Directing Intelligence - by Edwin Jansen (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

You have access to a brilliant thinking partner. Chances are, you're asking it to write emails.

You're bringing AI in too late. You ask it to write the email after you've decided what the email should say. You ask it to build the deck after you've chosen the story. You ask it to polish the proposal after the strategy is already set.

By then, AI can improve the output. It has missed the chance to help improve the outcome.

This book shows you how to bring AI into your work while the thinking is still open, where it can challenge assumptions, expand your options, strengthen decisions, and help you find a better path before you commit to one.

The foundation is your own custom AI work partner: a brilliant, highly coachable chief of staff shaped around your role, goals, standards, responsibilities, and work. It learns your context, remembers what good looks like, pushes back when your thinking is weak, and becomes more useful as you work together.

And you can build yours as you read. Directing Intelligence includes free access to CraftAI, a guided tool that helps you create the custom instructions for your own work partner.

This is how AI starts helping you do far more than produce things faster. It becomes a partner in thinking bigger, making better decisions, and doing some of the best work of your life.

You'll learn how to

• create a custom AI work partner shaped around your role, standards, and thinking;
• start important work with a strategic briefing using OCH: outcome, context, help;
• bring AI into the thinking early enough to challenge assumptions, explore stronger paths, and improve decisions before the direction is set; and
• improve the work partner's instructions so it becomes more valuable over time.

The payoff is stronger thinking, better outcomes, and more room for the judgment, creativity, relationships, and care that your best work requires. The better AI gets, the more valuable your direction becomes.

Review Quotes

"As AI grows more capable, human wisdom grows more valuable. Directing Intelligence gives us a practical way to put that wisdom to work. Edwin Jansen shows how to build AI into a genuine work partner while keeping judgment, responsibility, and meaning with the human directing the work."
--Chip Conley, New York Times bestselling author and founder of MEA

"Directing Intelligence shows you how to strengthen thinking, expand capacity, and create new possibilities. For leaders asking what AI can make possible for people, this is an important book."
--Angela J. Bonfanti, CEO, Canadian National Institute for the Blind

"Directing Intelligence changed how I work with AI as a CEO. My work partner has become part of how I think through strategy, leadership decisions, and other consequential work. The habits Edwin Jansen teaches have improved both the quality of my thinking and the quality of my work."
--TJ Kanaris, CEO, Fontaine Santé Foods

"I've seen Edwin Jansen help leaders move from using AI as a helpful tool to bringing it into our thinking earlier, asking better questions, and using it as a real thought partner. Directing Intelligence helps you build the habits and judgment to use AI meaningfully."
--Tracey Mikita, Chief People Officer, Vena Solutions

"This is a new way of working with AI. The skills and frameworks Jansen presents now shape the AI tools I use every day, and he has a rare gift for making the complex immediately useful."
--Julie Winkle Giulioni, author of the bestseller Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go

"This book gives you a way to bring more intelligence to your decisions while keeping the judgment, and the responsibility, in your own hands. Practical, human, and refreshingly free of hype."
--Pim de Morree, cofounder of Corporate Rebels

"Directing Intelligence is a short, practical roadmap for moving forward with confidence. Edwin left me feeling more prepared, more capable, and genuinely excited about what AI can make possible. I finished the book and immediately sent copies to my team."
--Tim Arnold, President, Leaders for Leaders, and author of Lead with AND

"I work with CEOs every day, and AI represents an extraordinary opportunity for leaders who learn how to use it well. Edwin Jansen shows how to build AI around your work, bring it into the thinking earlier, and use it to expand what you are capable of as a leader."
--Nancy MacKay, founder and CEO, MacKay CEO Forums

About the Author

Edwin Jansen is an AI coach and founder of Coachfully.AI. He works with executives, consultants, teams, and organizations to help them move from scattered AI experimentation to practical AI adoption. Over the last two years, he has helped dozens of organizations, including global multinationals and organizations at the frontier of AI adoption, build custom AI work partners and redesign how they use AI in their daily work. Jansen's work focuses on AI as amplified intelligence: intelligence that expands human thinking, increases access to knowledge, and becomes more valuable when aligned with human direction.