How to Use AI to Write Board Papers and Executive Summaries

The most common failure mode in board paper writing is starting with a blank page and beginning to write. This produces dense narrative that buries the key messages and forces the board to work to extract them.

Start instead by asking the AI to help you with structure. Share the key information you need to convey and ask: 'Here is the situation I need to communicate to a board: [bullet points of key facts]. What is the most logical structure for a board paper that needs to convey this clearly and recommend a decision?'

The AI will suggest a structure: background, current situation, options assessed, recommendation, financial implications, risks, and next steps is a common framework. Agree on the structure before writing prose, and your document will be clearer and faster to produce.

For executive summaries, ask: 'What is the single most important thing the board needs to know from this paper, and what decision are they being asked to make?' If the answer to this question is not obvious from the information you have, that is a signal the paper needs more work before it goes to the board.

Once the structure is agreed, draft each section from bullet points rather than blank pages. Write bullet points of the key facts, implications, and recommendations for each section, then ask the AI to turn them into board-quality prose.

Example: 'Here are my bullet points for the background section of a board paper on [topic]: [bullets]. Draft this as a 200-word background section in formal business English, appropriate for a FTSE 250 board. Be concise and avoid management jargon.'

The AI draft will rarely be perfect, but it provides a strong foundation to edit. Editing AI prose is typically 30-50% faster than writing from scratch, particularly when the structural and factual decisions have already been made.

Ask Claude or ChatGPT for a first draft of the full executive summary: 'Here is my full board paper draft. Write a one-page executive summary that covers: what decision is being asked of the board, what analysis supports the recommendation, what the key risks are, and what happens next if the board approves.'

Once you have a full draft, use AI to challenge and improve it before it goes to the board.

'Read this board paper and identify: (1) any statements that are assertions without supporting evidence, (2) any places where the logical flow is unclear, and (3) any significant risks or considerations that are not addressed.'

'Is the recommendation clearly stated and clearly supported by the analysis? If not, where is the gap?'

'Review the executive summary. Does it accurately represent the full paper? Is it sufficiently concise?'

This challenging step often produces the most valuable AI contribution to board papers. The AI is not invested in the paper being approved and will identify weaknesses that authors are too close to see.

Board papers produced entirely by AI can feel generic and may not reflect the author's thinking and judgement. The goal is AI-assisted writing, not AI-substituted writing.

To preserve your voice: provide a sample of a previous board paper you wrote and ask the AI to match its tone and style. The instruction 'write in a style similar to this [sample]' produces outputs that feel more like your work.

Always review AI drafts with a critical eye. The AI may produce technically correct but strategically wrong framing. If you are recommending a difficult decision, the framing of risk and benefit needs to reflect your judgement, not just the AI's synthesis of the available information.

The best use of AI in board paper writing is to reduce the mechanical writing burden and give you more time for the strategic thinking: are we asking the board the right question? Have we genuinely assessed the alternatives? Is this the right recommendation?