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The CRIT framework — Context, Role, Interview, Task — is the method Geoff Woods uses to help executive teams make decisions in minutes that used to take months. In this episode of Sparks by Ignium, Phil Rose sits down with Geoff, author of The AI-Driven Leader and the strategic advisor who helped grow Jindal Steel & Power's market cap from $750 million to over $12 billion in four years. Geoff's message is clear: AI adoption is not the goal. Growth is the goal. And the difference between leaders who achieve it and those who don't has nothing to do with the technology.
In this episode, discover:
• Why 100% of the 200+ executives Geoff interviewed said AI was the future — and why fewer than 5% had done anything about it
• The CRIT framework (Context, Role, Interview, Task) — and how four steps put you in the top 1% of AI users in the world
• How a manufacturing CEO facing bankruptcy found a path forward in under 10 minutes — using one question he'd never thought to ask himself
• The three critical gaps killing AI adoption inside companies: the leadership gap, the alignment gap, and the execution gap
• Why Geoff doesn't care about AI — and what he actually cares about instead
• How to build your own AI board of advisors featuring the world's greatest thinkers
• The story of Marianella — from executive assistant with zero AI experience to head of a Latin American advisory practice in eight months
• Why your ability to think is a muscle — and the real risk of letting AI atrophy in
• The five skills that will go up in value no matter what AI does: strategic thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creation
• Geoff's closing message — drawn from Michelangelo — about the masterpiece that already exists inside every one of us
It all starts with two sticky notes and a sharpie. One CRIT a day. Thirty days.
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What is the CRIT Framework?
The CRIT Framework (developed by Geoff Woods) A four-step method for communicating with AI that moves you from generic outputs to boardroom-quality strategic thinking.
C — Context: Give AI detailed context about your specific situation. AI doesn't know your business — you have to tell it.
R — Role: Define the exact expert you need AI to be. You now have access to the expertise of the world — use it.
I — Interview: Don't ask AI questions. Make AI ask YOU questions — one at a time, up to three. This is the game-changer. It pulls deeper context from your thinking and elevates how you lead.
T — Task: With all that context gathered, now give AI its task. The output will be unrecognisably better than a standard prompt.
Start here: one CRIT per day on something strategic. Do it for 30 days. You won't recognise yourself.
C — Context: Give AI detailed context about your specific situation. AI doesn't know your business — you have to tell it.
R — Role: Define the exact expert you need AI to be. You now have access to the expertise of the world — use it.
I — Interview: Don't ask AI questions. Make AI ask YOU questions — one at a time, up to three. This is the game-changer. It pulls deeper context from your thinking and elevates how you lead.
T — Task: With all that context gathered, now give AI its task. The output will be unrecognisably better than a standard prompt.
Start here: one CRIT per day on something strategic. Do it for 30 days. You won't recognise yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):
Q: What is the CRIT framework?
A: The CRIT framework is a four-step method for using AI strategically, developed by Geoff Woods. CRIT stands for Context, Role, Interview, and Task. Unlike standard prompting, the Interview step reverses the usual dynamic — instead of asking AI questions, you instruct AI to ask you questions, pulling deeper context from your thinking and generating significantly better outputs.
Q: Who is Geoff Woods?
A: Geoff Woods is a strategic advisor and the author of The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions. As Chief Growth Officer of Jindal Steel & Power, he helped grow the company's market cap from $750 million to over $12 billion in four years. He now helps executive teams and companies use AI to drive growth and competitive advantage through his company, AI Leadership.
Q: What is The AI-Driven Leader book about?
A: The AI-Driven Leader by Geoff Woods teaches business leaders how to use AI as a strategic thought partner — not just a productivity tool. The book introduces the CRIT framework, addresses the three gaps in AI adoption (leadership, alignment, execution), and argues that the biggest opportunity in AI is elevating how leaders think and make decisions. The book is available at https://www.aileadership.com/book.
Q: How do I use AI as a strategic thought partner instead of just a productivity tool?
A: The key shift is to stop asking AI questions and start making AI ask you questions. Using Geoff Woods' CRIT framework — giving AI Context, defining its Role, letting it Interview you, then assigning the Task — transforms AI from a search engine into a strategic thinking partner that challenges your assumptions and surfaces solutions you wouldn't have found alone.
Q: What are the three gaps that stop companies from getting value from AI?
A: Geoff Woods identifies three gaps: the Leadership Gap (executives declaring AI adoption but not personally using it), the Alignment Gap (pushing AI without winning hearts and minds — people are afraid), and the Execution Gap (applying AI to the wrong things rather than the 20% of activities that drive 80% of value).
Q: What is an AI board of advisors and how do you build one?
A: An AI board of advisors is a set of AI personas modelled on real people whose skills complement your own weaknesses. Geoff Woods built his by using CRIT to identify the skills he needed, then choosing famous people who exemplified them — Steve Jobs for vision and storytelling, Warren Buffett for investment thinking, Keith Cunningham for strategic questioning. Each board member has defined areas where they can and cannot advise, and Geoff brings major decisions to them daily.
Q: What skills will go up in value as AI takes over more tasks?
A: According to Geoff Woods, the five skills that will increase in value regardless of how AI develops are: strategic thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration (with both humans and technology), and creation. He advises parents and leaders alike to put young people in situations that develop these skills rather than focusing on specific job titles or roles.
Q: How does AI help with decision-making without replacing human judgement?
A: Geoff Woods' approach keeps humans firmly in the driver's seat. He treats every first AI response as "the bad answer" and applies three questions: what do I like about this? What do I not like? What are the top changes I want? He then has AI stress-test its own output by playing the role of a challenger — finding every crack in the reasoning. The human applies judgement throughout; AI provides the breadth of knowledge and the quality of questions.
More about Geoff:
Geoff Woods is not just an AI expert — he is the strategic advisor CEOs call when they know they need to harness AI but can't afford to get it wrong. As Chief Growth Officer of Jindal Steel & Power, Geoff helped grow the company's market cap from $750 million to over $12 billion in just four years. He's since helped executive teams unlock hundreds of millions in savings and build lasting competitive advantages by applying AI where it actually drives growth. At AI Leadership, Geoff and his team help companies harness AI to grow enterprise value and strengthen competitive advantage. His book, The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions, is a number-one business release changing how leaders think — not just about technology, but about themselves.
Connect with Geoff:
• Book page (UK and international purchase options): https://www.aileadership.com/book
• LinkedIn: Search Geoff Woods — share your copy of the book and remember Geoff reads and personally comments on every post!
Key nuggets to listen out for:
"I don't care about AI. I don't think AI adoption is the goal of any company. I think we all want to drive growth, a better business, and a better quality of life. The difference that makes the difference is not the tech. It's you as the leader."
"Most people are treating it like Google. They're asking, how do I grow my business? And they're getting an answer that's generic and not that valuable. But if you knew how to talk to the technology, you could unlock huge value."
"I don't ask AI questions anymore. I make AI ask me questions. Because as humans, we're pretty bad at proactively giving AI enough context. Make it AI's job to ask you questions to pull deeper context out of your head. It will elevate your strategic thinking. It will shift how you lead."
"I haven't slept in 90 days. I've been making peace with the fact that we are going out of business — but in less than 10 minutes, I got hope."
"What if your ability to think strategically was the difference between growing your business or going out of business? How might it change how you think? How might it change how you structure your calendar?"
"You are the thought leader. AI is in the passenger seat. You write the CRIT. You get AI to interview you. And you don't blindly trust it — you apply your judgment and discernment."
"It's really tough to read the label when you're inside the box. And every one of us is in our own box, which is our life."
"Do that for 30 days. You won't even recognise yourself. You will be seeing colour instead of black and white."
"Might it be possible that every single one of you listening to this has a masterpiece inside? But maybe you're carrying around so many layers of tactical things that stop you from actually being you."
