Notes from the training room.

Short, practical ideas, every two weeks. Where could AI help in your company? Type its name and see, in about two minutes. Find your starting point →

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Three ways to get AI work done, and how to choose

Your team can learn to do the AI work, build it with a guide alongside, or have it built and then own it. Three questions tell you which way fits each piece of work, and most businesses use all three.

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Before you start

Who should do the AI work?

  1. Learn it: small tasks your team repeats
  2. Build it with us: shared work, kept in house
  3. Have it built: heavy, central or urgent work
  4. Mark each piece before you budget
Process

Fix it before you automate it

Automation runs whatever version of the task it is given. A quick test tells you whether a task is ready — and getting it ready is usually smaller work than people expect.

People

It guessed because you didn't say

When AI gives you a generic answer, it has usually filled the details you left out with its best guess. Telling it the details you care about changes the answer.

People

When AI tools change, your team's skills stay

AI tools keep changing. The skills a team builds, such as breaking work into steps, briefing AI clearly and checking what comes back, carry over to every new tool, which makes them the investment that lasts.

Process

Hand AI the boring task first

The best first task for AI is a routine one: it comes back every week, you could write its steps down, and you can check the answer. The impressive one can come later.

People

Five skills for getting good results from AI

Getting good results from AI comes down to five skills: break the task down, give it the context, set the limits, refine the draft, and judge the result. When an answer disappoints, the missing skill tells you what to fix.

Process

Keep your AI instructions in a file

The instructions you give AI for a repeated task are worth keeping in a plain document. Use the file every time, update it whenever you correct a result, and the task gets better with every run, whoever on the team runs it.

Process

Split AI work into asking, doing and checking

AI work goes better with three roles kept apart: you decide and write down what good looks like, a fresh AI session does the work from that instruction alone, and someone with no stake in the result checks it against your description.

Technology

AI can be confidently wrong

AI writes by predicting what fits, so it can give an answer that is specific, fluent and wrong. Treat every AI answer as a draft, and check the parts that carry weight, such as numbers, references and names, before you rely on it.

Technology

Two kinds of automation, and how to choose

AI automation handles work that varies. Coded automation handles work that must run the same way every time. Most good workflows use both, each where it fits.

People

Brief AI the way you'd brief a person

Search engines taught us to type a few keywords. AI works from meaning, so it gives better answers when you describe the situation and what the result is for, in plain sentences, the way you would brief a person.

People

Build what only you can build

AI now lets almost anyone build software, senior leaders included. For a leader, the most valuable hours usually still go into direction: deciding what should be built, and why.

People

Three permissions your team needs to use AI

Teams take up AI when they feel free to use it the way it works best: to ask basic questions, to hand it the effort, and to keep asking for a better answer. A manager can grant all three in one sentence.

Money

Plan for who keeps it running

An automation keeps paying off for as long as someone looks after it. Decide who that is, and when they'll do it, before you build.

Not sure where to start?

Type your company name and see where AI could take work off your team. About two minutes.

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