00:00:01 Mark Smith
Welcome to the copilot Show, where I interview Microsoft staff innovating with AI. I hope you will find this podcast educational and inspire you to do more with this great technology. Now, let's get on with the show. Welcome back to the copilot Show. Today I'm joined by Ricky. He's based in Texas in the US. Ricky, welcome to the show.

00:00:23 Ricky Lawson
Thanks for having me, Mark.

00:00:24 Mark Smith 
But I'm looking forward to having a discussion with you. Couple of things why. One, I've worked with similar organizations or the exact organizations that you've worked for, and so  I'm interested to get your take. I see you've recently returned to Microsoft. But before we go there, food, family, and fun, what do that mean for you?

00:00:41 Ricky Lawson
Yeah, so like you said, Mark, I'm based out of Texas here in the United States, and you know, we are home to some great BBQ. And so I love to smoke meats. Really my specialties are ribs and pork **** but I wouldn't necessarily say those are Texas traditional. I've knocked down the best. And so those are the ones I typically try and make. And when you make that, you're having friends over. My parents, they live in the neighborhood that we live in here in Dallas. And we spend so much time together. I have a six and nine year old in they really, they really dictate what we're doing as far as the family goes. So, between soccer practice, gymnastics, music, all that good stuff, it really keeps me busy. And so just really enjoying time with my family, as well as our great neighbors here that we live close by. So.

00:01:41 Mark Smith
I love it. I've been to Texas a few times. You can't work in the Microsoft ecosystem without having one or two conferences happen across that landscape. So yeah, definitely been there. And you know, I love how you guys are passionate about BBQ. Like you take it to a whole new level. And it's just, I've watched even, you know, a lot of BBQ shows on the food channels and whatnot. And I just think Americans now BBQ like nobody else.

00:02:07 Ricky Lawson
Yeah, my favorite is a place called Snow's BBQ. It's a little outside of Austin in Lexington, Texas. And there's a lady named Tootsie and she runs this BBQ joint. It's only open on Saturdays. And if you want to get some BBQ, you're probably getting there, I don't know, probably 8, 9 o'clock in the morning.And so it's an event, you know, When I, last time I went, I went with a group of my college roommates. We had such a great time, just kind of like reliving those memories. Yeah, BBQ is definitely the big thing, for me at least in Texas.

00:02:47 Mark Smith
Yeah. So you're a boomerang with Microsoft. You've been in, you've been out, you've been back in. And you've worked for Kyndryl, which is, that's my closest, as in, I was working at IBM when Kyndryl spun off. And you're in the AI space, you're with Copilot. Tell me at what point in the last three years did you go, oh my gosh, this is something different when it came to Copilot AI, the way tech's changing.

00:03:15 Ricky Lawson
Yeah, so I mean, even before that, in like 2022, I was using, you know, a couple different tools like Syllabi. to generate some content. I had actually taken this role with the ETL company and we were trying to, I was trying to like understand what extract, transform, load really was as an offering. And so I was, I was having these meetings with people and then transcribing those meetings from our product managers, from our engineers, and then turning that into marketing material for our partners. And I was like, wow, I'm blown away how good this is because it got me maybe 60% there, right? It gave me a good first step. But really in the last, I would say, six to nine months, I've stopped hearing so much, hey, why does this sound like AI? Why does this sound kind of like a robotic response? And things are getting so much more natural. And I think that has really changed the landscape. And I'll say just in the past few weeks using the Cowork product, so Microsoft's Cowork product, we've been able to leverage it internally. It is amazing the content that we've been able to generate, just the campaigns that you're able to build out. And it is such a unbelievably great tool that I can't wait for others to use. But I mean, I would say things have been changing rapidly in the last six to nine months that have really changed how I look at AI tools, how I look at Copilot, and I think how others are looking at it too.

