EP 159: Using Microsoft Copilot To Advance Your Learning and Leadership

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We always think of generative AI pushing business outcomes, maximizing our efficiency. And it does. It absolutely does. It makes us all more efficient and it can multiply our business outcomes. But what about ourselves? What can generative AI do in terms of helping us learn better and also lead better as well? So that's what we're going to talk about today on Everyday AI. My name is Jordan Wilson and if you're new here, Everyday AI is a daily livestream, podcasts and free daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me not just learn what's going on in the world of generative AI because it's hard to keep up. Literally, there's huge news every day. But how we can also take all of that, take all of those learnings and apply it practically to growing our careers into growing our companies. I'm excited for today's show because we have a leader at Microsoft joining us to tell us how Microsoft Copilot specifically can help advance your leadership and advance your learning. So make sure you get your questions in now, get them ready. I know today's show is going to be a popular show and if you are joining us on the podcast, thank you. You can always check the show notes. You can come back and join a thread. We usually have a thread on LinkedIn with a bunch of back and forth guests. But before we do, as we do every single day, let's first go over what's going on in the world of AI news. So Elon Musk is looking to raise 1 billion for XAI. Yes, that is billion with a B. So XAI is founded by Elon Musk and has filed for an equity offering of up to $1 billion according to recent reports. So Xai will obviously compete directly with other AI companies including, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and just about everyone out there building their own large language models. So the big difference with the platform they're building is called Grok. I believe that's the pronunciation, but it uses real time data from Twitter. People ask me all the time, Jordan, what's your thoughts? I'm, I'm not necessarily going to spend a lot of time using this platform. That's just me. Something that's based largely off Twitter data. I don't know how, how great I feel about that. That's just me. Next piece of big news in the UK when it comes to AI and financial stability. So the bank of England plans to assess the risk of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial services sector next year. This is just, just came out literally less than an hour ago news of this, but Bank Governor Andrew Bailey is acknowledging the potential benefits and danger of these technologies and stresses the importance of understanding and regulating their use. So there should keep your eye on what's going on in the UK when it comes to AI and financial regulation, because it does look like they're going to be making some moves as the EU in particular is kind of leading the worldwide charge in terms of government regulation of generative AI and other technologies. And last but not least, Nvidia is looking to make an iconic AI investment, but this has nothing to do with their GPU chips that we're always talking about. So Nvidia CEO Jensen Wuyang is currently making a major investment in Singapore for the country's booming technology industry. So according to recent reports, this new investment would include potentially building a larger supercomputer and backing a in an iconic site for AI development. Nvidia is already has a supercomputer and AI technology center in Singapore, but it is looking to further invest and double down in the country's AI development. So wow. A lot going on in the, in the world of AI news. And like I always tell you, there's always so much more. So if you want to know more, make sure to go to your everydayai.com Sign up for the free daily newsletter. We always go over more things of what's happening in the world of AI news as well as other tools and trends and everything like that. But we also break down every single podcast guest, their appearance on the show like we're going to be doing today. So with that, I'm extremely excited for our guest today. So Microsoft Copilot I think has been grabbing all of the headlines and rightfully so after it's been starting to get released to to enterprise customers a little more than a month ago. And so let's, let's talk about what that means and how you can use Microsoft Copilot to advance your learning and advance your leadership. And if you do have questions, get them in now. So please help me welcome to the show. There we go. We got her, Carol, Carol Scott. She Carol Scott, the Senior Director of Software and Digital platforms at Microsoft. Carol, thank you for joining us. West Coast Time 5:00am thank you.

Awesome. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Absolutely. Well, hey, real quick, let's start here. Can you tell us a little bit about what your role is at Microsoft and a little bit about what you do.

Sure. My role as a senior director at Microsoft, I'm in the Software and Digital Platforms group. And that group was formed last year to put all of our large partners and platforms and digital natives that build on Microsoft in one enterprise group. And so I lead our largest partner groups in the west for customer success. So we have really large partners like Adobe and Teradata and Snowflake and many others. And so it's an exciting time because our group is leading Microsoft globally in AI.

