to make improvements to processes, systems, and infrastructure.

Implement changes: Put the plan into action, making changes and improvements to processes, systems, and infrastructure.

Monitor and adjust: Continuously monitor the changes made to ensure they are having the desired impact and adjust as necessary.

So we’re starting to get into the detail of creating a strategy. I could go on and ask it about the other individual points in the original response to populate more of our strategy, but you get the idea.

There are positives and negatives to this.

For example I can produce a draft strategy that looks professionally written in minutes. I have no issue with any of the points in the overview or subsequent response, and think they could form the outline of a credible transformation strategy.

The big downside is that the strategy isn’t tailored to your organisation as because it’s a generic response it can’t suggest outcomes specific to the needs of your organisation and its service users. Sure there will be things that every organisation going through a transformation programme needs to achieve, but especially for councils, each of which have different priorities set by their elected members, some things will be different.

Following on from that, without outcomes specific to your organisation it can’t create a delivery plan to then achieve them and if you happen to think "the strategy is delivery", then it seems ChatGPT can't really help you with creating a plan for that.

So, can ChatGPT really write your strategy?

No, but it is a useful tool to create an initial draft which you can then tailor to your organisation, and if you’re buying in services from outside your organisation to help create a strategy, I would certainly be using ChatGPT to check that they’re not doing the same.

You can sign up to use ChatGPT here

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