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When leading a football club, strategy is never just a document. It is more than a static deck which leadership writes but no one opens. It is about people, choices, priorities and direction. It is about what kind of club we want to be, how we make decisions, and how we make sure that our everyday work takes us toward the future we believe in. At IF Gnistan, the last question has become especially important because we want to be one club in every decision we make throughout the whole organization. This is also why we started building a strategy with AI: not as a shortcut or a replacement for human judgement, but as a way to make our shared direction clearer, more connected and easier to turn into everyday action.
We are a large football club in the Finnish context, with nearly 1,500 players. We have a strong grassroots community, a large number of juniors and seniors, committed volunteers, fans, owners and corporate partners. At the same time, both our men’s and women’s teams compete at the highest level in Finland. All this under the same Gnistan umbrella, a combination we are proud of, but also one that makes our strategy development challenging.
We are not only developing competitive teams. We are also serving a broad football community. We want to enable participation, create meaningful experiences around football and build a stronger club for everyone involved. In parallel, we want to grow, compete at the highest level in Finland and, in the future, aim for Europe. Leading all of that into one shared direction is not a simple task.
It was time to update and upgrade the strategy since a lot had changed since the previous one
Gnistan had already done strategy work before I stepped in. The previous organization had done good work and looked ahead but a lot has happened since then. Our stadium at Oulunkylä burned down a few years ago. Our women’s team now plays in the highest league, and our men’s team is also competing at the top level. Our ambitions have grown, and the operating environment around us has changed. So we knew that it was time to renew and upgrade the strategy.
The challenge was how to do it properly while also running the club every day. Like many football clubs, we do not have a development organization, actually not even a person focusing mainly on development. Our people are deeply involved in daily operations. There is not a separate development person whose only job is to lead long-term development work. In practice, that responsibility often lands on the CEO’s desk, in this case on my desk, along with many other tasks.
This is a familiar situation in sports organizations and in other fast-growing businesses as well. There are many important development topics, but limited time and resources to move them forward.
We needed both structure and involvement in the strategy process
For us, it was important that the strategy would not be created in isolation. A sense of community is one of our values, and we wanted our community to be strongly visible in the process. We wanted to involve our owners, fans, volunteers, corporate partners, board and organization. Their input matters, because Gnistan is not only a top-level football club. It is first of all a community, a place where every person matters.
At the same time, however, strategy work cannot be only a collection of individual opinions. Different inputs need to be understood in the right context. Board input, organizational priorities, community feedback and previous strategic material all have their own roles. This was one of the reasons why we started using Suunta.ai. We needed a secure and focused environment where we could bring our existing documentation together, involve stakeholders and structure the inputs in a way that would actually support decision-making.
Building a strategy with AI: How we used Suunta.ai in the strategy development
In Suunta.ai, we brought together our previous strategy materials, internal key documentation, and other relevant frameworks, including e.g. strategy documents from UEFA and the Finnish Football Association. We also used Suunta.ai’s strategic survey to collect input from a wide group of stakeholders. In the end, we received almost 100 responses from people connected to the club. That gave us a large amount of valuable material.
In the past, this type of work would often have required consultants to go through the inputs, identify themes, summarize what different stakeholders were saying and propose strategic focus and direction. Now, building strategy with AI, we were able to support that work significantly faster and more systematically, as it helps us identify key themes, prioritize inputs and connect insights directly to the strategy creation process.
One important part was prioritization. When you collect a lot of input, not all information can be treated equally. For example, we value our fans and different stakeholders highly, but one individual comment cannot automatically have the same strategic weight as input from the board. Suunta.ai helped us structure the material so that the most important sources and priorities were properly reflected.
This is where I saw the value very clearly. When I looked at Suunta.ai’s answers and feedback, it had covered the most important topics from our board input. That showed us that the tool was supporting the process in the right way. Suunta.ai was acting as a consultant but much faster and actually working with text more cost-effectively.
Strategy is not a fixed document but a living process
We have now finalized the strategy with the board. But for me, the most important point is what happens after the strategy is approved. I do not think strategy should be something that is created once and then left untouched for years. The world around us changes. The club develops. New opportunities and challenges appear. That is why the strategy needs to stay alive.
We should review it regularly, at least annually, and ask whether it is still valid. Do we need to change something? Should we stop doing something? Should we move faster in some areas? These are questions that need to be part of our normal management rhythm. We also need to align the chosen focus in everyday tasks and decisions.
This is where I see the long-term value of AI. For us, Suunta.ai is not only a tool for creating one strategy document. I see it as something that can support our development work more broadly. In the future, I could place Suunta.ai in our organizational chart as a development director. Not as a replacement for people, but as support for the work we otherwise struggle to resource.
I see it helping us create sub-strategies, action plans and follow-up models. It can support areas such as community, competition, marketing and sales. It can help us keep strategic thinking connected to daily operational work.
From strategy to action: implementing a strategy with AI
A football club is always moving. There are matches, events, player development, commercial work, community activities and future projects. In our case, there are also major development topics ahead, including a new stadium project. The risk I see in this kind of environment is that strategy becomes separate from everyday work. That is exactly what we want to avoid and Suunta.ai is helping us with that.
The real value of strategy is not in the document itself. The value comes when it helps people make better decisions, prioritize their work and understand how their actions connect to the bigger direction of the club. For Gnistan, the goal is to build a strategy that connects participation, community, elite performance, financial development and long-term growth.
I know it is a demanding combination. But it is also what makes this club special. And when AI helps us keep that direction clear, involve our community and turn strategy into action, it becomes more than a tool. It becomes part of how we lead and develop the club every day.