How Leaders Should Really Use AI

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0:47Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jance. My guest today is Jeff Woods. He is the number one international bestseller of the book, The AI Driven Leader, harnessing AI to make faster decisions. He's the founder of AI Leadership and the AI Driven Leadership Collective, where he empowers leaders to harness AI to escape operational overwhelm and think strategically to accelerate growth. So Jeff, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, John. So at some point in the book, I think I read the line that you emphasize at least the difference between growing your business and going out of business is the ability to think strategically, which has probably always been the case.

1:29So how is AI impacting or at least enhancing a leader's ability to think strategically? That was the question that changed everything for me, John. At the time, I was chief growth officer of a large public company out of India called Jindal. Steel manufacturing company, global footprint, about 100 ,000 people. When I saw AI for the first time, ChatGPT specifically, I very much saw the future. But when I started using it, I was asking myself all the wrong questions. I was asking, how do I use this to write a better email? Right, right. And I was so disappointed with the output. I felt like it was a waste of time.

2:06It did not want, like, I already got too much to do. I don't need to learn a new tool to help me do something that's as low value as email. But then I thought, what matters most as a leader? And that's when I came, what if your ability to think strategically was the difference between growing your business or going out of business? And what if I could use AI to enhance my ability to think strategically or to help me make faster, smarter decisions? That was the unlock. Because what I realized, John, my entire career, I had built, I had helped a lot of companies scale by asking leaders the right questions.

2:45It's not about having the right answers. It's about having the right questions. And I thought, oh, I've been asking AI questions. Could I turn the tables and get AI to ask me the right questions or better ones? Once I cracked that code, it was game over. Yeah. And you actually, I think a lot of people initially looked at the tools and thought, oh, I can be faster, I can automate, I can do tasks. And I think you're the first person that I came across, at least, calling it a thought partner. And I think that really is the way to look at it, right? And one of the things that I find is challenging about it, sometimes you ask it a question and you almost get the sense that it's thinking, what do you want me to tell you?

3:32What do you want the answer to be? As opposed to you going to it and saying, I don't know the answer. What should I be asking? And that idea of thought partner, I think that changes everything, doesn't it? And AI is your thought partner. That makes you the thought leader. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is important because I actually think one of the greatest risks is people abdicating their responsibility as the thought leader. And you see it already. You see people who are asking AI to generate an email and you can totally tell. They just copied and pasted the response with no human judgment, editorial oversight.

4:10That's a path to mediocrity. That's how AI replaces you. But if you recognize that as the thought leader, you are in the driver's seat, defining the scope of the prompt, giving it context, telling it the role you want it to be, asking it to interview you so it can accomplish a task. And then when it delivers the result, you don't believe it. You don't trust it. you challenge it for biases and assumptions. You make sure it's factually based and not hallucinating. You make sure you're applying your own judgment and discernment. And based on that, you engage in a conversation. That's what it means to be the thought leader.

4:45One of the things that I think keeps a lot of people from having this strategic focus, being the thought leaders, that there are a lot of business owners that listen to this show, at least are kind of in the operational weeds most of the time. How do you see AI as a tool to maybe get them out of that so they can either be more strategic or spend more time face-to-face with people? I'll tell you that question is very normal. It's also, I would suggest, not the best question to ask. Prior to writing this book and then prior to being chief growth officer of Jindal Steel, I had built a training and consulting company based on a very popular business book called The One Thing, which I'm sure a lot of people have read or heard of.

5:25I've had the authors on this show. There you go. So I partnered with them to turn their book into a company. People would always say, how do I just get through all my 80 % tasks so I can free up time to do the 20 % priorities that drive 80 % of the results? Wrong question because Parkinson's law says work expands to the time you allow it. There will always be more 80 % tasks than there is time. So you can spend all day trying to clear your plate and it will just keep filling back up. The opportunity is to say, I'm just going to start focusing on the 20 % priorities that drive 80 % of the results.

