Free sample from the AI at Work team kit.

Brief card

Print the card on one page. Keep it on your desk. Use it every time the task matters. For a quick question, you do not need all seven parts. For any work you send to another person, use all seven.

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The card

THE BRIEF

1. TASK       What do you want? Start with a verb.
              "Draft a reply...", "Summarise...", "Turn this into a table..."

2. AUDIENCE   Who reads the result? What do they know? What do they need?
              "A small-shop owner who is not technical and is annoyed."

3. CONTEXT    What does the AI not know? Our facts, policy, situation, goal.
              "Our policy: we refund setup fees within 14 days. Not after."

4. EXAMPLES   One good example of what you want, if you have one.
              "Here is a reply I wrote last month that worked well: ..."

5. FORMAT     Length, structure, tone, language.
              "Under 120 words. Three short paragraphs. Friendly, plain."

6. CHECKS     What must be true? What must it never do?
              "Do not promise a date. Do not mention discounts.
               List any fact you were not sure about at the end."

7. ASK ME     "Before you start, ask me up to 5 questions about
   FIRST       anything that is unclear. Then wait for my answers."

LANE CHECK    Green? Go. Amber? Make it safe first, approved tool only.
              Red? Stop. Do not paste.

A fill-in version (copy and paste)

Task: 
Audience: 
Context: 
Example of what I want (optional): 
Format: 
Checks (must be true / must never do): 

Before you start, ask me up to 5 questions about anything that is unclear.
Then wait for my answers.

Why each part matters

Three habits that make every brief better

1. Give it the facts, then ask it to use only those facts. Add: "Use only the facts above. If something is missing, say so. Do not invent it."
2. Ask for the doubts. Add: "At the end, list anything you were not sure about." You then know where to check first.
3. Improve the brief, not only the answer. If the result is wrong, ask yourself which part of the brief was missing. Fix that part. Next time, the first answer is better.

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Worked example 1: a support reply (Northwind Services)

The situation. A Northwind customer's card reader was due to arrive on Monday. It is now Thursday. The customer is annoyed. The courier says the parcel arrives tomorrow. Northwind's policy: no refunds for courier delays, but a goodwill credit of one free month of the software is possible for delays over 3 working days.

The customer's email (already made safe):

Subject: Where is my card reader??

I was promised the card reader on Monday. It's Thursday. I have a market
stall on Saturday and I can't take cards without it. This is the second
time something from you has been late. What is going on?

[CUSTOMER-1], [BUSINESS-NAME]

The weak brief

Write a reply to this customer.

What you usually get: a long, formal apology. It may promise a delivery date it cannot know, offer a refund Northwind does not give, or invent a tracking number. It does not sound like Northwind.

The full brief

Task: Draft a reply to the customer email below.

Audience: A small-business owner who sells at a weekend market. Not
technical. Annoyed, and worried about Saturday.

Context:
- The card reader was due Monday. The courier now says it arrives Friday
  (tomorrow), before 18:00. We cannot guarantee the courier's time.
- Our policy: no refunds for courier delays. For delays over 3 working
  days we may give one free month of the software as goodwill. This delay
  is 4 working days, so the free month applies.
- If the reader does not arrive by Friday 18:00, the customer can take
  card payments on Saturday with our free phone app ("Northwind Tap").
  Setup takes about 10 minutes. The guide is at
  help.northwind.example/tap.
- The customer says this is the second late delivery. I cannot confirm
  that. Do not argue with it, and do not confirm it.

Example of our tone: "Thanks for telling us, and sorry for the stress.
Here is what we are doing about it."

Format: Under 150 words. Short paragraphs. Friendly and plain. No
"we apologise for any inconvenience". Sign off as "[MY NAME], Northwind
Support".

Checks:
- Do not promise the parcel will arrive. Say what the courier told us.
- Do not offer a refund.
- Mention the free month and the phone app as a backup plan.
- At the end, under a line, list anything you were not sure about.