And speaking of leading globally in AI, this is the hill I'm willing to die on everyone. If you've heard the show, you know I'm a huge proponent of Microsoft Copilot. I'm a big fan of what they're working on. But Carol, from someone that knows much more than the rest of us, maybe just give us a little walkthrough of even what Microsoft Copilot even is.

Yes. So Microsoft is using this term copilot, as your everyday companion. So as you see here, it talks about your everyday companion for work and life. And even before we had access to Copilot, I think everyone that is really focusing on using Gen AI sees how it can be used in your everyday life. And so one of the themes that I really like is that at the end of the day, we're always in control of the output that we use. So we may be using Gen AI, we may be getting answers, but then at the end of the day, we get to choose how we use it. But like this says here, we definitely get more personalized answers. Productivity is shot up and also that creativity. I truly believe this is like the right brain moment. I like to say that Gen AI requires using your whole brain. I know there's a lot of focus on STEM and of course, and development, and that's great. But you really do have to dig deep and think about, like, how you use your natural language to be more creative. So I think it's helping all of us see creative parts of us that maybe we haven't even seen before.

And if you are maybe newer to generative AI, Carol, can you just a little bit explain? Because I think one of the main benefits, at least from my vantage point of Microsoft Copilot is it comes to your operating system, Right? So if you are one of those enterprise teams that has access to Microsoft 365 Copilot, it actually brings all of these capabilities to all of the programs that you use kind of across your operating system can you just real quickly just talk a little bit about how that changes the way that companies can even work.

Yes. So it's been very exciting to get our hands on Copilot. And I do want to clarify that Copilot is not one thing, it's really a capability. It's your AI companion. We have 41 copilots in Microsoft alone. It's definitely the ones people have been hearing about in365, GitHub and others and then custom Copilots. But let me give you a little bit of background around how this works with 365 and at the operating level and why right now it's at the enterprise level. Each person at Microsoft, so I'll use myself, has what's called the Microsoft graph and that is all the data. Think of it like your enterprise OneDrive. And then anything anyone in my network has shared with me in my own ecosystem and then I also have access based on my permissions to work with and access other data within Microsoft. So the beauty of enterprise Copilot is it really supercharges and differentiates your corporate data. So it's definitely on top of Microsoft OpenAI and then you have access to corporate data, then you have access to your own data. So as a knowledge user, when I go in and I use Copilot in different ways, whether it's in teams or whether it's in office or 365 at the operating level, it will pull data from everything that I have access to. And so it's really required us to think differently because even in your prompting, once you know more of what you have access to, then it's even you can like prompt better and get more out of it.

And speaking of getting more out of it, and this is really what I want to talk about because yes, Microsoft Copilot and other gen AI systems can, can make your work, you know, much more efficient and effective. But you know, Carol, even from someone that's using it, right, how has this changed specifically just gen AI in general, how has it changed the way that you learn? Right, because I think that L and D learning and development is going to change a lot. But even for you, how has this changed the way that you learn now that you have access to this level of gen AI in copilot?

