Speaker 1: You know that feeling when you ask AI for help
Speaker 1: and it gives you something back that is technically fine
Speaker 1: but completely misses the mark, like it's too generic.
Speaker 2: To surface level, not quite you.
Speaker 1: That's not a prompt problem, it's a context problem, and
Speaker 1: it's probably the single biggest reason people aren't getting their
Speaker 1: results they hoped for from AI. The fix is something
Speaker 1: Neo and I use constantly. We call it a briefing document.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we walk through exactly what it is,
Speaker 1: why it changes everything, and how to create one without
Speaker 1: sitting down to write.
Speaker 2: A big wall of text.
Speaker 1: We are sharing the actual prompt we give to our
Speaker 1: Inventium AI workshop participants to have AI interview you, so
Speaker 1: the whole thing gets done in about fifteen minutes over
Speaker 1: a cup of copy. By the end, you will have
Speaker 1: a clear system for giving AI the context it actually
Speaker 1: needs to understand your world, so that every chat you
Speaker 1: open feels less like starting from scratch and more like
Speaker 1: picking up with someone who already knows what you're working on.
Speaker 1: Welcome to how IAI with me Doctor Amantha Imba and
Speaker 1: Neo Applin, head of Inventium AI. Each episode we share
Speaker 1: one practical way to use AI better at work and
Speaker 1: in life. No fluff, no tech jargon, just things you
Speaker 1: can use straight away. Back in twenty twenty four, maybe
Speaker 1: some of twenty twenty five, all the talk was about
Speaker 1: prompt engineering and how can you craft better prompts. But
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty five, and you know, certainly now in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, I think that everyone working in AI
Speaker 1: would agree that context trumps are well written prompt Would
Speaker 1: you agree with that.
Speaker 3: Neo, Yeah. A lot of people are saying that prompt
Speaker 3: engineering is dead because AI guesses what you're after and
Speaker 3: it gives you the result. But if you don't give
Speaker 3: it the background of your business, your needs, your problems,
Speaker 3: all those kinds of things, you're going to get a
Speaker 3: great average response.
Speaker 1: And this is really the biggest mistake that we see
Speaker 1: people making with AI, not giving the AI enough context.
Speaker 1: So today we want to talk about how we recommend
Speaker 1: doing this and doing this really easily in a way
Speaker 1: that is not going to be cumbersome or overly time
Speaker 1: consuming for you. And that is what we call at
Speaker 1: Inventium AI a briefing document. Can you share what this is?
Speaker 2: Neo?
Speaker 3: Yeah. Before I show you what it is, let me
Speaker 3: tell you about the old fashioned way of doing things.
Speaker 3: So we all know you should give background to AI,
Speaker 3: and so you might say, this is the project I'm
Speaker 3: working on, this is what I've done so far, blah
Speaker 3: blah blah blah. You can imagine you've got to write
Speaker 3: or if you've listened to other episodes, then hopefully you've
Speaker 3: dictated to AI. You're going to write all that back
Speaker 3: or dictate all that background to AI, and then you
Speaker 3: can tell it what you want it to do. So imagine,
Speaker 3: I would argue, if we're going a big complicated thing
Speaker 3: we're talking about, multiple paragraphs of background is probably what
Speaker 3: you need to add. So cheap number one is upload
Speaker 3: a document or three. That's kind of cool, so it
Speaker 3: gets some kind of the background there, but you really
Speaker 3: need to give that background before you get it to
Speaker 3: do the thing. And that's the old fashioned way of
Speaker 3: doing things. But here's the thing. Every time we open
Speaker 3: up a new chat thread, you're going to have to
Speaker 3: do the same thing. You're gonna have to add all
Speaker 3: that background and give all that kind of context. Every
Speaker 3: single time you do that again and again. You're doing
Speaker 3: that so many time reads every day that either one
Speaker 3: of two things are going to happen. One is you're
Speaker 3: going to be bored of giving the background, or two
Speaker 3: you're going to be what most people do, which is lazy,
Speaker 3: and then you don't give it the background, and therefore
Speaker 3: you don't get a really targeted result. So what we're
Speaker 3: going to do is we're going to capture that background
Speaker 3: in one document. We'll call it a briefing document, and
Speaker 3: then you can then upload that each single time you've
Speaker 3: got a new chat, or you can even add it
Speaker 3: as knowledge to a project or it from an agent.
Speaker 3: So that's always got that knowledge, always got that background,
Speaker 3: So every time you come to AI, you can start
Speaker 3: talking Turkey and it already knows all about you and
Speaker 3: your background. That's a briefing document.
Speaker 1: Now, it can be a little bit annoying to go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what should I put in a briefing document?
Speaker 2: Or have to sit down and.
