Get AI to challenge your business plans and strategies
Job to be done: Use AI to critically evaluate plans and strategies before execution
🇳🇬 Ways to use this in Nigeria
Ideas to get you started, adapt to your situation.
- Entrepreneur
Get AI to identify flaws in your startup's marketing strategy before launching your product.
- Small business
Ask AI to critique your plan for a new WhatsApp promotion to find potential customer objections.
- 9-5 employee
Use AI to find weaknesses in your proposal for a new office project before presenting it to management.
What you’ll get
You’ll get a critical evaluation of your business plans, content strategies, or any other approach you’ve developed. Instead of just helping you build, the AI will act as a devil’s advocate, highlighting potential flaws and weaknesses. This approach works by explicitly shifting the AI from an ‘assistant’ role to a ‘critic’ role, forcing it to provide more honest and useful feedback, especially when you’re already convinced your idea is solid.
Tools you need
- ChatGPT (freemium): A widely available AI chatbot that can understand and generate human-like text.
Steps
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Prepare your plan: Before you start, have a clear plan, strategy, or idea ready that you want the AI to critique. This could be a business strategy, a content plan, or an architectural decision. You should have your plan written down or clearly in mind.
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Open your AI chat tool: Go to ChatGPT (or your preferred AI chat tool) in your web browser or mobile app. You should see the chat interface, ready for your input.
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Ask the AI to challenge your thinking: Instead of asking the AI to help you build your plan, ask it to find flaws first. The author suggests two powerful prompts. Choose one and paste it, replacing
[Your Plan Here]with your actual plan:Assume this approach has a serious flaw. What is it? My plan: [Your Plan Here]Or, for a deeper critique:
What would a smart person who disagrees with me say about this plan? My plan: [Your Plan Here]The AI will respond by listing potential weaknesses, counter-arguments, or reasons why your plan might be wrong. It will not try to help you build it yet.
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Review the critique: Read through the AI’s response carefully. Look for genuine insights or perspectives you might have overlooked. This feedback is designed to make your plan stronger. You should have a clearer understanding of potential risks or areas for improvement in your plan.
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(Optional) Refine your plan or ask for execution help: Once you’ve considered the critiques, you can either refine your plan based on the feedback or, if you’re satisfied, then ask the AI to help you execute the improved plan. A more robust plan or the AI helping you with the next steps, now that potential flaws have been addressed.
Original source
This workflow is inspired by a Reddit post from user /u/Ok_Long_310, who shared this effective prompting technique on the platform. The post highlights how explicitly asking AI to act as a critic can lead to more honest and useful feedback than simply asking for assistance.
Notes & variations
- Free-tier alternatives: Most major AI chat tools like Google Gemini (gemini.google.com) and Claude (claude.ai) offer similar freemium tiers and can be used for this workflow.
- Common mistake: A common mistake is to be too vague with your plan. The more detail you provide about your strategy, the more specific and useful the AI’s critique will be.
- Tip for better results: If the AI’s initial critique isn’t deep enough, try follow-up prompts like ‘Elaborate on the biggest weakness you identified’ or ‘What’s a counter-argument to that flaw?’ to dig deeper.