Yeah, that's a great question because I have a background in learning and development in addition to digital transformation and cloud adoption. And so I was very excited to go in and see like what I could do with it. So I've been a power User and subscriber of ChatGPT plus since the beginning. And, and the thing that blew me away first of all is how quickly you can develop materials and obviously you know, you have to make sure it's accurate and things like that. But a lot of the way I'm using is, is on content. Maybe they I already know or something I'm wanting to learn. And so first of all like the time to develop and the way you can iterate has been transformative. So what I have done to practice and I would encourage people to do this, especially in L and D is say you take you know, a McKinsey article that's 10 pages. So this is what I do with a lot of articles. Do I even want to read this? So I pop it in there and I summarize it. Then I'll say create an executive briefing on this. Create a one day workshop. Create a workshop for executives. Of course it blows me away that it doesn't in like less than 60 seconds. I mean that is amazing. So then the other thing I've been doing with it is simulation. So I've been working on a workshop that I'm going to deliver with someone on like bias in the workplace and how to advocate for yourself. And so first of all it went, it's gone very quickly and then I've been actually doing simulations and again nobody told me this, I was just like oh and can I simulate and do practice? And so the answer is yes and then you can tell it I want to go five rounds. So you play the person doing X, I play the person doing Y and I want to go back and then it'll say oh you did a good job or you could have done this or that and like for coaching and things like that, it's been amazing. I still think for sure humans need to be involved and you need to be thinking about what those use cases are. But I think as a self learner and I'm a curious person anyway but I like to, you know, people talk about it supercharging but it's definitely supercharged my learning and got me thinking to different ways that this can be used.

Oh, I love this. I'm so excited. I have so many follow up questions. Hey, as a reminder, if you are joining us live, make sure to get your questions in. I see a couple so far, we'll get to them. But I want you know it's not every day we can talk to a senior director at Microsoft and help us understand Gen AI at such a great level. But Carol One thing you mentioned there that I love is, is being able to learn better. Right. And even in your example, I'm doing the same thing, right? Like I'll see a 50 page research paper and people are always asking me, jordan, how do you stay up with what's going on in the world of AI? I say, well, I use AI instead of, you know, reading that 50 page research paper. I have a gen AI system. Break it down into bullet points and a little two minute podcast as an example. But the simulation side, I want to ask you some questions because people think I think of AI just like, oh, this is helping me. It's just an extension of myself. But how has this specifically changed the learning for you? When you look at copilot or chatgpt as almost a second person and not just an extension of yourself, but almost like a consultant per se, helping you learn, you know, how has using it in that way, in the simulation way really changed how you learn?

Right. So one of the things as a leader, so I've been a manager and a leader for a long time and sometimes we have to have challenging situations. And so when I view it as my companion, I can go in and simulate a conversation and say, hey, I'm thinking about this. Can you help me say this in a more constructive but direct way? You know, when I'm working with my team, there are, there are times when, you know, I'm trying to think about, like how I want to present something. But one thing that's really changing and it's so exciting now that we all have copilot and teams and stuff, is we're all showing up with a new level of understanding and expectation because. And so you're starting in a new place. You, you don't have to spend all the time getting everyone up to speed on certain things or one of the exciting things like in, in meetings and, and again, you do have to turn on copilot. You know, there's kind of like, hey, we want to turn this on. Yes, you know, we do think about what we say. Not that we're saying anything, we're not supposed to, but there are some times, you know, you're like, maybe I don't want everything I said recorded, but the benefit of the notes and the learnings and so it's just really been that companion and it's almost becoming the expectation that, like the unwritten expectation that everyone has these tools, they are using them and so we're really starting in a new place.

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It's starting, starting in a new place. It's such like that's such a good idea because I think before gen it seemed like, you know, day to day work was sometimes repetitive and I do think, you know Carol, what you said there, starting in a new place. Yes, you can start a project, your day in different ways that, that maybe you didn't have the skill set to start your work a certain place before. I think now gen changes that. A great, great question here. Woozy. Thanks. Thanks for this because I didn't even think of this. But Carol, what's the feature of copilot you are using the most?

