I am convinced of one thing: we spend a large part of our lives at work. We might as well work better.
That conviction has stayed with me from Montreal, where I worked in HR technology, to Dakar, where I founded NextWorker and then the Maister programme. And it is exactly what excites me about artificial intelligence: its ability to help us work better, not just faster.
Today, everyone is talking about AI. We test ChatGPT, Claude, a new tool every week. But the real question, the one I ask myself every day, lies elsewhere: what does it actually change in the way we work?
At Maister, that is what drives us: turning AI into results. From AI to ROI.
And using it every day has taught me one thing: we all underestimate how much it matters to set these tools up properly. We all have access to more or less the same models. Yet we do not all get the same value from them. The difference is not the technology. It is what we give it: our context, our goals, our projects, the way we work.
This is even more true in Africa, where we often have to achieve a lot with very little. AI is a real opportunity, provided we know how to build it intelligently into our daily work.
That is why I wrote this guide. Not to teach you how to ask Claude a few questions, but to show you how to turn it into a genuine ally, at work and in your personal life.
The 15 prompts that follow come from my own practice: this is the method I used to set up my own Claude. Thanks to it, Claude knows my background, my goals and the way I work, and it helps me run each of my projects. I am sharing this method with you, step by step, so you can adapt it to your own reality.
No technical skills are required. You copy the prompts, you answer the questions, and, step by step, you build a Claude that works the way you do.
Because ultimately, the goal is not to use more AI. It is to work better with it.
Leina
Leina Diaw
Head of Africa, Maister · Founder, NextWorker
Leina Diaw runs NextWorker, which designs custom AI-powered systems, and co-founded Maister, the applied AI training programme. A former strategy consultant, she supported the corporate strategy team at Workleap (HR Tech) on post-acquisition integration and employee experience. A graduate of HEC Montréal, she teaches HRIS, AI and strategic management at ISM Dakar.