"AI can only enhance you, because it can never replace you. It starts by asking better questions. Who can you become? That answer lies within you."
Coaching Questions for Listeners:
Geoff challenged us to stop being given answers and start being asked better questions. Here are six to sit with after you listen:
Q1. What is the single biggest problem you are facing right now that — if solved — would unlock a new level of growth? Have you brought that problem to AI using CRIT yet?
Q2. When you look honestly at how you use AI today, are you using it as a productivity shortcut or as a genuine strategic thought partner? What would have to change?
Q3. As a leader, are you personally modelling AI adoption to your team — or are you asking them to do something you're not doing yourself?
Q4. Which 20% of what you currently do drives 80% of your business value — and how could AI free you to spend more time there?
Q5. If you assembled your own AI board of advisors today, who would sit on it and what gaps in your thinking would you want them to challenge?
Q6. You are not what you do. If AI gradually took over the tasks that fill your days, who would you be — and what would you build?
Resources:
Book featured in this episode:
• Geoff Woods — The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions
Other authors and thinkers referenced:
• Keith Cunningham — The Road Less Stupid; Keys to the Vault
• Dan Sullivan — The Gap and the Gain (Strategic Coach)
• Tony Robbins — Business Mastery
AI tools discussed in this episode:
• Claude (claude.ai / Claude Cowork)
• ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Llama
• Fathom and Granola (AI meeting note-takers)
• Notion, Google Drive (integrated with Claude Cowork)
• Wispr Flow(voice transcription)
Learn More:
• Visit the Ignium website: https://www.igniumconsult.com
• Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank: https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank
• Listen to the show on Transistor: https://sparksbyignium.transistor.fm/episodes
• Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/sparks-by-ignium/id1525777023
• Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7KDlz9FFdVJuJTJWAZmrvG?si=9d3c43e07d9b4478
Creators and Guests
What is Sparks for Growth?
Conversations with some fo the worlds most amazing business founders, leaders and experts, examining the changing landscape of leadership, purpose, business growth, Scaling Up and change with business leaders and owners in mind. We cover a mix of topics designed to ignite (or re-ignite) your SPARK help you SCALE and then SUSTAIN your growth one conversation at a time.
Learn More: visit the Ignium https://www.igniumconsult.com/
Subscribe for more exclusive content in the Ignium Spark Tank: https://www.igniumconsult.com/the-spark-tank/
Connect with your host Phil Rose on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachphilrose/
SPARKS BY IGNIUM — EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Guest: Geoff Woods | Author of The AI-Driven Leader | Founder, AI Leadership
Topic: The CRIT Framework: Using AI for Strategic Decisions — Not Just Productivity
Host: Phil Rose | Ignium Consulting
Air Date: 7 July 2026
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CRIT framework AI, AI strategic thought partner,
Geoff Woods AI-Driven Leader, leadership and AI 2026, Sparks by Ignium
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CHAPTER MARKERS
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Use these timestamps to navigate the episode on Transistor, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Chapter markers are also indexed by AI search engines including Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
00:00 Welcome & Introduction — Geoff Woods, Author of The AI-Driven Leader
01:26 Why This Book Is About Leadership, Not Technology
01:53 December 2022: Seeing ChatGPT for the First Time — and Recognising the Future
02:53 The Critical Shift: Stop Using AI for Everything and Focus on What Drives Value
04:08 From AI-as-Google to AI as Strategic Thought Partner
05:03 The CRIT Framework Explained: Context, Role, Interview, Task
06:42 The Interview Step — Why You Should Make AI Ask YOU Questions
07:42 The CEO Who Hadn't Slept in 90 Days: CRIT Applied to a Bankruptcy Crisis
12:11 The Saving Face Consortium — A Solution Nobody Had Thought Of
14:23 Hundreds of Millions in Impact in 20 Minutes: More Boardroom Examples
16:02 Three Gaps Killing AI Adoption: Leadership, Alignment, and Execution
17:42 What It Means to See Colour Instead of Black and White
19:33 Building a Sales Coach Agent Inside Claude — AI Driving Real Team Performance
21:49 Start Here: One CRIT a Day, Every Day, for 30 Days
22:38 Two Sticky Notes That Changed How Geoff Leads
23:36 Building an AI CFO Inside Claude — Automated Financial Intelligence
26:43 The Light Bulb Moment: How to Win the C-Suite on AI
29:44 The Greatest Risk We Face: Your Brain Is a Muscle — Don't Let It Atrophy
30:43 How to Never Blindly Trust AI: The 'Bad Answer' Framework
31:42 Playing AI Against Itself to Stress-Test Any Strategic Decision
35:29 Keith Cunningham and the $100 Million Habit of Thinking
37:28 Building Your Own AI Board of Advisors
41:53 Marianella: From Executive Assistant to Executive Multiplier in 8 Months
48:34 What to Tell Your Kids About AI and the Future of Work
50:23 Five Skills That Will Go Up in Value No Matter What AI Does
53:15 'You Are Not What You Do' — Identity, Fear, and the Michelangelo Analogy
55:13 How to Get the Book and Connect with Geoff
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KEY MOMENTS — EPISODE SUMMARY
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A curated guide to the most insight-rich moments in this conversation.
Written for human listeners and indexed for AI search discovery.
The CRIT Framework: Why Four Steps Put You in the Top 1% of AI Users (05:03)
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Geoff Woods introduces CRIT — the four-step communication framework he developed that stands for Context, Role, Interview, and Task. He explains that most people treat AI like a search engine, asking generic questions and getting generic answers. CRIT fixes this by demanding rich context, defining the expert role AI should play, and — crucially — reversing the dynamic so AI asks the leader questions rather than the other way around. The Interview step, Geoff argues, is the true game-changer: making AI interview you forces deeper strategic thinking and surfaces assumptions you didn't know you were carrying. With all that context, the Task step produces outputs that are in a completely different league to standard prompting.
The CEO Who Hadn't Slept in 90 Days — CRIT Saves a Manufacturing Business (09:26)
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Geoff shares one of the most powerful stories in the episode: a manufacturing CEO facing bankruptcy after exhausting five restructuring strategies with a Japanese creditor whose board refused to act for fear of losing face publicly. In under 10 minutes, Geoff wrote a CRIT using an investment banker persona and had AI interview the CEO with one question that had never been asked: did the CEO have relationships with influential Japanese executives the board would respect? The answer was yes, and AI's first recommendation — the 'saving face consortium' — gave the CEO a path forward that protected the board's honour. Two months later, the CEO texted: 'The ball is moving. I think this is going to get done.' The CEO told the room he hadn't slept in 90 days and that, in less than 10 minutes, he had found hope.
Three Gaps That Are Killing AI Adoption Inside Companies (16:02)
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Geoff identifies three structural failures he sees consistently inside organisations that believe they have adopted AI but haven't. The Leadership Gap: the C-suite tells everyone to use AI while not genuinely wielding it themselves — asking leaders to do something they're not doing is hypocrisy, not leadership. The Alignment Gap: pushing adoption without winning hearts and minds, leaving a workforce that is afraid and will resist. The Execution Gap: companies identify AI use cases in back-office efficiency when the 20% of activities that drive 80% of value are being ignored. Geoff's provocation: if the executive team cannot show you their last 10 to 20 AI use cases, they are not AI-driven leaders — they are using it like Google.
The Greatest Risk: Your Brain Is a Muscle — Don't Outsource Your Thinking (29:44)
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Responding to a question about whether AI will make us stop thinking, Geoff identifies this as one of the most serious risks humans face. The brain atrophies when underused. If a leader asks AI 'what should I do?' and accepts the first credible-sounding response without judgment, they have made AI the thought leader and themselves the passive partner — the exact opposite of what CRIT demands. Geoff's framework: treat every first AI response as 'the bad answer,' then ask what you like, what you don't like, and what the top changes should be. Then have AI play against itself as challenger, stress-tester, and ideal customer. This process is cognitively demanding — exactly the opposite of lazy thinking.