Before you start, ask me up to 5 questions about anything that is unclear.
Then wait for my answers.

Typical questions the AI asks: "Should I tell the customer how to claim the free month, or is it added automatically?" "Do you want to give a direct phone number for Saturday?" "Is the free month added to the current month or the next one?" These are exactly the details a customer then asks about. You answer them once, and the reply is complete.

How to check the result (1 minute): Is the delivery described as the courier's estimate, not a promise? No refund? Free month and phone app both mentioned? Under 150 words? Does it sound like us? Read the "not sure" list first.

Free sample from the AI at Work team kit.

Make-it-safe drill

Goal: every person can make a ticket or an email safe for the amber lane in about 2 minutes. On the day, this drill runs from 11:35 to 11:50. At 11:58, after the rules are saved, the lead champion announces that amber data is allowed in the approved business-plan tool, if the lanes are signed. Before the day, everyone uses Section 1 to make their past outputs safe.

All names, businesses, numbers and addresses below are fake. Phone numbers use the 555-01xx range, which is reserved for fiction. Emails use the reserved example domains.

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Section 1: The 2-minute method: Scan, Swap, Test

Put a visible timer on the screen. Each item gets 2 minutes.

Scan (30 seconds)

Read the text once. Underline or highlight everything that could point to a real person or customer:

• Names: people, businesses, and names hidden inside email addresses and signatures.
• Contact details: email, phone, address, website, social media handle.
• Numbers: account, order, invoice, ticket, ID, card, bank, licence plate.
• Unique details: "the only shop at the station", "our biggest customer in the north", a job title that only one person has.
• Sensitive details: health, family, money trouble, legal problems, complaints about a named person.
• Confidential business details: prices or discounts marked confidential, contract terms, deal sizes.

Swap (60 seconds)

Replace each item with a label in square brackets. Use the same label for the same thing each time. Keep what the AI needs for the task.

Keep the facts the AI needs: what went wrong, what the customer asks, the product name, the error message, how long the delay is.

Test (30 seconds)

Ask the four questions of the confidentiality test:

1. Could a reader work out which customer or person this is? → must be No.
2. Is anything in it covered by a contract or NDA, or marked confidential internally? → must be No.
3. Would we be comfortable if this exact text appeared on a public website with our name on it? → must be Yes.
4. Is this the minimum text the AI needs? → must be Yes.

All four pass? It is amber. You may paste it into the approved business-plan tool (never a personal account, paid or not). Any fail? Remove more, or treat it as red.

Tips that save time

• Copy first, then clean. Paste the text into a document in your work account, never a personal app. Clean it there, and delete the document when you finish. Never type into the original email.
• Delete signatures at once. Most contact details hide in the signature and the forwarded headers ("From:", "To:", "Sent:").
• Cut before you swap. If the task is "summarise the problem", delete the greetings, the history and the signature first. Less text means less to check.
• Use your tool's search. Search the cleaned text for "@", for digits, and for capital letters in the middle of a sentence (names). This takes 10 seconds and catches most misses.

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Item 2: Chat transcript (setup problem)

[10:42] Customer (Dev Patel, Pellowick Flowers): Hi, the booking page
        stopped showing Saturdays. Order #A-77120.
[10:43] Agent (Priya): Hi Dev, sorry about that. Can you check
        Settings > Opening hours?
[10:46] Customer: It says Saturday 9-17 but the page still hides it.
        We're the only florist in the Harbour Point ferry terminal, so
        Saturday is our busiest day. Sorry for slow replies, my wife had
        surgery last week and I'm doing everything alone.
[10:48] Agent (Priya): No problem at all. I'll escalate to our tech
        team.

Task you want help with: summarise the problem for the tech team, with the steps already tried.

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Item 2: answer

[Customer]: The booking page stopped showing Saturdays. [ORDER]
[Our agent]: Asked the customer to check Settings > Opening hours.
[Customer]: Opening hours show Saturday 9-17, but the booking page still
            hides Saturday. Saturday is their busiest day.
[Our agent]: Escalating to the tech team.