6:02I don't even worry about the 80 % tasks. If we're going to go through the learning curve on using AI, let's go straight to the 20 % that's going to drive 80 % of the value and learn there. So I can imagine somebody saying, well, what do I do with the other 80 %? Just don't do it. Think of it this way. You ever tried to juggle balls, John? Yeah, I'm pretty bad at it. What's the most balls you've ever been able to juggle? Four. Dang. Okay, you're already in the 1%. Imagine I throw 20 balls in the air and time freezes. And you look up and you see the balls. Have you already made peace with the fact that a lot of those balls are going to drop?

6:44Yeah, you bet. Yeah. Now imagine that 17 of those balls, John, are rubber. if they fall and hit the ground, what happens? They're probably going to bounce. Yeah. Now I want you to imagine that the balance three, they're a delicate thin glass. When those hit the ground, what happens? They probably are going to shatter. They shatter. The glass balls are your 20 % priorities. Those are the ones you can't drop. The 80%, it's the rubber. People think, but what do I do about the 80 %? Again, it's not the best question. Balls are going to drop. Let's make sure we're dropping the rubber ones. Now, when it comes to AI, one, it's going to take care of itself because the 80 % stuff is all tactical, frankly, machine-based work.

7:31It's focused on outputs like generate this report, draft this message. AI is going to augment or automate most of that. It's just going to go away. What doesn't go away is the 20 % that's aligned with our strengths as humans. So let's Just focus there. Can I share an example of what this looks like? Make it real. You know, that was my next question. I wanted a real world application. Yeah. So I have a very simple framework for when I write prompts. It's called CRIT, Context Role Interview Task. If you only take one thing from this episode, that's it. Like, I literally want you to get a sticky note.

8:04I'm holding it up. And in Sharpie, it says Context Role Interview Task. You give AI lots of context. You then assign it a role. This is where you tell it to become a certain type of expert because it's been trained on so much data, like 200 to 500 million books worth of data. You literally describe any type of expert. It can simulate it at your fingertips. Massively powerful. So that's context. That's role. Interview. This is where I turn the tables and I say, interview me. Ask me one question at a time, up to three questions to gain deeper context. That is literally what I type word for word.

8:45So rewind it and type it out. And then your task is whatever you want AI to do. Here's a real example. I was presenting to a group of CEOs and I asked them, what are the biggest problems you're facing in your business right now? If we can just solve them, it's going to unlock a new level of growth. The question itself, John, is strategic because I really don't care about AI. I care about making businesses grow. One CEO looks at me and says, I got a big problem. I run a manufacturing company here in the US. I leased all this equipment from this company in Japan. But things have shifted in the market.

9:14The debt structure is killing us. We're going to go bankrupt if we don't get it restructured. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. What have you done? And he lists five strategies he's deployed and said, I feel like I've done everything and none of this has worked. Because the board in Japan is refusing to restructure the debt because they think they'll lose face in Japanese society. I have no next step. We're probably going out of business. Can AI help? That's my other sticky note, by the way. I have a sticky note on my desk that says, how can AI help me do this? I have these two on my desk. One that says, how can AI help me do this?

9:45And the other that says context, role, interview, task. You put those two sticky notes on your desk, game over. So I pulled up a screen and I wrote context, role, interview, task. Here is the actual prompt I wrote. Context, I'm a manufacturing CEO. I leased all this equipment from a company in Japan. Things have shifted in the market. The debt is killing us. We're going to go bankrupt if it doesn't get restructured. I feel like we've tried everything. And then I listed all five strategies he had deployed. None of it has worked because it's a public company in Japan. The board is refusing to restructure the debt because they think they'll lose face in Japanese society.

10:20I have no next steps and I fear we're going out of business. Your role is to act as an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt. Interview me. Ask me one question at a time, up to three questions to gain deeper context than your task. is to generate five non-obvious strategies I could deploy to get the board to restructure the debt. That was the prompt. For those of you who are listening to this, you might be thinking, whoa, I didn't know you could talk to AI that way. This is why this is not Google. So here's what happened. AI turned the tables. And as an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt, it researched 2 ,000 years of Japanese culture to ask, do you have any relationships with any influential executives in Japan that the board would respect?

