The AI-Driven Leader (Book Summary)

The AI-Driven Leader:  Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions by Geoff Woods

Part 1. Redefine Your Leadership in the AI Era

Chapter 1 The Rise of AI and the AI-Driven Leader

• The true game changer isn’t using AI to craft better emails; it’s harnessing AI to elevate your strategic thinking.
• Instead of asking, “How do I solve this problem?” start asking, “How can AI help me solve this problem?”
• Here are three big problems AI can help you solve immediately.
  • Turning Data into Decisions
    Attached is our strategic plan. I want you to act as my AI Thought Partner™ by asking me one question at a time to challenge my biases and the assumptions we have made. I also want you to challenge if our plan has the sufficiency to achieve our goal. Once you have enough information, give me a summary of where you think our plan is strong and where you see potential weaknesses, and recommend ways we can improve it.
  • Doing More with Less
  • Aligning Short-Term Efforts With Long-Term Vision
• The ONE Thing: Identify the one thing you could do such that by doing it, everything else would be easier or unnecessary.
• “You’ll know you have a world-class product when every customer brings you another customer. Go build that!”
• “Anytime you’re hitting a ceiling of achievement, you’re just missing a person.”
• As a leader, your job isn’t to be your company’s AI expert — it’s to drive growth. AI is evolving too fast for any one person to keep up. The real competitive edge isn’t having all the answers — it’s surrounding yourself with the right people and asking the right questions to unlock collective knowledge and win.
• You are the Thought Leader — AI is your Thought Partner.

Chapter 2 We’ve Been Here Before: What Past Technological Revolutions Can Teach AI-Driven Leaders

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Chapter 3 Shift From Operational Overwhelm to Strategic Clarity: The Essential Mindset for AI-Driven Leaders

• In the world of AI-driven leadership, the value of human work will shift to emphasize our unique human strengths, such as creativity, strategic thinking, problem-solving, communication, and collaboration.
• I would like you to act as a Thought Partner by asking me one question at a time. Here’s the situation: (provide the necessary context). Here’s what I’m trying to solve: (then insert where you need help). Please help me think through potential solutions.

Part 2. Become an AI-Driven Leader

Chapter 4 Understand AI: What It Is, How It Works, and How to Get Started

• Tell AI how you want it to complete the task.
  • Do you want to respond in a certain tone?
  • Do you want your answer to be succinct and to the point or detailed and thorough?
  • Do you want it to respond using bullets or a numbered list?
  • Do you want your answer provided in a table with certain columns?
• You may want it to explain why it is giving the recommendation it is giving so you can better understand its reasoning. Asking it to explain why will also help increase the quality of the result you get.
• To unlock AI as your Thought Partner, ask it to interview you to gather all the necessary information and then complete a task. Make sure to tell it to ask you one question at a time.
• You can even draw attention to sections by putting titles in ALL CAPS or putting a hashtag before and after — for example,  #YOUR TASK#.
• Based on this information. I’m thinking that we should use AI to create the content internally. I want you to act as the Challenger. Your job is to stress test my thinking to make sure I’m not only seeing the upside but that I also see the downside and non-obvious second-order consequences. Ask me one question at a time to challenge my thinking.

Chapter 5 Supercharge Your Leadership: Five AI Use Cases You Can Use Today

• “How might AI help me do this?”
• Here are three solutions I’ve come up with: (Then I listed those solutions). I would like you to identify alternative solutions that I have not thought of yet so I can have a comprehensive list to consider.
• Please structure your answer in order of priority, and explain why you are making each recommendation.
• Top five ways you can use AI to immediately boost your productivity. Here they are:
  • Strategic Thinking
  • Decision-making
  • Content creation
  • Idea generation
  • Analysis
• The Communicator can help develop transparent messages that address issues directly, reassure stakeholders, and outline clear resolutions.
• The Communicator can also assist in creating high-quality performance reviews for your people.
• Many users mistakenly expect AI to lead the creative process.
• This is not how you will get value from AI. It will only lead to mediocre work.
• Here are three key ways AI can help with idea generation:
  • Generating additional ideas to expand your initial list of solutions.
  • Identifying non-obvious ideas to challenge your biases and assumptions.
  • Narrowing down a broad list of ideas to a shortlist for further consideration.
• I want you to act as an ambitious non-technical executive of a growth company. Here is an idea I have for a product offering: (then I describe the product). Here’s the problem I believe it solves and the benefits it will bring. My goal is that you will see this solution and think, “This is exactly what I need! “Your goal is to tell me what you like about my idea, what you do not like, and the top changes I should consider making and explain why they are important to you.

Chapter 6 The High Price of The Wrong Questions: Using AI to Overcome Biases and Assumptions

• We can’t just rely on assumptions based on past wins. As leaders, we have to be on constant lookout for our own biases and assumptions.
• Prompt AI to play the role of the Challenger, challenging your assumptions and calling out potential biases in your thinking.
• If you ask AI to build on flawed foundations, it will simply magnify the mistakes. Instead, the team could have prompted AI more effectively, saying, “I’m an agent with EMC Insurance. Here are five solutions I’ve come up with. Please identify alternative solutions you think would be more creative.”
• AI is like a crystal ball for your business, able to simulate how things might play out depending on different factors. You can ask it to simulate everything from economic outcomes to competitive responses to how customers or internal stakeholders might respond.
• I am an executive with a consumer packaged goods company. We have a meeting coming up with the CEO of Whole Foods. Our goal is to gain strategic alignment as a preferred partner. Your role is to research Jason Buechel, the CEO, and identify what matters most to him in a partnership.
• Now act as Jason Buechel, the Whole Foods CEO, in reviewing the attached presentation against the six priorities you’ve outlined. Please structure your response highlighting: • The strengths of our presentation. • What we are missing. • What we can do to improve.
• Attached is our strategic plan for the next fiscal year. Acting as the Devil’s Advocate, review our plan and ask critical questions that could expose flaws in the plan’s ability to achieve our overall goal. Please prepare a detailed report evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of our strategy, and offer recommendations to improve.
• [Prompt AI to conduct] Premortems and Postmortems

