The First Draft: The Value of ChatGPT for Independent Consultants

In an era of rapid digital transformation, AI has become an instrumental tool in redefining how we work and communicate. I’m attending the 2023 IABC World Conference in Toronto, Canada, this week and — spoiler alert — artificial intelligence (AI) and ChatGPT has been on people’s minds…a lot.?

While the fear of potential job losses is real, for independent consultants and small teams (even large teams), ChatGPT can tackle the routine and (let’s face it) boring tasks that none of us enjoy doing at work. This transformational approach allows professionals to work smarter and focus on value delivery, not the mundane.

Whenever I speak to a young professional, I ask them if they could design their ideal job, what would that look like? None of them said writing ten different versions of an email or social media post is their ambition in life.?

They want to use their superpower to do work that’s meaningful to them and their values. They want to provide advice and ideate solutions. They want to be consultants and strategic advisors.

Delegating To ChatGPT

If you’ve ever stared at a blank page and the blinking cursor on the screen, you know the first draft is the hardest and, sometimes, at least appealing part of the job. Writing is time consuming, and creating a first draft can often take hours or even days. For independent consultants without teams to delegate to, this is valuable time that isn’t being spent on strategy and providing advice to clients.

By using AI to generate the first draft, consultants can significantly reduce the time spent on this step of the writing process. Learning how to write prompts for the desired response (more on that later), consultants can leverage ChatGPT to quickly generate a competent first draft which can then be edited and refined further to best align with the content’s purpose and intended audience effect.?

Freeing up time allows consultants to focus on strategic and creative tasks. These might include developing business strategies, building relationships with key stakeholders, brainstorming creative campaign ideas, or refining the messaging to align more closely with the brand voice.

The value of a consultant isn’t measured in tactical outputs but in their strategic impact. By automating tasks such as drafting routine communications or responding to frequently asked questions, consultants can focus on tasks that require human touch, emotional intelligence and strategic insight.?

Learning To Think Not Do

The common adage is that planning takes 80% of a consultant’s time, while execution is only 20%. When you’re an independent consultant, sometimes it can feel like you’re executing while planning. There are never enough hours in the day to sit and think and plan before the next deliverable is due.

Leveraging ChatGPT means we can spend more time thinking than doing. We can map out all the possibilities, connect the dots and determine the best plan to address the problem or challenge we have been hired to handle. This requires high critical thinking and strategic insight based on expertise.

Before using ChatGPT (or similar AI tools), prepare a set of prompts (think creative brief) about the project. Focus on what you want to achieve, the audience and what you know about them, the content tone and writing style, rough word count, any SEO terms to consider, words or phrases to avoid and key messages to highlight. If you have examples of tone and style, add them to the prompt list and ask the tool to consider them as such.

The creative or project brief is where your thought process comes to life. The more specific the brief, the better the chance the output will match your vision. Writing prompts for ChatGPT is like writing a great creative brief: ensure the instructions are precise and have a clear and defined purpose. This will result in a more usable first draft that requires some editing and validation or fact checking but doesn’t need to be written from scratch.

Prompt engineering is critical thinking by another name. Spend 80% of your time learning to create specific prompts that deliver impactful content with only 20% of the effort required to edit and finalize.

AI tools can help independent consultants reimagine workflows, boost productivity and focus their energy where it matters most: more opportunities to be strategic and impactful for our clients. That’s our superpower!

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash