1: “Crafting effective prompts is like writing a recipe,” Geoff Woods writes in The AI-Driven Leader.
“The ingredients we include and the way we combine them directly impact the taste of the dish,” Geoff notes. “With training and lots of practice, I identified several key ingredients that consistently lead to high-quality results with AI.”
Ingredient one: “Describe the Task,” he writes. “Just like when delegating to our team, we need to clearly describe the task we want AI to perform for us.”
Geoff provides three illustrations:
1: “I want you to evaluate my strategic plan to ensure it has the sufficiency to drive 40% growth this year.
2: “I want you to analyze our P&L to identify non-obvious patterns that might represent opportunities to drive more profit.
3: “I need to make a key decision and want you to help me think through my two options.”
Ingredient two: Give Context. “While AI can process large amounts of data, it does not have our human context,” he notes. “To fully harness the power of AI, give it the necessary context so it can put itself in your shoes and go to work for you. The more, the better.”
Ingredient three: Assign a Persona. We can use AI to explore different perspectives on an issue or opportunity. We are able to tell it to act as a board member, a CEO, a CFO, a marketing expert, an executive coach, or someone with deep expertise in an array of topics.
“With AI,” Geoff explains, we “have the ability to access expertise at our fingertips. Simply say, ‘I want you to act as (then assign the persona).’ It will harness data relevant to that expertise and focus it on your task. This is a powerful ingredient.”
Indeed.
Ingredient four: Specify Requirements. We can provide detailed information on how we want AI to complete our task. “Do we want to respond in a certain tone? he suggests. “Do we want your answer to be succinct and to the point or detailed and thorough? Do we want it to respond using bullets or a numbered list? Do we want our answer provided in a table with certain columns?”
Geoff typically asks AI to categorize the information using numerical bullets, listed in order of priority.
Ingredient five: Establish Limits: “This is about establishing the boundaries we want AI to work within,” he notes. “What do you want it to avoid doing? For example, let’s say we want to find solutions to reduce cost by 10%, but we want it to avoid recommending laying people off. That would be a limit.”
Ingredient six: Explain Why. Doing so gives AI additional information so it can understand our perspective and goals. We can also ask it to explain it’s why to increase the quality of the response.
Ingredient seven: Ask AI to Interview Us. “This is my favorite ingredient for AI-driven strategic thinking,” Geoff explains. “To unlock AI as your Thought Partner, ask it to interview us to gather all the necessary information and then complete a task.
“One pro tip: make sure to tell it to ask one question at a time,” he suggests. “Otherwise, it may overwhelm us with several questions at once.”
Geoff again outlines three examples:
1: “We have a goal to grow revenue 40% this year. Attached is our strategic plan. I want you to interview me by asking one question at a time to understand our company and market on a deeper level and then present five growth strategies I have not yet considered that could achieve our goal.
2: “Here is a draft communication I intend to send to our board to update them on the state of the company. I want you to interview me to understand my board on a deeper level and, based on what you learn, update the communication so it will resonate with them.
3: “I’m facing a difficult decision. I’m considering two options. I want you to interview me to gather the information you need on each option and then make a recommendation on what you would do if you were in my shoes and explain why.”
Bonus: Enhancing our prompts. Once we become adept at the seven steps above, we can add two additional ingredients to our stew to achieve even better results. “Think of these like spices,” Geoff suggests, “not used as often as the core ingredients, but when they are, they can pack a punch.”
To enhance our prompts, we can share examples or templates. If we “have a defined writing style,” Geoff writes, “provide an example of our writing so it can match the tone. If we have a template we want it to adhere to for our strategic plan, upload it.”
Finally, write in paragraph form as if writing an email. “Avoid writing a long block of text as it could confuse the AI. Instead, write in paragraphs, or use bullets,” he explains. We “can even draw attention to sections by putting titles in ALL CAPS or putting a hashtag before and after—for example, #YOUR TASK#. This helps AI process the information better.”
More tomorrow.
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Reflection: What ingredient in my AI prompting process do I most often overlook, and how might improving it enhance the quality of my results?
Action: Experiment with adding one new prompt ingredient—such as specifying requirements or asking AI to interview us—to our next AI-driven project and observe the difference in output quality.
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