Day 10: Herding Cats with AI 🐈⬛
AI tools that turn scattered notes into clear wins, risks, and next steps.
Graphic generated by OpenAI’s DALL·E
Hey crew, welcome to Day 10!
Yesterday we gave our AI a sidekick role. Today, we’re going a little bigger — because sometimes, what you really need is less buddy and more project manager.
Program management = alignment + communication.
And let’s be real: that usually means wrangling updates from different teams, sifting through way too many docs, and trying to stitch it all together into something clear.
Good news: AI is actually shockingly good at this.
Here’s how your sidekick can step into program/project manager mode:
✨ Consolidate updates
Drop in three messy project updates and ask AI to create a clean, single-page status doc.
⚠️ Highlight risks + blockers
Instead of reading between the lines, ask AI: “What feels risky here? Where are the blockers?”
📣 Draft communication plans
Need to tell leadership one thing and your team another? AI can help you tailor updates for each audience.
📊 Create dashboards & summaries
Connect AI to your project tools (if IT lets you 😉), and it can automatically summarize tasks, deadlines, and trends.
👉 Today’s Challenge: Copy + paste three messy updates into your AI sidekick. Ask it to summarize the wins and the risks. Bonus points if you also ask for a version you could send to your boss.
Prompts for Each Scenario 🐈⬛
1. Consolidate messy updates → status doc
👉 Prompt:
"Here are three project updates from different team members: [paste updates]. Please consolidate them into a single status update for leadership. Make it concise, professional, and organized into: Wins, Risks, and Next Steps."
2. Highlight risks + blockers
👉 Prompt:
"Review these project updates: [paste updates]. Identify potential risks, blockers, or dependencies that could slow us down. Summarize in bullet points, and highlight the most urgent ones."
3. Draft tailored communication plans
👉 Prompt for Leadership Update:
"Summarize this project update for a leadership audience: [paste update]. Keep it high-level, focus on outcomes, and frame it as progress + risks."
👉 Prompt for Team Update:
"Summarize the same project update for the core team. Make it more detailed, action-oriented, and include specific next steps."
4. Create dashboards or summaries (when connected to tools)
👉 Prompt:
"Based on these project tasks and statuses from [tool]: [paste export/list], create a simple project dashboard. Organize by: Completed, In Progress, At Risk. Then summarize key insights in 3–5 bullet points."
✨ Pro Tip: Save your favorite prompt inside your AI sidekick (like a custom instruction or pinned note). That way, you don’t have to rewrite it every week — just drop in the new updates and hit go.
🔒 Quick PSA on Privacy & Responsible AI Use
Before you start feeding AI your project updates:
Don’t paste in anything confidential, sensitive, or client-protected unless your organization has approved tools in place.
Stick to patterns, summaries, and generic examples if you’re experimenting.
If your company has IT-approved AI (like Microsoft Copilot, Google Duet, or Notion AI), use that for real work data. If not, treat free tools like ChatGPT as your practice sandbox.
Always review and edit the AI’s output before sharing — you’re still the human in charge of alignment + context.
✨ Think of it like this: AI can herd cats, but you’re still the cat whisperer.
Shoot me a comment and let me know how you're doing. It's awfully quiet out there, crew.