Frame your interaction with AI as if you're onboarding a new employee. Providing deep context, clear expectations, and even a mental "salary" forces you to take the task seriously, leading to vastly superior outputs compared to casual prompting.

Generic use cases fail to persuade leadership. To get genuine AI investment, build a custom tool that solves a specific, tangible pain point for an executive. An example is an 'AI board member' trained on past feedback to critique board decks before a meeting, making the value undeniable.

Advanced management techniques, like using AI to suggest team improvements, no longer require specialized software or data science teams. A manager can use an off-the-shelf tool like ChatGPT, feed it a simple spreadsheet of performance data, and ask it to run the analysis, democratizing access to managerial 'superpowers'.

To overcome employee fear of AI, don't provide a general-purpose tool. Instead, identify the tasks your team dislikes most—like writing performance reviews—and demonstrate a specific AI workflow to solve that pain point. This approach frames AI as a helpful assistant rather than a replacement.

The key skill for using AI isn't just prompting, but "context engineering": framing a problem with enough context to be solvable. Shopify's CEO found that mastering this skill made him a better communicator with his team, revealing how much is left unsaid in typical instructions.

The process of structuring effective AI prompts—providing clear context, roles, and constraints—is a transferable skill. Marketers are finding this practice makes them more precise and effective communicators when delegating tasks to human team members.

Don't let performance reviews sit in a folder. Upload your official review and peer feedback into a custom GPT to create a personal improvement coach. You can then reference it when working on new projects, asking it to check for your known blind spots and ensure you're actively addressing the feedback.

Rehearse difficult conversations by having an AI adopt the persona of your boss, partner, or employee. This allows you to practice your approach, refine your messaging, and anticipate reactions in a safe environment, increasing your confidence and effectiveness for the real discussion.

After receiving feedback that his writing was too long, a PM built a custom GPT to make messages more concise. He fed it newsletters and books on effective writing from experts, creating a personalized coach that helped him apply the feedback in his daily work, leading to better engagement from colleagues.