Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the AI Insights podcast, where we explore the transformative world of artificial intelligence. I'm your host, Tony Stewart, manager of digital innovation at Alithia. Today, I'm excited to still be speaking with Robert Gates, principal cloud solution architect for Microsoft.
Speaker: um Continuing the conversation from our last episode, we'll be discussing co -pilot adoption. This episode, we're transitioning from organizational level to end user adoption. ah With a wave of new AI tools, the user adoption story can look a little bit different from other technology migrations users have seen.
Speaker: Before we get started, can you give us a quick recap of your journey in the technology industry and a little bit about your role today? Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Tony. ah So again, Rob Gates, one of our principal solution architects here at Microsoft. I cover a lot of the technology around the modern work tools, co teams, obviously co -pilot for Microsoft 365, which I've been doing for a while now. And I've been in the field for many decades doing lots of things like teams and voice and collaboration type tools. So happy to join you. Fantastic having you here.
Speaker: Um, so we started to discuss it on our last episode, um, but I, you know, following up on the idea of organizational strategy, um, can you explain the idea of people and process transformation as it relates to co -pilot? Yeah. I mean, I think.
Speaker: When you look at Copilot, it's a personal aspect. right it's It's a tool that i'm I'm being given that's going to allow me to sort of amplify, accelerate, drive creativity. But it also gets weaved into my workflow and my processes. right and so it is very close to the individuals and and that's change. And let's face it, change is hard, right? Nobody but he really is chasing down change and excited to do something different because it requires learning sometimes or ah taking something that maybe is not as efficient as it should be but is is
Speaker: kind of you've learned how to do it to a point where you don't have to think, right? And it's just you're an autopilot. So it's really kind of important to get folks comfortable with change and evolving. And it requires employees kind of getting them engaged. It does require a little bit of thinking about continuous learning and getting folks to kind of adopt and learn. This stuff is changing fast. It's evolving quickly.
Speaker: um I do think once you start seeing the power of like co -pilot and that it can offload these tasks that are kind of boring or or may take you unnecessary amounts of time, it also sort of inspires you to want to dig in, right? So it is there's a lot of focus on the people side because it's you know it's really impacting my daily work. Yeah, absolutely. um So what are your key strategies regarding day one and user adoption?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of really applying traditional like adoption and change management aspects. right So we need leadership commitment. They need to show that this is important to the organization, explain the benefits, right driving that communication strategy out to to the org, not just in a one -time scenario, but continually. um you know Having leadership even share their own successes of how they've used Copilot it is super important.
Speaker: um you know driving that employee engagement sometimes also requires having some champions across the organization that are that are eager to to jump in and have them out in the fields. kind of sharing and celebrating and getting others excited, um but also being that kind of trusted friend to say, hey, all right, I got to do this co -pilot thing. I heard you were doing some stuff with it already. Can you give me some guidance, right? And so building that community of of folks. um And that may even be like you are using some internal tooling, maybe like VivaEngage or Teams, where we're creating these kind of collaborative spaces where folks can go in. So lots of like kind of traditional ECM adoption and change management type work.
Speaker: training continually, right, having that kind of continual training I think is important.
Speaker: And then again, clear communication, right? What's the benefits, the why, making sure people understand the impact, and a little bit of from from our organizational conversation, but also identifying those business processes. If you can help me deploy Copilot and use it, and I can take a process that's got friction, or it's giving me a lot of pain in my daily workflow, and if you can show me how to do that and now improve that experience,
Speaker: I'm going to be super excited, and I'm going to probably be chasing you to help me do it in more areas. right So it's definitely a lot of that. you know Getting people excited, seeing the power, and then it almost becomes addictive. Like, hey, all right, great. You solve this. I need more.
