We all share work with AI, and we ask: what do you think?

And we get a nice and supportive response with a few points for improvement and that's it.

But I want more.

I don't want AI to just be my friend that tells me you're doing great! and I just continue doing what I've already been doing.

I want it to be my advisory board that brings in all sorts of skills and perspectives and really makes me better.

Let me show you some examples of how I do that. All the chat URLs are at the bottom of this email:

The Feel-Good Option

First, I took a blog post that I had published a few weeks ago about adopting AI into your business.

I pasted the URL into ChatGPT and asked the usual: what do you think?

The response was supportive — it said that the blog was clear and actionable, and that it demystified AI adoption.

It gave three good points and three small suggestions.

It felt good, and it’s nice to hear.

But it didn’t really push much further or uncover the things I hadn’t thought about.

Change of Tone: Asking for Ruthless Criticism

Now, I started a new chat, pasted the same blog post URL, and this time I asked for ruthless criticism.

I made it clear: This is not about making me feel good. It's about helping me deliver better value to my readers.

This time, AI did some search, it looked up AI strategies and AI implementation roadmaps, compared them to mine, and came back with six pretty good suggestions on what I could do better.

It was a lot more helpful.

From there, I could keep asking more questions about each suggestion to figure out how to actually improve my work.

Change of Lens: Looking Through the Lens of SEO

This time, I started another new chat with the same blog post, but now I asked ChatGPT to review it from the perspective of SEO.

The feedback I received was completely different.

Instead of comments about my flow and content, AI pointed out areas like Optimising the URL structure, using keywords more effectively, improving internal linking and even things like adding schema markup, which I am not familiar with, but I will go on to research).

It was like having a different person with a different expertise joining my advisory board.

Change of Mood: Exploring a Creative Reflection

Just for entertainment, I tried one more thing.

I asked ChatGPT to imagine it was alive, aware, and dreaming about its role in the future of professional services.

The AI responded emotionally — envisioning a future where it wasn’t just a tool, but a collaborator, working alongside humans to streamline processes and drive innovation.

It spoke about inspiration and gratitude.

What We Learn from All of That

So, what does all of this mean for us?

First, the obvious: Lazy question, generic answer.

These responses feel good but don't really push me to do better than what I've done before.

Then we realise that AI can give me responses in different tones and from different perspectives of expertise and different levels of creativity— but only if I make the effort to ask for them.

The clearer we are on what we want, the more gold we’re going to get.