Purpose
Use this lesson to write success criteria before asking for prose or analysis. The aim is to produce work that a colleague can review and act on, not merely text that sounds convincing.
Lesson Explanation
Scenario: We need a plan for the monthly team meeting.
Better instruction: Create a 45-minute agenda that ends with owners and deadlines for three priorities.
“Make a plan” is not a finish line. Define the decision, reader, scope, length, and evidence of completion. Success criteria become a checklist for evaluating the output rather than relying on whether it merely sounds polished. The agenda fits 45 minutes and creates named owners and deadlines.
Work in a short cycle: provide the relevant input, state the result and limits, inspect the draft against the acceptance criteria, then revise the instruction when a requirement is missing. Keep the final human decision with the person responsible for the work.
Practice Questions
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A request says, “We need better onboarding materials.” What does this lesson say is missing from this instruction?
View Answer
A defined decision, reader, scope, length, and evidence of completion – “better” isn’t a finish line.
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Rewrite “We need better onboarding materials” into a request with clear success criteria.
View Answer
Something like: “Create a 5-page onboarding guide for new sales hires that covers our CRM, pricing sheet, and first-week checklist, reviewed and approved by the sales manager.”
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What does this lesson say success criteria function as, once defined?
View Answer
A checklist for evaluating the output, rather than relying on whether it merely sounds polished.
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A team asks an AI to “improve our customer email templates” with no further detail. What five elements does this lesson say should be defined instead?
View Answer
The decision, reader, scope, length, and evidence of completion.
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A manager reviews an AI-generated document and says, “This sounds great, let’s use it,” without checking it against any specific requirement. What does this lesson suggest is missing from this review process?
View Answer
A defined success criteria checklist to evaluate the output against, rather than judging based on how polished it sounds.
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A request defines the reader (new customers) and the scope (a welcome email) but never states a length or what counts as done. What is still missing, based on this lesson?
View Answer
Length and evidence of completion.
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Why does this lesson say “make a plan” is not a finish line?
View Answer
It doesn’t define what decision the plan should support, who it’s for, its scope, or what would count as a completed, acceptable plan.
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A prompt for a project brief specifies the decision it should support (whether to launch a new product line) and the reader (the executive team). Is this enough, per this lesson’s five elements, or is something still missing?
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Scope, length, and evidence of completion may still be missing to fully define a useful outcome.
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A request asks for “a comprehensive report” with no page limit or defined scope. What risk does this create, based on this lesson?
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The output could be the wrong length or scope entirely, since “comprehensive” doesn’t define specific, checkable boundaries.
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What is the difference between an outcome defined by “sounding polished” versus one defined by success criteria, according to this lesson?
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A polished-sounding result may not actually meet the real requirement, while success criteria provide a concrete, checkable standard for evaluation.
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A team defines a request as: decision (whether to renew a vendor contract), reader (procurement team), scope (cost and service comparison only), length (2 pages), and evidence of completion (a recommendation with a clear yes/no). What does this reflect?
View Answer
A fully defined useful outcome, containing all five elements this lesson identifies.
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A request for “a great slide deck” is submitted with no other detail. Applying this lesson’s framework, what is the single most useful first question to ask before starting?
View Answer
What decision this deck needs to support, since that clarifies the reader, scope, and what would count as a successful result.