Workflow
Every workflow piece on DeskTheory, newest first.
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The email command center: five inboxes, one digest, nothing sends without you
A Claude Code skill that reads every inbox you own, sorts the signal from the noise, drafts replies in your voice, and hands you one numbered digest. You reply by number. Nothing is ever sent…
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The one-paragraph ground rule to give AI before you delegate
A single paragraph, pasted at the start of any session where you hand AI something real, that installs a pause before the session starts and cuts the corrections you'd otherwise repeat every time.
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The one AI habit to model so your team actually copies it
Pick one visible habit, do it this week, and narrate it. That is the whole plan.
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Using AI on your phone between meetings
Five things you can do between meetings that used to require a desk.
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Paste a screenshot, upload a PDF: working with documents and images in AI
Stop retyping information that already exists. Three inputs, plain chat, no setup.
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Draft and rewrite emails that still sound like you
How to use a plain chat window to draft, rewrite, and tighten emails across every situation you face, without losing the voice your relationships are built on.
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Explaining AI to a skeptical board member or co-founder in 5 minutes
The skeptic across the table isn't wrong to be skeptical. They've watched blockchain absorb budget and big data absorb headcount, and they're not ready to do it again.
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First-draft any document from a three-bullet brief
Collapse the blank page from 60 minutes of staring to 10 minutes of editing, for any document you regularly need.
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The follow-up is the skill: stop accepting the first draft
The model isn't done when the first output lands. You are.
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Get up to speed on any topic before a call
No materials, no expert on speed dial. Just a chat window and the right prompt.
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Give it context: the one habit that multiplies every answer
Context is one of the four ingredients in every prompt. It's also the one most CEOs skip. This article goes deep on that single ingredient, shows you what it does, and hands you a reusable block you…
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How to check AI's work: a CEO's 3-step verification habit
A lawyer was fined after most of the citations in their AI-drafted brief turned out not to exist, and they never opened a single one.
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How to write a prompt that actually works
Most CEOs write prompts like search queries. Short, decontextualized, and hopeful. There is a better way, and it takes less than a minute to learn.
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Prep for a meeting by pasting in the agenda
The core move is five minutes and a paste. No Granola, no terminal, no meeting history.
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Turn rambling notes or a voice memo into clean structure
Paste the raw mess into a plain chat, name the output shape you want, and get something you can act on.
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Summarize any long document or email thread in 60 seconds
One pattern, six ready-to-use lenses, and a reusable template. No terminal, no setup.
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Show, don't tell: use examples to get the exact format you want
The fastest way to get the model to match your format is to show it one thing that already does.
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Talk to AI with your voice: dictation and voice mode for busy CEOs
Two ways to use Claude when you cannot type. The commute, the walk, the gap between meetings: all of it is live time now.
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Why AI gave you a bad answer, and how to fix it
You didn't break it. You gave it nothing to work with.
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Your first 30 minutes with Claude
Sign up, lock down your privacy, build your first Project, run a real task, iterate once. Thirty minutes and you will have done something useful with it, not just played with it.
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A 30/60/90 onboarding plan drafted for every new hire
A role-specific first-90-days plan, drafted in minutes from the job description and your org context, so every new hire ramps fast on a real plan instead of figuring it out alone.
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An AI chief-of-staff for your calendar
An AI that reviews your week the way a great chief of staff would: flagging conflicts and back-to-backs, defending your deep-work time, and briefing you on every meeting before it starts.
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Run AI office hours that actually change behavior
A standing 30-minute weekly session where someone brings a real task they're stuck on, a champion solves it live with AI, and the working prompt goes into a shared library, so adoption becomes a…
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An AI usage policy your team will actually follow (with template)
A one-page AI policy, short enough that people actually read and remember it, that tells your team the approved tool, the data rule, and the one hard line, with a copy-paste template to start from.
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Set up AI for your company without leaking customer data
The one-hour setup that makes the safe way to use AI also the easy way, so your team gets the tool they want and your customer data stays out of the training set.