11:14John, I turned and looked at the CEO and he goes, oh my gosh, I would have never asked that question. I actually do. And then it asked two more questions just like that and came back and said, here's your five non-obvious strategies. Number one on the list, the saving face consortium. It said, you have enough relationships with all the right people in Japan. man, approach them to acquire your debt. Give them really favorable terms. Your debt gets restructured. The board saves face. I look at the CEO. He's holding back tears. He looks at the people in the room and he says, I haven't slept in 90 days.

11:53I've literally been making peace with the fact that we are going out of business. But in less than 10 minutes, I got hope. Two months later, John, my phone rings and it's a text message. And it says, the ball is moving, I actually think this is going to get done. What if your ability to think strategically was the difference between growing your business or going out of business? And what if all you had to do was ask the right questions? Do you ever feel like TV ads are just for the big guys? Well, not anymore. Ad Critter makes it easy and affordable for small business owners to run targeted connected TV ads that drive real results.

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13:12One of the things are moving so fast right now in the AI space or at least the hype of the AI space. that I find a lot of organizations are actually struggling culturally as much as they are strategically with the embracing AI. You want to talk a little bit about how you've actually, I mean, there's a lot of fear of job displacement. Sure. You know, let's just say it like it is. I mean, how, how are companies addressing or how should they be addressing kind of the cultural shifts going on with AI? Yeah. And this is why the AI driven leader is a leadership book more than an AI book. You have to be practicing this yourself and understanding what it can do and what it cannot do to be able to lead this change.

13:56I went back in history, John, and I studied all the past technological disruptions from the printing, the steam engine, assembly line, electricity, internet, because I found myself thinking, haven't we been here before? History repeats itself. What can we learn from our past to guide our future? What I realized is that technology has always changed the skills we apply and the processes we follow. And that is all a job is. So if you think of it like an algebraic formula, job equals skills applied times processes followed. So my guidance to leaders is first and foremost, know that formula. Because if somebody's afraid of losing their job, and maybe you are, I used to be, by the way, educate people that their job is a series of skills they apply and processes they follow.

14:41Here's the good news. At one point in time, they did not have the skills to do the job. They did not know the processes to do the job. What they did have was the ability to learn. AI is going to make certain skills less valuable and certain skills more valuable. Let's have a conversation about what those skills are. And the processes, the way we're doing things now, that's going to change, but no biggie. We're going to invent new processes. Here's where I think this becomes the great liberator. Most people spend most of their time doing three things. checking email slacker teams, sitting in meetings, and then doing their to-do list.

15:15Most of which is filled with 80 % tasks that drive 20 % of the results, and then some 20 % priorities sprinkled in. But if we're being really honest, most people spend most of their time doing the things that do not deliver the greatest results. So what if there was a technology that could actually liberate you and free you from all all that low-level tactical stuff. So you finally had the space to breathe and focus on the 20 % priorities that drive 80 % of the results, but give you superhuman ability when you do it. That's pretty exciting. Is that some fantasy? No, that's my life. That is my life now.

15:58That is the life of my team. That is the life of all the companies that we work with in our executive network called the AI Driven Leadership Collective. This is about with strong leadership, looking at the strengths that every person has, focusing those strengths on the 20 % priorities of their role in alignment with the company goals and using AI to enhance people because it can never replace them. One of the things that I think is changing rapidly, and I know that you talk about this, and that's the whole decision-making process. A lot of business leaders, you know, we weigh pros and cons. They'd ask people, they'd research.

16:32How is AI transforming, you know, how we make decisions today? It's really tough to read the label when you're inside the box. And we are making decisions with lots of biases and assumptions. Some we're conscious of, some we are unconscious of. I love when I have to make a decision going to AI and writing crit. Context, I have a decision I have to make. I'm between these. I did it this morning. We're between four options for a technology product we're building, and I gave it tons of context about each of the options. Your role is to act as my thought partner. In this case, you're also a world-class.

17:08You're not only my thought partner, you're a world-class chief product officer who's great at asking questions to identify what is the true source of sustainable value that we can build a competitive advantage around. Interview me, ask me one question at a time, up to five questions to gain deeper context. then your task is to make a recommendation on where you think we should focus because it's going to be most aligned with our strengths while leading to a defensible, sustainable, competitive advantage. I wrote that prompt this morning. And did you make a decision? Yes. Yes. I don't know how, you know, you used to say, where do you see this industry in five years?

