How thoughtful consultants should actually use AI
A framework for using AI without losing your voice or your edge.
There are two failure modes with AI on LinkedIn. The first is refusing to use it, on principle, and slowly falling behind peers who publish twice as often with half the friction. The second is handing it the keys and posting the beige, over-polished output that every reader now recognises within a sentence.
The interesting question is not whether to use AI, but where in your process it belongs.
A simple division of labour
- Ideas: yours. The provocation, the take, the specific client story — always human.
- Structure: shared. AI is genuinely good at turning a messy voice note into a coherent outline.
- Draft: shared. Ask for a first pass in your voice, then rewrite the opening and closing by hand.
- Polish: yours. The line-level rhythm is where personality lives. Never outsource it.
The voice-note-to-post loop
The workflow we recommend to almost every client is embarrassingly simple. Record a two-minute voice note while walking. Transcribe it. Ask a model to structure it, not rewrite it. Then edit the result the way you would edit a junior associate's draft — cutting anything that sounds like it could have been written by someone else.
AI is a leverage tool, not a voice. The moment it starts sounding like you, you have stopped editing hard enough.
What AI is genuinely bad at
Contrarian takes. Specificity. Restraint. Any sentence whose value depends on what it refuses to say. That is precisely the sentence your ideal client is scrolling for — so keep writing those yourself, and let AI handle the connective tissue around them.