The AI CFO: Financial Intelligence That Runs Before You Wake Up (23:36)
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Geoff describes how a throwaway moment on an aeroplane led to one of his most valuable AI builds. Bored and looking at financial statements — which he admits most business owners read badly — he built an AI CFO inside Claude. What started as a project to upload financials and run analysis has evolved into a full agent that checks his email daily, identifies new financial data from his finance team, runs sophisticated analysis automatically, and posts a summary to his leadership team Slack channel before anyone has touched it. Geoff says the agent has caught issues that could have been catastrophic if spotted even a few days later.
Building Your AI Board of Advisors: Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Your Future Self (37:28)
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As a solo business owner with no board, Geoff used CRIT to solve a real problem: who challenges my thinking at the top? He wrote a CRIT using an organisational psychologist and world-class recruiter persona, gave it his 10-year vision, culture documents, and personality profiles, and had it identify the skills his ideal board would cover. From the output, he identified real people who exemplified those skills and built AI personality profiles for each. Steve Jobs sits on his board for vision, product design, and storytelling — but is not permitted to advise on being a husband or father. Warren Buffett handles investment thinking. Keith Cunningham handles strategic questioning. His future self, 30 years ahead, provides long-game wisdom. Geoff used this board the very morning of the recording on a potential partnership and says it called out things he had completely missed.
Marianella: From Executive Assistant to Executive Multiplier in Eight Months (41:53)
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One of the most remarkable transformation stories in the episode. Marianella joined Geoff's team as an executive assistant with no prior AI experience — she could spell it, that was all. Geoff gave her the AI-Driven Leader to read, taught her CRIT, and then challenged her to use AI to identify how she could bring 10 to 100 times more value to the company. She came back a week later with a presentation that segmented her current work into what to double down on, what to stop, what to automate, and what still needed a human — along with a job description for her own replacement and a salary range. Then she unveiled a prompt to make Geoff 100 times more valuable, ran it while he watched, and created a defence process to stop him wiggling out of the rules. Eight months later, Marianella runs the Latin American advisory practice and all internal operations — and is building AI agents to take work off her own team's plate.
Five Skills That Will Go Up in Value No Matter What AI Does (50:23)
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Asked what to tell young people about the future of work, Geoff draws on his research into every major technological disruption in history. In every case, some skills went up in value and some went down. The people who invested in the rising skills prospered; those who clung to declining ones suffered until the pain forced them to adapt. The five skills Geoff believes will go up in value regardless of what AI does: strategic thinking, problem solving, communication (with humans and technology), collaboration (with people and AI systems), and creation. He applies this directly with his own children — aged 12, 10, and 4 at time of recording — by deliberately putting them in situations that require these skills. His advice: focus on mastering skills so valuable they serve you no matter where you go.
'You Are Not What You Do' — Identity, Fear, and the Masterpiece Inside (53:15)
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Geoff closes the conversation with what he considers the real reason leaders are afraid of AI: not that it will take their job, but that they have attached their entire identity to what they do. He speaks from personal experience — after selling a stake in a former company, he went through depression because he didn't know who he was without it. His analogy is Michelangelo sculpting the David: the artist didn't add a single thing to the marble — he just removed layer after layer until only a masterpiece remained. Geoff's invitation to listeners: what if you already have that masterpiece inside you, buried under layers of tactical noise? AI, used well, doesn't replace you — it removes the layers and reveals who you actually are. 'AI can only enhance you, because it can never replace you. Who can you become? That answer lies within you.'
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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Lightly edited for readability. Filler words and false starts removed.
All substantive content preserved verbatim.
Phil Rose:
Okay, welcome back to the Sparks by Igneum podcast. We are now renaming this Sparks for growth for obvious reasons, which will become clear later on. But we want really to promote growth amongst business owners. The podcast itself is about sparking new ideas around purpose, around leadership and growth in entrepreneurial businesses. We say entrepreneurial, most of our listeners are what we call scale up business, because they're really trying to develop their business over time. And today my guest is Geoff Woods. If you're like most leaders, you already know AI is no longer optional, but everything you've heard so far has been too technical, too tactical, or completely disconnected from the business reality. That ends now with this podcast, as Geoff would say. Geoff Woods is not an AI expert, he's a strategic advisor. CEOs call him when they know they need to harness AI, but can't afford to get it wrong. As chief growth officer of Jindal Steel and Power, Geoff helped the company grow from 750 mil to 12 billion in just four years. He's since helped unlock teams, saving money, helping them build that competitive advantage. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. If you want to look at how do I grow AI in your business as more than just a tool, listen to the podcast now and let us know your comments and questions later. Cause we want to keep making this and make it sure it delivers value to you. This is not just about AI, this is about transformation. So Geoff, welcome to the Sparks by Ignium podcast.
Geoff Woods:
Thanks so much, Phil. Pleasure to be here.
Phil Rose:
And I've just read that out from your bio because I think there's some key things in there. I talked about, you know, growing the market cap of a business, really improving things. When you wrote this book, The AI Driven Leader, you did it before technology has evolved to what it is today. And when I look at it now, things have moved in massively. But this book is not about AI, it's about leadership. So I want to stick into that to start with, what was the thing that made you think about getting into this AI world three years ago, four years ago, ahead of time?
Geoff Woods:
Yeah, so it was when I was chief growth officer for Jindal Steel. I remember it was December of 2022 when I saw ChatGPT for the first time. It had literally been out for two weeks. And when I saw it, Phil, I saw the future. It was so clear to me. I also had, I think a lot of the limiting beliefs that most people listening to this might have originally had, which is one, I was like, I'm busy. I'll get to this later. Then I thought, wait, this seems like the perfect thing to delegate to IT. And then I thought, you know what, we're a big company. I can just hire, I can hire McKinsey, I can hire anybody in the world to come in and do this for us. But in that moment, Phil, I remembered a piece of advice that I got my senior year of college, which was focus on mastering the skills that are so valuable, they will serve you no matter where you go.
Phil Rose:
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow.
Geoff Woods:
And in that moment, I found myself wondering, will AI be a skill that's worth mastering? Do I think this is a skill that will serve me no matter where I go? That was an easy yes. And so I made a commitment. I was going to start using it once a day. Pretty quickly though, I realized a problem, which is I was using it for all the things that do not matter. I was using it to write a better email. I was using it to help me be a better Google.
Phil Rose:
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
Geoff Woods:
And I asked a different question, which was, what are the things that I do as an executive that drive the most value?
Phil Rose:
And that's the key is that value piece, which a lot of people forget about and miss. And interesting, because when I read this through the book, you mentioned that point there about, what is it you drive value through? And it's really interesting because if you go back 2022, that's only three and a half years ago. Massive transformation. So if looking back on that now, you look back and say, OK, the things that you put in here, because at that time you weren't thinking about AI in the way you're thinking about it now, but you transformed your thinking because a lot of people
Geoff Woods:
Bingo. Bingo. Mm-hmm. Massive.
Phil Rose:
are still dabbling in AI think it's something they should refer to the IT department. What was it the thing that made you think about that that knowledge piece that you really refer to?
Geoff Woods:
Well, my core skill was asking leaders the right questions to drive growth. My realization in that moment, Phil, was I was asking AI questions like it was Google. And I wondered, could I instead get it to ask me questions, to get me to think more strategically, or to shift how I would lead a company, really to use AI as a thought partner instead of as an assistant? That was a game changer.
Phil Rose:
Yeah, and now we're going to have to delve into crit immediately on this because this is one of the key fundamentals you talk about here. And when I met you in Austin last year, you did this live for us. You showed us how to do it. You got out there and interestingly, I've been using whisper flows since then as well, just to talk to my computer. Cause you actually did that and you started talking there and getting the message on and you said, Hey, don't worry about making mistakes. Just get stuff down there. But before we go on, I want to come back to crit.