17:48Now it's like five minutes, it feels like, but you know, where do you think, you know, So what's AI's role in leadership over the next couple of years, you think? I think AI's role in leadership is enhancing us as leaders in terms of our ability to think, our ability to challenge our biases and assumptions, our ability to make way faster decisions that are way more valuable. But I think what's more valuable is what's our role as leaders in an AI-driven world. There are companies that are going to use this to cut heads. I think they have the wrong mindset. Your number one asset in your company is your people.

18:25And for every dollar you put in, you might be getting$1.20 or$1.50 out right now. With this technology, you could put a dollar in and be getting 10 out, 100 out, 1 ,000 out, a million out. If I have that kind of asset in my company, I'm not trying to get rid of them. I am trying to make them AI-driven and then strategically add more because the ROI is so good. Now, what I do think is going to happen is that the number, the revenue, the profit, the throughput is going to massively go up with the same headcount. Those, however, that's for those that are willing to adopt a growth mindset and view this as an opportunity and are willing to let go of who they've been so they can reimagine who they can become.

19:15That is not going to be everyone, John. There are going to be people that are very stuck in their ways, that view this as a threat, that just cling to the way things used to be. AI will not take their job. Someone who's AI-driven will. So I know you speak to a lot of groups, probably very diverse groups. And so you probably encounter leaders that are still asking the question like, what do I do first? How do you advise somebody that, hey, here's how to start integrating this into your leadership practices? first you have to recognize that this is not something you delegate to it yeah because this is not about the technology right this is about casting a new vision for your future it is about defining your strategy for how you are going to win because whatever you thought your competitive advantage was would it serve you to evaluate if it's still defensible or what's changed when so much is changing and then so you cast the vision you define strategy and then you have to lead the change, which means you don't delegate this to IT and say, figure it out, or to HR and say, go figure it out.

20:17You view this as a leadership priority. You must first walk the talk, which means you have to become an AI-driven leader. I'm showing you how. Don't worry about using it to be your Google. Don't worry about using it to write a better email. Use it as a thought partner for the 20 % priorities that drive 80 % of the results. How? Two sticky notes, John. put one sticky note on your desk that says, how can AI help me do this? Because every day you're going to be doing something that matters and you're going to be doing it the old way. Yeah. Relying on your human processing power. This sticky note is going to get you outside the box and you're going to go, huh, how can AI help me review my financial statements?

21:00Real use case, by the way, what would that prompt even look like? And then I saw the other sticky note, context role, interview task. Context, here's my financial statements, drag and drop. role. Your role is to act as a strategic CFO who's world-class at telling a CEO the top five non-obvious insights about their business based on their financials that they should know that they don't know. Interview me, ask me one question at a time, up to five questions to gain deeper context about our business. Then your task is to tell me what those top five things are. John, that was so mind-blowing to me.

21:39That is now my process for reviewing my financials every month.

21:45I don't know what you just did there, but I heard a gong sound. I expanded my arms like, ta-da, and accidentally hit my microphone holder. But that was great. It was like a sound effect. It was perfect. Jeff, I appreciate you coming and spending some passionate time talking about AI with us today. Is there someplace you invite people to connect with you? Find out obviously more about the book and the collective. Yes. So the book is the AI driven leader. It's on Amazon, audible, Kindle. I strongly encourage you to read this with your team. It will just, it'll start that flywheel spinning real, real quick.

22:22And if you do decide to purchase the book, if you email the receipt to book at AI leadership.com, I will send you a full prompt library with like 40 highly strategic prompts from the book in a PDF form that you can get started with. So that's book at AIleadership.com. AIleadership.com is the website. You can learn about the newsletter, the collective. This is, our goal is to create a new category of leader. We want to assemble a network of AI-driven leaders. Every single person is C-level. So CEO, COO, CSO, CFO. They are all the person that is driving vision and strategy. they have no interest in becoming a technical expert.

23:03That's not the goal. The goal is to cast vision, define strategy, and collaborate on how we are going to lead the change in our companies when AI is going to change everything about our companies. You can do that by yourself, or you can do that with other people so that you stay ahead. That is our mission. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and share, and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Thank you, John. music music