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Turn your P&L into plain-English answers you can ask anytime
Upload your profit-and-loss statement once and interrogate it like a person. "Why did margin drop in March?" "Which costs grew faster than revenue?" Answers in seconds, in English.
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Board-ready financial summaries drafted from your raw numbers
The financial narrative for your board deck, drafted from your actual statements in your usual format, so you spend your time on judgment and fact-checking instead of staring at a blank page.
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Turn a messy brain-dump into a prioritized week
A stream-of-consciousness dump of everything in your head, turned into a ranked weekly plan mapped to your real goals, with the "only you can do this" items separated from the "delegate this" ones.
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Build your first software tool in Claude Code
Describe a tool out loud. Forty minutes later, open a working app in your browser. No code, no engineer, no budget.
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Cash-flow forecasting a CEO actually trusts
A rolling 13-week view of the cash coming in and going out, built from your own receivables and payables, that you can stress-test with a question: "what happens if our biggest customer pays 30 days…
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Claude Code tips for non-technical CEOs
The keyboard shortcuts are a different page. This is how to actually work with it when you can't read a line of the code it writes.
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Close your books faster: a CEO's month-end AI workflow
A same-day, reconciliation-ready fix list built from your accounting export, so your close stops dragging into the second week of the month.
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A competitor-monitoring routine that pings you on real moves
A scheduled job that watches your competitors for you and alerts you only when something genuinely changes, so you stop missing the moves and stop drowning in noise.
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Turn one customer call into a published case study draft
A structured case-study draft built from the transcript of a happy-customer call, with every metric flagged for the customer to confirm before you publish a word.
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Turn 20 customer calls into a product-roadmap signal
A ranked, quote-backed read of what your customers actually keep asking for, extracted from twenty real call transcripts, so your roadmap is driven by evidence instead of the last loud conversation.
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Your daily executive brief, assembled before you wake up
A scheduled AI job that runs before you wake, reads your inbox and calendar, pulls the one metric you watch, and leaves a single-page brief waiting for you, so your day starts oriented instead of…
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Catch billing leaks and rogue SaaS spend with an AI expense review
A cancellation-and-renegotiation list built from twelve months of transactions, surfacing every duplicate tool, silent price increase, and charge nobody remembers signing up for.
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Inbox zero for CEOs: triage and draft replies in the terminal
An AI pass over your inbox that sorts the last day's mail into what needs you, what's just FYI, and what's noise, then drafts replies in your voice as Gmail drafts you review and send.
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Turn interview transcripts into a structured scorecard
A consistent, evidence-backed scorecard for every candidate, generated from the interview transcript against the same rubric every time, so panel decisions stop being a clash of gut feelings.
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Write a job description that filters for the right operator
An outcome-driven job description that makes the right people lean in and the wrong people bounce, so your applicant pool is smaller and better before you screen a single resume.
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Measure the ROI of AI across your company (without a data team)
A simple baseline-and-after method that turns "AI is helping, I think" into a defensible number, using a spreadsheet and a few weeks of honest measurement, no analytics team required.
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The Monday market-and-competitor scan you run in five minutes
A standing prompt that scans your competitors and category for what actually changed in the last week and hands you a one-page brief with source links, every Monday morning.
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Draft personalized outbound that doesn't read like a template
Per-prospect outreach grounded in one specific, true, recent fact about each person, drafted by AI in seconds and approved by a human before it sends, so your cold emails read like you actually…
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Pressure-test a big decision with an AI red team
A structured adversarial review of a big decision, run by an AI you explicitly task with attacking it: the premortem, the strongest opposing case, and the assumptions that, if wrong, sink the whole…
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Repurpose one podcast or webinar into a week of assets
One recording, turned into a long-form article, clip scripts, a carousel, a newsletter section, and a handful of social snippets, all in your voice, from a single transcript.
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Roll out AI to a non-technical team in 30 days
A focused 30-day rollout that picks one painful workflow, gives one team the tool and the prompts to fix it, and measures the result, instead of handing everyone a chatbot and hoping.