Speaker 1: Type it all out, but we have solved that problem
Speaker 1: for you. Neo, Can you share the prompt that we
Speaker 1: give to our workshop participants to help make it really
Speaker 1: easy to create a briefing document.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So the briefing document, a good one has things
Speaker 3: about your job, context, stakeholders, how you work. It might
Speaker 3: be products that you work with. That might be customers
Speaker 3: you've got, it might be all those kind of things.
Speaker 3: So you could type all that down, but why not
Speaker 3: have it a bit more engaging, in a little bit
Speaker 3: more fun. So what we're going to do is we're
Speaker 3: going to have an interview with AI. So this is
Speaker 3: something that you can use on the adaptive Advanced Voice mode.
Speaker 3: This is the one that looks like a little squiggle button.
Speaker 3: You can actually have an interview with AI. It'd asks
Speaker 3: you question by voice. You can answer it five voices,
Speaker 3: not easier. So sit back with a cup of coffee,
Speaker 3: get at the interview about your job, and then it'll
Speaker 3: create a document at the end. So here's the prompt
Speaker 3: we're going to use. Run a short adaptive interview that
Speaker 3: captures only what matters about my role, context, stakeholders, and
Speaker 3: how I work, and then produce a single structured briefing
Speaker 3: that covers all information. Be efficient, inquisitive rather than prescriptive,
Speaker 3: and tailor the depth in questions to my role and signals.
Speaker 3: In other words, don't follow a really regimenter process. But
Speaker 3: really I want you to understand and be inquisitive about
Speaker 3: what I do and my background and all those kinds
Speaker 3: of things. And then I want you to produce a
Speaker 3: briefing document. And so when you do that, it's probably
Speaker 3: fifteen twenty minutes, sit back, have a chat with it
Speaker 3: and tell it. Make sure you tell it the important
Speaker 3: parts about your job. And if it doesn't ask you
Speaker 3: a question that's important, feel free to just tell it
Speaker 3: well like, well, this is my boss and this is
Speaker 3: what they really need and these are my main clients
Speaker 3: or these are the main products, or those kind of things.
Speaker 3: So make sure everything's really important about your job is
Speaker 3: in this document.
Speaker 1: And so at the start, you'll probably have just the
Speaker 1: one briefing document that is about you, the organization that
Speaker 1: you work in, and your role.
Speaker 2: But as you.
Speaker 1: Start to double down on this strategy, I would say
Speaker 1: you will end up with several briefing documents. So I
Speaker 1: think Neo and I we can both share the briefing
Speaker 1: documents that we have credit in our own working lives.
Speaker 1: But really, anytime you are starting a new project, that
Speaker 1: really justifies creating a new briefing document that you can
Speaker 1: upload to any chat thread in AI when you want
Speaker 1: to give it that instant context so it knows, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what we're talking about so Neo, do you
Speaker 1: want to share a handful of your briefing documents what
Speaker 1: you've created.
Speaker 3: I've got an overview Inventium one, so it's about our
Speaker 3: product services and all those kind of things. And I
Speaker 3: use this particularly when i've got sales e type chats
Speaker 3: that I need to have, you know, like when people
Speaker 3: ask you know, what do you do with these kind
Speaker 3: of things? I've got within that, I've got a sub
Speaker 3: briefing document section which is all about our products and services.
Speaker 3: So if someone asked a question about a particular program,
Speaker 3: then I can get AI to help me beat that
Speaker 3: into shape. So about our company, I've got one for me,
Speaker 3: which is my role what I do all of those
Speaker 3: kind of things. I have another one which is about
Speaker 3: our AI programs. In fact, they've got two of those,
Speaker 3: So I've got one for our main programs which has
Speaker 3: all the main lessons in it, what you get out
Speaker 3: of it and earn all those kinds of things. And
Speaker 3: the reason that I do that is sometimes I need
Speaker 3: to work with some of my previous content to be
Speaker 3: able to like remix bits and pieces or how do
Speaker 3: I pull that in and what have we gotten? Things
Speaker 3: like that, so I can then ask questions of AI
Speaker 3: about my stuff already built. Recently, we've got a big
Speaker 3: client and they've got a big fun project where we're
Speaker 3: going to be doing hands on fun. It's like a
Speaker 3: half day AI hackathon if you'd like. It's not quite
Speaker 3: a hackathon, it's something a bit cool more than that,
Speaker 3: but anyway, we'll call it that. Very detailed, lots of
Speaker 3: different ins and outs and things like that. So I've
Speaker 3: created a briefing document for that. So yeah, for me,
Speaker 3: it might be projects, might be about the company, might
Speaker 3: be about me, but that's me, how about you?