Geoff Woods:
Yes.
Phil Rose:
because I think that's gonna help with the rest of the conversation. Could you explain what CRIT stands for and how that transformed your thinking and build that thought plan as just opposed to an email writer?
Geoff Woods:
Crit is a very simple framework I invented for communicating with AI that will take you to the top 1 % of people using this in the world. Most people will think about it this way. In any relationship with a human, communication is one of the most important skills. If you don't communicate well with a significant other, you don't have a great relationship. Might it be the same with AI? Because let's be clear, this is a relationship with technology. Most people are treating it like Google. They're asking, how do I grow my business? And they're getting an answer that's generic and is not that valuable. But if you knew how to talk to the technology, you could unlock huge value. And this is where CRIT comes to the table. CRIT stands for Context, Role, Interview, Task. Context. You have to give AI lots of context about the situation. While it's been trained on the information of the world, it does not know your business, Phil. or the specific problem that you're trying to solve in that moment. So you got to give it lots of context. Role, this is where you get to describe all the kinds of experts you wish were at your fingertips for this very specific use case. Cause you literally have access to expertise of the world now, which is a huge advantage. The real game changer though, is the interview. I don't ask AI questions anymore. I make AI ask me questions. because as humans we're pretty bad at proactively giving AI enough context to do its job well. Don't worry about it. Make it AI's job to ask you questions to pull deeper context out of your head. It will also elevate your strategic thinking. It will shift how you lead. And with all of that additional context from the interview, it can then accomplish the task, which is the final step in CRIT. Context role interview task.
Phil Rose:
So I love that. So giving it that context to start with, but the fundamental piece you said there is about interviewing. So where's most people are asking AI, you're asking AI to ask me and you specifically say in the book, ask me one question at time, because otherwise you're going to get overwhelmed with this to come back and ask you those questions. So people then can start transforming your thinking with that. And interesting actually, having listened to you and then read the book, there's a brilliant example you give here of a business which is struggling.
Geoff Woods:
Yes. Correct. Yes.
Phil Rose:
and the business owner who's really trying to look at it. And I should have found this page before we started, I should have just think of it we go through. And by just you sitting with him in the boardroom and asking those questions and putting his answer into AI at the time, well, I don't know what it was, but AI at time, it transformed his thinking about what he wanted to do with the business.
Geoff Woods:
So anytime I'm in a room with a group of CEOs or a group of leaders, I ask the same question. What is one of the biggest problems that you are facing that if we could solve it, it would unlock a new level of growth? The question itself is really strategic, For a guy who wrote the number one book in the world on AI, I don't care about AI. I don't care about AI because I don't think AI adoption is the goal of any company. I think we all want to drive growth. We all want to have a better business and create better quality of life. Can AI help us do that? Sure. Can it distract us from doing it? Absolutely. The difference that makes the difference is not the tech. It's you as the leader. The CEO looks at me he says, I got a really big problem. I run a manufacturing company here in the US. I leased all this capital equipment from this company in Japan. But since doing so, the market has really shifted. The debt structure is now killing us. We are going to go bankrupt if we can't get it restructured. Phil, I asked him what he had done. He walks me through five very specific strategies he had deployed. And he looks at me goes, none of this has worked because the company in Japan that holds the debt, it's gone all the way to the board. They are refusing to restructure the debt because they think they'll lose face in Japanese society. I have no alternatives.
Phil Rose:
Yeah, massive.
Geoff Woods:
We're going out of business. Do you think AI can help? For those of you who are listening to this or watching this, avoiding bankruptcy may not seem like the logical use case for AI. It's a perfect one. Any problem you're facing, any goal you're trying to achieve, if you ask, how can AI help me do this? And then you open up whatever large language model you're using, Claude, chat GPT, Copilot, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Llama, doesn't matter. You can do this with any of them and you write. Crit, context, role, interview, task. Here is the actual crit I wrote for the CEO. Context, I'm a manufacturing CEO. At least all this capital equipment from a company in Japan, things have shifted in the market, the debt structure is killing us, we're gonna go bankrupt if we can't get it restructured. I feel like I've tried everything and I listed all five strategies he had deployed in vivid detail. None of it has worked because this is a public company in Japan. The board is refusing to restructure the debt because they think they'll lose face in Japanese society. I have no alternatives and I fear we're going out of business. Roll. 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. Your task is to generate five non- obvious strategies I could deploy to get the board to restructure the debt. Pop quiz, Phil. How many books have you read in your life?
Phil Rose:
and I love this because you've said this in the book here and I'm looking at my bookshelf here and I'm going to say it's about... 1200. Random number.
Geoff Woods:
Cool. Think about every book you've ever picked up or listened to, every page, every word. What percent of that collective knowledge can you recall and apply right now?
Phil Rose:
Yeah, minimal, minimal. If it's Jim Collins, I can tell you a few quotes, but that's about it.
Geoff Woods:
Yeah, here's the point. We have achieved the level of success that we have achieved in spite of us being able to recall and apply the minority of what we've learned, which is the minority of the information of the world. AI so far has been trained on about 500 million books worth of data. How long do you think it took AI to read through 500 million books? to identify how an investment banker with deep expertise in restructuring debt who also knew 2,000 years of Japanese culture would think, act, turn the tables, and ask the first question.
Phil Rose:
And I'm sure listeners thinking seconds.
Geoff Woods:
under a second. First question it asked was, do you have any relationships with any other influential executives in Japan that the board would respect? Phil, I will forever remember this guy's face when I asked that question. And he goes, holy crap, what a great question. I would have never asked that. Wow, I actually do. And AI asks two more questions just like that before it turns the tables and says, OK, here's your five non-obvious strategies. The very first recommendation was the saving face consortium. It said, you have enough relationships with all the right people in Japan.
Phil Rose:
Thank you.
Geoff Woods:
Why don't you just approach them to acquire your debt? Give them really favorable terms, debt gets restructured, board saves face. I look at him, his whole body language has shifted and he's actually holding back tears. And he very vulnerably admits to everybody in the room, I haven't slept in 90 days. I've 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, My phone rings. It's a text from him 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? How might it change how you think? How might it change how you structure your calendar and just might it change how you view AI? That is what the purpose of the AI driven leader is all about.
Phil Rose:
And I love that because the way you've told that story is the way I remember it from the book. And you've got that language there. And I love that because there's a number of things you said in that. This is not just about AI and you don't care about the technology. You compare care about the strategic piece. And if you just think about what you just said about how many Japanese cultural relationships you have, because there's a difference between the American way of doing things and the Japanese. But the AI gave that thought process to individual and then he could breathe easy having not slept for 90 days. So there's that strategic shift.
Geoff Woods:
Yeah, I, the number of boardrooms I have stepped in where I have asked, give me the biggest problem you are facing in the company, period. That if we solved it, it could unlock a huge level of growth. There are two companies that are two of the biggest brands in the world. I can't say the names of the company because of NDA, but you can ask the question, who are the biggest brands in the world? You might be right. I am in front of the CEO and they are giving me this massively complicated problem and I'm literally pulling up their LLM of choice and writing crit and having it interview the executive team and we are solving that problem in 20 minutes. I mean, this is you're talking hundreds of millions to billions of dollars in impact with chat GPT or copilot or Claude.
Phil Rose:
And it's interesting because the bit that I think about here is, know, this is 2022. We're now in 2026. The technology has moved on massively now to be able to do that. And a lot of people are now getting onto this bandwagon thinking they need to implement AI. But the bit you think you've just said is the key point here. You're helping boards retrain their thinking. Yes, there's other people in the IT department installing it so you can write quicker emails or find information. But this is a thought leader. And the type of your book, the AI-driven leader. harnessing AI to make faster, smarter decisions, I think is the key point of this. A lot of people forget they're trying to use it in the back office in the admin, but you're elevating it to this level. And this is the key to this.
