Adopt first, extend then build

I chatted with my father this weekend while visiting and during our conversation (which he helpfully gave me permission to share) he heard me talking about the transformational power of tools like Copilot for Microsoft 365 and offered a story from his own life that I feel is relevant to many organizations today.

Before I tell it though - I think it is useful to step back from the AI hype for a second to realize that many organizations are approaching generative AI with a mix of fear and uncertainty. They have heard the drumbeat around "innovation" for decades now, and increasingly have paired "digital" and "disruption" with a sense of foreboding. When generative AI began to emerge - many firms thought of large layoffs, of competitors swallowing them whole and of doing business in a completely different manner than they did today.

That environment causes a lot of "big bets" - where businesses think of a complex problem that has bedeviled them for years, and whether AI can get them over that problem. This, of course, requires large investments and thinking about things in a totally new way. It is revolutionary by nature - not evolutionary.

My father, a retired surgeon, told me that when he began medical school, in one lecture series, the entire class would attend at the start of the term. Each day though, folks realized that the real power of the class was simply getting their hands on the notes from the lecture - there was no real need to attend.

And so, they came up with a plan: each day, a different member of the class attended the lecture, took notes, and then shared them with the group afterwards.

The problem, of course, was that some folks took horrible notes, while others were great at doing so - which meant of course that the bad note takers were rarely asked to do so again, but the best note takers were tasked regularly. A tragedy of the commons, perhaps, but also - as evident by the class size - even the lecturer realized swiftly that no one was coming to class.

This is, with Copilot, the "low hanging fruit". And just as the class in my father's school cleared out of people - once you implement Copilot for Microsoft 365 (and enable transcription) - you are going to see two major changes in behavior at your organization:

1. In every meeting, someone will simply ask Copilot to take notes - meaning no one is tasked with this dull, useless activity moving forward (hooray!)
2. Once folks realize they can get a meeting summary without going - they will stop attending - letting them focus on more important tasks; meeting that "could have been an email" will actually likely become that at last

There are, of course, many meetings where input is collected and work is celebrated and participation isn't optional - but getting rid of the other meetings is a huge, easy, low-hanging fruit to focus on once you deploy Copilot.

And this is my lesson to all the organizations looking for large solutions to large problems: start with the simple ones. Taking notes. Capturing sales meeting decisions in your CRM. Generating corporate communications. These are very, very, simple tasks - but without a team dedicated to educating your staff on how to do them - they aren't going to happen. And until you experience saving time in this manner, your entire company won't be taking advantage of it.

It is why we always tell customers to start with "Adopt" and then move to "Extend" and then only later "Build". Instead of building a super powerful generative AI solution, leverage a tool like Copilot for Microsoft 365, paired to a industry standard adoption and change management effort, from a partner like Cognizant. Then before you jump to building your own tool - again - work on extending your existing line-of-business applications into Copilot - so that staff who are good at prompting with Copilot can use that experience with even more data sources, rather than trying to hop to a different web app, or chatbot. Only then should you move to the construction of a wholly novel solution.

Otherwise you will be, like the remaining students sitting in my father's class, focusing on the words of the professor and taking furious notes.

Wondering why the room is so empty and where everyone else went to...