Philip Topham | CRAFT Thinking™
When your thinking improves,
your AI prompts improve.
CRAFT Thinking™: A Structured Framework for Better Thinking with AI
Think more clearly. Ask better questions. Get better results from AI — and from yourself.
CRAFT Thinking™ is a practical five-step thinking framework designed to improve clarity, decision-making, and AI prompt quality. By focusing on how you think before you ask, CRAFT helps leaders, teams, and professionals reduce ambiguity, sharpen insight, and consistently produce better outcomes — with or without AI.
CRAFT Thinking™ is for executives, board-adjacent leaders, and serious knowledge workers whose value comes from making sound judgments—not just producing output. It’s for directors, advisors, and consultants who operate in ambiguity, where clearer thinking leads to better decisions, stronger alignment, and more defensible outcomes.
If your work involves framing strategy, guiding others, pressure-testing ideas, or deciding what matters before acting—CRAFT Thinking™ gives you a structured way to think more clearly, with or without AI.
AI won’t make your work smarter. Clear thinking will. Adopt the CRAFT Thinking™ Framework.
When your AI prompts improve,
your decisions improve.
“CRAFT Thinking™ is the playbook senior leaders and boards have been missing."
— Jason Odden, Board Chair & Strategic AI/Cloud Executive
“I created CRAFT Thinking™ because I kept seeing the same thing—smart people getting disappointing answers from AI. It wasn’t the fault of the person or the tool. It was the way we were taught to think with people, not machines. When I realized vague prompts were producing vague results, I started developing a method to bring structure and clarity to AI interactions. This book shares what I’ve learned—so you can think more clearly, work more effectively, and turn generative AI into a true co-thought partner.” — Philip Topham
Philip Topham
Philip Topham is a strategic AI advisor, speaker, and creator of the CRAFT Thinking™ method—a framework designed to bring clarity, intentionality, and better decision-making into the AI era.
With a career spanning corporate leadership, startup ventures, and board advisory, Philip combines the rigor of an engineer with the insight of a relationship-focused strategist. He’s earned two U.S. patents, contributed to peer-reviewed research, and worked across industries from health tech to clean tech to biotech.. But what sets him apart is not just his technical depth—it’s his shift toward human-centered leadership, helping leaders think with AI—not just use it—so their organizations can grow wisely, inclusively, and sustainably.
Philip serves as co-chair of the National AI Special Interest Group for the Private Directors Association, and publishes regularly at SavionAI: The Shift. His belief is simple: AI should serve all of humanity—not just the elite. And it’s our shared responsibility to build companies and institutions worthy of that promise.
Across history new tools have exposed gaps in our systems—governance, training, incentives, culture. AI is no different. It amplifies whatever we bring to it: focus or noise, rigor or shortcuts, ethics or expediency. So let’s bring it clarity.
CRAFT Thinking™ is a five-part method—Context, Role, Action, Format, Target—that turns AI ambiguity into usable decisions. It’s not prompt tricks. It’s a way to think with AI (and without it) so your outputs match your intent.
This is a playbook for organizational leaders and all professionals using AI. You’ll learn to:
You do not need to be a prompt engineer. You do need to be an intentional thinker.
The Book
Get clearer thinking and better
decisions with AI—without becoming
a prompt engineer.
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Frame problems clearly—not vaguely
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Pressure-test assumptions and surface blind spots
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Rehearse decisions before they matter
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Turn conversations into artifacts others can use
Praise for CRAFT Thinking
™
Philip Topham
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