AI Devil's Advocate
Before a team commits to a decision, it describes the decision to an AI chat that has been instructed to play devil's advocate. The AI asks one question at a time: what alternative views exist, what the drawbacks are, what evidence supports the choice, what you are assuming. The team answers, then reports what, if anything, changed its mind.
Use when a group is close to agreement and nobody wants to be the one who questions it.
Solves: Teams fall into a consensus trap where questioning the group's choice feels disloyal, so nobody does.
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Step 1: Write down the decision the team is about to make in two or three sentences (5 min).
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Step 2: Paste the devil's advocate prompt into an AI chat: it should introduce itself as a teammate, ask one question at a time, and wait for answers.
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Step 3: Share the decision with the AI and answer its questions as a team, with one person typing (10-20 min).
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Step 4: Pull out the two or three challenges that actually landed and discuss them without the AI (5-10 min).
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Step 5: Decide: keep, change or park the decision, and write down why (5 min).
- Remind the team that the AI does not know their context and can make things up. Its job is to raise questions, not to be right.
- Watch for the team deferring to the AI. Ask: which of these points would you have raised if no one had asked?
- Rotate the typist so one person does not filter what the AI sees.
- Run it before a pre-mortem to warm the group up to criticism of its own plan.