Speaker: Yeah. I'm glad you brought up the, um, from our earlier conversation, the starting your, starting your adoption from a process perspective too. Um, you know, it's not just assign a license to everyone and tell them how it works. And then they're good. Um,
Speaker: And that, to me, starts to really add substance to something like a champions network. um Are you seeing any organizations that have had great success from that standpoint of zeroing in on the process? And how how does that relate to the end user story? Yeah, I mean, it's I think it's a critical facet, right? and And even within Microsoft, we have internal champions program, we have your different co -pilot communities that are out there that people can join and be part of. um And then like I'm a co -pilot champion, right? And so I'm kind of advocating for my department and my org within Microsoft. um you know it is It is change, right? And so just getting people trained and understanding, learning how to talk to co -pilot in that more natural format is is definitely an important piece.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a topic that's near and dear to my heart, obviously, but training in education with co -pilot. You kind of mentioned it. What does that look like as far as when what you experience with organizations?
Speaker: Yeah, you know there's I guess there's two two paths to to that training aspect. and And I guess the first is more of the out -of -the -box experiences, right? So you just got the Copilot license turned on. You're starting to see it now in Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint. You can go to copilot .microsoft dot .com directly.
Speaker: and kind of engage into that dialogue with the tool. So understanding just out of the box, first off, where is it, right? Because as you're as you're starting to see, like it's everywhere. It's an Outlook, it's in different places in Outlook. Depending on where you go in Outlook, you're going to get different experiences because if I'm in Calendar,
Speaker: it's going to be fine -tuned to look at and work with my calendar and information versus if I'm an email where it's helping me prioritize messages or find and respond to info quickly or summarize an an email. So there's just a understanding of the out -of -the -box experiences. And like in some of these things, these are high friction tasks that people do across the modern work tool sets. And like that's a quick win right there. It's just getting people to say, oh,
Speaker: Here's your email box. You get hundreds of emails a day. Here's how you can go and deal with those reply all email threads or here's a long running email that's got a lot of details that you just need to get to the gist of because you're getting ready to go to a meeting.
Speaker: And mike you start having those wins, and then that starts opening up the mind to like you know and the and the individual to kind of think a little bit further, like, hey, I see where it can work in the tools itself. Now, how do I apply this to other areas of the business? right How do I do something in my process or my workflow for my department, my team, my org kind of thing? so Yeah, it's interesting. and There's lots of ways to kind of approach it, but I like starting with the out of the box and then getting into those business outcomes, right? So it's, it's you know, how do I use the tools? And then how do I apply it in in different contexts? Yeah, I think that's that really ties into the the continuous education, the continuous training aspect of it. the There is that initial hurdle of
Speaker: how you know learning in general how these things work and I think that's ah something you've mentioned before that that really it's it's a habit change it's you know, occurring to me, oh, in this moment, I can talk to co -pilot to do this, as opposed to go to this place and click and do these ah these different sort of high friction tasks. But then, you know, there's the ongoing training aspect of it. What happens when you find a really great prompt or you really start to be able to dig into what the tools can do?
Speaker: um I'm interested in, ah are you seeing are you seeing organizations ah really communicate that strongly or do they have systems that you would recommend for gathering that feedback to be able to share out to the other end users?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's done partly through the adoption kind of change management type programs and strategies organizations are doing. um There's also feedback capabilities within the Copilot tool that the you know admins and folks managing the M365 tenant can take advantage of from a reporting. We have a Copilot dashboard where you know leadership and some of the managers of the co -pilot deployment, for example, can go in and see you know usage patterns and how well folks are kind of leveraging the experience. um And then surveys and tech you know focus groups across the organization. i mean it It's important to kind of have a ah continual motion of collaboration, communication, sharing the benefits of co -pilot because it's
Speaker: It's a change in the way we work. And you know when you get busy, it's you know the end of the quarter. Everybody's got to hurry up to to complete a bunch of tasks and you know to meet the goals for the quarter. ah We're going to all fall back to our old habits and behaviors. and and you potentially could get things done quicker by leveraging Copilot. And so it's ah it's a battle between old habits and kind of the new way of working in some cases. So it it it needs some time for people to really just break those old habits.
Speaker: Deploying Copilot across the organization can be daunting and feel overwhelming, which is why starting with a well -planned pilot is a best practice. Alithia's Co -Pilot structure pilot program helps your organization develop an optimal plan for enterprise -wide deployment of Co -Pilot, ensuring seamless AI adoption and daily workflows. Our experts guide you through the discovery and alignment for different personas, departments, and processes, providing comprehensive reporting on Co -Pilot's effectiveness. This allows you to establish a clear vision for Co -Pilot licensure scope, create a deployment strategy, and set the stage for a successful rollout and ongoing adoption across your organization.