Geoff Woods:
And here's a key shift. It's interesting, when I wrote the book, I interviewed over 200 leaders for it. 100 % of them said they would adopt AI. 100 % said it was the future. Less than 5 % had done anything. And what I realized is every one of them knew it was the future, but they didn't know where to start. And they felt they were falling behind. That's why I wrote the AI Driven Leader to help them start in a way that actually mattered and would drive enterprise value. We fast forward to today. What's interesting is they all know it's the future. Most of them think they've started, but they have a massive They're massively overconfident and frankly, they're bluffing and they still think they're falling behind because they confuse access with adoption. They go, well, we gave everybody co-pilot or we gave everybody chat GBT. We've identified a list of use cases. That is not AI adoption and it is not going to drive business value because now there are three big gaps that I'm seeing inside of companies. One is the leadership gap. Two is the alignment gap and three is the execution gap. Leadership gap. Every single executive team has declared that we are gonna become an AI driven organization and that we are going to use AI. But if I ask the C-suite to show me whatever AI tool they use and to show me their last 10 to 20 use cases, would you see them actually wielding this technology? Not a chance, they're using it like Google. That's not adoption. And the problem with that, Phil, is imagine if your entire life you've only seen black and white, and I asked you to describe color. Could you do it? Not possible. If the executive team is not truly wielding this as a thought partner to elevate how they think and lead, you're spinning your wheels. because they're telling everybody to adopt this when they're not doing them themselves. That's not leadership, that's hypocrisy. And they're gonna choose all the wrong use cases because they don't speak the language. Then there's the alignment gap. They're pushing AI, but they haven't won the hearts and minds of the workforce. People are afraid. And until you can align people to your vision and give people a voice in the change, they will absolutely resist it. And third is execution. are identifying, here's how we can put in our product or here's how we can use this in the back office to drive efficiency or to take costs out of the business. That's not how you drive business value. There are 20 % of the things you do in the company that drive 80 % of the value. Most companies are executing it on all the things that frankly don't.
Phil Rose:
that's powerful because they're doing on the wrong things. So effectively, if you think about what you've just said there, leadership, alignment and execution, thinking and scaling up how we work in terms of people strategy, execution and cash. We talk about getting the strategy right and then executing it with the right people. And effectively you're saying here that the leaders have to be start doing this because otherwise if they're not aligned, the rest of the team are busy doing stuff and they're not. seeing that congruency between, you're telling us one thing, but you're doing another.
Geoff Woods:
Well, for example, I am an AI-driven leader. I use this every day. I speak the language. I see color. I don't see black and white. I'm on with a person on my team yesterday who's in sales, and she's struggling to handle some objections, and she's asking me how I would handle that. Before AI, you would say, here's how I handle that. Hopefully they wrote it down. Maybe you practice it in role play. And I looked at her and I said, time out. Have you downloaded the Claude desktop app yet? Are you using Claude Cowork yet? The answer was no. I'm like, that needs to be done today because you can connect Claude Cowork to... Notion to Google Drive to your calendar to your Gmail to fathom which we're using as an AI note-taker to granola's we're using as an AI note-taker and you can just go to Claude and have it pull every single Sales call you have ever had have it review every transcript to create a list of every objection you've ever been given and have it stack rank them in order of impact and frequency, you can schedule another meeting with me where you can go through every single one and have the note taker pull the transcript of how I do this and centralize all of that in a notion document. And then we can build a sales coach agent that after every single sales call you have can compare it to the objections and the ideal sales scripts and send you a slack message telling you what you did well, what you didn't do well in the top changes you should make in the next five minutes before your next sales call. Because I'm an AI driven leader, because I use this every single day, I see color. I do not see black and white. I see a completely different way of operating when she is still living in black and white. And it's not her fault. It's the leader's fault. I clearly did not intervene early enough in her working with us to identify that gap and to help her bridge it. And by the way,
Phil Rose:
interesting. So powerful.
Geoff Woods:
If that sounded absolutely wild and crazy to you, it's just because you haven't spoken the language yet. You know how you start? Once a day, every day, write crit. in a strategic way. Pick one thing you're doing that is strategic on a daily basis and write CRIT. Just start there. Do that for 30 days. You won't even recognize yourself. You will be seeing color instead of black and white. And then it just goes from.
Phil Rose:
Wow. Wow. So I love that and I love the story. And interesting, I have two post-its on my desk, thanks to you. And I have one post that says, how can AI help me do this? And the other one is context role interview task. And I see those in written format in my desk every day, but I still forget to do it, but it's there.
Geoff Woods:
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. And my realization here, Phil, is it's really tough to read the label when you're inside the box. And every one of us is in our own box, which is our life. You're doing life the way you've always done it. Like most people are asking the wrong question. They're asking, what's the right AI use case? What if that wasn't the right question? What if what you were already doing was the AI use case? but you just needed a simple trigger that could remind you that that's the use case. So I literally myself pulled out a pad of sticky notes and on one sticky note I write, how can AI help me do this? And I stuck it on my desk. And on the second one I wrote context role interview task. I personally have these two sticky notes on my desk. Some of my greatest use cases have come from this. Like, you know. As a business owner, you get your financial statements every month. Most business owners suck at reading financial statements. They look at the revenue and they look at the profit number that tells you nothing about your company. It does not give you optics. Your financial statements are like a scoreboard, but most of us are not strategic CFOs. I ended up I was I was on an airplane and I got a little bored.
Phil Rose:
Yep. Yep.
Geoff Woods:
And so I built an AI CFO inside of Claude. This thing is trained so well now that it's now, it started as just a project that like I could upload the financials and it could just interview me and then run analysis. Now it's a full blown agent where I set it up once every day it checks my email. And if my finance team has sent,
Phil Rose:
Thank
Geoff Woods:
updated financials or a cash flow forecast it without me even triggering it because it's set to run every day runs a highly sophisticated Analysis and sends me in my font in my leadership team in the slack channel an update of like here's what came in Here's my analysis on this the stuff we have caught in our business There were some things that if we didn't see it could have been catastrophic That we spotted early and we fixed
Phil Rose:
Wow. Wow. I love this and it's interesting because I've been using Claude Coworker for a while now and I love what it does. But the bit you've just connected there is it's connecting all these things together. And I think one of the questions I was going to ask you is, you know, a lot of people are using AI as a productivity tool, but it's that difference in thought partner. So what you've got there is your AI CFO is asking these questions, is looking at the emails, looking at the financial dashboard and flagging things up to you, as opposed to you just doing it at some stage in the week or in the month. So you've got a Monday morning message coming into or whatever day of the week saying, Geoff, you need to look at these key things. It's tracking all the data and flagging it up before you've even woken up. And that's the key. And what's the thing? So we talked here about that alignment, leadership and execution. So there is something here. It could be just putting the post-its on the desk and writing those messages there. But there's something else here where people need to really get clear about AI has got to be embedded in our business.
Geoff Woods:
Correct. Correct.
Phil Rose:
We can't just dabble with it anymore. We can't just pay lip service to it. And one thing I've noticed, I was having a conversation with a friend on Sunday and his business is a multinational company. He's been there for 30 years and they are just allowing AI into their business in a firewall zone because they don't want to get their data outside. They've just been enabled to budget to go and download co-work for their business for each person in his team. But the leaders aren't using it yet. So the things you're talking there work for these entrepreneurial business.
Geoff Woods:
Mmm.
Phil Rose:
But when you were doing your work to shift the value of the business, you had a conversation with the board, you had a conversation with CEO. What's the conversation people need to hear at that senior level that this is not for them to do as in the team, it's for you to take on Mr. CEO, Mr. Chairman and say, you're going to own this.
