How to talk to AI
Most people talk to Copilot like a search box. Here’s the better way.
The gap between a vague AI answer and a great one isn’t the model — it’s structure. CRISP is the five-part prompt I teach. Give the AI all five and it stops guessing.
/ the five parts
Context — background & situation
Tell it what’s going on and where to look. In Copilot, that means pointing it at the right source — a file, a Teams channel, a SharePoint folder — and saying why you need it. Copilot can’t read your mind any better than a new hire could.
“I’m prepping for tomorrow’s leadership sync. Use the Q3 Planning folder in SharePoint and the #leadership Teams channel from the last two weeks.”
Role — who Copilot should be
Assign it a hat. A chief of staff, a deal-desk reviewer, a skeptical customer. The role sets the vocabulary, the priorities, and the lens Copilot answers through.
“Act as my chief of staff who’s sat through every exec meeting we’ve run.”
Instruction — the task
Say exactly what you want done. One clear verb beats five vague ones: summarize, draft, compare, rewrite, find the gaps.
“Summarize the three decisions we still owe the leadership team, and who owns each.”
Structure — format of the output
Tell it the shape you need: a table, five bullets, a Word doc, an email ready to send. Skip this and you’ll spend more time reformatting Copilot’s answer than you saved.
“Give it as a table: Decision | Owner | Status | What’s blocking it.”
Parameters — constraints, limits, rules
Set the guardrails: which files to use, word count, tone, what to ignore. With Copilot this matters double — scope it to the right sources or it’ll pull from the whole tenant.
“Only use documents from the last 30 days. Keep it under 150 words. No filler.”
/ see the difference
Without CRISP
“Summarize my meetings this week.”
Copilot guesses which meetings, dumps a wall of text, misses the part you actually needed. You’ll redo it by hand.
With CRISP
[Context] I’m prepping for tomorrow’s leadership sync; use the Q3 Planning folder and the #leadership Teams channel. [Role] Act as my chief of staff. [Instruction] Summarize the decisions we still owe the team and who owns each. [Structure] A table: Decision | Owner | Status | Blocker. [Parameters] Last 30 days only, under 150 words.
Scoped to the right sources, in the shape you need, ready before the meeting.
You don’t always need all five — but the more you give, the less the AI guesses. Start CRISP, then trim.
Free — no email needed
The CRISP Cheat Sheet
The one-page version of everything above. Print it, pin it by your desk, pass it around the team.
Download the cheat sheet (PDF)Bonus
Want the Copilot Prompt Pack too?
12 ready-to-paste Copilot prompts built with CRISP — across Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams and more. Drop your email and it’s yours.
This is what I teach teams to do.
CRISP is one piece of the Copilot Activation Workshop — where your people learn to actually get work done with AI, in your environment.
See the workshop