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Screen a stack of resumes without reading all of them
A structured summary of every applicant against your job-related criteria, so you spend your attention on the 20 candidates worth a real look instead of slogging through 280 obvious passes. The…
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A weekly content engine: one founder voice, ten posts
A workspace loaded with your voice that turns one or two raw thoughts into a week of posts that sound like you, not a marketing bot, in about 20 minutes a week.
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What's safe to put into AI: a CEO's data-handling guide
A traffic-light rule your whole team can remember: what's always safe to put into AI, what needs care, and what should never touch a consumer account.
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Why AskUserQuestion is one of the best features in Claude Code (and totally underrated)
Nobody puts it on the highlight reel. For a CEO who can't read the code, it might be the single most valuable thing the tool does.
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Book ideas from meetings: the source material is already being generated
If you've ever thought about writing a book, this workflow makes it tractable. Claude organizes meeting moments against your book outline. Every week.
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Content ideas from meetings: never run out of things to write again
Claude scans your transcripts for stories, anecdotes, customer truths, and sharp observations. Output is a running ideas file you mine for LinkedIn, articles, podcasts, talks.
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CRM enrichment from calls: every call updates your CRM for you
Every customer call auto-populates your CRM with the people, the priorities, the personal context, and the real next step. Your sales team opens a record that's already filled in.
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Customer call to follow-up or spec: two outcomes from every call
End a customer call, run one prompt against the transcript, and get back either a draft follow-up email in your voice or a draft product spec for your team.
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Your leadership doctrine: the principles you already use, captured
A doc that grows over time, capturing the principles, metaphors, and frameworks you actually use in meetings. The seed manuscript of how you lead, pulled from how you actually lead.
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Make a skill in Claude Code
Build one skill. Run it Friday. Watch your weekly review write itself.
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Meeting effectiveness review: reclaim four hours a week
Weekly review of which meetings produced decisions, which produced noise, and which could be cut.
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Self-coaching from meetings: where am I actually avoiding hard things
Ask Claude where you've been ducking confrontation, dominating airtime, or rushing past concerns. Specific moments. Named patterns. Better alternatives. All grounded in what you actually said this…
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Set up your CLAUDE.md file
Open a folder. Paste a template. Replace six placeholders. Test that it works. Done.
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Terminal tricks for Claude Code
Top ten, then everything else. Print the cheat sheet when you're done.
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Team todos from meetings: stop chasing follow-up
Action items from every meeting land in each owner's Slack DM minutes later. They have their list. You stop chasing.
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Pre-meeting brief: walk into every meeting already prepared
A brief lands on your phone before every meeting. You walk in already knowing where you left things, what's outstanding, and what to lead with.
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Automated pipeline hygiene: stay on top of every deal without a pipeline review
A Claude Code agent reads every customer transcript from the prior day, cross-references it with your CRM, and surfaces deal moves, risk signals, and next-step gaps to Slack. You'll know where every…
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The commitment ledger: every promise you made (or made to you) tracked
A running file that captures every commitment you made and every commitment people made to you. Refreshed weekly from your meeting transcripts. Walk into every 1:1 knowing what's outstanding on both…
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Weekly team and investor updates, generated from your meetings
Two drafts every Friday morning. One team-facing, one investor-facing. Both pulled from the week's meeting record. You edit for tone and ship.
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Ask your meeting history anything: the CEO's query layer
Open Claude. Point it at your meeting library. Ask any question in plain English. Get answers in thirty seconds, with citations.
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A senior analyst, baked into Excel
Install one plugin and Excel goes from a tool you fight with to a senior analyst who builds models, reads pasted images, and rewrites entire workbooks on command.
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Persistent memory across Claude Code sessions
Index your notes, decisions, and past work into a local search engine. Pull the relevant pieces into any Claude Code session with one command: `/recall`.
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Run autonomous workflows 24/7 with Claude Code Routines
Set one recurring task to run on Anthropic's servers, with your laptop closed.
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Granola → markdown: the foundation everyone's missing
Export every meeting to [markdown](/articles/what-is-a-markdown-file). Make it searchable in Claude. Unlock six workflows on top of it.