ChatGPT uses for lazy managers

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December 7, 2022 December 7, 2022

Mike Crittenden

If you don’t know what ChatGPT is, it’s really smart AI you can chat with and ask for help on things. Here it is explaining itself:

That’s a silly example, of course. Here are some random examples of useful ones for lazy managers:

“ Here’s a long document. Please summarize it so I don’t have to read the whole thing .” (There’s already an extension for that.)

“ I’m going to paste a transcript of a meeting. Please generate detailed meeting notes using bullet points .” (It’s really good at summarizing or writing notes).

“ Here is a list of achievements of an employee. Please write their performance review for me from this list .” (Sketchy usage but it can help with writer’s block. The quality it produced here blew my mind).

“ Here is a copy/paste of a large Slack thread. Please summarize each person’s thoughts from the thread, using one bullet point per person .” (Killer for catching up on giant threads without having to read the whole thing.)

“ Explain what XYZ is in simple terms .” (Useful when you hear a phrase you don’t recognize in a large meeting where you don’t want to interrupt to ask. You can then ask clarifying follow up questions to GPT, or ask it to compare/contrast XYZ with some other thing you’re more familiar with.)

“ Here are the OKRs for my team. Please generate a slide presentation about them. ” (Or, please rewrite them in the form of a rap song. Or, write a short story about them. And so on.)

“ Here’s a user story and some relevant context and requirements. Please write the acceptance criteria for this task. Also identify some possible risks. ” (Who likes writing risks and acceptance criteria? GPT does. Stole this idea from here .)

“ Here are the OKRs of my team. And here are the OKRs of another team. Which projects will likely involve some team overlap? ” (This is hit or miss but so far has generated some neat ideas.)

“ Here’s an email from HR telling me that a smart speaker does not qualify as a home office expense. Please write a polite but assertive rebuttal explaining why smart speakers should qualify as a home office expense .” (This may be my favorite so far. I got the idea from here .)

“ Write me a cover letter for a job application. The job title is XYZ and the company is named XYZ. Make sure to mention experience managing remote teams and working on data intensive applications .” (Because managers need to write cover letters sometimes too, not just read them.)

Another one from a friend of mine: “I had it open in a goal-setting meeting yesterday and kept feeding it context as the meeting went on and then asked it questions when I needed ideas for brainstorming. Wasn’t perfect, but great for getting the wheels turning.”

It can also write code, which for managers may mean things like:

“ Write Google Apps Script that will automatically add the title of each of my Google Calendar meeting invites to a Google Sheet, if the title has ‘1-1’ in it .” (Yes this actually worked. Pretty nice for tracking 1-1 frequency/regularity and remembering to check in on people you haven’t talked to in a while.)

“ Create a Chrome extension that searches the Workday website for the name of the person who’s profile I’m currently viewing in Slack , when I hit cmd+shift+w .” (This one required some manual tweaking afterwards since it didn’t know how to parse the person’s name from the Slack website’s markup, but it got me most of the way there.)

“ I have a directory of text files with notes from 1-1 meetings, where each text file’s filename is the name of a person. Write a bash script that searches those text files for words of emotions (happy, sad, excited, etc.) and print a report of the top emotions used for each person. ” (I did this just to see if it would work, but the output was actually super interesting. It’d be neat to ask ChatGPT to make it report how the counts of changed month to month.)

“ Here’s the step by step onboarding process for my company. Generate the Mermaid markdown syntax showing a diagram of the process .” (Just discovered this one as I was writing this post. Wow, the potential!)

I’m just starting to wrap my brain around how powerful ChatGPT is but I haven’t been this excited about new technology in a really long time.

And if you want some more ideas, ask ChatGPT:

Thanks for reading! Subscribe via email or RSS , follow me on Twitter , or discuss this post on Reddit !

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December 7, 2022 December 7, 2022. Mike Crittenden. If you don’t know what ChatGPT is, it’s really smart AI you can chat with and ask for help on things. Here it is explaining itself: That’s a silly example, of course. Here are some random examples of useful ones for lazy managers: “ Here’s a long document. Please summarize it so I don’t have to read the whole thing .” (There’s already an extension for that.) “ I’m going to paste a transcript of a meeting. Please generate detailed meeting notes using bullet points .” (It’s really good at summarizing or writing notes). “ Here is a list of achievements of an employee. Please write their performance review for me from this list .” (Sketchy usage but it can help with writer’s block. The quality it produced here blew my mind). “ Here is a copy/paste of a large Slack thread. Please summarize each person’s thoughts from the thread, using one bullet point per person .” (Killer for catching up on giant threads without having to read the whole thing.) “ Explain what XYZ is in simple terms .” (Useful when you hear a phrase you don’t recognize in a large meeting where you don’t want to interrupt to ask. You can then ask clarifying follow up questions to GPT, or ask it to compare/contrast XYZ with some other thing you’re more familiar with.) “ Here are the OKRs for my team. Please generate a slide presentation about them. ” (Or, please rewrite them in the form of a rap song. Or, write a short story about them. And so on.) “ Here’s a user story and some relevant context and requirements. Please write the acceptance criteria for this task. Also identify some possible risks. ” (Who likes writing risks and acceptance criteria? GPT does. Stole this idea from here .) “ Here are the OKRs of my team. And here are the OKRs of another team. Which projects will likely involve some team overlap? ” (This is hit or miss but so far has generated some neat ideas.) “ Here’s an email from HR telling me that a smart speaker does not qualify as a home office expense. Please write a polite but assertive rebuttal explaining why smart speakers should qualify as a home office expense .” (This may be my favorite so far. I got the idea from here .) “ Write me a cover letter for a job application. The job title is XYZ and the company is named XYZ. Make sure to mention experience managing remote teams and working on data intensive applications .” (Because managers need to write cover letters sometimes too, not just read them.) Another one from a friend of mine: “I had it open in a goal-setting meeting yesterday and kept feeding it context as the meeting went on and then asked it questions when I needed ideas for brainstorming. Wasn’t perfect, but great for getting the wheels turning.” It can also write code, which for managers may mean things like: “ Write Google Apps Script that will automatically add the title of each of my Google Calendar meeting invites to a Google Sheet, if the title has ‘1-1’ in it .” (Yes this actually worked. Pretty nice for tracking 1-1 frequency/regularity and remembering to check in on people you haven’t talked to in a while.) “ Create a Chrome extension that searches the Workday website for the name of the person who’s profile I’m currently viewing in Slack , when I hit cmd+shift+w .” (This one required some manual tweaking afterwards since it didn’t know how to parse the person’s name from the Slack website’s markup, but it got me most of the way there.) “ I have a directory of text files with notes from 1-1 meetings, where each text file’s filename is the name of a person. Write a bash script that searches those text files for words of emotions (happy, sad, excited, etc.) and print a report of the top emotions used for each person. ” (I did this just to see if it would work, but the output was actually super interesting. It’d be neat to ask ChatGPT to make it report how the counts of changed month to month.) “ Here’s the step by step onboarding process for my company. Generate the Mermaid markdown syntax showing a diagram of the process .” (Just discovered this one as I was writing this post. Wow, the potential!) I’m just starting to wrap my brain around how powerful ChatGPT is but I haven’t been this excited about new technology in a really long time. And if you want some more ideas, ask ChatGPT: Thanks for reading! Subscribe via email or RSS , follow me on Twitter , or discuss this post on Reddit ! Related. Categories Uncategorized.