Another 'no sales pitch' view on M365 Copilot and the experiences. In February's update, it was very much about how Copilot surfaced in each application.
This time, I want to look at the reality of rolling out wider within an organization. We've known for a long time that Business Change & Adoption were going to be high on the agenda, but how is it working out in reality.
Business Change and Personal Change - Regardless of whether you trust AI or not, this is the future of the workplace. If you want to get your organization on the front foot, you need to lead with the front foot. One thing that has become very clear is that when an organization buys into AI, in any form, the transformation becomes dramatic. When you test M365Copilot out with an handful of users to 'see what it does' you are not going to realize the full potential. This is a very different way of working, and you need to put those who are really driven by it, at the heart of the business change. This new tooling will be very much a community play, sharing ideas, prompts, talking about what you did with it. There is strength in numbers in this game. You might be able to create functions in an excel spreadsheet faster because you have used it for years, but unless you take the time to explore the true possibilities of Copilot, you will end up with it becoming a tool to help you manage emails and meetings. Empowering your employees to see what they can do with this is going to reap huge rewards in the long run.
The battle for licenses - This one was expected, but not on the scale that we have seen. It has been the equivalent of the Black Friday sales mayhem, with people trying to jump the queues and pull in any favours that they can, through any means possible. Does that mean that you should give them a license? Yes and no, if the really keen ones get hold of it, that is great, but if they get hold of it, but do very little with it, then where is the real value? Sometimes it is the people with the most experience in their area, the ones who are just cracking on with their jobs, are the ones who can really open up the possibilities. Do you want to give everyone a Copilot license? Probably not, well not yet. If you do give people the license, you also need to give them permission to try it out properly so long as they are wholly responsible for the quality of the output.
Usage - There is always a big peak of usage once a shiny new tool is rolled out. We've seen it loads of times, but after that boom phase, normality settles in, and that is where you need to start watching for the real behaviours. The usage stats in the report pages show anyone who has used M365 Copilot in the last 28 days. That's not really a great reflection. The Pulse surveys ask if you use it daily, weekly etc. but again, that is not really ideal. The collection of data, the way Copilot is being used, the patterns and behaviours are critical to getting a real idea of what is going on. Delve deep in this area. Where it is working well and has a high adoption, showcase it to those areas that are not so well adopted. Don't just rest on someone using it once in 28 days... if this is here to help you speed up what you do, then take the time to find out why it isn't being used. There is a fabulous irony in not having time to learn to use a tool that can save you time.
Prompts - Share... Share... Share... Share them all, share the good, the bad, the amazing... the funny, the stupid, collect them all. Create a repository, we're using a nice little tool from Stuart Ridout called Prompt Buddy. Collect all your successful prompts and share them internally in this Teams app. Vote for the most useful etc... Writing prompts is an interesting angle, the better the prompts, the better the result. Information Literacy comes in to play here, know what you are asking for, get it right and you'll get what you want, get it wrong, or write something sloppy and you won't. Admittedly if you don't get what you want, you will know in seconds!! Prompts can be long too, don't feel you need to keep them short, and if you don't know where to start, guess what, ask Copilot to help you get started. Yes, ask the AI to help you create the prompt for itself.
Time investment - Justifying the ROI through meeting efficiency alone is easy, but if you want to hit the high ROIs, you need to give people time. There is a reality that in learning how to use M365 Copilot properly, it might initially slow down the process, but as your user base gets more and more familiar with it, the ROI becomes better and better. Make it part of someone's role, 'learn how to use M365 Copilot and share your findings with your peers' - make it part of an OKR or performance goal... just find a way of allowing someone busy, to learn a tool that will take away some of that pain.
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