How AI Helps Leaders Accelerate Business Growth

Want to make smarter, faster business decisions with AI? Wondering how leaders can effectively leverage AI without getting lost in technical details?

In this article, you'll discover a practical framework for becoming an AI-driven leader who can harness artificial intelligence to enhance strategic thinking and decision-making across your organization.

Why Using AI Is an Imperative for Business Leaders

As a business leader, if you're told a tidal wave of change that will impact every aspect of your business is coming, when would you begin prioritizing gaining some foundational knowledge about that change?

When Geoff Woods, author of The AI-Driven Leader: Harnessing AI to Make Faster, Smarter Decisions, interviewed over 200 leaders for his book, 100% of them said that AI was the future and that they would adopt it, but less than 5% had done anything with AI.

This was similar to his initial response to AI: “I'm so busy. I'll get to it later, or maybe I'll delegate this to my tech team.”

However, Woods believes this approach is dangerously shortsighted, rooted in leaders mistaking AI as a technology challenge rather than a leadership priority. The difference is recognizing that the urgency isn't about the technology. It's about the people who wield the technology and how they use it.

For example, early on, Woods realized instead of asking ChatGPT to help him write better emails, he should be using AI for what matters most to him as a leader, “How might I use AI to elevate my ability to think strategically or make faster, smarter decisions?”

This shift in perspective changed everything. Woods realized leveraging AI wasn't about asking the technology questions but about having AI ask him questions.

#1: Begin Your AI-Driven Leadership Journey With Two Sticky Notes

The first step in becoming an AI-driven leader isn't to delegate AI to someone else—it's to become competent with AI yourself. 

You don't have to become your company's chief AI officer or even a technical expert, but you do have to begin using AI systems so that you understand what the technology does and does not do. Only then can you cast a strategic vision for your business's future.

First, grab a sticky note and write, ‘How can AI help me do this?' and put that note on your computer or desk. This reminder will change your perspective as you go about your work throughout the day. Instead of asking, “What can I do with AI?” you'll start asking, “How can AI help me do this?”

On a second sticky note, write: “Context, Role, Interview, Task”

Woods uses this CRIT prompting framework for 99% of his AI prompts, and it will provide you with a structured approach to interacting with AI effectively.

1. Context: Provide background information
2. Role: Assign AI a specific role
3. Interview: Have AI ask you questions to gain more context
4. Task: Specify what you want AI to accomplish

For example, about an hour before presenting an important sales pitch deck to a large company, Woods opened ChatGPT and followed his CRIT framework.

First, he gave ChatGPT details about context and role:

Context: I'm about to give this proposal to [company name]. Here is the proposal [uploaded PDF]. I'm about to meet with the executive and their chief of staff. We have an hour allocated for this.

Role: I want to be able to role play with you as them so that you can give me feedback on what I do well, what I don't do well, and the top changes I can make. Your role is to act as both people.

After describing the personalities of both the executive and chief of staff in detail, Woods continued with the interview and task instructions:

Interview: When I confirm, I'll switch to voice mode and give you the proposal.

Task: When I say, "All done," I want you to challenge me, ask questions, and raise objections. I don't want you to be nice. I want you to make this a ten out of ten tough.

Woods then practiced his entire pitch with ChatGPT's advanced voice mode, which interrupted him with questions and objections. When he finished saying “all done,” ChatGPT provided feedback highlighting a critical oversight—he hadn't outlined a return on investment. Woods immediately amended his deck to address this gap.

#2: Use AI to Drive Business Results: The 20/80 Rule

Don't get caught up in asking about the latest AI tools you can use. Instead, focus on the 20% of AI implementations that will drive 80% of your business results.

Here are two examples to inspire you.

Financial Statement Analysis

When reviewing his financial statements, Woods opens ChatGPT and applies his CRIT framework:

Context: Here are our financials [drag and drop].

Role: You're a strategic CFO who's a world-class expert in telling a CEO the top five non-obvious insights about their business based on their financials that they don't know that they should know.

Interview: Ask me up to five questions, one at a time, to gain deeper context.

Task: Give me the top five non-obvious things about my business that I should know as a CEO.

This approach has become a monthly rhythm for Woods because it helps him see patterns and insights he might otherwise miss.

AI Board Reviews

When a CEO in his network was struggling with a hostile board that consumed 50% of the executive team's time, Woods helped develop a novel solution.

First, Woods pulled the executive team together on Zoom and used ChatGPT with his CRIT framework.

Context: I'm the CEO of this company. We have a hostile board. Every quarter is an absolute bloodbath, and 50% of my executive team's time is gobbled up by board shenanigans and distractions. We've been working toward an exit in the next twenty-four months, but I just got a call from the chairman saying if I don't rehab the relationship in the next six months, we're all fired.

