You have access to a brilliant thinking partner. Chances are, you’re asking it to write emails.You’re bringing AI in too late. You ask it to write the email after you’ve decided what the email should say. You ask it to build the deck after you’ve chosen the story. You ask it to polish the proposal after the strategy is already set.
By then, AI can improve the output. It has missed the chance to help improve the outcome.
This book shows you how to bring AI into your work while the thinking is still open, where it can challenge assumptions, expand your options, strengthen decisions, and help you find a better path before you commit to one.
The foundation is your own custom AI work partner: a brilliant, highly coachable chief of staff shaped around your role, goals, standards, responsibilities, and work. It learns your context, remembers what good looks like, pushes back when your thinking is weak, and becomes more useful as you work together.
And you can build yours as you read.
Directing Intelligence includes free access to CraftAI, a guided tool that helps you create the custom instructions for your own work partner.
This is how AI starts helping you do far more than produce things faster. It becomes a partner in thinking bigger, making better decisions, and doing some of the best work of your life.
You’ll learn how to
- create a custom AI work partner shaped around your role, standards, and thinking;
- start important work with a strategic briefing using OCH: outcome, context, help;
- bring AI into the thinking early enough to challenge assumptions, explore stronger paths, and improve decisions before the direction is set; and
- improve the work partner’s instructions so it becomes more valuable over time.
The payoff is stronger thinking, better outcomes, and more room for the judgment, creativity, relationships, and care that your best work requires. The better AI gets, the more valuable your direction becomes.
You have access to a brilliant thinking partner. Chances are, you’re asking it to write emails.
You’re bringing AI in too late. You ask it to build the deck after you’ve chosen the story, create the proposal after the strategy is set, or help prepare for an important conversation after you’ve already decided what to say.
By then, AI can improve the output, but it has missed the chance to help you improve the outcome.
That’s the limitation of using AI tactically. Directing Intelligence shows you how to use AI strategically, bringing it into important work while the thinking is still open so it can challenge assumptions, expand your options, strengthen decisions, and help you find a better path before you commit to one.
The foundation is your own custom AI work partner: a brilliant chief of staff shaped around your role, goals, standards, and ways of thinking. You give it the context of your work, teach it what good looks like, and instruct it to challenge your thinking and help you improve. As you refine it through use and feedback, it becomes an increasingly valuable thinking partner.
And you can build your custom AI as you read. Directing Intelligence includes free access to CraftAI, a guided tool that helps you create the instructions for your own work partner.
Drawing on his experience coaching leaders and teams, Edwin Jansen gives you a practical, proven approach to making strategic AI use part of how you work every day.
You’ll learn how to
- start important work with a strategic briefing using OCH: outcome, context, help;
- bring AI into the thinking early enough to challenge assumptions, explore stronger paths, and improve decisions;
- develop habits for strategic AI use, from dictating rich briefings and capturing key context to using deep research for stronger decisions; and
- improve your work partner’s instructions so it becomes more valuable over time.
AI has opened one of the greatest opportunities of our careers: to think bigger, tackle challenges once beyond our reach, and make a greater contribution. Its capabilities will keep growing, expanding what each of us can attempt. Learn to direct AI well, and you can do the best work of your life.
