Interview Me First—AI as a Creative and Strategic Partner
Part 5 of our 20 part series
Welcome to AI as a Creative and Strategic Partner—Funmentum™ Style!🎉🎉🎉
Our new series on harnessing Generative AI like Chat GPT, Copilot, Gemini, etc. for both fun and breakthrough results. Many people use GenAI for low level tasks like summarizing meeting notes, writing simple emails, researching industry trends, etc.
This series is focused on the opposite—Gen AI is strongest as a high level thought partner. Not replacing you or doing your work in an average/generic way, rather pushing your thinking as a strategic challenger, creative muse, and feedback focuser. All to create higher quality work, which is approved faster, with less and time/effort. And it’s a lot of fun!
Make sure to subscribe and follow along—new posts every Friday at 5am PT/8am ET for the next 15 weeks!
Chapter 1 of 4: Mindset is the Magic
For the first 5 posts, we’ll focus on the right mindset for working with AI. Namely, way more context and back and forth iteration than you expect.
#5: Interview Me First
We've covered treating AI like a diary, uploading everything, casting the perfect role, and being hard to please. Now for our final mindset magic trick🪄—getting AI to interview you before it starts working.
It's deceptively simple: after you fill out your long prompt with all the good stuff we’ve already gone over, at the very end, write:
"Before you provide anything else, I want you to interview me. Ask me 3 questions, one at a time, to make sure you have all the context you need."
I use it for everything besides super basic tasks. Here's why it's magic:
⚠️ It catches the context gaps. You know those details that are crystal clear in your head but you forgot to mention? AI's questions can surface them.
🔍 It makes you clarify fuzzy thinking. Sometimes it asks me a question, and I realize I haven't fully thought that part through. Aka—good question AI, let me figure that out!
❌ Bad Example - Diving Right In⚓️🔇
“Help me create a report for my client meeting tomorrow. Here are my rough notes [paste notes]."
✅ Good Example - Getting Interviewed First🛟🔊
"I need help creating a report for my client meeting tomorrow. Here are my notes [paste notes]. Before you create the report, please interview me with 3 questions, one at a time, to make sure you have all the context you need. Remember - one at a time, before you give me the report!"
🏅Pro Tips for Getting Interviewed:
⚠️ Emphasize and repeat the “one question at a time” part, as sometimes AI forgets and tries to ask all three at once. If it does that, just ask it do it again, one at a time. Otherwise it’s too overwhelming for our human minds.
3️⃣-5️⃣ I usually do three questions, but I will go up to five if it’s super important. The more questions it asks the better, but this is supposed to speed you up, so it’s a balancing act.
🎙Answer with voice-to-text! I know I sound like a broken record, but it’s way faster, and actually a better way to answer the questions. You’ll work out your own thinking as you go, and often surprise yourself.
Personal example:
Recently I dumped some messy workshop notes from a client call into ChatGPT and asked it to create a rough draft outline. Of course, it interviewed me first! Here's its 3 questions:
How actively should the 2-3 customers participate—same as other attendees or different roles?
What's the final takeaway format—concept paper, digital board, something else?
Is this fully in-person or remote? Any logistics or room setup requirements?
Each question revealed something I hadn't specified. By answering them, I got exactly what I needed from GenAI. Right now we’re just using the “interview me” technique to ensure AI has the proper context from you—in subsequent posts we’ll explore advanced interview techniques about strategic thinking and creative ideation.
Credit to Geoff Woods and his excellent book the AI Driven Leader for this “3 question interview” concept. Which I learned about on Beyond the Prompt, the best AI podcast.
Remember—interview me first!
💡That’s your one thing for this week!
Make sure to subscribe to get the next 15 posts, every Friday morning at 5am PT/8am ET! Let’s make Friday our day to grow our AI skills experimenting on high level work challenges.
I count on word-of-mouth to grow this series, please consider sharing it with a friend.
👋Thanks,
Devin McNulty
Co-Founder Funmentum™ Labs
👀👀👀
P.S. I can get your team acting like this—book 15 minutes to pick my brain.
P.P.S. Try Funware Ideator for free, the world’s first ever automatic brainstorm, powered by AI (of course)!
🦾AI as a Creative and Strategic Partner
As we progress, each post will be linked below for reference.
Chapter 1: Mindset is the Magic
Post #5: Interview Me First (this post!)