Role: Your role is to act as an HR professional with deep expertise in creating personality profiles.

Interview: "Interview me. Ask me one question at a time. You get to ask as many questions as you want until you understand one of our board members, Susan, on a deep enough level so you can accomplish the task of creating a personality profile for her.

Task: Create a personality profile for Susan.

Then, the AI conducted the interview, asking the executive team questions about Susan. As the executive team responded, Woods literally typed their responses word for word.

After this process, the AI created a personality profile, which the executive team reviewed critically: “They said, here's what I like about it. Here's what I don't like about it. Here are the top changes we need to make.”

They repeated this process for each board director, creating personality profiles for every board member.

Then, they built a custom GPT that included these profiles with instructions: 

Your job is to be our AI board. Every quarter, we'll give you our deck before the meeting. Your task is to review every slide as every director and simulate how you think they will react.

The AI quickly identified potential sections of the presentation that could derail the board meeting. In one case, it predicted that a particular board member would get distracted by details on slide eight, leading to a 30-minute detour. Then, the AI gave the team a suggestion to modify the presentation in a way that would appeal more favorably to the director.

Finally, the team implemented an AI note-taker in the meetings. They upload the transcript and tell the AI to compare its simulation to what actually happened in the meeting, then adjust the personality profiles based on the reality. 

Within two board meetings, the board told the CEO, “These are the best decks we've ever had and the best meetings we've ever had. What changed?”

#3: Use AI to Enhance Your Thinking, Not Replace It

If you ask AI to interview you and then copy and paste the results without any human oversight or review, you've just made AI do your thinking. As your thinking muscles fatigue, you will become less valuable as a human, warns Woods.

Instead, he recommends staying in the driver's seat as the thought leader, with AI as your thought partner. Tell AI to interview you, do research, or generate a content draft, but remember to always apply your judgment when using that output.

#4: Implement AI Across Your Organization From the Top Down

A common mistake is trying to implement AI across the entire organization at once. Woods recommends starting with yourself and key leadership team members. If you get the top of your org chart to embrace this technology in the 20% of areas that matter most, that alone is a game changer.

Woods outlined a structured approach to implementing AI across your organization based on five levels of AI maturity.

Level 1: Foundational Competence 

Start by putting AI in your hands and the hands of key leaders. Ensure they can identify strategic use cases, communicate effectively with AI, and stay in the driver's seat as thought leaders. 

Get an appropriate LLM (Large Language Model) approved to meet your security provisions and establish a basic policy. ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are all easily accessible models.

Level 2: Early Adoption 

Expand AI use to early adopters throughout the company, focusing on those who are innovative and excited to try new approaches. Begin developing a roadmap for implementing AI and identify the 20% of priorities that will drive 80% of results.

Woods recommends starting with a small group of cross-functional leaders who are comfortable with failure and pushing through challenges. 

Document their stories to drive adoption in later phases.

Level 3: Strategic Expansion 

Aim to get about half the company proficiently using AI. Begin centralizing your data to make it more accessible and useful across departments, then ensure your people can identify use cases, implement solutions, and achieve wins.

Level 4: Organizational Optimization 

At this level, the entire organization is leveraging AI to optimize existing processes and functions. For many companies, this level of maturity will be sufficient.

Level 5: AI-Driven Transformation 

The highest level involves reimagining the business itself. Woods frames this as asking, “What's the business that'll put you out of business? How can you build it first?”

For example, Woods mentions how Domino's Pizza in China reduced the time to open a new store from four months to just two weeks by leveraging technology, creating a significant competitive advantage.

#5: Create Psychological Safety for AI Adoption

When expanding AI adoption beyond just leadership to the broader organization, team members must feel safe as they experiment, fail, and learn with the new technology.

During weekly team meetings, require everyone to share a win and a failure from the last week and ask a question about using AI.

This three-part sharing structure serves multiple strategic purposes in driving adoption:

First, team members can showcase valuable use cases and inspire others by sharing successes. These wins demonstrate practical applications others might not have considered, creating a positive reinforcement cycle.

Second, and perhaps most crucial, is making failure feel safe. By normalizing and openly discussing failures, organizations remove the fear that often prevents experimentation with new technologies. When leaders model vulnerability by sharing their own AI missteps, it signals to the team that perfect execution isn't expected.

Third, creating space for questions and requests for help fosters collaboration and prevents team members from getting stuck in isolation.

AI adoption isn't simply a technical implementation but a cultural transformation that requires emotional safety. While many organizations focus exclusively on training and tools, Woods' approach acknowledges the human element: that learning happens most effectively when people feel secure enough to take risks and be honest about challenges.

Other Notes From This Episode

• Connect with Michael Stelzner @Stelzner on Facebook and @Mike_Stelzner on X.
• Watch this interview and other exclusive content from Social Media Examiner on YouTube.

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