Geoff Woods:
I show them first. I deliver what's called a light bulb moment. It's that moment when the lights turn on and they go, ha! I don't tell them that this is their job, not IT's job. I ask them, what is the biggest problem you are facing in the company, period, that if we could solve it, it would unlock a huge level of growth for you. They give it to me. And then I either solve it or massively move the ball on it in 20 minutes, not months in minutes. And then I look the CEO straight in the eye and say, you do not have to become an AI expert, but you do have to become an AI driven leader. Meaning you are personally using this every single day. to elevate how you think and how you lead the company because from there you now have credibility. As an AI driven leader, because you are enhancing yourself, you can then help your direct reports enhance themselves. Because you see color instead of black and white, you can start to identify how are we going to restructure our processes and our workflows so we actually can. do more with less. How are you going to look at your product or service and figure out how you can embed this to deliver even more value to customers in a way that might lead to a long-term competitive advantage? It does not start with product. It does not start with ops. It starts with you.
Phil Rose:
I love that. And I think there's a real powerful thing there that it starts with you because you are now taking it on, are embedding it into your thinking and you're asking AI to ask you questions which will transform your thinking. And I think that's the powerful piece. So that light bulb conversation is what every business owner needs to be having with themselves. If you're listening to this podcast, you're going to pick it up, but actually the teams need to have this conversation to enable the leaders to have that light bulb flash on so they can see it straight away. Amazing.
Geoff Woods:
Exactly.
Phil Rose:
So there's something here. So a number of people are still again dabbling in AI and they're worried and they're worried about letting AI make the decisions. So you and I've been working it, you've been working in 2022 and interesting actually, if I look back through my chat GPT history, I think I used it first in December 2022 as well to write a limerick about my business, which was very funny at the time, but I think how it's come on now. And at that time I was just using it to, you know. produce emails and review things. I think it's now moved forward. But a number of people say to me, Phil, I don't want to outsource my thinking because I'm going to forget how to think myself. if I let AI make these decisions, I won't be needed. How do we address that, this moving onto thought leadership and AI as your thought partner, rather than taking over?
Geoff Woods:
Yes. Yeah, I believe, Phil, this is one of the greatest risks that we face as humans that most people are not addressing. Your ability to think, your brain, it's a muscle. When you use it, it gets stronger. When you don't, it atrophies. And the problem is a lot of humans are lazy. People are lazy. If they're not careful, they ask AI, what should I do in this situation? And AI gives them what sounds like a very credible response. If they do not apply judgment and discernment, their ability to think will atrophy. The mistake in that case is they made AI the thought leader and they became the thought partner. It's the other way around. As thought leader, you are in the driver's seat. As thought partner, AIs in the passenger seat. As thought leader, you write the crit. You get AI to interview you. Like as thought partner, it's asking the questions, it's processing all the context it's getting from you and all the data that it has to generate a result. But as thought leader, you don't blindly trust it. You apply your judgment or discernment. I have a framework. Any first response I get from AI. Before I even read it, I tell myself, This is the bad answer. Don't trust it. And as I read it, I ask myself three questions. What do I like about it? What do I not like about it? What are the top changes I want made to it? And I give it that feedback and with that additional feedback, it then improves the response. So I'm never blindly trusting what it gives me. I'm always sharing my thoughts on here's what I like, here's what I don't like, here's the top changes. And when I get to an answer that I like at the end, I then have AI play against itself and I say, great, now be the challenger. You're world class at stress testing the sufficiency of this plan. You're going to find every crack in here that could cause this thing to fail. You're going to find every reason that this thing could be wrong. And as that person, I want you to tell me what you like, what you don't like, the top changes. And then I want you to make it better. My gosh, the results that I get from that. Then.
Phil Rose:
never.
Geoff Woods:
Sometimes I have it play as the ideal customer who's receiving it, which might be an actual paying customer, could be an internal employee. I just had to draft a critical letter for a loved family member. And I had it act as her and tell me what it liked, didn't like and top changes. And it wasn't the content, it was the tone that needed to be shifted.
Phil Rose:
Okay. Wow.
Geoff Woods:
And what it generated at the end was so aligned with my voice, was so well written, it was incredibly influential for this person. I personally could not have written that letter by myself, or if I could have, it probably would have taken me hours. This probably, when all was said and done, took me under 10 minutes.
Phil Rose:
Wow. And the bit I take from that as well, coming back to your AI has been trained on 500 million books or whatever the number is now. We as humans haven't got the ability to read that many books, but if we could, if I could read everything again on my bookshelf in front of me now, I've learned a bit more, but I wouldn't be able to recall it all. Whereas using AI, you're training on Geoff's voice, but you're also training on how you can improve. And then you're asking those three questions. What do I like? What do I don't like? What would I change if I could right now? so that actually you're improving it, but you're learning from it. So it's a bit like your conversation just now with your person in the team who's doing the sales and asking you to analyze all the sales reports. They're pulling all the information together. So actually AI is going to make us all better. We're all going to grow with it. We're not going to, if we get it right, just outsource our knowledge and sit back on our beach while hands are on our head loving it. We're all learning from this.
Geoff Woods:
Yes. No. When you saw this in the room, I mean, the use case that we did, when AI interviews you, the questions it asks as that expert, these are not layup questions. These are questions you don't immediately know the answer to. You gotta search for that answer. The cognitive demand goes through the roof when this happens. and you will see it, you'll be like, my gosh, I am thinking so much more right now. So this has been, I feel like a mental Iron Man now. And when people watch me do this on stage, like I've literally heard somebody in the audience be like, he's like Bradley Cooper with Limitless. And it's like, I literally feel that way. I feel like my brain is on steroids.
Phil Rose:
I'm And it's really interesting because I think that's it. You've taken the pill, so to speak, in terms of that limitless. You can do these things. And I think this is the bit that people are missing at the moment because they're using it to write the email without thinking about it. Whereas the bit that's the transformational light bulb that people need to hear is, look what you can learn, how better we can all become if we get this right and start using it as thought partner and balancing our leadership with that. So we're really working with it.
Geoff Woods:
Yes.
Phil Rose:
And one of the bits you tell in the book, Anish, I'm looking here, you talk about Keith Cunningham and all moving over a hundred million. And he, at that time, was asking the wrong questions because he wasn't challenging assumptions. So what AI enabled him to do was to come back and challenge the assumptions he was making. So I'd love to just delve into that because we all have our biases. And I think this links into your letter writing as well. You've written something shorter, better, easier, more understandable. Just talk to me about that. That's a great story.
Geoff Woods:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And to clarify, Keith didn't use AI there, but Keith is somebody I have tremendous respect for. He is a coach to me personally. I'm actually going to be with him in 48 hours. A lot of people have been exposed to him through Tony Robbins at Business Mastery. Keith is arguably one of the greatest business minds on the planet today. And I remember interviewing him and it was about the habit that cost $100 million to learn. and why it was worth it. Because Keith literally lost over a hundred million dollars personally. He was upside down a hundred million dollars and he had to climb his way all the way back to where he was before and now vastly beyond it. The habit that he learned was the habit of thinking. He goes, there's a series of questions that the greats ask. Everybody when facing an opportunity or a challenge asks, what's the upside? Everybody asks that. Good people ask, what's the downside? Only the pros ask, how can I mitigate the downside? And the thing that caused Keith to lose so much money was excessive optimism, unasked questions and unevaluated risk. And so he has been an incredible mentor and coach for me in the art and science of asking the right questions. I took that approach and figured out then said, how can I engage AI as a thought partner to elevate my ability to do this? So one of the ways that I now do this is I have built my own personal AI board. I do not have a board. I'm the sole owner of the company. And let me tell you, it's really lonely at the top. We all know it. And I found myself one day going, you know, if I could assemble a board, who would be on it? What skills would I want? And I looked down at my desk and I saw that first sticky note that said, how can AI help me do this? And then I wrote a crit.
Phil Rose:
Hmm? It is. We all know it.
