I'm going to share a prompt with you that is absurdly powerful.

It won't literally replace a consultant. But it will do something most consultants do in their first three weeks — stakeholder analysis, landscape mapping, and strategic framing — in about four minutes.

Before you use it, understand the principle behind it: the value of AI isn't in getting answers. It's in asking better questions. The right prompt doesn't give you a strategy. It gives you the raw material to build one.

The Prompt

"You are a senior management consultant analyzing [your organization/department]. Based on the following context: [paste relevant background — org structure, challenges, goals, recent changes], perform a comprehensive analysis:

1. Identify the 3 biggest strategic risks this organization faces in the next 12 months 2. For each risk, identify the root cause (not the symptom) 3. Map the stakeholders who are most affected and most influential in addressing each risk 4. Propose one high-impact, low-cost intervention for each risk that could be implemented in 30 days 5. Identify what I'm probably not seeing — the blind spots that an outside observer would notice immediately

Be brutally honest. I'm not paying you to be diplomatic."

That last line changes everything. Without it, you get sanitized recommendations. With it, you get the uncomfortable truths that expensive consultants are paid to deliver over expensive dinners.

Why This Works

Most leaders don't lack information. They lack perspective. They're too close to the problems. They've normalized dysfunction because they live inside it every day.

AI, given enough context, can simulate outside perspective. It has no politics. No career anxiety. No reason to tell you what you want to hear.

It's not perfect. It will miss nuance. It will occasionally be wrong. But it will surface patterns and blind spots that you've been staring past for months.

How to Make It Better

The quality of the output depends entirely on the quality of the context you provide. Don't just give it a job description. Give it:

• What's changed in the last 6 months
• What keeps you up at night
• Where the tension is between teams
• What the last strategy failed to address
• What your boss cares about vs. what you think matters

The richer the input, the sharper the output.

Try This Monday

Run the prompt with your real context. Read the output. Circle the one thing it identified that you've been avoiding. That's your Monday priority.

Building this kind of AI-augmented leadership practice is the core of what I explore across all my books. The leaders who thrive aren't the ones who know the most. They're the ones who use every tool — human and artificial — to see clearly and act decisively.

Better prompts. Better questions. Better leadership.

— Vance Sterling