A director I know told me last month that AI was “overhyped rubbish”. I asked him to show me. He opened it up, typed “write me an email to a client”, and turned the screen round with a look that said, see. And fair enough. What came back was grey, waffly, and could have been about anyone selling anything to anybody.

Then I asked him a question. “If a brand new employee walked in on their first morning, and you said those exact seven words to them, what would you get back?”

He laughed. Because he knew. He’d get the same grey waffle. Not because the new starter is thick, but because you’ve told them nothing. No client name. No history. No point to the email. No sense of who you are or how you talk. You’ve handed a capable person a blank page and expected them to read your mind.

That is the whole thing, really. Most leaders aren’t bad at AI. They’re bad at briefing.

Winging it is the default, not the exception

I looked at the numbers this week, because I wanted to know if this was just him or all of us. It’s all of us. Depending on which survey you believe, somewhere between 58 and 82 per cent of small businesses are now using AI in some form. One report put it beautifully: most use it, and most wing it. Over half of small business owners are sat right on the fence, having had a poke about, decided they can’t see the value, and stepped back.

Here’s the bit that should make you sit up though. Among growing businesses, 83 per cent have taken AI on properly. Among the ones going backwards, it’s 55 per cent. Now, correlation is not cause, and a struggling firm has bigger problems than its prompts. But there’s a signal in there. The businesses pulling ahead aren’t the ones with the fanciest tools. They’re the ones who worked out how to actually use the ordinary ones.

And you don’t get that from a better app. You get it from a better brief.

Brief it like a good new starter

So here’s the one thing I’d have you take away, and it costs you nothing. Before you type your next request into AI, imagine you’re handing the job to a sharp but brand new employee who knows nothing about your world. Give them four things.

Context. Who are you, who’s it for, and what’s the situation. “I run a physio clinic in Bolton. This email’s to a long standing client who’s gone quiet for three months. Warm, not needy.”

The actual job. Not “write an email”. Say what you want it to do. “Get her to book a review, without making her feel guilty for the gap.”

What good looks like. Show it. Paste in an email you were proud of, or one you’ve had back that landed well. It will match the tone far better than any adjective you give it.

The guardrails. How long, how formal, what to avoid. “Under 120 words. No jargon. Don’t mention the missed appointments.”

Do that, and the same tool that gave my mate grey slop gives you something you’d only need to tweak. Not because the machine got cleverer between Tuesday and Wednesday. Because you stopped mumbling at it and started managing it.

It’s a leadership skill, not a tech one

I find this genuinely reassuring, and I think you might too. The people who get the most out of AI are not the most technical. They’re the ones who are already good at delegating. Clear brief, right context, high standard set, room to have a go, then edit what comes back. If you can lead a person well, you can lead one of these tools well, because it’s the same muscle.

Which also means the reverse is true. If your briefs to the machine are vague, one line, and hopeful, I’d gently wonder what your briefs to your team look like. The blank page you keep handing the AI might be the same one landing on their desks.

So my question this week isn’t really about AI at all. It’s this. The next time something comes back to you half baked, from a person or a tool, is the honest problem that they can’t do it? Or that you never really told them what you wanted?

Have a go this week. Brief the next one properly and see what changes.