You Can Start Now!
You don't need a transformation to start using AI in your job
Most senior leaders I know are still waiting for someone to show them how to start with AI. You don't need to.
I've been listening to Geoff Woods' book, The AI-Driven Leader. It's a non-techie book for senior leaders who want to understand how large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot etc) can fit into their work without waiting for a project plan or a vendor.
The premise is pretty simple: you can start now.
The tools are available, they're cheap or free, and the learning curve is far shorter than most people think it will be.
What stops most people from starting isn't scepticism about the technology. It's not knowing where to begin, combined with concerns about how it looks to peers. There's a strange stigma around using AI at senior levels, as if asking for help from a tool somehow undermines your judgment. I think the opposite is true. The people who pull ahead treat these tools as thinking partners, not threats to their credibility.
The book offers an amazingly useful prompting framework called CRIT:
- Context: What's the business problem you're trying to solve, or outcome you're trying to achieve? A couple of sentences is enough to start
- Role: What do you want the LLM to do? For most people, the least threatening starting point is "act as my strategic thought partner."
- Interview: Ask the LLM to interview you, one question at a time, until it has everything it needs. One question at a time matters. Otherwise it fires twenty things at you and you're back to staring at a screen wondering where to start.
- Task: What output do you want? A document, a set of recommendations, a list of options, a critique of your draft?
I used this approach earlier this week on a client engagement. Two hours of back and forth with Claude, working through a problem that would normally have taken me a couple of days to structure properly.
The output wasn't a replacement for my thinking, it was sharper thinking, faster. It challenged assumptions I hadn't examined, surfaced angles I would have missed, and helped me arrive at something of higher quality than I would have reached alone.
It helped me improve the quality of my work AND compressed the time it took to get there, but it certainly didn;t replace me.
To make a start, pick a business problem you're already working on. Open ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot and use the CRIT framework. Give it thirty minutes and see where it takes you. Personally, Claude is my tool of choice.
One practical note: before uploading anything sensitive, check your settings. Most LLMs let you keep conversations private and ensure your data isn't used for training. Takes thirty seconds.
The book is also worth the time investment if you want to go deeper. I listened to it on dog walks and in the car, and the audiobook format makes it easy to fit in around everything else. But the real value is in that first step.
Thirty minutes. One business problem. Start this week.