Chapter 7 Collapse the Time From Data to Decisions

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Chapter 8 Navigate Short-Term Pressures Without Sacrificing Long-Term Growth

• A McKinsey Global Institute study found that a whopping 63% of executives admit to delaying new projects that would deliver long-term value, all because they’re afraid of missing their quarterly earnings targets.
• I need your help balancing short-term results with long-term growth. I want you to review our strategic plan, then interview me to help me identify what will deliver the most long-term value and where we can deliver quick wins that will keep the board happy while we invest in the future.
• The Jindal family identified three priorities to reward:
  • Results over effort. It was about the results delivered, not hours worked.
  • Year-over-year growth in cash score (EBITDA minus changes in working capital). EBITDA doesn’t pay bills; cash does.
  • Long-term retention of top talent. We wanted our best leaders to stick around.
• Part of being an AI-driven leader is not about having all the answers; it’s about having the skill to ask the right questions and leverage data and technology to search for the right answers.

Chapter 9 Accelerate Strategic Momentum: Make Faster, Smarter Decisions with AI

• AI can serve as your strategic Thought Partner, challenging your assumptions and ensuring that you’re tackling the root problem, not just a symptom. It can test for alignment by evaluating how solving this issue fits into your goals and long-term competitive advantage. Additionally, AI can help you weigh the opportunity cost
• Role-play with me as if you are the decision maker. I’ll present a recommendation for your approval, and I want you to simulate their likely response. Challenge me where they might resist so I can practice my responses. Afterward, provide feedback on: 1. What I did well. 2. Where my approach was not strong enough. 3. The key changes I can make to increase my odds of success.
• Here’s a prompt you can use to get you outside the box when it comes to evaluating risk: I need to make an important decision. Here is the situation: (describe the situation). Here are the solutions I have identified so far: (list the solutions you’ve identified). I want you to act as an expert in identifying risk by asking me one question at a time to help me see the second-order consequences of these solutions.

Part 3. Build an AI-Driven Organization

Chapter 10 Lead with Strategic Clarity: Ensure Year-Round Alignment

• Take a look at our strategic plan for our upcoming fiscal year. Acting as an executive coach, I need you to challenge our assumptions. Start by questioning our goals: are we really pushing the envelope, or are we playing it safe? Then assess the structure of our plan: is it robust enough to achieve our goals even when things don’t go as planned, or are we too reliant on ideal conditions? After our discussion, I’d appreciate your feedback on the strengths of our plan, areas for improvement, and actionable advice to ensure we’re set up for success.
• Act as my Thought Partner and interview me with one question at a time to conduct a quarterly strategic review of my business. The questions should focus on these four drivers: 1. Strategy: What competitive advantage are we building in the long term through the actions we are taking in the short term? 2. Execution: What progress have we made toward our strategic plan so far this year? What changes do we need to make? 3. People: Are the right people in the right seats doing the right things and growing in the right direction? 4. Technology: How might we harness technology to help our people do higher-quality work in a fraction of the time, increase efficiency, and deliver more value to customers? Start with strategy and continue through each driver in order. Then give me feedback on what I’m doing well and where you see potential holes in my thinking, and list the top things I should consider focusing on in the next ninety days.

Chapter 11 The Critical First 30 Days: Focused Execution to Drive Results

• Want to know the telltale sign that your company doesn’t have a common language around prioritization? When a new priority surfaces, most of the conversation is about the new item, not about what will be deprioritized to make room for it.
• One-On-Ones
• Ask great questions to evaluate if they are making the progress they expect to be making. How clear are they on what matters most this week? Are they prioritizing so the most important things get sufficient space on their calendars? What are the distractions that are threatening their focus? How can you support them? Where do you see opportunities for them to perform at an even higher level? How can you guide them there?

Chapter 12 10x the Impact of Every Employee

• Elon Musk’s Five Steps for Process Improvement
  • Question every requirement.
  • Delete any part of the process you can.
  • Simplify and optimize.
  • Accelerate.
  • Automate.
• “Standards without consequences are merely suggestions.” — Gene Rivers

Chapter 13 Integrate AI Seamlessly: Change Management Strategies for Smooth Transitions

• Technology is just a tool to achieve your goals. It is you as the leader who determines its impact. Strategy first. Technology second.
• I would like you to act as a Thought Partner by asking me one question at a time. Here’s the situation: (provide the necessary context). Here’s what I’m trying to solve: (then insert where you need help). Please help me think through potential solutions.

Chapter 14 Go from 0 to 1: The Simple Path to Deliver Value with AI

• Expanding Your Use of AI: A Simple 3-Step Framework
  • Ask AI to Interview You: Please interview me by asking one question at a time to find a way you can assist with (insert category) that I need to tackle this week.
  • Generate a High-Quality Prompt: Please create a high-quality prompt for that. Also please explain why you structured it the way you did so I can learn how to write great prompts from you.
• Execute the Prompt: Great. Now please execute that prompt so you can help me accomplish this task.

Conclusion Redefine Who You Are and Who You Can Become

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