Every leadership call I’ve had this month has ended with the same question: “Are we keeping up with AI, or falling behind?"
Nowhere is that anxiety louder than in the tech industry. AI headlines scream possibility, competitors claim breakthroughs, and the little voice in our heads whispers, “Figure this out or fade out.”
If that sounds familiar, you’re in good company. Most of us want to turn AI into a game-changer for our teams. We’re just not sure which problems to attack first (or how to pick a tool that won't gather dust).
Geoff Woods, a founder and author, stood at this exact crossroads when he became Chief Growth Officer at Jindal Steel & Power.
He shared his story of growing the company's valuation from $700 million to $12 billion in just four years on our RevOps Champions podcast.
Geoff said the key to that growth was merely asking better questions.
He turned his experience into one of the year’s hottest books, The AI-Driven Leader, which, in many ways, serves as a guide to what better questions look like.
Technology is not the focus. Becoming a better leader with technology is.
“Are you using [AI] for a 20% priority that drives 80% of the results, or are you using it for an 80% task that only drives 20% of the results? Most people are using it on the tactical 80%. The AI Driven Leader shows you how to focus it on the 20% that's strategic.” - Geoff Woods
I loved this question. In my case, hiring A players is a high-priority challenge. So I gave ChatGPT all of my personal assessments (Kolbe, StrengthsFinder, DISC, etc). Then I asked ChatGPT to use that information to draft questions for an important interview I have coming up.
Not only did I get fantastic questions that I wouldn’t have thought of myself, I got an explanation for why ChatGPT recommended those specific questions: “Based on your high-trust nature, here’s a framework to intentionally uncover gaps, validate capability, and pressure-test their strategy."
“You can spend 10 minutes checking email, or you can spend 10 minutes figuring out how to double the size of your business in three years, the difference isn’t the tool, it’s the leader who wields it.” - Geoff Woods
What stood out to me about Geoff’s story is that he wasn’t an expert in AI when he started writing his book. He had a goal to write a book about AI. But how could he do that if he wasn’t an expert in the subject?
He used a framework by Dan Sullivan called the 4 C’s Formula:
So in Geoff’s case, he committed to start writing. And in doing so, he applied what he learned, iterated upon those learnings, and eventually, he did become an expert.
We can apply that model to nearly any daunting situation where we’re not sure we’ve got what it takes.
Geoff’s daily practice of using AI led him to develop a model that helps leaders get the most from AI. He calls it CRIT:
Context: What’s the situation or issue (this quarter’s pipeline export, a stalled plant build-out, etc)
Role: Who do you want ChatGPT to be? (ie, “Act as my Chief Revenue Officer”)
Interview: Instruct it to ask questions, one at a time, until it grasps the stakes
Task: What’s the call-to-action (ie, “Surface blind spots, rank risks, propose next steps, etc.”)
So here’s an invitation I’ll leave you with this week:
Before the next fire hijacks your day, steal ten uninterrupted minutes.
Drop one big decision (hiring, pricing, territory planning, etc) into ChatGPT. Tell it to act as your Chief Revenue Officer and to interview you one question at a time until it understands the stakes, and then ask it to share the blind spots you’re missing.
It might hand you a sharper question or the early warning that your P&L will thank you for next quarter. Either way, you’ll prove to yourself (and your team) that leadership, not tech, is the real multiplier.
Because in a market moving this fast, the edge doesn’t go to the company with the newest tools, it goes to the leaders who use their tools to ask better questions.
Kristin
Kristin Dennewill
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