Get ready for and operationalize Microsoft 365 Copilot

🦸🏽‍♀️🦸🏽‍♂️🦸🏽Make a rock solid team to lead you into the future of work
💡Teach your employees to Work out loud
🏗️Restructure your ecosystem for collaboration and communication
👩🏽‍🏫Get up to date on digital skills
🧭Establish a permanent AI Council

“Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence—in the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement – wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”
—Eliezer Yudkowsky

It is super exciting to see the possibilities of the Microsoft 365 Copilot!

At the same time, it will equally be interesting to see which companies jumps onboard right away, and what this will mean for their business, and for those that don’t. As we have talked about it, within my group of colleagues, peers and customers, we pretty much agree that the changes that come with Microsoft 365 Copilot, can be likened to when the internet became available for most people.

So what will this mean for you and your organization? Perhaps you have an idea or a plan? I guess, time will show…

…in the meantime…it can be smart to get ready…

Summary of this blog:

AI as a transformational shift
The blog opens with a reflection on how AI, especially systems exceeding human intelligence, will profoundly reshape work and society.

Excitement around Microsoft 365 Copilot
Highlights the growing anticipation for Microsoft 365 Copilot and its potential to significantly improve how people work across applications.
Importance of preparing organizations
The post emphasizes that businesses should begin preparing for Copilot, not only technically as well as through adoption practices and change management.
Need for awareness and readiness
Leaders and teams should familiarize themselves with AI’s impact, understand Copilot’s capabilities, and set realistic expectations.
Microsoft 365 ecosystem as the foundation
Copilot builds on the existing Microsoft 365 stack, such as having good information governance, collaboration habits, and well‑structured data becomes essential.
Call to action
The blog encourages organizations, and particularly change and adoption professionals, to start exploring resources and practices that support a smooth Copilot rollout.

Are YOU and your organization ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Well, you might not even consider it yet. However, I would advice you to do just that! 💡Whether you embrace Microsoft 365 Copilot, or not, the technology behind it is here. It has been here for a while. The difference between organizations will be between those who come onboard and those who don’t. And, the gap that will grow between will be larger to cover…

History of Artificial Intelligence:

How can you get ready?

Check out this video “How to get ready for Microsoft 365 Copilot”, by Jeremy Chapman, Director Microsoft 365, and what 3 things you can do to get Microsoft 365 Copilot ready. The first on his list is important even if you don’t implement Microsoft 365 Copilot.

1 🦸🏽‍♀️🦸🏽‍♂️🦸🏽Make a rock solid team to lead you into the future of work

In addition to what Jeremy share in the video, I would stress the importance of establishing a Centre of Excellence; a forum and network of internal tech, knowledge, adoption and change management experts, such as Champions.

Champions are vital for an organization to learn new and smarter ways of working together. Even for smaller organization, just having 2-3 persons who are sharing the responsibility of champions, can make a huge difference! And yes, you need more than one as they need to have different skill sets (tech, communication, security, information management, adoption and change management, etc..).

Image source: Become a Champion – Microsoft Adoption

Ownership of champions, in e.g. in the form of a board (consisting of representatives from IT, HR, Communications, and other relevant units in the business), reporting to main sponsor(-s) in the leadership board, with mandate to running both the champion network, making technology decisions, competency directions, etc., is equally vital. Without ownership and a defined mandate, people will revert back to old habits and the way we work in an organization will be fragmented.

2 💡Teach your employees to Work out loud

As my friend, Lesley Crook, says it; sharing your work in the context of thinking others might find it useful. Check her blog: Viva vision #11 Why Viva adoption is like pet adoption and the originator of the idea: Working Out Loud ®

Working Out Loud in Teams

Collaborating on work processes purely in email conversations and private chats in Teams is not “Working Out Loud”, and it hinders effective collaboration. The recommended way of working together is to collaborate and communicate on work related topics in Teams channels, where you tag people or groups for them to be notified of updates.