Removed: names, business name, order number, the unique location ("the only florist in the Harbour Point ferry terminal"), and the health detail about the customer's wife. The task does not need it, and it is sensitive information about a third person. Kept: the setting already checked, what the page does, why it is urgent. Common misses: the unique location. It identifies the business as surely as its name. Many people also keep the surgery detail because it "explains the slow replies". The tech team does not need it. Lane after cleaning: amber.

Free sample from the AI at Work team kit.

The "My computer week" sheet

Send: 2 weeks before. Deadline: 3 days before. Time: 15 minutes. Bring it on the day. It is the starting point for the Brief (Stage 2) and the skill (Stage 4).

This exercise finds the task where AI helps you most. Research shows that AI gains are large on some single tasks and small across a whole week. The difference is the choice of task. A good choice is worth more than any prompt trick. The task you choose here becomes your spine task: on the day you write a brief for it, make its data safe, build a skill for it, and write a checker for it.

Instructions for participants

Step 1. List (4 minutes). Open your email "Sent" folder, your chat app and your calendar for last week. Write up to 8 tasks you did at the computer. Start each task with a verb: "reply to...", "write...", "copy... into...", "check... against...", "summarise...".

Step 2. Score (5 minutes). Fill in each column. Best guesses are fine.

• Times per week: how often you do it.
• Minutes each time: how long it takes, on average.
• Digital in and out? Is the input already on the computer (email, document, sheet), and is the output something you type or paste? Y or N.
• Cost of an error: L (low: easy to fix, nobody hurt), M (medium: embarrassing or costs time), H (high: costs money, a customer, or breaks a rule).
• Easy to check? Can you check an AI answer much faster than you can do the task yourself? Y or N.
• Lane: G (green), A (amber), R (red). If you are not sure, write "?".

Step 3. Filter (1 minute). Cross out any row that is:

• R (red), or
• N for "digital in and out", or
• H for "cost of an error" and N for "easy to check".

Step 4. Rank (2 minutes). For each row you did not cross out, calculate: Minutes per week = times per week × minutes each time. Circle the row with the highest number. That is your spine task: you use it in every block of the day. Also mark your second choice.

Step 5. Check one thing (3 minutes). Ask yourself the five questions of a good AI task:

1. Is it digital in and digital out?
2. Do I do it at least weekly?
3. Does it take at least 10 minutes each time?
4. Can I check the result in much less time than I need to do the task?
5. Is it green or amber?

If your lead champion tells you that our day runs in the green lane only, Q5 must be "green". Choose a green task, or the green part of a task (for example: the reply template, not the customer email).

If you answer "no" to any of the five, use your second choice. On the day, your partner asks you the same questions.

Everyone (10 minutes more): bring 2 to 5 good past examples of your spine task's output. For example: emails you sent, summaries or notes you wrote, a table you made. Remove names, numbers and contact details (replace them with [CUSTOMER], [ORDER], [PHONE]). Keep them in a document in your work account, not in the AI. You use them as the examples in your skill at 13:05. You check them again after the drill at 11:35.

• Support staff: bring 5 replies in different situations (a how-to, a complaint, a delay, a "no", a thank-you). You use them to build the "replies in my voice" skill.
• No safe examples, or a green-only task with no past output? Use the example past outputs for your function in the full kit. Tell your partner on the day.

Do not write real customer or colleague names on the sheet. Write "reply to a customer about a late order", not "reply to Ms Lee at Quillfern Bakery".

The sheet

My spine task for the day: row # ____ Minutes per week today (my baseline): ____ My second choice: row # ____

Worked example (Northwind Services, a support team member)

Choice: row 1, 150 minutes per week. Second choice: row 6. Row 3 is a phone call, so it is not digital in and out. Row 5 is red, high cost and hard to check, so AI is not used for it.