Hand holding a phone screen with AI apps next to a coffee cup on a table.

Quick Thought – Prompting is Written Communication

I’ve heard, read, and said that we should think of prompting a Generative AI tool like giving instructions to an entry-level employee. Be specific, lay out your expectations clearly, and provide context.

That sounds great, and, in my opinion, it usually works out well.

Recently, though, I had a thought. How many times have I gotten instructions from a senior person that were the opposite of that description? Additionally, I’ve worked in the legal industry for a considerable time, but I have received such vague requests from a wide range of professionals throughout my career. I’m not picking on lawyers.

The thought I had was simple. If you are not good at communicating instructions and expectations to your team, there’s a good chance you’re not very good at getting what you need from Gen AI tools.

Perhaps this is another compelling reason to provide management and communication training to all employees, as we’ll soon be managing our AI tools. Knowing how to communicate clearly would make a massive difference in creating that “relationship” at work.

Similar Posts

  • Shared Links (weekly) Feb. 7 2021

    For U.S. businesses, less data is more than ever

    The Future Of Mental Health And Career Support For Remote Workers

    No, Getting Rid Of Anonymity Will Not Fix Social Media; It Will Cause More Problems

    I cannot stress this enough, getting rid of anonymity does nothing to stop harassing (look at Facebook?), and only hurts already marginalized people.

    eDiscovery Tug of War: A Breakdown of the In-House vs. ALSP Debate, Part Two

    Defensible Deletion: The Proof Is in the Planning

    Microsoft launches Microsoft 365 for Legal

    How to ensure mental wellbeing policies genuinely work for employees

    The ethical quandary of being a social media manager in 2021

    Strong stuff from Tim Cook

    “What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users joining extremist groups and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?”

    New ESI Sanctions Order Offers E-Discovery 101 Course for Lawyers

  • |

    Blaming IT

    I saw this late last night, a post by Ron over at Strategic Legal Technology in response to a LexisNexis survey: Inside Counsel (April 2008) reports on a LexisNexis survey on information overload by professionals: ?77% of legal professionals? cite a clack of sufficient information technology tools to cope with the ever-increasing information burden.” Law…

  • Major issues down..

    It’s 10AM and between putting in 4 hours yesterday and two so far today, all of the major issues left over from my vacation have been dealt with. My boss’ hard drive has been replaced and the software installations finished (except for the accounting package, she has always done that one herself) , the receptionist’s…

  • | |

    Linked: Time to end workplace stigma of mental health treatment for employees

    Annalise describes a fairly typical situation, and what goes through our minds when we try to decide whether to say anything at work: “Let’s take something as simple as, theoretically: “My therapist is booked because demand is so high. I need treatment but they only have morning appointments available.” That may wrack your employee with…

  • Do Layoffs Fix Anything, or Do We Have Them Because Everyone Else is Doing It?

    Take a hard look at what leaders are saying about layoffs and what they focus on. Do they seem personally hurt and concerned for the people leaving? Do they have honest and transparent explanations for why they made these decisions? Or do they repeat platitudes about “recession,” costs, and other bits of financial jargon to explain away something so painful to the same people they were calling part of the family a week ago?

    Families don’t cut the number of kids when money gets tight. Your workplace is not a family and does not deserve a level of commitment that matches your family or your health. Layoffs are sometimes necessary, but mostly just a nice tool to perk up the value of a company for a specific part of the structure or to make up for mistakes made by the same people making these job cuts.

    That’s business. I’ve argued for years that business has a vested interest in employee well-being. Caring about your people is how you get their best. I hope leaders will continue to grow in that regard, but as an individual employee, you need to care about yourself more. If your job isn’t meeting your career needs in terms of money, development, or work-life balance, find a better one. You owe them nothing. They pay you to do a job until they decide not to. You owe them that work.

    That is all.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)