IBF Editorial Team
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly automating many of the analytical tasks planners once owned. It can generate forecasts, detect patterns, and evaluate scenarios faster than any individual or team could.
The rapid rise of AI in the demand planning space forces planners to address a critical question:
How can planners adapt in this brave new world?
The answer is not to compete with machines on speed or precision. It is to change their mindsets and how they think about planning so that they can deliver value that AI cannot. They need to identify new ways to fit into the planning process by upping their games.
This article reveals four mindsets planners can adapt to achieve success today. Be aware that most people cannot hold all four mindsets. They should adopt the ones best suited to their training, education, personality, and career goals.
Four Mindsets that Allow Planners to Deliver Value in Today’s AI-Powered World
Artificial intelligence can play a role in planning, especially in making it more efficient. However, it cannot handle the most critical components. Planners will need to adapt one or all of the following four mindsets to master AI and not let it become their master.
1. The Demand Planning Detective: Turning Data Into Understanding
The detective mindset moves planning beyond mere reporting.
Instead of simply explaining what happened, planners operating as detectives ask deeper questions:
- What actually caused the outcome?
- Which signals mattered, and which were noise?
- Why does this matter for the decision in front of us?
Detectives move beyond a simplistic understanding of the past. They use in-depth analysis of historical data to solve the case, producing insights that shape future action.
Great detectives start with questions, not data. They search for causality, patterns, and implications, always with the goal of enabling better decisions, not just better explanations.
AI can deliver the what, but not the why that a planning detective can.
2. The Demand Planning Doctor: Improving Outcomes, Not Just Diagnosing Problems
If the detective uncovers what is going on within the planning process and provides insights about how to act on it, the doctor focuses on the more difficult cases.
The doctor mindset treats planning as a series of disciplined interventions:
- Testing hypotheses
- Running test experiments
- Learning quickly from what works and what does not
This requires moving past averages and default logic—context matters. What works in one situation may fail in another. After all, the best doctors combine book knowledge and creative thinking to cure patients, not just flat, one-dimensional ideation.
Critically, this mindset avoids “pilot theater,” where experiments quietly become commitments. Instead, it emphasizes clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and the willingness to quickly stop things that aren’t working, much as a physician immediately ceases treatments that harm rather than help patients.
Planning becomes less about static certainty and more about improving the odds of better outcomes by leveraging AI-generated information and dynamic human creative thinking within the planning process.
3. The Demand Planning Futurist: Preparing for What Models Cannot Predict
The futurist mindset understands that many of the most consequential future outcomes may not be the easiest to see. When future vision is clouded, imagination becomes a strategic necessity.
Futurist planners:
- Explore multiple plausible futures
- Make assumptions explicit
- Think probabilistically rather than deterministically
- Surface uncomfortable or “forbidden” scenarios that others avoid
The futurist mindset is not about guesswork. It is disciplined imagination, used to prepare organizations to recognize and respond during the most challenging and uncertain times.
4. The Planning Coach: Translating Insight Into Action
The coach mindset is where all others converge, and where value is ultimately realized.
The detective, doctor, and futurist mindsets provide ideas and capabilities that inform action. The coach mindset drives action through a continuous cycle of prepare, act, and adapt.
Great coaches prepare relentlessly, act decisively, and adapt continuously. They understand that plans will break down, assumptions will fail, and conditions will change mid-cycle.
What distinguishes them is not their analytical capabilities, but their ability to:
- Focus teams on what matters
- Adjust quickly when reality shifts
- Hold themselves and others accountable
- Influence decisions in moments of uncertainty
AI can inform decisions. It cannot align people, build confidence, or drive commitment. That remains uniquely human work, done by people with a coach’s mindset.
AI and Demand Planner Mindset: The Final Word
As AI takes on more analytical tasks in the world of planning, the demand planner’s role is not shrinking; it is evolving.
Planners who cling to traditional definitions of value risk becoming peripheral. Those who embrace new mindsets become indispensable.
They elevate conversations from numbers to decisions. They help leaders navigate ambiguity. They drive action rather than explanation. And they create value that AI alone cannot deliver.
The planners who succeed in the age of AI will not be those who compete with algorithms, but the ones who expand what planning makes possible.
Editor’s note: The themes in this article draw on insights shared during a keynote presentation titled “The Four Mindsets for Exceptional Forecasting and Planning in Uncertain Times,” delivered by Rudy Colberg at the recent Institute of Business Forecasting conference in Orlando. The session explored how planning roles are evolving in an increasingly uncertain, AI-enabled environment, including perspectives informed by experience at The Clorox Company.