Inside ghSMART’s Proprietary AI Leadership Intelligence Platform

In today’s fast-paced world, the landscape of leadership advisory is evolving rapidly.  

At ghSMART, we’ve always believed that the key to success lies in the ability to combine the art of talent advisory with the precision of data-driven insights. As technology continues to advance, we’ve embraced new tools and innovations that empower our leadership advisors to do their best work; work that is not just faster, but more thoughtful, impactful, and secure. We prioritize the security and confidentiality of all data and insights, ensuring that our clients’ trust is maintained throughout every stage of the process. Our goal is simple: to equip our leadership advisors with the best tools available, enabling them to deliver meaningful impact for our clients.

In this article, we’ll explore how ghSMART is leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance our leadership advisory services, improve the accuracy of our insights, and stay ahead in an increasingly digital world.

We’ll also show how we’re building a future where technology and human expertise go hand-in-hand to deliver smarter, more secure insights to clients.

Technology’s Role in Client Work

In the field of animation, the most celebrated artists began with nothing more than paper, pencils, and extraordinary talent. Every frame was hand-drawn with precision, care, and an intuitive understanding of movement and storytelling. Over time, new tools and technologies enabled these same artists to bring their visions to life with even greater depth and sophistication. The craft itself didn’t change. The standards of excellence remained just as high. But the tools enhanced what was already exceptional.

At ghSMART, we see our leadership advisors practicing a similarly refined craft. They are practitioners with deep expertise, sound judgment, and a finely honed ability to assess and advise senior leaders. To support and enhance that work, we’ve built the ghSMART Leadership Intelligence Platform, an AI-powered toolkit designed to elevate the quality of our client delivery.

The platform currently includes four core tools: Scorecard Builder, askSMART, the Next Gen Leadership Survey, and a future digitized version of SmartAssessments. Each tool plays a unique role in sharpening insights, enriching peer review, and enabling deeper analysis. Just as digital innovations have helped animators push their craft even further, our platform empowers our advisors to deliver even greater value to clients. It is not a replacement for judgment or expertise, but a set of tools that enhances both.

Our leadership advisors don’t just use these digital tools; they help shape them. An internal Steering Committee made up of experienced consultants and partners helps to prioritize digital innovations that will have the most meaningful impact. This ensures that the tools we develop are practical and highly relevant to our leadership advisors’ needs and aligned with the real-world challenges our clients face.

While there are efficiency gains to be had from these tools, we’re not focused on doing more work faster; instead, we aim to use the efficiency gains to deliver higher-quality insights faster.

Think of it like a Hermès craftsman; a master artisan known for precision and unparalleled quality. We’re not building new tools to mass-produce more clothing but rather providing state-of-the-art machines that support their craftsmanship and allow them to showcase their work.

Our focus is on perfecting the process, not scaling it at the expense of quality. In the following sections, we’ll explore how each component of the Leadership Intelligence Platform contributes to our advisors’ impact.

Nearly all of our advisory work begins with a scorecard. This concise, one-page document defines the role’s mission, outlines measurable outcomes, and highlights the key competencies and cultural traits required for success. A key component of the Leadership Intelligence Platform is the Scorecard Builder, an AI-powered tool trained on thousands of sanitized ghSMART scorecards. This tool helps our leadership advisors draft scorecards more efficiently while also providing intelligent peer review that pushes thinking and calibrates assessments against our extensive historical database. We believe that humans and AI working together can achieve better results than either could alone.

We’ve also built askSMART, our internal AI research chatbot. Due to our high standards for data security, leadership advisors are not permitted to use public models. All our AI tools are trained with anonymized and sanitized data to preserve strict client confidentiality. askSMART serves as a secure, in-house research companion, enabling our advisors to ask targeted questions and explore relevant data as they refine insights and prepare recommendations.

For example, one way a leadership advisor might use askSMART is to conduct a peer review of their report. Every report generated by our advisors already goes through a rigorous human peer review process; askSMART isn’t a replacement for that review. Instead, it adds an additional layer of scrutiny to challenge assumptions, surface inconsistencies, and push thinking even further.

Innovation & Competitive Edge

Staying ahead in the leadership advisory space means continually innovating, and technology plays a crucial role in that. Thanks to our expansive, proprietary dataset (the largest of its kind) and 30 years of advising C-suite executives and boards, we’re uniquely positioned to leverage innovative technologies and leapfrog competition. We’re invested in creating and refining digital tools that enhance the value we provide to our clients. And we’re just getting started.

We’re currently adding proprietary ghSMART surveys to the platform, including the Next Gen Leadership Survey, a proprietary, data-driven tool designed to identify high-potential talent deeper within an organization. Traditionally, our leadership assessments have focused on top-of-house leaders, given the depth and rigor of our process. With this new survey, we can now extend our reach across broader segments of the organization, helping pinpoint individuals best suited for deeper assessment, accelerated development, or targeted training. It enables our clients to make more strategic investment decisions, ensuring the right people receive the right support at the right time.

As we continue to innovate, our focus remains on the intersection of technology and honed human judgment. The integration of AI and digital tools into our work is not about replacing our leadership advisors but empowering them with additional resources, thereby making our team even more effective rather than simply more efficient. This approach helps us maintain the highest standards of quality, ensuring clients receive the most impactful, insightful leadership guidance available.

Looking Ahead

While we’ve made great strides, we’re just getting started. The world of AI and digital technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace, and so are we. At ghSMART, we’re fully embracing the possibilities AI offers, but we’re committed to ensuring that technology remains a tool to enhance the human expertise of our leadership advisors, not replace it. Going forward, ghSMART will be empowered with the best of both worlds: the analytical precision of AI combined with the deep judgment and intuition of our expert leadership advisors.

Looking ahead, we will continue expanding our Leadership Intelligence Platform. We’re already working on the next wave of products, including a sophisticated digitized version of our core product SmartAssessments©, which will provide even deeper insights into a given candidate’s leadership capabilities and potential. These innovations will further equip our leadership advisors to deliver actionable, data-driven insights that help organizations find, develop, and retain top talent.

We’re also focused on the broader future of leadership advisory. As our tools evolve, we’re committed to staying ahead of the curve, ensuring our team has access to the most cutting-edge technologies.

Conclusion

This blend of human expertise and innovation ensures our clients receive the highest quality leadership advisory, now and into the future. By empowering our team with advanced tools and platforms, we’re helping them focus their time on the highest impact elements of our work, rather than simply doing more of it. We believe that technology, when used thoughtfully, will continue to support our mission to provide unparalleled leadership advisory services, helping organizations make smarter, data-driven decisions about their most important asset: their people.

As we continue to innovate, we look forward to equipping our team of leadership advisors with even more powerful tools to drive impactful, client-focused results. The future of leadership advisory is bright, and at ghSMART, we are proud to be the industry’s leading edge.

Interested in joining a team that blends human expertise with innovative technology to transform leadership advisory? Visit our careers page to learn how you can help shape smarter, data-driven leadership decisions and make a real impact for organizations worldwide.