As a general rule*, content shared via private chats will be stored in your OneDrive, which is your own personal storage – and that is what it is meant to be. Check out my blog about MOCA on my own, this article about Engage: Move or migrate from Workplace to Viva Engage?  | CloudWay and Microsoft MOCA (Modern Collaboration Architecture): Enabling Modern Collaboration – Microsoft Adoption as well as these brilliant blogs by Shari L. Oswald:

As a general rule*, content shared in channels in Teams is stored in the associated SharePoint site document library. Hence, both dialogues and content will be available for your Copilot to find, to help you in your work.

*Of course, content can also be shared in forms of links to other sources, both internal and external.

Hiding and hoarding, or share and multiply?

3🏗️Restructure your ecosystem for collaboration and communication

How does your ecosystem for collaboration and communication look like?
Do you have fragmented use of tools?
Are some parts of the organization refusing to let go of their favourite toy – as it has been their favourite for so long, even if the rest of the organization can’t access it or want to use it? So, basically it can remind you of the wars of titans at times?

👉🏽Have a look at your current ecosystem for collaboration and communication and make decisions and a plan for which tech to keep, to get and which to let go of.

4👩🏽‍🏫Get up to date on digital skills

Are your employees too busy with their everyday work and meetings so they don’t get time or motivation to learn new digital skills
Are your leaders hindering smart and effective ways of working due to them not being digitally comfortable or skilled enough to teach their employees, even when employees are asking for it?

Make decisions and strategies for empowering your leaders and your employees.

📚Read these resources about digital skilling moving forward:
🧘🏽Teach your leaders and employees about digital wellbeing (Example see these videos by Ståle Hansen: https://youtu.be/7d0Xdnlax5Y)

5 🧭Establish a permanent AI Council

Nothing happens by itself, and the same goes for successful implementation and management of AI in your organization.

The AI Council

Establishing a permanent AI Council

As generative AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot become part of everyday work, organizations need more than technology and training. They need

Clear governance
Shared responsibility
A trusted place to make decisions.

An AI Council provides exactly that.

What is an AI Council?

An AI Council is a cross‑functional governance and enablement group that guides how AI is introduced, used, and scaled across the organization. As both the technology and the organization, along with its employees, mature, the AI Council should be embedded as a permanent function of company management.

Purpose:

Its purpose is not to slow innovation, it is to enable safe, responsible, and value‑driven use of AI, aligned with business priorities, data maturity, and organizational culture.

Microsoft’s own experience shows that successful AI adoption depends on combining strategy, data readiness, security, and responsible use, and that no single team can own this alone.

Role and mandate

The AI Council’s mandate should be clear and practical:

Set direction for AI use, including Microsoft 365 Copilot
Prioritize use cases that deliver real business value
Define guardrails for security, compliance, and responsible AI
Ensure readiness across data, information architecture, and ways of working
Support adoption, learning, and change management

The council acts as a guiding hand, helping the organization move fast without losing control.

Escalation and decision point

The AI Council should be the formal escalation point for AI‑related questions and risks, such as:

Decisions on which AI solutions to invest in and not
Unclear or controversial Copilot use cases
Data sensitivity, access, or oversharing concerns
Ethical or responsible AI questions
Conflicts between innovation and compliance

Not every issue needs executive involvement. The AI Council should have a clear path to leadership when decisions affect risk, reputation, or strategic direction.

Key responsibilities in practice

A well‑functioning AI Council typically:

Reviews and approves new AI and Copilot use cases
Aligns AI initiatives with business goals and employee needs
Works closely with IT, security, legal, HR, communications, workers unions and the business
Ensures data quality and information structure support Copilot outcomes
Promotes responsible AI principles, transparency, and trust
Shares learning, patterns, and recommendations across the organization
Establish framework and processes for managing AI agents and AI automations.

Importantly, the council should enable experimentation, not block it, by offering clarity, templates, and guidance instead of ad‑hoc approvals.

A practical recommendation

Start small. Many organizations begin with a lightweight AI Council that evolves over time. What matters most is not perfection, it is that someone clearly owns:

“How we use AI responsibly, safely, and to create real value—together.”

For inspiration, see how Microsoft established multiple AI‑focused councils to balance innovation, data readiness, and responsibility in their own Copilot journey:
👉Guiding hands: Inside the councils steering AI projects at Microsoft – Inside Track Blog