Okay, so my favorite one in team. So we basically have a copilot that goes across like I said, our entire graph. So all of our messages, all of our meetings so I can go in. So yesterday I was at a women's conference and several other things. So when I get off here I'm going to go in and say recap my day, my meetings, what did I miss? And so it will go through and summarize everything and then it actually has links to all of that content. The other thing is meeting summaries because we can't go to meetings, all the meetings. And so now again it's kind of that expectation and I'll give one quick example. So we have and an AI group for our software and development platforms group and a lot of times I can't make those meetings even though I'm interested and it's almost daily and so I go in every day and I Look at the summary of the notes and who spoke and who did what. And so just that meeting summary in and of itself has been great. And then Also I love PowerPoint, you know, being able to take an idea or upload a document and then it automatically will generate a PowerPoint for you. So, you know, and still, still learning these things. But I do think using it kind of in the flow of work that way has been great. And then of course, we now are starting to have copilots built into our different systems that are offering us insights. You know, I would call them kind of the custom copilots, but it's definitely exciting and there is positive peer pressure to learn this stuff because there is training and learning, but you're never. And I would say this with Chat GPT, even if you don't have access to it, because I know and there was a question around, when will SMEs have it? I mean, I don't have an actual date for that. I've heard that, you know, they do want to get there for that. But one thing I would say is you can use Bing Chat for free. You can use chat GPT. I still think the best $20. I will never give up my chat GPT Plus. And so there's a lot of the ideation and creativity and stuff that you can do with that. But yeah, it's very exciting to have access to it. And Honestly, even with ChatGPT, before I had access to Copilot, it feels like such a privilege. I'm like, I cannot believe we have access that billions of dollars have been poured into this at no cost. And I know people went through this when they had the Internet and this and that. We take it for granted. But there's really no excuse for anyone to not be able to go and use like for free. We have, people can use the Bing Chat, they can use Image Creator, which is on Dolly, which you have access to in Chat GPT. You can use Designer. Yeah, so I'll stop there.

No, Carol, like you brought up, you brought up a great point. Specifically, you know, your example of, you know, saying, hey, maybe there's a meeting that you can't attend. Right. And then Copilot, true to its, you know, name, can. Can almost take over. Can almost take over piloting for, for you. Right, right. I think when we think about, you know, Gen AI and Microsoft copilot like that, it's very interesting because there's times when, you know, you, Carol, may, may need to step in and be the pilot and have, you know, Microsoft copilot help. And there might be times that you need to step back and maybe let co pilot almost pilot. Can you talk a little bit about that? Even your personal experience so far and how that's been because that changes how we work. Right? Because it's always been you, human in control. And I mean, what's that been like so far?

Yeah, and, and candidly, once you have access to the tools and everyone has access to them, it's almost like it's an immediate lift and of, of what we're doing. And I had shared with you a little bit of my background where I co founded an air charter business with my husband. He runs that now in an air craft maintenance business. So I've been around private AV and corporate aviation. And so I love the term copilot. So the way I like to say it is sometimes, you know, the pilot's in charge, sometimes the co pilot's in charge and then sometimes there's autopilot. So what I would like to, you know, the good analogy is if I'm not in a meeting, even though it's technically copilot, taking the meeting notes is like autopilot. So there are things that are automatically happening through our AI technology that are there. Then the copilot will summarize things and then what's really cool, like in teams, it will prompt you. It's not just, hey, here are the notes. You can ask for insights in the notes you can say, and I do this with my learning. I use this with ChatGPT and others. What actions could I take on this? What actions could I take as a leader? What actions could my team take? And even with these generic questions, I'm just blown away with like the answers. And so, you know, sometimes we're, you know, prompting. Sometimes, you know, the copilot is prompting. And then like I said, sometimes it's, it's autopilot. But you know, when you're, you know, you need to take your, who needs.

To take who's role and great, timely, timely observations there, Carol, because I was just going to bring up this question from, from Douglas. So Douglas, thank you for joining. Because you know, one thing if, if you're not familiar with Microsoft Copilot is it lives in the apps that you already use. Right? So your Outlook email, your Excel, your, you know, word docs and, and teams and everything in between. So in this situation like Douglas is talking about, you know, how does Microsoft Copilot handle this if there's, you know, if you have an email about something, if There's a spreadsheet about something. If there's a teams meeting about something, is it able to not repeat and just say, hey, across all of your different apps? If you're asking about, you know, Project B, here is everything you need to know, regardless of where it came from.

