Lead with Intelligence: The Ultimate AI Toolkit for Executives

From decision-making to presentation crafting, AI tools are revolutionizing how top executives work. Discover how CEOs are leveraging AI to tackle cognitive overload and focus on strategic leadership.

CEOs like Steve Jobs made countless decisions each day, from strategic product choices to lunch menus. Jeff Bezos famously limited himself to three good decisions daily to avoid decision fatigue. Today’s C-suite executives face similar cognitive burdens, but with a twist: AI tools are reshaping how they tackle these challenges.

Remember when preparing for a board meeting meant late nights poring over spreadsheets, crafting presentations, and rehearsing talking points? Now, imagine an AI assistant that digests your quarterly reports, suggests key slides, and even predicts tough questions from the board. That’s not science fiction—it’s Monday morning for the AI-savvy executive.

Here is your concise guide to using AI as a second brain to streamline your decision-making, report-preparing and knowledge-consuming processes – giving you more time to focus on what truly matters for your business.

The AI Toolkit: A Quick Rundown

Before we get into the topic, here’s a concise list of AI tools that can augment C-suite workflows, from scheduling to information gathering and even preparing presentations with a single click:

1. Clara: A virtual assistant that manages meeting coordination via email, handling scheduling and rescheduling seamlessly.
2. Calendly: Provides automated scheduling based on user availability, making it easy to set up meetings without manual intervention.
3. Zapier: Automates workflows by connecting various apps to streamline repetitive tasks and processes. Beautiful.ai/Copilot for PowerPoint: AI-powered presentation creation.
4. Salesforce Einstein: Integrates AI into customer relationship management (CRM), providing predictive analytics and insights to improve sales strategies.
5. Perplexity: An advanced AI-powered search engine that delivers precise and real-time answers to queries, enhancing information retrieval with knowledge graphs and contextual understanding.
6. Notebook LLM: A tool designed for document curation and research that leverages large language models to summarize, organize, and extract insights from various documents efficiently, including in the form of a podcast.
7. Narrative Builder (Microsoft PowerPoint): An AI-powered feature that helps users co-create presentations by generating structured outlines and automatically crafting slides based on input and branding guidelines. Once you have your bullet points and images, just drag and drop and the tool does the rest.
8. Gemini Pro: Along with a more advanced version of the Gemini chatbot, a pro subscription includes AI tools that assist with managing emails and meeting notes by summarizing key points and action items, ensuring executives stay organized and informed without manual effort.
9. Doodle: Simplifies scheduling by allowing users to poll participants for the best meeting times, eliminating back-and-forth emails.

Automating the mundane (and not so mundane)

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, was famous for his hands-on management style, and required managers to get as many as 10-15 direct reports on from their teams. For managers, this could mean hours spent each week reviewing and signing off on reports summarising their work. But today’s executives can automate such tasks with a few clicks. Zapier or IFTTT can create workflows that flag unusual expenses, route approvals, and even generate summary reports—all without human intervention.

But it’s not just about expense reports. These tools can automate complex processes across departments. Imagine a system that monitors social media sentiment, correlates it with sales data, and alerts the CMO when it detects a potential PR crisis brewing. That’s the power of AI-driven automation in the C-suite.

From data deluge to decision driver

In his book “Only the Paranoid Survive,” Andy Grove described the challenge of making sense of vast amounts of data to spot industry inflection points. Today, tools like IBM Watson and Salesforce Einstein are the digital heirs to Grove’s rigorous analysis methods.

A modern CEO might use Watson to analyze global supply chain data, predicting potential disruptions months in advance. Meanwhile, a CSO could leverage Einstein to identify cross-selling opportunities by analyzing customer interaction patterns across multiple touchpoints.

The AI research assistant you’ve always wanted

Warren Buffett is famous for spending 80% of his day reading. While that level of dedication is admirable, most executives don’t have that luxury. Enter AI research assistants like Perplexity and Notebook LLM.

These tools can digest vast amounts of information—from industry reports to academic papers—and provide concise summaries and actionable insights. It’s like having a team of expert analysts at your fingertips, working at the speed of thought.

Presentations that pop (without the all-nighter)

Steve Jobs was renowned for his meticulously crafted presentations, often spending weeks perfecting every slide. While there’s no substitute for preparation, tools like Beautiful.ai and Copilot for PowerPoint are changing the game.

These AI assistants can transform bullet points into visually compelling slides, suggest data visualizations, and even help structure your narrative. It’s not quite Jobsian magic, but it’s a significant leap forward in presentation creation.

Taming the email beast

Tim Cook starts his day at 3:45 AM, partly to get a head start on the 700-800 emails he receives daily. While we can’t all be early birds, tools like Gemini can help executives manage their inbox overload.

By summarizing long email threads, extracting action items from meetings, and prioritizing messages based on content and sender, Gemini acts like a hyper-efficient executive assistant, helping leaders focus on what truly matters.

Use what works for you

With the boom in generative AI, no single list can capture every tool of value. Make sure to explore websites like theresanaiforthat.com whenever you find yourself with a problem that demands automation.

The AI revolution in the C-suite isn’t about replacing human judgment—it’s about augmenting it. By offloading cognitive burden to AI assistants, executives can focus on what they do best: leading, innovating, and making the critical decisions that shape our world.