Speaker: For full details, visit alithia .com forward slash pilot. The link will also be available in the description box.
Speaker: I think that's a great, ah tied closely to that, the communication part of it. um So as you gather that feedback, as users are starting to learn more or continue to learn what these tools can do, um what are you seeing from a communication or a communication strategy standpoint?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it applies really to a lot of the traditional ACM adoption and change management methods, right? It's frequent communications across the organization. um It's you know celebrating success. So if a team, a department you know was able to do something really impactful to to that group or to the organization, making sure that's shared and communicated, um we've actually had some great luck with doing some gamification to it, right? Where we've created challenges of of, you know hey, here's some cool prompts you can do and and here's how you can leverage them. So just having some some gamification to it where people could win prizes could be an interesting way to to approach it. It's getting people really to kind of weave it into their daily workflow. And so it's a lot of just people transformation aspects that that that you know at that point.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. i I've been heavily ah involved in and pulled into the idea of prompt -a -thons. So I think you tipped the hat a little bit in terms of um what what are your thoughts on organizations that are considering that or starting to kind of combine all these ideas together?
Speaker: You know, prompt I love promptath thumb promptto prompt And the reason being is because when you think about Copilot, right, and you're having these natural conversations with a tool, it's not like I have a manual that I can go to, and here's the 12 defined commands to go do something in an application.
Speaker: This is pretty wide open, right? And depending on the data, depending on what I ask Copilot to do, depending on maybe what IT has added into my account through integrations and customization, plugins, connectors, and whatnot.
Speaker: um I need just time to experience the co -pilot system, but I also want to see examples from others. right and so We've done prompt -a -thons internally where you know all of a sudden I'll see somebody write a prompt, I go, oh I never really thought of asking co -pilot for that. um and Then of course, seeing other people's prompts and you're like literally copy paste them and then you try to go use them or tweak them a little bit. um It's just a great way for you know for you to see different ways to ask co -pilot to get things done.
Speaker: you know I learned a way to kind of chain a couple of different commands together in one prompt um you know through something that somebody else was doing in a prompt -a -thon that I was in. so It's really interesting to just kind of see and learn. and and It also creates that collaboration space where you've got folks joking around and trying to figure out how to to leverage the ah tools. I feel like I i saw it really add a lot of meat or sort of actionable things I could do as the end -user,
Speaker: to a center of excellence. Knowing who my champions were is always amazing. You can go and reach them, having centralized resources. How is this configure? What integrations do we have? um once One thing that we saw, especially in the the gamification section, um was not just identifying an amazing prompt and building that library out, but also finding who was really great at building those prompts.
Speaker: um And especially when that idea crosses persona. um So if they're writing fantastic prompts for their job role, but then they're also a resource that you could reach out when it's, well, how do I do something similar to what I do in my day to day?
Speaker: Are you seeing similar type of experiences? Yeah. And what's interesting is like one of the things that I kind of started to to learn from some of the prompt -a -thons that I've been part of is um actually it's actually forcing me to stop and slow down for a minute and think about what I do in my daily work.
Speaker: And when I can kind of understand like, okay, here's the task that I typically do. Here's the locations of the data that I need to help me get that task done. um This is the type of output that I'm like trying to create with the task and the data that I'm working with.
Speaker: when you start to put it in that kind of content and you think about your workflow, and that and some of this has come through those prompt -a -thons where I've seen how other people have been creative of kind of weaving that story together, it kind of makes you realize like you actually want to maybe slow down a little bit to go faster. and And kind of what I mean by that is like the more time you kind of stop and think about what your goals, your objectives, what's the output, where's the data, what's the actions and and the to -dos that are part of that,
Speaker: the the more you can kind of spend time writing that prompt and and defining those things to Copilot. And then when you submit it to Copilot, what you'll see is your your output is accelerated. um I've done scenarios where I've gone from a blank slate, managers drop something off and said, I need you to go prepare for an event and we're going to need this content and we've got a publisher document. I'm like, okay, great. And I'm ah starting with a blank slate. And I'll go to Copilot just as on a blank chat.