Yeah. So what is exciting about the features is. And too, because a lot of people want to know, like, if is this data accurate, where did it come from? And so it will look across those different applications and it will give you answers. And then just like a footnote, like say, you know, say something comes from three applications. I had this happen the other day for a teams meeting because there was an Excel file and a PowerPoint file attached. So it, it had just a little footnote with links. Link number one was the meeting, link number two was the PowerPoint, and link number three was the Excel. So what's exciting is you not only get the value of the conversation and the data in that, but then if you want to go to the source file and say, hey, I need to look at that, then you can definitely do that. And I see also someone's asking, how does it handle the overlapping? So it's amazing. I mean, I don't, I've never checked to see if it's 100% the way people set things, but it will have on there who said what and when. And it's pretty good at, you know, capturing who said what. One other thing, and I, I don't. It's. It's like a copilot. Maybe it's not part of the studio, but it's built into. PowerPoint is the speaker coach. So as a speaker, there's AI that as you're speaking, it can tell you how many filler words you used, how much you talked. I have, you know, started using it and some others, it's like, oh, I'm really talking a lot, or, oh, I'm trying to facilitate others to be included. And, you know, this is not happening. So there's just all kinds of applications.

Oh, I could, I could use that on the podcast sometimes.

Cheryl.

I think, because sometimes I'm like, wait, did I just talk for four minutes straight and not give the guests the chance to chime in here? So I need that. So we've talked a lot, Carol, about learning, but what about leadership? How can. Especially when you're using something like Microsoft Copilot and it's tuned in to everything that you have going on in your day to day. Because as a leader, you have to make tough decisions. You have to have tough conversations. How can Gen AI and Microsoft Copilot help develop your leadership and maybe help you even make better leadership decisions?

Right. So I would say just kind of at the most foundational level with copilot, it's just an ability to keep up, like as a leader and to know what's going on. And then if you have a question you're not digging for an email, you can go in and say, hey, you know, you know you're thinking about something. It's like, give me all of the content, you know, related to this person and the emails and, and that, and it will immediately aggregate that for you. So I think there's keeping up. The other is it is forcing me to think differently and, and see, like, how can I show up better as a leader? So I will give a quick example so you can. I've actually used it to help me write employee reviews. So this time around I thought, oh, I'm going to use copilot, you know, because I'm going to be the example. So I started to use them and I got some really good ideas. But I decided that it was so personal that I actually wrote everything myself. And so I told my team, it's like I wrote, you know, I copilot and write your reviews. And not that there would be an issue with that, you know, and using it as a companion. I did use it for some inspiration, but I, you know, I decided as a leader that this was a time when I really wanted it to be my own voice. And then just with learning, I feel like it's important. People ask me all the time, how do you keep up with AI and how do you do all this? And it's all my own training and motivation. Yes, now I get some Copilot training, but I'm already a power user of Gen AI. But as a leader, it was really one. I think you show leadership by being curious and having a growth mindset. And given my role at Microsoft and all of this coming out and also OpenAI being our customer as a leader, I thought, well, I want to be able to lead on this. And so I just used it to learn. I use it to summarize articles, I use it for ideas. And everybody knows that they're going to get some cheesy graphic from me that I'm constantly creating memes and graphics and things. But the key thing as a leader for credibility is it's one thing to talk about it, it's another thing to use it. So I would say primarily helping me as a leader Is especially since I'm in this space. But no matter what your field is, you know, using it and showing your growth, showing your, you know, how you're being curious and learning and there's really no excuse for anyone not to use it because, I mean, so much of this is, is even Microsoft Copilot being designer and image creator free, you know.