00:05:04 Mark Smith
How are you addressing In the market, there's been a lot of upheaval in Microsoft, that seems, particularly in the last six weeks, senior leadership around AI, you know, Asachi's announcement of these, really quite a multiple reorgs happening across the organization. And then Copilot hasn't flown as high as perhaps expectations, particularly the earnings report at the start of the year, 3.5, 3.3% adoption of the M365 customer base. And To give you an idea how tied in I am, I've done this for Microsoft Press and on copilot adoption. So I'm embedded deeply. And because I've been in the Microsoft ecosystem 30 odd years, I know that Microsoft might not start winning the game at the start, but they tend to in the long run. And How are you feeling about the more, 2026 type changes that you're seeing in Microsoft in regards to Copilot? And, I got a call 2 weeks ago from a Fortune 50 company, and I'm in New Zealand, right? I'm at the bottom of the world. I'm not in that market in the US. And their scenario was, we have got Copilot in our organization. We've got ChatGPT. We've got Anthropic. Anybody can have anything they want. This is a wealthy organization, right? Everyone's got what they want. He goes, the problem is I need them all to be on copilot. And I've got to get people back from having all these AIs, which of course, they all say they're enterprise grade, but there's enterprise grade when it comes to data security. And then there's Microsoft, right? And there's, and they're not the same thing. Microsoft has a massive history of data governance, security, and making sure that if you're set up right, data doesn't leak out of your organization or is accessible to others. But of course, the modern, the big providers that have been in AI for the last four or five years say they're enterprise grade. But I don't think, as I say, these stories are the same. And so I often take that as an Ave. for discussion with organizations that want to make sure they're not going to leak their IP into models. What are you seeing? Are you seeing the same thing I'm seeing? And then how are you kind of rescuing companies back into the copilot fold? Because we know it's ultimately going to get there and be totally epic. And you know, like, as you say, co-works just a game changer.

00:07:38 Ricky Lawson
Yes.

00:07:39 Mark Smith
I hate using that word, but it is phenomenal, right?
 What you can achieve, what I've been able to achieve in the last two weeks with co-work is mount your face off phenomenal. How are you having these conversations?

00:07:52 Ricky Lawson
Yeah, no, this is a very common scenario that we're running into. We have organizations that want to make their end users, their employees happy with the generative AI tool. And they're not really sure what the best first step is. And one solution is exactly what you're describing. Hey, let's just get a bunch of licenses and see what sticks, and then maybe we'll just pick one. And what kind of reminds me of is maybe a decade ago when Teams was first kind of coming out, but everyone was really leaning towards Slack, right? Everybody was like, oh, Slack, Slack, Slack, and Teams, it was struggling. And eventually, Microsoft got around to properly packaging it with the Microsoft Suite. They've learned a lot of lessons and they've made teams, you know, a very proper productivity tool. I mean, I think it's a great communication tool, great collaboration tool. And I look at Copilot and I see a very similar path. The one thing that Copilot really does well that other tools don't is that it's agile. You know, if At a certain point, you're going to be able to offer the ability to use Copilot through OpenAI models, and then you're going to have the Anthropic models. Now you've got the best of both worlds. On top of that, like you were mentioning, the enterprise data protection, right? So now I know that I have the same protection that I have within my OneDrive, within my entire tenant within 365. Those rules and guidelines follow me as I use Copilot. And then one of the things that we really pride ourselves on is that the information that you're doing within your tenant with Copilot doesn't leave. You're not training the model. And it's a very secure way of leveraging Gen. AI. The final piece is everything, if you're using an M365 Copilot license, and I know our license, our naming conventions aren't the best, right? But if you're using an actual license and you can leverage your work data and, you know, our new layer of work IQ, well, now that generative AI tool, Copilot, knows you it has access to your data, and now you're going to get better results that are work-related. And so that's how I look at Copilot. ChatGPT, Claude, they all have their own space that are really great. I look at Copilot and I say it's a perfect enterprise work solution because, I mean, so many of these organizations are already leveraging Microsoft and it just falls in there. The last piece I would touch on is here in Maine, we're going to be launching Agent 365. And with Agent 365, that's your governance tool. And as soon as governance gets into play with all the agents that companies are going to start leveraging, that's going to be another differentiator because you're not only going to be able to, You govern the agents that you built through Microsoft, but if you have third-party agents, they're also going to be able to be monitored there, governed. And I think that's going to be a big piece that's going to allow Copilot to become a better product, and it's going to have a better adoption pattern as we move forward with that.

00:11:40 Mark Smith
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more around the value coming in the interface, being able to switch models. And I feel that because Copilot was originally released with old OpenAI models, and then we've seen this transition in the last six to nine months where OpenAI will announce today and tomorrow it's in the product. Like, awesome. And that's the type of parity you'd want to see. Now, you know, this week I've seen anthropic models available in the chat experience, not just the researcher or the analyst type agents, you know, in that interface. And I think there's a massive opportunity for Microsoft, as I say, to lean into the UI for AI. Like nobody wants every single piece of SAS software they have to have its own AI. Right. Because then staff are like, okay, ServiceNow, do I need to use a ServiceNow AI when I'm doing ServiceNow stuff? Do I need to use the SAP AI? Now when I'm like, no, Copilot could be the interface for everything, like you've seen, as you said, with Teams. And I think massive opportunity there, and massive opportunity with Copilot. They're bringing back customers that like, and I did an interview with somebody in Microsoft that run the entire adoption program for internal to Microsoft. She actually forwarded my book. And the thing is she said that what they noticed in Microsoft. Microsoft that when a person was, let's say, skeptical, concerned, fearful, maybe all these things of AI, it was always a colleague that brought them back in. Like a colleague was like, hey, I'm doing this.