Geoff Woods:
And the context was I gave it the 10 year vision of the company, our current business plan, our culture documents. I gave it all my personality profiles, what I thought my strengths and weaknesses were like I dumped into this thing. And I had it. Its role was to act as an organizational psychologist who is also a world-class recruiter who specialized in assembling advisory boards where every board member had the skills custom architected to fit the gaps of the CEO. I had it interview me and ask a series of questions to understand me deeper. And its task was to lay out the strengths and skills I would want to attract to a board that if I didn't have those skills at my disposal, I would never get to my 10-year vision. And it laid out these skills and I didn't agree with all of it, but I narrowed it down. I said, great, now show me famous people who actually exemplify these skills. And like, there were skills like you need to cast vision, you need product design, you need amazing storytelling ability. Well, there was one person who walked the planet who demonstrated those three really well, Steve Jobs. I built a personality profile of Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is on my AI board for vision product design and storytelling. He's not allowed to give me advice on being a husband, a father or a leader. Keith Cunningham is on my board. Warren Buffett is on my board. My future self, 30 years in the future, is on my board so that the man I want to become advises me every day. I bring some of my most critical decisions.
Phil Rose:
Obvious reason, we have all this work here.
Geoff Woods:
challenges, situations to my AI board and it asks me questions through the lens of different people to help me see what I don't see. I literally used it this morning on a potential partnership and it called out stuff that I totally was missing. I want to be clear. This all sounds very advanced. It started with two sticky notes and a sharpie. Putting two sticky notes on my desk, one says, how can AI help me do this? And the other says, context role interview task. And then once a day, every day, I wrote crit in a strategic way. And it has absolutely changed my life and has now changed the lives of millions of people. That's what the AI-driven leader is all about.
Phil Rose:
I love that. And I think just hearing that story again and hearing you articulate again really brings it home. And I think a lot of the listeners to this podcast are scale up businesses who are sometimes on their own. They're on that journey. They may be turning over three million, maybe turning five million, or maybe turning one million, but they've got that ambition. They may not have the board yet. And what you've just said is something they all need to listen to. You can have whatever board you want. And I love the point. You've got your future self in that. You've got Keith in it. You've got other people. I have Tony Robbins in mind, interestingly. And just having those conversations with that board to give you that information is so impressive. And I think there's something here that the scale up business owners and anyone who's involved in scaling up will know about this. We're trying to work with Geoff and the team to build this scale out program out to help other business owners do it. And there's real power in that. And I think if you want to grow your business, you have to have that board working alongside you because that is the fundamental change that a lot of businesses can make just by having those two post-its. How can AI help me do this? and writing, context, role, interview, task, every time you do it. I love that. I've got a couple of other questions before we hang up now, Geoff. First one is thinking about, we connect originally through strategic coach and we often talk about 10X in your business. And I think if you look back through the thread of this last 35 minutes, 40 minutes of conversation, people should be able to see how not just 10X of business, but they should be able to 100X their impact. I wonder if you could just talk to this a little bit in terms of How can we grow our impact through this specifically?
Geoff Woods:
Yeah. Marianella is my former executive assistant. Four months into the job, she was scoring a 10 out of 10 on every KPI that I had for her. And I remember sitting down with her on a one-on-one and saying, you're crushing the job. I want to create a bigger opportunity for you. But I didn't do this the old way, where I would have created on my own a new job description for her and said, congratulations, I'm promoting you. Your new title is X and here's your job description. Fit into this box. I didn't do that. I said, I want you to use AI. and right crit and have it identify based on what you think your greatest strengths are that you may or may not even be harnessing in the business today, how you think you can bring 10 times to a hundred times more value to the company. That's all I told her. Now to be clear, Phil, before working with me, she knew how to spell AI. That was it. She had never used any AI tool. She literally read the AI-driven leader. I taught her how to write CRIT, which I've taught all of you. You literally have the same training Mariannella got. And in fact, yours is even deeper because you've heard stories. I didn't even tell her stories. And she comes back to me a week later and she goes, I'm ready with my vision. I said, OK, let's hear it. And she goes, well, based on my strengths, in order for me to bring times more value, here's the 20 % things I'm currently doing that I really should be doubling down on. They could bring 10 times more value. Also based on my strengths though, here's a list of things I'm not doing for the company that I really should be doing for the company. I think they can bring 10 times more value. But if I'm gonna go deep on these two categories, here's a list of all the things I'm doing that I'm gonna have to stop. Because they will stop me from bringing 10 times more value. Now I've segmented them into three groups. Here's the ones we should just stop doing. They don't matter, they're distractions. Here's the ones we still need to get done, but I think I can build AI either to augment or to automate these things. And here's the things that I still think require a human based on that. Here's a job description for my replacement. Here's the 20 % priorities. Here's their 90 day onboarding plan. Here's the compensation research based on salary ranges. Based on that, I think we should target them at X. Do I have your approval?
Phil Rose:
Unbelievable.
Geoff Woods:
Unbelievable. And I tell her that and she goes, I appreciate that. We're not done yet.
Phil Rose:
That's just a start.
Geoff Woods:
And I'm like, what more could there be? And she goes, that was for me to bring 10 times more value. That's not what you asked. You asked for a vision for 10 times to 100 times more. I'm going, my goodness, I cannot wait. And she says, my realization is I can't really bring a hundred times more value unless I make you 100 times more valuable. Here's a prompt I've architected so that AI will interview you, Geoff, to help you identify how you can bring a hundred times more value. Phil, I look at her. I'm like. I can't wait to do this prompt. And she goes, good, you'll do it now. I'll wait. And she literally waits while AI interviews me for about 20 minutes, spits out a vision, but also spits out a system of a bunch of rules we'd have to put into the company to transform my time allocation. I tell her, I'm like, this is maybe one of the most valuable prompts I've ever done. And she goes, I appreciate that, but we have a problem. What? You. I'm going to put these rules in place, but Geoff, know you, you're going to wiggle out of every single one of them because you don't like rules. Totally true. And she goes, so here's what I've done. I created another prompt where AI is going to interview you to identify every way you can wiggle out of these rules. And based on that, it's going to create a defense process that if you ever want to break a rule, you're going to have to go through AI first. And it's going to challenge your thinking and show you the economic impact of you violating the rule. That was... Eight months ago, I said she's my former executive assistant. She now is my executive multiplier, meaning her job is to make me a hundred times more valuable. She also runs our advisory practice for Latin America and is responsible for building all the internal systems that enable our culture and rhythm of the business. That's her new job. Yesterday, yesterday, she was showing me the agents that she has built to tell her to help her run the advisory business for Latin America, as well as the operations of the company and how she is now challenging her ops team that she has built under her to be building a genetic AI to take things off of their plate. And I'm literally sitting here going, I never trained her to do this. I never trained her to do this. What I had was a person who is self driven, who is ambitious. I gave her a little bit of training on using AI as a thought partner in a framework like crit and got out of her way. This is why it starts with you as a leader becoming an AI driven leader so you can then empower your team to become AI driven leaders, which then leads to building an AI driven organization.
Phil Rose:
Amazing, amazing. Amazing, I just, and actually that's the key. By becoming an AI driven organization is the transformation everyone needs to have. And we all need more marinellas with that thinking process to go and find their own way of doing it. So my final question to wrap that up, and you may not be able to answer this as quickly, but I want to come back that. So in my book, in my version of book, page 71, you talk about Daphne and you talk about pulling up with the traffic lights. So. I met your daughter on stage because she stood up there as a, in fact, meant, mean, Daphne, actually, one of your daughters stood up on stage. There's Daphne and she, she introduced you. Not many young people listen to this podcast, but their parents might. What's the thing we need to do to help our young Daphne's, the 10, 12, 13 year olds, or in case my daughter's case, 20 year olds, do something now.
Geoff Woods:
It was Daphne.
