SPECIAL GUEST!! Geoff Woods 🤯 You're Prompting AI Wrong | Ep. 551
August 14, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readWhen Geoff Woods first saw ChatGPT in December 2022, two weeks after its release, he didn't think of it as a tool for writing faster emails. He saw the next skill he needed to master—the same way a CEO once told him to stop asking what job to get and instead ask what skills would serve him anywhere. That instinct led Woods from a 2,000-follower LinkedIn account to selling 100,000 copies of The AI Driven Leader in its first year, making it the number one AI leadership book on Amazon. But the real shift came when he realized he was using AI wrong: asking it questions like Google instead of making it ask him questions.
The CRIT Framework: Turning AI Into a Thought Partner
Woods noticed that most people use AI for tactical tasks—drafting emails, generating content, doing research. These bring some value, but they rarely clear his 80/20 bar: is this a 20% use case that will drive 80% of results? For leaders, the real opportunity is using AI to solve the biggest, most complicated problems. That requires a different prompting approach.
The framework is called CRIT: Context, Role, Interview, Task. You write it as a ladder in your AI tool, skipping lines between each section.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introduction & Guest Intro** - Jay introduces Geoff Woods, author of *The AI Driven Leader*, which sold over 100,000 copies in its first year.
- 2 (03:02) **The Strategic Pivot: From Tactical AI to Thought Partner** - Geoff realized he was using AI for low-value tasks like writing better emails, when he could use it as a strategic thought partner.
- 3 (04:50) **The 80/20 Rule for AI Use Cases** - Geoff argues that content generation is rarely a 20% use case that drives 80% of results, so he ignores it.
- 4 (06:26) **The CRIT Prompt Framework (The Core Actionable Tool)** - Geoff introduces CRIT: Context, Role, Interview, Task. This is the single most important prompt framework for strategic thinking.
- 5 (07:37) **Real-World CRIT Example: Saving a Manufacturing Company from Bankruptcy** - Geoff walks through a live case where a CEO was about to go out of business due to a Japanese board blocking a debt restructuring.
- 6 (10:56) **The Core Distinction: Assistant vs. Thought Partner** - Most people use AI as a faster assistant; the AI-driven leader uses it as a thought partner to solve complex problems.
- 7 (11:48) **The Data Privacy Concern Addressed** - Jay asks about the fear of sharing sensitive information with AI.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
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Geoff invites listeners to visit AIleadership.com and look for the Accelerator, the two-day program built to get an entire leadership team using AI as a thought partner. He also points people to his book, The AI-Driven Leader, and his podcast of the same name.
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Most people are using AI to write faster emails and call it a tr
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