A leader’s guide to five essential AI prompts

Many successful CEOs are using AI to gain a competitive advantage, but are still leaving value on the table. While simple requests like "help me understand my market" will deliver generic insights, strategic prompting can transform AI into a thinking partner that accelerates decision-making.

The difference lies in combining great prompts with comprehensive context. Advanced LLMs like the Gemini app can integrate your plans, market research, financial data, and competitive intelligence. This contextual depth transforms theoretical business advice into actionable intelligence grounded in your specific market position and growth objectives.

Skillful use of the five prompting techniques described here can compress months of strategic analysis into hours. While others wait for consultant reports, leaders with these skills are already making their next moves.

1. The market opportunity decoder

The prompt: "Research adjacent markets where our core capabilities could create value. Analyze market size, growth trends, key players, competitive dynamics, and entry barriers for [specific adjacent market]. Identify companies successfully applying similar capabilities and highlight areas requiring strategic investigation."

Why it works: Market expansion research typically requires extensive analyst time and multiple data sources. This prompt accelerates the intelligence gathering phase, providing comprehensive market foundations for expansion discussions.

Business impact: Consider how a data analytics firm could rapidly research industries that rely heavily on predictive modeling, compile competitive intelligence, and identify market entry considerations — transforming weeks of research into focused planning sessions.

The strategic advantage: Faster, more comprehensive market research enables better decisions about expansion opportunities while freeing up team resources for execution planning.

2. The strategic threat detector

The prompt: "Analyze emerging competitive threats in [your industry] that traditional competitors might miss. Focus on non-obvious market entrants, business model innovations, and technology disruptions that could reshape our competitive landscape within 18 months. Identify early warning signals."

Why it works: This prompt encourages AI to think laterally about disruption patterns, cross-industry innovations, and weak signals that traditional analysis might overlook. 

Business impact: Consider how a logistics company might use this approach to identify a fintech startup's delivery ambitions six months before they announce their own logistics platform — providing time to strengthen customer relationships and develop competitive responses.

The strategic advantage: While competitors respond to threats after they materialize, you're building responses to disruptions that haven't yet emerged into public view.

3. The board narrative builder

The prompt: "Transform these quarterly metrics and operational updates into a strategic narrative for board presentation. Highlight our progress toward [specific strategic goal], connect current performance to long-term value creation, and identify the three most critical strategic decisions needed from the board."

Why it works: Transforming operational data into compelling narratives can require significant preparation time, input from a team, and multiple iterations. This prompt accelerates that process while ensuring the narrative connects current performance to long-term objectives and identifies clear decision points for the board to consider.

Business impact: Instead of spending hours with your team crafting board narratives from scratch, you can rapidly develop compelling storylines that connect operational performance to long-term value creation, freeing up time for other high-value work. With Gemini’s ability to process multiple data sources – from financial dashboards to operational reports – you can rapidly synthesize complex performance data into coherent narratives.

The strategic advantage: Faster, higher-quality board preparation means more time for thinking and execution, while consistently strong board narratives build confidence in your leadership and accelerate decision-making processes.

4. The scenario stress-tester

The prompt: "Evaluate our current strategy against three scenarios: economic downturn reducing customer spending by 30%, a major competitor launching a disruptive alternative, and accelerated market growth exceeding our capacity. For each scenario, identify our biggest vulnerabilities, required strategic pivots, and critical success factors."

Why it works: Planning for only one future scenario limits flexibility. This prompt enables comprehensive scenario planning that reveals blind spots and builds optionality into your planning.

Business impact: Companies using scenario-based planning can pivot faster because they've already identified alternative suppliers and pricing strategies for various market conditions.

The strategic advantage: Resilience and pre-built optionality let you turn market volatility into competitive advantage while others develop responses.

5. The M&A intelligence accelerator

The prompt: "Assess [acquisition target] for strategic fit with our core capabilities, market positioning alignment, integration complexity factors, and realistic synergy potential. Identify key due diligence priorities, highlight critical business model considerations, and outline areas requiring deeper human assessment."

Why it works: Traditional due diligence often starts with financial analysis. This prompt accelerates the assessment phase by analyzing market positioning, business model compatibility, and integration requirements, helping you focus human due diligence efforts on the highest-value areas.

Business impact: Consider how a company could use the Gemini app to analyze their own due diligence materials – internal assessments, market research, and other publicly available competitive intelligence –  to rapidly evaluate each target's strategic fit across multiple criteria. This would allow for completion of a preliminary assessment in days rather than weeks. 

The strategic advantage: Better deal selection and integration planning improves M&A success rates and accelerates time-to-value from acquisitions.

Making strategic AI work for you

These prompts work because they mirror strategic thinking frameworks. Each one requires you to provide specific context about your business, industry, and goals — transforming AI from a generic advisor into a customized thinking partner.

The Gemini app is particularly effective for this type of complex reasoning. Gemini can process multiple documents simultaneously — your board decks, financial reports, competitive analyses, and market research — while maintaining context across all variables. This means your prompts work with your complete business picture, not isolated data points.

Getting started: Choose the prompt that addresses your most pressing priority. Upload relevant business documents to provide Gemini with proper context. Refine your inputs based on output quality, then build the practice into your existing planning processes.

Critical reminder: These prompts accelerate strategic thinking but don't replace executive judgment. Always validate AI insights with domain expertise, market data, and stakeholder input before making major decisions.

The competitive advantage isn't just speed — it's the ability to explore more options, stress-test assumptions, and identify opportunities that traditional analysis might overlook. While your competitors schedule strategy sessions for next quarter, you're already stress-testing three different market scenarios and evaluating acquisition targets.