Shiny AI Tools Won’t Save You but Smart Prompting Will

Written by Edward Frank Morris , LinkedIn Top Voice in AI.

AI’s like a Lamborghini. Shiny, powerful, and utterly useless if you can’t drive it. The key? Prompting. Not just typing words, but crafting brilliance. Ready to stop stalling and start transforming?

Don’t let the anti-hype fool you

“Fancy sentence making!” That’s what one random commenter called prompting on my LinkedIn post. I had to laugh.

Because those “fancy sentences” had just saved a corporation hundreds of hours and probably their employees’ sanity.

Yet, every time I scroll through LinkedIn , I see the same skepticism. Generative AI? Overhyped. AI as a whole? A letdown. The dip of the Gartner Hype Cycle is deep, pulling everyone into disillusionment.

Honestly? I get it. Companies rushed to adopt tools like ChatGPT Teams, Microsoft Copilot, and custom AI solutions, hoping for automation and innovation. But instead of magic, they got blinking cursors and confusion.

Why? They skipped the most important step: training.

Not Youtube how-tos or surface-level courses, but real training that starts with mastering prompts. The secret behind AI’s seemingly magical capabilities.

Without it, companies are buying the equivalent of Lamborghinis but don’t have drivers licenses. They’re revving engines in neutral, frustrated and going nowhere.

It’s like handing someone Excel and expecting instant mastery of pivot tables and VBA. Laughable, right? Yet we give employees tools with PhD-level intelligence and no guidance, then wonder why nothing happens.

How can anyone succeed with a tool they’ve never been taught to use? How can we be productive without knowing how to produce?

The answer? Prompt.

So how do you teach Prompting?

It starts with understanding what prompting is. Not just typing words into a box, but crafting conversations that make AI an extension of your team.

Take Viva Technology , Europe’s biggest startup and tech event. The crowd will be buzzing over AI. GPTs, Agents, LLMs. The shiny toys of the future. But shiny doesn’t mean simple.

Thinking of adopting Generative AI? Great. But don’t just invest in licenses and tools. Invest in training.

Begin by identifying the time-sinks in your business. The tasks that eat hours and drain morale. If you’re unsure where to start, here’s a question I ask employees before I consult: 

“If you could wave a magic wand and erase one task from your job, what would it be and why?”

Their answers reveal inefficiencies and opportunities.

Find the pain points, then explore how AI might solve them. Don’t just roll out tools and hope for miracles. Show your team what’s possible. Map problems, propose solutions, and involve them in the prompting process. How you define roles and personalities, structure tasks, the difference a word can make. Even syntax prompts. Let them see what AI can truly do. 

Build from the ground up.

This is where magic happens. That’s when humans and AI working together stops being a tagline and starts being a reality.

That’s how you turn Prompting into Efficiency.