I fed my own strategy into Claude, and it found 3 gaps before I did

15 years in finance taught me this.

The most useful person is the one who asks the annoying question before the board does - Recently, I asked my digital twin in Claude to plan my day. And without me asking it found 3 things that contradicted (that I hadn't even noticed).

So on 17th September, live with Ramp, I'm showing you how you can level up your decision making in Claude, plus:

• How to use Claude Cowork to carry out painful tasks (freeing your time for the good stuff)
• How to use Skills for financial models or a board decks in your own template, so the 5th version looks exactly like the 1st (no re-explaining)
• The crawl-walk-run rule I use to test tasks before they start costing me money in over-used AI credits

My sessions with Ramp are always incredible. Last time we had 2,604 registrants and 1,195 live attendees.

Plus, this time, if you join us here, you will have a chance to win a free annual membership to my AI Finance Club - See you there!

"Every week I create a CEO briefing"

Michael leads finance and IT for a network of charter schools in the US, with about 250 staff.

Before education he was an auditor at Deloitte, then valuation at KPMG. So he knows what good numbers look like (and how awkward it is when they’re wrong).

We had a call last month, and I asked him what he was actually doing with everything he learned in my AI Finance Accelerator.

His answer: "every week I create a CEO briefing."

A recurring briefing that goes to his CEO and to his team, on top of month-end workflows, audit prep, board reporting etc.

But, the secret behind a good briefing? One that a CEO will read, find useful and be super impressed with - is a 5 layer system.

Here’s how it works.

Barbara Minto’s 1963 Pyramid

Barbara Minto was the first female MBA professional hire McKinsey ever made.

Her job involved reviewing reports, and she kept noticing something. The analysis was fine. But the thinking was buried.

So she started reorganizing every report into a pyramid (The ‘Minto Pyramid’) - with the answer at the top, and the support underneath.

Today it is how McKinsey, Bain and BCG teach people to talk to executives.

She said: "The pyramid is a tool to help you find out what you think.” And, on top, she also gave us the order to think in:

Situation, Complication, Question, Answer.

But for me - to really impress your CEO - there is a step missing, so I’ve re-formatted this briefing framework into:

The Nico Pyramid

1. Situation

Michael is formally mapping his tech stack before he automates anything else. MIP Fund Accounting for the ERP, BambooHR for HR, Paychex for payroll. He does not own all of those systems, so there is reconciliation and cleaning to do before any of it is used in a briefing.

The Situation is two things:

1. Your data, centralized in one place and checked for consistency before AI uses it.
2. Your context: your role, your company, your tech stack.

This level is the widest of the pyramid because it is the most work, and nobody wants to do it. But bad inputs do not give you an error message with AI. They give you a confident, well-written briefing that is wrong, and your name is on it.

2. Complication

Now you tell it what changed.

My standard example is the one I use in every crash course: the cost centre file where costs jumped by 125k and the CEO wants to know why.

And before I trust a single number, I check three classic errors.

1. The subtraction is going the wrong direction.
2. Last year and current year are mixed together.
3. Budget and actuals are the wrong way round.

Then go a level deeper on your analysis:

• Descriptive (what happened),
• Diagnostic (why),
• Predictive (what happens next),
• Prescriptive (what we should do).

AI will stop at the first two unless you ask it to go further. And like this you get outliers and drivers, instead of a summary of your own spreadsheet.

3. Question

Minto's third level is the question your CEO will likely ask. So rehearse it.

My first prompt is simply: “What could go wrong with this analysis?”

It comes back with things you did not think about.

Then you ask it the second question:

“So how do I flag that in the briefing before my CEO finds it?

On top, tell it to ask you questions back when it is not sure, instead of guessing. This one change will save you from most hallucinations.

4. Answer

For the structure, I use:

What, So What, Now What.

What happened, why it matters, and what you recommend. Insights, opportunities and risks, and a recommendation, written in your wording and not in generic and boring consultant English.

You MUST give a recommendation. A briefing that describes what happened is a report. A briefing that says what to do is where your CEO will see the most value.

Now the first question I always get here is: can I really let AI write something that goes to my CEO? And the answer is you do not let it.

In one of our live AI Finance Club workshops Anne-Claire Chanvin explained that AI can draft the summary and the commentary, but a person puts the business context and the tone in before it goes out.

5. Impact

I am very visual (most people are).

So visual in fact, that the thing that launched me on LinkedIn was my ‘Finance Cheatsheet’ which got 37 million views.

It was everything to do with finance, in a one page cheat sheet.

So, at the top of the pyramid you need to create an impact by making sure people will.

1. See ALL of the important information
2. Understand ALL of the important information

Whenever I ask a team a question, and I get a wall of text, I say to them: “Get AI to create me a visual or an infographic for this so i can understand it better.

So when you ask AI for the output for your briefing, ask for a dashboard, a graph, an infographic. Anything that will make it super easy for your CEO to understand.

Plus, if you ask for the output in a mobile friendly HTML view, this means people will be able to easily open on a mobile too.

And on top, there is a second use for it as well. This dashboard is a prototype. Take it to your BI team and say "build me this." Suddenly the conversation that took six months takes one meeting, because they can see exactly what you want.

The one thing to remember

Your CEO reads this pyramid from the top down, so what they see as soon as they open anything is critical.

But you build it from the bottom up: Situation, Complication, Question, Answer, Impact.

So, your first step this week is not to build the whole pyramid. Just write down the three questions your CEO asks you every single week.

This is the basis of a briefing that will create and impact, and gain you more influence.

Best,

Your AI Finance Expert,

- Nicolas
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P.S - The best way to learn from me directly is to join my weekly masterclasses. 60-mins + Q&A where I’ll get all your AI in Finance questions answered. ​Join me here.​

P.P.S - Want to build the AI clone behind the pyramid? Here's the full setup → How to Build Your AI CFO Clone in Claude (2026)​

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