How to Start Using AI at Work When You're Not Technical

The most common thing we hear from executives before they start coaching is not confusion about which AI tool to use. It is a specific kind of stuck: they know AI is important, they have tried it a few times, and they are not sure why it did not stick. The outputs felt generic. The effort felt high. They went back to doing things the old way.

That experience is almost universal. And it is not because AI is not useful. It is because the way most people first encounter AI sets them up to underuse it.

The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Most people start by treating AI like a smart search engine. They ask it questions and evaluate the answers. That is the lowest-value way to use it.

The shift is to treat AI as a thought partner. You are not asking it to give you answers. You are using it to help you think. That means sharing context, pushing back on what it produces, asking it to steelman an argument you are skeptical of, or having it poke holes in a plan you are too close to.

When you make that shift, the outputs change dramatically. So does your relationship with the tool.

Three Places to Start

1. Meeting and conversation prep

Before any important meeting, spend five minutes with Claude. Describe the situation, who you are meeting with, and what you are trying to accomplish. Ask it what questions you should be asking, what objections the other person might raise, or where the weak points in your position are. You will walk in sharper than you would have otherwise, and the prep takes a fraction of the time.

2. First drafts of written work

Memos, updates, difficult emails, performance feedback. Do not start from a blank page. Tell Claude what you are trying to communicate, who you are writing to, and the key points. Get a draft. Edit it into your voice. The bottleneck in most executive writing is not the editing. It is the blank page. Remove that bottleneck.

3. Research and synthesis

Paste in a long document, a report, a transcript, a proposal, and ask Claude to summarize the key points, identify the assumptions, or flag what is missing. This alone can save hours a week for executives who regularly read long documents to extract a handful of relevant insights.

The Biggest Mistake to Avoid

Trying to use AI for everything at once is the fastest path to overwhelm and abandonment. Pick one of the three use cases above, the one that would save you the most time or produce the most value if it worked well. Use AI for that one thing consistently for two weeks. After two weeks, add a second use case.

Fluency is built through repetition in specific contexts, not through trying everything once.

When the Output Is Not Good

This will happen, and it is not a reason to give up on the tool. Bad output is almost always a sign that the prompt needed more context, more specificity, or a clearer description of what good looks like. Think of it like delegating to a new team member. If the first version of something is not right, you do not fire them. You explain more clearly what you need.

• Add context: who this is for, what the purpose is, what constraints matter.
• Show an example: paste in a sample of writing you like or a previous version that was closer.
• Be specific about what is wrong: 'This sounds too formal' is more useful than 'try again.'
• Ask it to revise: most people do not iterate. The second or third version is usually much better.

The Long Game

AI fluency compounds. The executives who invested time building the habit in 2024 are already ahead of peers who are still experimenting. The ones who build it in 2025 will have a similar advantage over those who keep waiting.

You do not need a technical background to get there. You need practice in the right contexts, a willingness to iterate, and the patience to let the habit form before you judge whether it is working.

Start with one use case. Do it every day for two weeks. By the end of that time, you will not be wondering whether AI is useful. You will be wondering what else you should be using it for.

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