What, what you just described, Carol. And throughout the course of this conversation, one thing kept popping into my head because I've experienced this. I'm in different generative AI tools literally all day, chat GPT many hours in my day. I, I sometimes almost feel fatigued. Right. Because learning is so easy. And you know, where it used to take a couple of hours to tackle a concept I can now do in a couple of minutes. What are the business challenges, especially when it comes to, you know, learning and leadership, what are the big business challenges that you see? Whether it's from using, you know, Microsoft Copilot or just other generative AI systems, you know, because I do think this is going to change the way that we work. What are challenges that you think that we may run into?

Yeah, so I do want to briefly talk about the Skilling challenge and I think from the challenge of adoption, one of the things that I talk about, because I'm also an AI speaker champ, so I talk to different customers and things about, you know, what we're doing and others. And what I have seen and I saw this starting with cloud adoption and now is I don't think people understand the pace of change. I think the biggest challenge is people not moving fast enough thinking. And again, you know, some people could think, oh my gosh, this is so much to learn, but now you can think differently, right? If you need to keep up with AI, not even AI say you're trying to keep up with financial regulations and banking globally. You know, you have to think differently and use genai to consume a lot of information. And then there's definitely the upskilling. Pardon me, there's definitely the upskilling of employees. And I really think that credibility is going to come from the top down. I'm seeing a lot of leaders like get training on AI and things like that. But, and it's not just here's, here's how to use it, it's the use cases because we're already seeing transformation in customer service, in sales, in software development, being able to code faster, in knowledge workers and like it's, it's everywhere. And so I think those that really kind of embrace it and figure it out and ask the questions are going to be in a good spot. But I do think from a business perspective, companies that are not taking this seriously are going to be left behind, especially those, whether a small or larger business, the ability to differentiate yourself, your company and your brand with AI, like it's unlimited. And so those that take, I mean, you can teach yourself there's free stuff out there. I just think that pace of change is going so fast and sometimes I'm really surprised to not see faster use or adoption places.

You know, Carol, we've talked a little bit about everything in this episode. We've covered so much. You know, we've talked about how, you know, Copilot and AI in general can help us learn better and to learn more effectively how it can assist in our leadership. But maybe what's, you know, as, as we wrap here, maybe what's that one takeaway that you really want people, you know, because we have a lot of business leaders listening to this podcast and they may or may not right now have access to Microsoft Copilot. So what's that one piece of advice, you know, just generative AI in general that you have for business leaders to say, hey, here's how you can specifically grow your learning and your leadership.

So I would say it's everybody's personal responsibility for their personal growth, their career growth and their business growth, Especially in this place. It doesn't matter if you have access to the actual enterprise version of 365. Our Bing copilot, designer, image creator, ChatGPT, it's all available. And so I would say that one thing is take personal responsibility and use it. You can't break it. You know, take, take some of the learnings here, do some of the research. You know, you and I learned it on our own. It's not like when it was unleashed, all these courses were there. You know, I started with writing silly poems for my, for my family. And one of my daughters actually said one time she asked me something, she goes, can you please not use Chat GPT to answer the question. But, you know, and then use it every day, you know, and also take time to be on LinkedIn or other places and read about it. But you know, I, and I've always felt this way, but it's that personal responsibility. You know, go rewrite your LinkedIn profile, go get an article and, you know, write a workshop with it and literally you can do it in 10 minutes. And so take action, don't wait.

I love that. That's what everyday AI is all about. Practical and actionable tips on how we can all actually use this. And Carol, you delivered just a master course today in using Gen AI. So thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show. We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you for having me. This was fun.

Hey, and as a reminder, we did cover a lot. If maybe you joined late in the live stream, maybe you just want to give this a second listen or a second read. Make sure to go to your Everyday AI dot com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. We recap every conversation in great detail and always share more resources so you can grow your company and grow your career. Thanks for joining. And hey, if you're in New York City, I'm speaking at the AI Summit tomorrow. Make sure to say hello, say what's up? Yes, I'm a real person. I. I have a real background behind me. I'm not an AI. So thank you for joining and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more Everyday AI. Thanks, y'.

All.

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