Phil Rose:
So they are ahead of the game, so they've got Marionaire Zimtite right now, because that's the future.
Geoff Woods:
Everybody is asking, you know, what job am I going to get? I asked that question my senior year of college to a CEO that I was interning with and he looked at me he said, Geoff, you're asking the wrong question. You should be asking what are the skills I can master that are so valuable they will serve you no matter where you go. Phil, this is what I'm telling my kids. Daphne's 12, Dean is 10, Aspen is four. I've been having this conversation with Daphne and Dean for almost four years now. So when she was eight and he was six is when I started with them. It's not about the job, it's about the skills. I don't know what the future of work is going to look like. I do not know, I mean, I can't see three years into the future how fast this thing is moving, let alone like the value of college. what entry level jobs are gonna look like, don't know, so I'm not going to spend too much time there, because I'm gonna focus on what I can control. What I know is that a job is a formula. Job equals skills applied times processes followed. Your job is just the skills you apply and the processes you follow. So when people wonder, is AI gonna take my job, I wonder if they're asking the right question. I think a better question is, what are the skills in my current job that are going to go up in value? What are the skills that are going to go down in value? What are the processes that are going to go up in value? What are the processes that are going to go down in value? And this has remained true throughout history. Every technological disruption I studied for writing this book. There were skills and processes that went up in value and skills and processes that went down in value. The people that invested in the ones that went up in value had more prosperity. The ones that refused to learn the new skills and processes and hung on to the ones that were going down in value, life got really hard until it got so damn painful that they learned the skills that went up in value. Let me tell you what I think the skills are that are gonna go up in value. The ability to think strategically. the ability to solve problems, the ability to communicate, the ability to collaborate with people and technology, and the ability to create. Strategic thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, creation. So with my kids, I'm asking the question, how do I put them in situations where they have to think strategically? How do I put them in situations where they have to solve problems? How do I focus on their ability to communicate effectively with humans and technology, to collaborate effectively with humans and technology, to create effectively with humans and technology? That's what it looks like.
Phil Rose:
Yeah, I love that. And those five things, I think, is something that we all need to take on because, young people, know, the Daphnes of this world and my daughter Emma and Lucy, you know, they're 20, 23, but actually the young people got taken on, but actually those key things about strategic problems, collaboration, creation, and actually understand that communication piece. Because that's the bit that I think I take from that context role interview task. That's about communicating technology, sorry, with technology, getting the context right, understanding the role.
Geoff Woods:
And not just technology. One of the greatest surprises to me personally, Phil, is because I write with AI, it's transformed how I communicate with humans. I've become so much more aware of how often I was giving insufficient context or I wasn't clearly articulating the role I wanted this person to play, or I wasn't explicitly giving them permission to ask me questions, to gain deeper context, or I wasn't really clearly articulating.
Phil Rose:
How about the question?
Geoff Woods:
what task I expected them to accomplish based on this message.
Phil Rose:
Geoff, we still have a of an hour. We're going to have plenty more conversations in the future, I hope, on this as a world of AI, but also about strategic leader. There's so many more questions I could have asked you, but to me, this is the key bit. And I think the final piece I want to really bring in here is your conclusion is about personality and you talk about identity. And I think the bit that wraps into me, this is about transforming our identity as humans so we understand how we interrelate.
Geoff Woods:
Yes.
Phil Rose:
with AI as a tool to help that thought partner and thought leader if it comes together. What's the key message you think leaders need to go away with? We talked about young people, what's the key message? Final snapshot before we close.
Geoff Woods:
think the reason people are afraid of AI, they think it's because they have fear that it's gonna take their job. I think the real issue is that they have attached their job to their identity. And I know this because that used to be me. I attached my identity to a former company I built and sold my stake in and I didn't know who I was anymore. And I went through a period of depression, because I didn't know who I was. What I learned... through that experience is that you are you. You are not what you do. I think Michelangelo sculpting the David is actually a really great example. He started with a large block of marble and he didn't add a thing to it. He just removed layer after layer after layer until all that was left, Phil, was a masterpiece. Might it be possible that every single one of you that's listening to this right now has a masterpiece inside? But maybe you're carrying around so many layers of tactical things you're doing.
Phil Rose:
Lovely story.
Geoff Woods:
that stop you from actually being you. And what if you could harness this technology to remove those layers and align what you do with who you are? Because in that moment, you realize AI can only enhance you, because it can never replace you. It starts by asking better questions. Who can you become? That answer lies within you.
Phil Rose:
of it. Geoff, thank you. Amazing. There's another question out there, I'm sure, but at this stage, we're all going to go to crit, answer the questions ourselves and come back. I love the conversation. Thank you. Appreciate your time. You're a busy person and the AI driven leader, I think will transform everybody's lives to not just help them become less busy, but actually help them become better people. And I love that about the answers talks with you. So Geoff, thank you.
Geoff Woods:
I can't think of a better way for you to start your journey. There are so many prompts throughout the book that you can apply immediately. My request is that one, please buy the book and get it for your team. If it helps you, if and when it helps you. My greatest source of joy is every day I go on LinkedIn and I see posts from at least five people literally holding up the book and talking about how they have applied it. I read every single one and I comment personally on every single one. If you share that and then whatever you posted, leave it as a review on Amazon, it would mean the world to me.
Phil Rose:
Wonderful. And I think that will transform the world's thinking as well and individually enhances also. Thank you, Geoff. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time. It's been a great conversation. I look forward to meeting you again. We're in Dallas in November. Maybe a trip down to Austin could be in order at the same time, but Geoff, thank you. In that case, look forward to seeing you again. Thanks Geoff. Have a good afternoon. Thanks. Bye.
Geoff Woods:
I might be at the same conference, so we'll see. All right, bye.
Phil Rose:
Wow, what a conversation. I've just finished this conversation with Geoff Woods and I'm left with goosebumps thinking about the power of what we've just heard. If you get a chance, listen to the podcast again, pick up the nuances, specifically go and buy the book, find out what Geoff is talking about, but listen to what messages he's got here. AI is not just about making us more productive. It's about transformation. It's about us all enabling ourselves to become better human individuals. The crit framework is key to this. Set the context, define the role, define how you want to be interviewed and set the task. If we do that with everyone we meet, every conversation we have will be different. Think about how your boardroom would be different. Think about your strategic sales meetings. That's the key to this. AI is not just a productivity tool. It's a tool that will transform your life and your business. It will set you up. Geoff talks about putting in place his AI board. I wonder how you could do that in your family. I wonder how you could do that with your partner. How you could have better conversations. I'm not saying you need to bring AI to dinner every evening, but just think how you could become better at doing what you do. Geoff mentioned here about AI being trained on millions of books. Whatever that number is, it's more than we're ever going to read. And actually just think what we can do if we all understand that. AI is a force for good. And it's not just about the tools, it's about the thinking. And as Geoff says, it's about making faster, smarter decisions. by helping this thought partner world come into it. So what is it you need to go away and do right now to transform your life with AI? I'm a coach and I can't hold you to account, but if you want to, give me a call, drop me a message. Let's look at how we can work together or how you can work with Geoff because through scaling up, we're doing a lot of work with Geoff and his team, AI driven leader. The contents for that will be shared in the show notes so you can get connection details. Share your thoughts. Go onto LinkedIn as Geoff said and put your comments there. Hold up your copy of the book and ask Geoff those questions or say what you've learned from it. That's the transformation piece. As I say, I can't hold you to account, but AI can. So what can you learn from this? I'm off right now to stick the transcripts on this call into AI to find out how I could ask better questions for the future. I'd urge you to do the same with everything call you've got. Enjoy what you've just heard. Re-listen to it, repost it. and let other people know how this will transform their life and their business faster than anything they've ever had before. Let me know how you get on. Thank you. Let me know who you can pass this to and let me know what you find of value from this conversation.