Hi Reader,

There are two kinds of communicators in the C-suite right now.

The first kind restates. Something happens, they summarize it, they format it, they send it up. Useful. Replaceable. AI already does this job well, and it gets better every quarter.

The second kind counsels. Something happens, and they walk into the CEO's office with a point of view: here is what this means for us, here is what we should do, here is what I need from you.

Axios looked at comms leaders who report directly to CEOs this week, and the pattern was blunt. The ones keeping their seat are not the best summarizers. They are the ones who evolved from scribe to strategist, from restating priorities to shaping them.

Here is the uncomfortable part. Most of us default to scribe mode because it is safe. Counsel means putting a recommendation on paper where it can be wrong. But that risk is exactly what makes it valuable, and exactly what AI cannot take off your plate.

So this week's prompt builds the muscle. It turns one piece of business news into a one-page counsel memo for your CEO, written as an advisor, not a stenographer.

👇🏽 Here's the prompt:

🎯 Expert Mode: The "Seat at the Table Memo"

Scenario: Something happened this week that touches your business: a competitor move, a regulatory shift, an AI announcement, an earnings surprise in your category. You could summarize it. Instead, you are going to send your CEO one page of actual counsel, with a recommendation and an ask, and you are going to do it before anyone requests it.

Instructions:

1️⃣ Pick your trigger. Choose one development from this week that genuinely matters to your organization. Not the biggest headline. The one with the sharpest "so what" for your business. If you cannot articulate why it matters in one sentence, pick a different trigger.

2️⃣ Gather the CEO's context. Write down the two or three things your CEO actually cares about this quarter (growth targets, a launch, a reorg, board pressure, reputation risk). Counsel that ignores the CEO's priorities is just a longer summary.

3️⃣ Paste both into this prompt:

4️⃣ Red-team your own memo. Read the output and ask the model: "What would the CFO push back on? What am I asserting without evidence?" Fix the two weakest points. If the recommendation could have been written by someone outside the company, it is not counsel yet. Add the inside knowledge only you have.

5️⃣ Send it, then make it a habit. Deliver the memo before you are asked. Do it weekly and it stops being a document and starts being a reputation: you become the person who sees around corners.

Suggested Tool: Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini.

Why You'll Love It

• It repositions you in one page. A weekly counsel memo quietly rebrands you from the person who reports the news to the person who tells the CEO what to do about it.
• It forces the advisor muscle. The structure will not let you hide in summary mode, because parts three and four demand a recommendation and an ask.
• It compounds. One memo is a nice gesture. Twelve weeks of them is a track record you can point to when the seat at the table gets debated.

The scribe work is being automated out from under all of us. The counsel work is being promoted. This prompt is a weekly rep for the job you want to keep.

Talk soon, Chris

Want to run this as an agentic workflow? Here is the Cowork version.

Instead of hunting for the trigger and drafting from scratch every week, let Claude scan the week's news against your CEO's priorities, pick the development that matters most, and drop a finished counsel memo into your folder.

Setup (one time):

• Create a folder for the memos and drop in one file called CEO-Priorities.md with the two or three things your CEO cares about this quarter (update it when they change)
• Add one line describing your company, category, and top two or three competitors
• Optional: add a past memo or email you are proud of so Claude can match your voice

What you'll get:

• A finished one-page counsel memo, structured as advice, not summary, ready for your final pass
• The single most consequential development of the week, chosen against your CEO's actual priorities
• A runners-up list so you can overrule the pick in ten seconds if your judgment differs
• Red-team notes flagging the weakest claims before your CFO finds them
• A dated archive that becomes your track record over time

Want it on autopilot? Say "Schedule this to run every Friday morning," and the memo will be waiting in your folder before you have had coffee. You review, sharpen, send.

Here are a few articles from the past week to help keep you up to speed:

1. How communicators in the C-suite are staying at the table​
Axios Communicators July 9, 2026

Eleanor Hawkins looks at comms leaders who report directly to CEOs and finds the through line: the ones keeping their seats have evolved from scribes restating others' priorities into strategists counseling the top directly. This is the story behind this week's prompt. The title does not protect the seat. The counsel does.

2. AI in PR: The world's #1 protein brand just lost the query that matters most​
Agility PR Solutions July 15, 2026

Optimum Nutrition is the top sports nutrition brand on the planet, yet when buyers ask AI engines the specific questions that drive purchases, competitors get cited instead. Incumbency lost to whoever published retrieval-ready proof. If your brand is coasting on category leadership, the machines have not gotten the memo, and this is the sharpest case study yet on why.

3. AI is Seemingly Everywhere But How Far Does PR Need to Adopt It?​
O'Dwyer's July 15, 2026

Only 30% of PR teams say they are very confident in their ability to take advantage of AI, while more than half of journalists oppose AI in pitches and press releases. The gap between how much we use these tools and how confidently we govern them is where reputations get made or lost, and this piece maps that gap honestly.

4. What running with the bulls taught me about AI​
Ragan Communications July 8, 2026

New York Life's chief communications officer ran with the bulls in Pamplona and came back with three lessons for comms leaders on AI: respect the speed, move with intention, and expect the unpredictable. A CCO writing publicly about AI strategy is itself the "advisor, not scribe" posture in action, which makes this a fitting companion to this week's prompt.

5. PR Firm News: TEAM LEWIS Launches AI Practice​
O'Dwyer's July 9, 2026

TEAM LEWIS stood up a dedicated AI practice to help AI companies translate complex technology into credible market narratives. When agencies start building whole practices around AI storytelling, it signals where client demand is heading. Explaining AI clearly is becoming its own service line, and comms pros who can do it are getting more valuable, not less.