A ChatGPT trick to save hours, Cracking the CFO stack, AI powered project / task management

1-2-3 Newsletter - Read Time - 5 Mins

Hello, and welcome to a another edition of the Tech for Finance 1-2-3 Newsletter where we have:

1. Tutorial - 1 ChatGPT trick that could save you hours

2. Expert resources - On cracking the CFO stack and the top 30 finance & accounting peeps to follow.

3. Tech tools - On AI note taking, data Q & A and project & task management

1/ 1 ChatGPT trick to save you hours

We often forget that one of the best things about ChatGPT is that we can chat with it, in the same way as with a person.

Right now, there's a tonne of people (including me) sharing frameworks on how to write great prompts.

The downside of this?

You get roped into thinking that a great prompt means that you're guaranteed to get things right the first time around.

Not always the case.

We often forget to continue to chat to achieve the desired outcomes.

And even more, we fail to clarify.

So I'll ask you this...

How often do you give an instruction to a human being in one sentence?

If so, would they instantly understand and carry out the task without any clarification?

Probably not.

So what's the trick?

Ask ChatGPT to clarify, before it generates it's response.

Here's how to do it 👇

Step 1 - Craft your prompt

The above is one of the example prompts from my Ultimate GPT Framework for Finance.

It follows my SPICES prompt framework, which you can find here.

Step 2 - Add a request to clarify

We're going to amend it to include a clarification instruction, right at the end.

We added:

"BEFORE you carry out this task, can you please clarify whether you understand the task, and suggest ways this instruction can be altered for you to produce the best possible output."

Which led to the response.

"Before proceeding, please provide any specific points or aspects you'd like to be included in each presentation outline, or if you have any preferences on the structure or content focus. This will help ensure that the final output meets your expectations effectively."

Which is excellent as I'd not thought about providing a content focus in my initial response.

This is what happens when we continue...

Step 3 - Provide clarification / further detail

My response:

"The content focus should be on why it's so important for the sales team to work with the finance team in reducing outstanding debt.

Are you able to provide a couple of slides and bullet points before you produce the outline for all 3 potential presentations?"

By 'chatting' in this way, and seeking clarification, I've been able to give clearer instructions (instead of having to fit everything into one prompt) which has improved the output.

I've also asked for a quick preview of the output before ChatGPT generates the full response, just in case we need to further tweak.

Cool eh?

I hate to think of the hours I've lost in trying to create the perfect prompt.

Where what I should have been doing was improving my chat skills.

If there's one thing to takeaway here, is that it's better to treat generative AI as a human in the way that we speak and assign tasks.

As opposed to a bot that we expect to have all of the answers straight away.

How will you use this approach?

Drop me a reply to this e-mail and you could be the feature of my next LinkedIn post 😉

2/ Expert Resources

1. This week we released my podcast with Roi Ben Daniel Co-Founder and CEO at Received.

In our discussion we cover:

- CFO Solutions and Finance Software Evolution
- The Evolving Landscape of CFO Technology
- The Importance of Value-Based Pricing
- Choosing Financial Systems for CFOs
- ERP Systems and Business Revenue
- CFOs in a Down Market

And much much more.

Check out the full podcast "Cracking the CFO Stack: Which CFO are you?" on audio here. And on video here.

2. My friend Aleksander Stojanovic released his top 30 list of Finance & Accounting Creators yesterday.

If you're looking to learn something new, or just stay up to speed with the industry, you can find the full list of the best people to follow here.

3/ Tech Tools

1. Wave - Your personal AI notetaker - learn more here.

2. CSV-GPT - Analyse your CSVs with GPT4 - learn more here.

3. Height - AI powered task & project management - Learn more here.

IMPORTANT - Always read the data policy for any tools you try. If you’re ever unsure. Make sure your data, and any customer or supplier data is anonymised.

NOTE - I am not affiliated with any of the tools in this e-mail.

So that’s it for this week.

Until Next Time

Adam

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