Insights · A Different Experience

Stop Asking the Bot, Start Thinking With the Tool

By Dave O'Riordan · 5 min read · Last checked 2026-10-25

Most teams were handed an AI assistant and no explanation of what it actually is. Four habits separate the people who get real value from it from everyone treating a thinking machine like a vending machine.

I spend a lot of my week watching people work. In offices, on calls, in the hallways between meetings. And lately I've been watching something interesting happen. Almost every team I know has been handed some version of an AI assistant. Copilot in the corner of the screen. A chat window that promises to help. And almost every team I know is using it the same way.

They ask it a question. They skim the answer. They move on.

Then they tell me the tool isn't that useful.

Here's what I've come to believe after watching this play out again and again. The problem usually isn't the tool. It's that nobody explained what the tool actually is. So people treat a thinking machine like a vending machine. They press a button, expect a snack, and walk away disappointed when it doesn't change their day.

Let me clear something up first, because this is where most of the confusion lives.

People call all of it "the bot." The customer service chat on a website. The thing that writes your emails. The thing that booked your flights. But they're not the same animal, and using them all the same way is like using a screwdriver as a hammer and blaming the screwdriver.

A bot is a vending machine. It has fixed buttons. Press one, get one answer. Useful, predictable, and completely unable to think beyond the menu.

General chat, the kind powered by a large language model, is different. That's a conversation with something that has read an enormous amount of the world and can reason across it. Flexible, creative, and occasionally confident about things it has wrong. Like a very bright intern with the whole internet memorised. You wouldn't let that intern send a client email without reading it first. Same rule applies here.

Then there's the assistant built into your work tools. This is where Copilot lives. It's the same kind of thinking engine, but it's wired into your email, your documents, your meetings, your actual workday. It knows your context. That's what makes it powerful and what makes it dangerous if you treat it like a vending machine.

And then there are agents. An agent is what happens when you give that engine a goal and let it work through the steps, using tools along the way, checking back with you. Not a chat. A colleague you hand a task to.

Four different things. One word people use for all of them. No wonder everyone's confused.

Once you know what you're holding, the question becomes how to use it well. I've been playing with these tools for a while now, and I've watched the people who get real value from them. They all do the same four things. Not ten steps. Not a manual. Four habits.

Ask well. Give it the context you'd give a colleague. Not "write an email" but "write a follow up email to the facilities team about the delayed maintenance request, keep it firm but friendly, three short paragraphs." The quality of what comes back is almost always decided by the quality of what went in. Vague in, vague out.

Check everything. This is the one people skip and it's the one that matters most. Never send, share, or act on something you haven't read. The tool drafts. You decide. Every single time. This isn't about distrust. It's about ownership. Your name goes on the work, so your eyes go on it first.

Use it daily, in small doses. The people who love these tools didn't fall in love on day one. They built a habit. Summarise one meeting. Draft one tricky message. Ask it to explain one spreadsheet column that's been bothering you. Small reps. That's how a tool becomes part of your rhythm instead of a novelty you tried once.

Stay the boss. The tool is brilliant at starting and terrible at finishing. It can draft, summarise, brainstorm, and organise. It cannot take responsibility. That's your job, and honestly, it's the best part of the job. The judgment, the relationships, the call that only a human can make. Let the tool clear the brush so you can do the part that actually matters.

Ask well. Check everything. Use it daily. Stay the boss. That's the whole framework. You could write it on a sticky note.

I'd be lying if I said this was only about getting more done. There's something deeper going on for me.

There's an old line I keep coming back to. "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart." That's Colossians. I've always read that as a call to craftsmanship. Do the work properly. Care about the outcome. Bring your best.

These tools don't change that. They test it. It's easy to be careful when the work is slow and every word costs you. It's harder when a machine hands you a finished draft in ten seconds and the temptation is to shrug and send it. Craftsmanship now looks like the discipline to check, to refine, to stay in charge of the work with your name on it.

The people who figure this out won't just be more productive. They'll be better at their jobs in the way that actually counts. More thoughtful. More deliberate. More human, ironically, because they let the machine do the mechanical parts and kept the meaningful parts for themselves.

So stop asking the bot. Start thinking with the tool. Ask it well, check its work, build the habit, and keep the judgment where it belongs. With you.

If you're rolling one of these tools out to your team and you'd like to talk through what good actually looks like, my inbox is open. I mean it. I'm here to help.

Dave O'Riordan leads The ADX Group — continuous improvement, critical thinking and AI readiness for organisations. Request a discovery call or see the services.