Speaker: go back and forth, leverage the data that I got in the tenant, and then I can kind of continue to weave through that journey in different prompts to kind of create an outline, to create and a document, to use that document to create a PowerPoint. It gets interesting, but you've got to be able to explain to Copilot like you have a new hire. You've got a new an intern or a new assistant to your team, you're not going to just say, hey, I need a presentation for X and walk away. You're going to say, hey, here's the data. This is what we're working on. We've got a new program. Here's some resources for you. And this is a template, by the way, that we've used in other events. Go use that as your source. right And when you think about it in that context, that's kind of the way you want to talk to Copilot and give it the clarity that that that's needed to help you.
Speaker: Yeah, that that's a great point. I mean, the, the notion of slowing down in your own usage of co -pilot does also slow you down in the sense of what is co -pilot capable of doing, which then becomes something that is repeatable for those other personas. The more time I spend thinking through, okay, if I, you know, I word it this way and I want it to output this way.
Speaker: When I work with someone that's entirely different business role, I can communicate those those sort of prompt building strategies. Their prompt isn't going to be the same as the one that I use. but It really starts to build you know additional training and knowledge around how do you build this well for all of your organization sort of specifics. Yeah, and I may take something that you've done, but I'm going to tweak it for my own purpose, right? So that prompt -a -thon is a great opportunity for that. You kind of mentioned it there, especially with the new hire and and
Speaker: the idea of doing that that work. um do you see Do you see a ah heavy utilization of prompt -a -thons as it relates to sort of an ah an onboarding, um maybe ah pilot new users onboarding to the pilot or new users onboarding to an organization? right Both. I mean, it's it's important to get people to engage quickly in the tools. So you know having those prompt -a -thons, having it as part of that kind of you know onboarding process is definitely an interesting way to go because you're empowering them with a bunch of tools. And so now they're trying to learn the organization and and maybe in some cases it's new to them and they're learning that the capabilities of CoPilot. So giving them the tools in addition to a prompt -a -thon on the hiring step is is definitely definitely a good good approach. Awesome, yeah. In our work in that space, we've really been seeing prompt -a -thon as a way to
Speaker: Continuously educate, it starts to encompass all of those components of ACM, but it also starts to drive just building out a prompt library, something that is tailored specifically to that organization. um Are you seeing similar experiences? yeah Yeah, I mean, we've got that new prompt library support within the tool. um I've seen folks create sort SharePoint sites and other places to go to collaborate and have you know common prompts, and then obviously driving prompt -a -thons as well.
Speaker: So really having those prompts I think is helpful to see, it's almost like a starting point. It's like, oh, I didn't realize I could ask Copilot for that kind of thing, right? And so it just, it gives me people a place to start and then kind of, they can use that to kind of build upon. Yeah. What do you see the impact on an actual sort of pilot or adoption journey being from pre -prompt -a -thon to how new users come into the pilot once you've already run one?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's it's it it hit helps accelerate, definitely. um you know i think it's Because it's a very personal function or tool, like just having that ability to see different ways to ask Copilot for different things is definitely an important piece. so yeah Outside of the traditional sort of nodes of ah an ACM practice and and really making sure you're checking all of those boxes and sort of building that into a ah single environment. um Are you seeing any other trends as far as new organizations are organizations starting along this journey?
Speaker: Yeah, and and I think this is kind of where you start to have that multi -phased approach, right? There's getting comfortable with Copilot out of the box, right? As we talked before, being in Teams, Word, Excel, and just leveraging the out -of -the -box capabilities. um Then applying it to some business outcomes where you're you've got a defined process and you kind of see where you can weave Copilot into that to accelerate, amplify, or you know remove some friction.
Speaker: um And then kind of the evolution is really moving into those agents, right where you've unpacked and you've maybe optimized a process, but it's got repetitiveness to it, where you're like, oh, well, I don't need to do i can give like a co -pilot agent like a clear path to how to do something. Here you go. right And so there's lots of ways to kind of tweak and and evolve that.
Speaker: Rob, thank you so much again for joining us. Um, stay tuned by following us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube music. Also don't forget to check out a lithium structure pilot program offer at a lithium .com forward slash pilot and thank you.
