How to Find Best Practices for a Process with AI
Most workflows can be improved if you start from proven approaches. Copilot is a fast way to gather best practices — and the pitfalls to avoid.
What it is
When you’re trying to improve a process — onboarding, document review, project handovers, meeting facilitation — there’s usually a body of accumulated wisdom about what works. Copilot can pull that wisdom together quickly: principles, common patterns, things to avoid, simple frameworks. It saves you from reinventing what others have already worked out.
The skill is in narrowing the request to your context. ‘Best practices for project management’ is too broad. ‘Best practices for managing a 6-week digital project with 4 people in a regulated industry’ produces something you can actually apply. Constraints make the output sharper.
Where this is most useful is when you’re new to running something. Inherited a process you don’t know? Designing one from scratch? Ask Copilot for the standard pitfalls and the proven approaches, then layer your own judgement on top. You’ll skip past mistakes you’d otherwise have made and get to the interesting decisions faster.
When to use this
- When you’re improving an existing workflow and want proven approaches.
- When you’re designing a new process from scratch and need a starting framework.
- When you’ve inherited a process and want to know if you’re doing it right.
- When you’re training someone in a process and want a checklist.
How to do it
- Describe the process and what problem you’re solving.
- Add constraints: team size, timeline, industry, tools.
- Ask Copilot for best practices and a ‘minimum viable’ version of the process.
- Request common pitfalls, risks, and quick wins.
- Ask for a checklist your team can actually use.
- Tailor the output to your organisation’s tools and policies.
- Pilot the new process before rolling out widely.
Best practices
- Anchor best practices to outcomes. What does success look like? Speed? Quality? Compliance? Different priorities lead to different practices.
- Ask for ‘good enough’ options. Not every process needs to be world-class. Sometimes ‘better than what we have’ is the right target.
- Document ownership and decision points. A process without ownership isn’t a process.
- Turn guidance into a checklist. Bullet points your team can actually follow beat philosophical frameworks.
Common mistakes
- Asking for best practices without constraints. You get generic theory, not applicable advice.
- Implementing ‘best practices’ without piloting. What works for others may not fit your context.
- Skipping the pitfalls section. Knowing what to avoid is often more useful than knowing what to do.
The Copilot Readiness Guide gives you the 25-question scorecard, the 4-category risk audit, and the 30-day plan to fix permissions, content quality, and sensitive content before go-live.
Get the Copilot Readiness Guide — $39 →FAQ
How do I find best practices for a business process with Copilot?
In Copilot Chat, prompt ‘What are best practices for [process]? Include common pitfalls and what differentiates leaders from average performers.’ Use Researcher mode for deeper output with cited sources you can verify.
How reliable are Copilot’s best-practice recommendations?
Mixed. Copilot synthesises plausible-sounding best practices from training data, but doesn’t always distinguish between ‘widely adopted’, ‘evidence-based’, and ‘sounds good but unproven’. For decisions that matter, ask Copilot for evidence and verify against authoritative sources (research, case studies, expert publications).
Can Copilot tell me what’s industry standard for [process]?
Yes, but verify. Copilot can produce confident-sounding ‘industry standard’ claims that vary by sector, region, and recency. Ask ‘what evidence supports this is industry standard?’ and verify the cited sources. For regulated industries, never act on Copilot’s claim of standard without independent verification.
What’s the best Copilot prompt for finding best practices?
Be specific about scope: ‘best practices for onboarding new hires in a 50-person professional services firm in Australia, with citations to recent sources.’ Specific prompts produce specific output; vague prompts produce generic checklists that could apply to any industry.