00:13:13 Mark Smith
And they're like, wow, you can do that? Wow, that's epic. Rather than a piece of training or mandated from management. How are you translating that out with the customers that you're seeing in the field and really getting that kind of adoption rhythm that is not just a training course.

00:13:30 Ricky Lawson
Yeah, it can happen in a couple of different ways. One, I totally agree with that example. When you are looking to get someone who's on the fence with using Copilot, with using really any generative AI tool, you really have to give them something that's worth their time to try. And you do that by finding a champion in that business unit or with a leader. And that's one of the things that I really try to harp on with my customers is whenever I'm talking to someone in the C-suite, one of the very first questions I ask them is, what is your experience with Copilot or ChatGPT or whatever they're using? And be like, what are your challenges? What are your successes? Have you shared that with your team? Have you let them know what you're doing with the product? Because that's where I think having that, I hate to call it vulnerability, but just that openness from your leaders to come in and share their challenges, share, you know, hey, I've been able to say two hours a week by doing this. Is anyone else doing something like this? And so When you have a leader that's really bought in, it all trickles down. And that's what I try and instill into my customers, is that if you have a leader who's bought in the organization, and I'm hoping that person's, I hate to say it like this, but it's outside of IT, because I look at something like copilot adoption, and I don't think it's necessarily a technical motion. It's almost a habitual motion, a cultural motion. It's teaching someone. It's almost like we all went back to like, say, 2000, and we all needed to learn how to search through Google for the very first time, right? You're like, oh, no, I don't need that. I got the Yellow Pages. Okay, well, hold on. Yellow pages are nice or white pages or whatever you had back in the day. But this will actually help you find that local business, but so much more. And that's how you have to look at something like Copilot. Yes, I know it's a new tool. I know this is something you haven't used before. I know you hear these leaders in tech saying it's going to take your job or If you are using it and you're getting a lot out of it, you're worried that, your manager's like, what are you doing with all that time you've saved? Well, if your leaders are coming in and saying, hey, this allows me to spend more time with my family or spend more time on my passion projects or allows me to feel clear-headed throughout the day because I'm not worried about all these little tedious tasks. I can automate them or I can quickly do them through Copilot or through an agent, I think that resonates with others and then it opens them up to share their own stories. So just a couple of different examples of how I look at this is that ability to leadership to share as well as What you said, Mark, is exactly right. You want those examples from your peers so that you actually have that entry point of value. And the last point I would make here is just that when you have someone who's brand new to copilot, you got to give them baby steps. Don't jump into, hey, let's create an agent. No, let's show them how to write like a funny out of office so that they're like, oh, okay, cool parlor trick. And then you jump into, you know what, actually let's reformat this document and then let's
 
 00:17:23 Ricky Lawson 
And then you slowly build on it. When I was a community manager and I was helping adoption, these are some of the foundational things that I would do. You know, it's make sure that we had a good leader. We always had peer sharing for use cases. And we started with the basics because jumping in headfirst, it usually leads to people being frustrated with the experience.

00:17:51 Mark Smith
Yeah. I want to riff an idea with you.

00:17:54 Ricky Lawson
Okay.

00:17:54 Mark Smith
Around licensing. Around not licensing. I just want to hear how you think it lands.

00:17:59 Ricky Lawson
Okay.

00:18:00 Mark Smith
I think part of Microsoft's adoption challenge is the, and I'm just going to generically call it the $30 SKU.

00:18:08 Ricky Lawson
Sure.

00:18:09 Mark Smith
What you've sold me is a toaster. or an oven in my house where AI is actually electricity. And so it's been sold as a bolt-on to an E3, E5 SKU. And so this would be nice to have because you'll be able to do AI. And people have treated it just like that. It's nice to have. I don't need nice to haves in my business. I'm hemorrhaging over here. I don't need nice to haves. I need things that keep the lights on. Electricity. And so I think that fundamentally, The yesteryear thinking of licensing doesn't translate into the world of AI that we're going into. But we're currently retrofitting an old model into a new one and people have not bought it because it's a bolt on. You're selling me it. This is a nice toaster. You don't have to have a toaster. You could just, you could take it out to your BBQ and as you say, toast your bread out there. But the problem is, if people fundamentally understand what AI is, it's electricity. It makes everything work. It empowers everything. It empowers every employee, human being, business. If you understand it like that, I think it's been sold as a bolt on rather than core infrastructure to every business. And I think until that gets sorted out, I think there's going to be still struggling with it being treated as a nice to have rather than we need it to keep our business running.