Speaker 1: So I have got quite a few briefing documents. I've
Speaker 1: got one, for example, in my role as a manager
Speaker 1: at Inventium that understands who are the people I manage,
Speaker 1: what are their goals or okayrs, what are the things
Speaker 1: that they're working towards, what are they're trying to work
Speaker 1: on as areas for development.
Speaker 2: That's super useful.
Speaker 1: I've got one for the How I Work podcast, which
Speaker 1: is incredibly relevant for all sorts of all sorts of
Speaker 1: workflows that I have with AI for helping to create
Speaker 1: how How I Work podcast and now also the how
Speaker 1: I AI podcast.
Speaker 2: And I have had various.
Speaker 1: Briefing documents for my latest book, The Energy Game, which
Speaker 1: is out on the seventh of July. And I mean
Speaker 1: the book is the book is now written, and it's
Speaker 1: just in the final stages of proofing and typesetting, but
Speaker 1: moving into the marketing stage.
Speaker 2: This is super super useful.
Speaker 1: Where I can do things, for example, that would have
Speaker 1: taken a long time to do previously, where you know
Speaker 1: I will most likely be guesting on a range of
Speaker 1: different podcasts, as is pretty typical for authors to do,
Speaker 1: and I can, and I've had this done to me
Speaker 1: as a podcast host, and I find it incredibly useful
Speaker 1: to give me a bunch of different questions or talking
Speaker 1: points that are going to be hyper personalized to the
Speaker 1: podcast that we are pitching to. It helps reduce their
Speaker 1: work and it also helps lead to a better interview.
Speaker 1: There are other bits of marketing collateral that can be
Speaker 1: really time consuming to create, but with the help of
Speaker 1: AI and a really good briefing document, it can cut
Speaker 1: down time and also improve the quality of what we
Speaker 1: are creating. So they are a few, but typically any
Speaker 1: project that I start that is a major project or
Speaker 1: a major area of my life, I will sit down
Speaker 1: and just spend that fifteen or twenty minutes creating a
Speaker 1: briefing document.
Speaker 3: So we're talking about briefing documents. We've got aid interviewers
Speaker 3: to create them. We've talked about different ways you would
Speaker 3: have them. We didn't talk about where you'd actually place
Speaker 3: them at, how you'd actually use them. Where do you
Speaker 3: put your briefing documents?
Speaker 1: I actually have a file and it's in the main
Speaker 1: company folder at Inventium that says briefing documents, and that's
Speaker 1: where I've saved most of the briefing documents that are
Speaker 1: relevant to me and the team. Obviously, things like the
Speaker 1: how I Work briefing document. It just saved in the
Speaker 1: how I Work folder.
Speaker 3: So you upload them to AI as you need them.
Speaker 1: I do, but also because I have done all the
Speaker 1: content that we are teaching in our AI Agent boot camp,
Speaker 1: what I actually also do is I create GPTs or projects.
Speaker 1: But do you want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: this is for those that are wanting to not have
Speaker 1: to manually upload them every time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm lazy. I don't upload in mine every single time.
Speaker 3: So I've created either a project or an agent slash
Speaker 3: GPT depends on which of the tools that I'm using,
Speaker 3: which is preloaded with my briefing document, and some of
Speaker 3: the magic thing you need to tell it is before
Speaker 3: you answer my questions, make sure you read this briefing
Speaker 3: document as context and background, so something like that, and
Speaker 3: so that way, every time I open up the project,
Speaker 3: it understands, Okay, I've already read everything about NEO, or
Speaker 3: I've read everything about this project, and then I can
Speaker 3: start talking turkey with it off the bat. And I
Speaker 3: don't have to upload this briefing document to every single
Speaker 3: chat threads because I'm lazy. Why do that if you
Speaker 3: can just get at the store in AI. But there
Speaker 3: is a gotcha here, which is I like Amanther's idea
Speaker 3: of just keeping in a folder because that way it's
Speaker 3: always updated and you've got the most up to date one.
Speaker 3: Mine takes a little bit of diligence, so if I
Speaker 3: update it, I need to go in there and update
Speaker 3: it within the project or the GPT. So depending on
Speaker 3: which tool you want, which way you want to go,
Speaker 3: they're both very valid. But make sure your briefing document
Speaker 3: is updated because if your project changes and you've got
Speaker 3: an old briefing document, it's going to give you old information.
Speaker 1: So we will put the full text of that prompt
Speaker 1: that Neo shared that will have AI interview you to
Speaker 1: create a briefing document and hopefully today you can just
Speaker 1: take your AI out for a coffee and just spend
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes creating a briefing document. How i AI was
Speaker 1: hosted by me Amantha Imber and Neo Applan. A big
Speaker 1: thank you to Martin Imber who does our sound editing,
Speaker 1: and Jim Rubio for production support, and thank you to
Speaker 1: John Kilby who composed the theme music.