The AI Practice Guide

Two summaries of the same interview

This is a made-up case I use in training. A school is hiring a Head of School, and the job requires a move to Nashville. A consultant interviews a candidate named Dana Whitfield. On the call, Dana says this:

“We'd have to talk about Nashville as a family. My husband just made partner.”

Two people then ask AI for a summary of the call.

Summary A reads well. It is also false, and nothing about it looks false.

Empty is worse than wrong. Wrong gets caught.

Both people used AI. The difference was what each of them brought to it. This guide is eight weeks of practice at bringing more.

The one test

Before anything you made with AI leaves your hands, ask one question:

What did I add that the AI could not have?

A good answer is something you can point to: a fact only you knew, a line you cut, a question you asked that the draft did not. If you cannot point to anything, the work is not finished.

I think of this as stewardship. AI should serve people and their judgment. It should not stand in for either.

Before you start

Three ground rules

1. Practice on real work. Use the project you are actually running this week. Invented exercises teach you little.
2. Use the account your organization approved. Not a personal account, and not a second AI tool on the side. If you do not know which account is approved, ask before you paste anything in.
3. No one grades this. It is practice at work you already care about.

Tell it how to work with you

Most AI tools have a setting for standing instructions that apply to every conversation. These are mine. Paste them in and change what does not fit you.

Work with me this way in every conversation:

1. Do not flatter me. Skip praise unless it is specific and earned.
2. Challenge my reasoning. If I push back and you still think you are right, say so.
3. Never make anything up. If you do not know, say you do not know.
4. Clarity over clever. Use plain words. If a phrase would make me stop and translate it, rewrite it.
5. Ask me one question at a time.

Give it far more context than feels necessary

The most common mistake is typing three words, the way you would type into a search engine. AI gets much better when you write it a full paragraph. It also keeps everything earlier in the same conversation, so you do not have to repeat yourself.

I want your help with a task I do regularly at work. Before you give me any advice, ask me five questions about it, one question at a time, and wait for my answer before asking the next one. Do not give me a draft or a recommendation until you have asked all five.

The task is: [describe it in three or four full sentences]

After the fifth answer, type: “Now write a first draft.”

NOTICE  How different that draft is from what a one-line request would have produced.

Talk it out first, then shape the writing

Many people are stronger out loud than on the page. If that is you, stop writing from a blank page. Use the microphone in your AI app, or dictate into a document and paste. Talk for two minutes without organizing your thoughts. Ramble.

Below is a transcript of me talking out loud, unedited and unorganized. Organize it under these headings: [list your headings]. Use my own words wherever possible. Do not add any fact I did not say. At the end, under the heading "Left unfinished," list anything I started to say and did not complete.

Transcript:
[paste]

NOTICE  The “Left unfinished” list. That is the part you would have forgotten.

Show it two examples of your own good work

Instructions are weak. Examples are strong. AI cannot know what a good document looks like at your organization until you show it one.

Below are two documents I wrote that I consider good examples of my work. List the specific, repeatable elements they share: section order, headings, approximate length, level of detail, what gets a number and what gets a sentence. Do not comment on quality. Just list what is the same in both.

Document 1:
[paste]

Document 2:
[paste]

Then type: “Now use that list as the template for this new one.”

NOTICE  Keep the list. It is the first written standard for that kind of document, and you will need it in week 7.

Strip out flowery language and force specifics

AI will hand you a polished description when you needed real names and real facts. The fix is a second prompt.

Rewrite this with no adjective that cannot be verified. Replace every general description with a specific fact, a number, a company, or a name. Where you do not have the fact, write [need fact] instead of filling the gap with description.

Then cut it by half. Do not lose anything the reader would need.

NOTICE  Every [need fact] is a real gap in what you know. That list is worth more than the polished draft.

Ask it to find the hole in your own work

Most people use AI to produce. The more valuable use is to check. This is the week that changes how you work.

Read this document the way [the person who will receive it] will read it. List the three questions they are most likely to ask that this document does not answer.

[paste]

NOTICE  The answer is a numbered list you can act on before your next conversation.

Verify what you did not write, and know when to stop

Two habits, both about judgment.

Verify

Run this before AI-assisted text goes anywhere another person will read it.

Below is text you drafted for me. Mark every sentence that states a fact I did not give you. List those sentences separately, numbered, so I can verify each one myself.

[paste]

Anything on that list is yours to confirm or delete. Your name is on the document.

Stop

If you have gone three rounds and it is still wrong, stop. Fix it yourself, or ask the person down the hall who can do it in ninety seconds. Twenty minutes arguing with AI about a misaligned logo is not a win.

Write your prompt down so a colleague can use it

By now you have a prompt that works. It lives in your chat history, where no one else can find it. In the teams I work with, people build well alone and share poorly. This week closes that gap.

Here is a prompt I have used successfully several times. Rewrite it as instructions for a colleague who has never done this task. Include four things, in this order: what to paste in, what to change every time, what good output looks like, and what to check before sending it to anyone.

My prompt:
[paste]

Before you share it, put five things on it:

1. A named owner
2. Who gets to use it
3. Where it is stored
4. A name people can search for
5. A review date

A shared prompt with no named owner and no review date is a decoration.

If a colleague wants it changed, they ask the owner. They do not make a private copy. Private copies are how a team ends up with one tool and forty versions of it.

Hand it to one person

No new exercise. Give the prompt you wrote up in week 7 to one colleague and watch them use it. Then write down two things:

• The colleague's name.
• One sentence on where they got stuck.

Where they got stuck is your first revision.

Draw your lines

Every organization has a judgment its clients, donors, students, or patients are trusting a person to make. Name it before a deadline tempts you to hand it to AI. An executive search firm I worked with wrote theirs this way: AI never decides which candidates advance.

Write yours. Each line should be specific enough that a colleague could tell whether you crossed it.

Then go back to the Dana Whitfield summary. Which of your three lines would have caught it?

Your checklist

0 of 10 done   Your ticks are saved in this browser only.

• I pasted in my standing instructions.
• Week 1. I let AI ask me five questions before it drafted.
• Week 2. I talked for two minutes, then shaped the transcript.
• Week 3. I have a list of what my two best documents share.
• Week 4. I have a list of [need fact] gaps from a real draft.
• Week 5. I have three questions my reader would have asked.
• Week 6. I verified every fact I did not supply in one document.
• Week 7. One prompt is written up with an owner and a review date.
• Week 8. One colleague has used it, and I know where they got stuck.
• I wrote three lines AI never crosses at my organization.

Plain terms

Prompt

What you type or say to AI.

Context

Everything you give AI besides the request: documents, examples, your notes, who the reader is.

Standing instructions

Instructions you save once that apply to every conversation.

Hallucination

A statement from AI that sounds right and is false. The reason for week 6.

Voice mode

Speaking to AI and hearing it answer, instead of typing.

Skill

A saved prompt with instructions, so a task is done the same way each time. Some tools call these custom assistants.