00:19:36 Ricky Lawson
I'm trying to think of all the different ways I want to go with this. First off, I completely agree with this. The amount of ROI conversations I have in the back.

00:19:45 Mark Smith
Your ROI is electricity, right? Who goes, what's my ROI on electricity? No break.

00:19:51 Ricky Lawson
Right. And I think of it even closer to Copilot. I go, when is the last time you had to do an ROI report on PowerPoint, Excel, Word? It is just what you expect.

00:20:02 Mark Smith
Infrastructure, right? It's part of your business. You don't even think about it.

00:20:07 Ricky Lawson
So there's that piece. I totally agree. And I get that you want to have the ability to show value from something you bought on, exactly like what you're saying, as a bolt-on for these licenses. You know, the next phase, which is coming in the next month, is this E7 license. And the E7 license will include it. And I think that's going to start that pattern ofWe no longer have to have a conversation of this being an add-on, but it is an essential tool that drives your organization to being more productive, more efficient, and being more creative in your day-to-day work. Now, the final piece that I will add to that is that, well, I'll leave it there. And if it comes back to me, I'll bring it up. But those are two really good points I really like to have. I don't usually touch on that first part, right? Like most, if I'm talking to a leader or something, they probably don't want to hear, why do you need to see ROI? I get it, right? But like, that's how I think of it in my head. And that's how we'll all eventually think about it. I thought of the last thing, which is, this is exactly the type of thinking you have with Microsoft's vision of a frontier firm. Right? We're all hearing about a frontier firm, which is I'm thinking about AI at the very beginning of any problem I'm running to out at my organization. And so I'm no longer thinking, you know, about it in the tail end. It's in front and it's allowing me to hopefully automate things and make everyone more efficient in their role. And so that's kind of those pieces. If you put them all together, I think eventually this, the ROI conversation will go away. The licensing will just be baked into whatever Microsoft wants to call it. It's E7 now, but who knows what it'll be called a year or 12, 18 months from now. Who knows? But I totally agree with you. It is going to be just a commodity, electricity, whatever you want to call it, I would say within the next Yeah.

00:22:27 Mark Smith
And so as we wrap up, let's take a look at your crystal ball for just to the end of 2026. We're three months in, just started April.What does your crystal ball show you? What are you excited about coming down the pike? What are you thinking about? Yeah, in regards to AI, what's your thoughts?

00:22:47 Ricky Lawson
All right, so Microsoft just launched a feature within Copilot Studio called Computer Use. And with this feature, an AI, an agent can go in and literally in a virtual machine like dictate things and it can log into things. And I think that's going to revolutionize how people are using agents. because it's going to allow you to authenticate to multiple tools, software, whatever you want it to be. It's going to really change how people are creating agents because it's going to be able to be leveraged within Copilot Studio, which I would consider like the middle ground of building agents. And the moment you start making agents easier and you apply that governance through Agent 365,You're going to empower so many people to quickly create agents that solve very simple tasks for them in an autonomous way, right? Well, it's more likely going to be task-related, but I look at it like the lower the entry point is  to creating agents, And the more the IT team gives the freedom to their users to build these agents, it's going to explode everyone's usage of these tools. Now, it's probably going to be one of those things where it's a slow burn and then overnight, boom, it's going to explode. But that's really where I see this going, is the ability to quickly create agents and allowing non-technical people to be able to generate these that aren't just like the agent builder ones, the retrieval type agents that you can build through the app today, but really through Studio, which allows you that next layer and that next, you know, feature set within building agents.

00:24:54 Mark Smith
Yeah, nice. Ricky, if people want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

00:25:00 Ricky Lawson
Yeah, absolutely. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm always looking to meet new people. I post pretty frequently on there. And yeah, I would love to connect with others in this community because honestly, I've listened to a ton of your episodes and I was very excited when I got the reply back to you. So love what you're doing here. Love all of the different types of shows that are going on. And yeah, if anyone wants to learn more about how Copilot's changing within Microsoft and within organizations, reach out.

00:25:35 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 Guy. Is there a guest you would like to see on the show from Microsoft?Please message me on LinkedIn and I'll see what I can do. Final question for you, how will you create with Copilot today? Kakite.