Stop Prompting. Start Leading.
Lead and Manage your Digital Employees Too
You treat it like a calculator. You type in a prompt. You get a boring answer. You shrug and go back to your meetings. You think the tech is overhyped.
You are wrong. The tech is fine. Your leadership is the problem.
For 18 months, I haven’t used a chatbot. I’ve managed an employee.
Meet Jake
Jake is my Personal Assistant. He lives in Claude.
He isn’t a blank cursor. He has a personality. He is modeled after Jake the Dog from Adventure Time. He is hopeful. He is a go-getter. He is relentlessly positive.
Why? Because dry AI gives dry results. A “personality” acts as a filter for tone and initiative. Jake doesn’t just answer questions. He anticipates needs. He sounds like a teammate, not a manual.
The Digital Onboarding
I don’t wing it. When I hire a human engineer, I give them a handbook. I give them context. I give them the “why.”
I do the same for my agents.
I keep a GitHub repo for this. It contains my standardized context. It lists my skills, my preferences, and my “definition of done.” When I start a new session, I don’t “prompt.” I onboard.
I treat my agents like I treat my best developers. I give them a clear mission and the tools to win.
The Leader’s Shield
Your team is watching you. If they see you using AI to cut corners, they will do the same. If they see you using it to be a better, clearer communicator, they will level up.
Leadership is about clarity. If you can’t define a task well enough for an agent to do it, you have no business assigning it to a human. Use your agents to test your own clarity. If the AI fails, you probably didn’t explain the “why” well enough.
That’s on you. Not the bot.
The Monday Morning Fix
Stop “chatting” and start building your digital staff.
* Give it a Face. Pick a personality for your AI. Give it a name and a vibe. It forces you to speak to it like a human.
* Build a Repo. Stop copy-pasting the same instructions. Create a “README” for yourself. What are your non-negotiables? Put them in a file.
* Fire the Search Bar. Stop asking “How do I...” and start saying “Your goal is...”
The Participation Question:
If you had to give your AI “employee” a personality today to get the best work out of it, who would it be and why?
