From Copilot to Change: Embracing Microsoft's Future

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FULL SHOW NOTES
https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/682  

Microsoft MVP Tiffany Songvilay shares her perspective on embracing technological change and preparing for an AI-powered future in the workplace. She explains her philosophy that fighting against inevitable change drains energy while adapting to Microsoft's vision positions professionals for success.

TAKEAWAYS
• Tiffany focuses on "whatever's new with Microsoft," currently evangelizing for Copilot while maintaining expertise in SharePoint and Viva
• Building prompt engineering skills is essential for thriving in an AI world—crafting sophisticated prompts that improve quality rather than just saving time
• AI will likely make certain jobs irrelevant rather than "taking" them, particularly impacting white-collar professions like legal and consulting
• Corporate communications, legal, and risk management are seeing significant benefits from Copilot implementation
• AI helps overcome task procrastination by making challenging work less intimidating
• Future developments may eliminate the need for traditional data structures like lists, fundamentally changing information architecture
• The MVP program's value comes from building relationships with product teams and advocating for client needs

Ready to embrace AI rather than fight against it? Listen now to discover how you can position yourself for success in Microsoft's AI-powered future—and perhaps reclaim your work-life balance in the process.
 
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👉 Microsoft MVP YouTube Series - How to Become a Microsoft MVP - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzf0yupPbVkqdRJDPVE4PtTlm6quDhiu7

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Chapters

• 0:32 Welcome to The MVP Show
• 1:40 Food, Family & Fun with Tiffany
• 2:44 Microsoft Tech Focus & Change Philosophy
• 5:23 AI's Impact on Jobs and Careers
• 9:56 Real-World Copilot Applications
• 15:01 MVP Summit Insights & Program Value

Transcript

Mark Smith: 0:19

Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Houston, texas in the United States. She works at Avanade as a group manager and product management in business and tech integration. She was first awarded her MVP in 2024. Her personal interests and hobbies include sport, bike riding, stand-up comedy I love that craft beer and yin yoga. You can find links to her bio and social media in the show notes for this episode. As always, welcome to the show, Tiffany.

Tiffany Songvilay : 1:11

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

Mark Smith: 1:14

I'm excited to have you on. I always like to start with food, family and fun. Happy to be here.

Tiffany Songvilay : 1:17

I'm excited to have you on I always like to start with food, family and fun. What do they mean to you? Food for sure I do enjoy cooking. During the pandemic there was an Indian restaurant that did classes, so for some amount of money you could go and you could pick up the ingredients. And then you came home and then you over zoom, you did some cooking. So I learned how to do some Indian cooking.

Tiffany Songvilay : 1:46

So food for me is important. I think that bleeds into family. So for me I'm very big into family by choice. And the people that you share a meal with or that you invite over to your house, to me those are people kind of more in your inner circle. And fun I mean you've already kind of more in your inner circle. And fun I mean you've already said it I love to ride my motorcycle. I've got a great group of women that I ride with. We do a couple of rallies each year where we take our motorcycles to different places and ride them in a parade. So that's a lot of fun. I'm also in a bowling league Wow.

Mark Smith: 2:19

Wow, very diverse. It's a lot of choices to choose from. There then for fun.

Tiffany Songvilay : 2:25

Yeah.

Mark Smith: 2:27

Tell me about the area of tech that you focus on.

Tiffany Songvilay : 2:31

Oh yeah for sure. So I think the best way to say it is I do whatever's new with Microsoft. So I started in SharePoint, went to Power Platform you know I still do migrations and intranet modernizations but now everything is about Copilot and Copilot is now at the center of the wheel and so I'm now our Copilot evangelist. I'm a co-pilot MVP that's what my MVP and co-pilot and SharePoint and Viva. I know we kind of lost track of Viva, but I'm still a huge engage fan working with internal comms people yeah, so pretty much employee experience. There are things I'm not super good at, Like you probably wouldn't call me if you needed a Windows 11 upgrade or an Intune, but pretty much anything inside of that modern workplace space that is collaboration or knowledge management centered.

Mark Smith: 3:34

I like it. I want to unpack a comment that you made there, which was you do you work on whatever's new for Microsoft? Tell me about your philosophy behind that and why people really need to understand the importance of that, particularly if you consult in the space.

Tiffany Songvilay : 3:51

Yeah for sure. Actually, it was Caruana last week at MVP Summit and she put that slide up with Copilot in the middle, and that, for me, change management is so key when you're talking about Microsoft technologies. And the reason is is because if Microsoft tells you you're going to the cloud, you're going to the cloud. If Microsoft says you're going to use Copilot, you're going to use Copilot. So I always say change isn't hard, it's fighting the change that kills you. Right, that's what's going to exhaust you. So, for me, I support whatever's new with Microsoft, because because that is the vision for the future, and so, whether or not a CTO or a CIO wants to go there, eventually their business will insist on it, and at this point you have to have an AI strategy.

Mark Smith: 4:54

I'm on board. I totally agree. The interesting thing there in your comment as in from a change in adoption perspective, is that, for the first time in history, different than Microsoft Teams, no one was worried about Microsoft Teams replacing their job. Right, but people, when it comes to change, might be very concerned that AI because we hear it in the news all the time and then we hear kind of like, well, AI won't take your job, but somebody that's good at using AI will take your job. Where I'm of the opinion. I just published a post an hour ago which says no, ai is going to take your job and therefore, what do you do? What do you do in that scenario? How do you help people that are are fearful that ai will take their job? Um, because, as you say, it's going to happen as an, if you're like, the technology is going to happen. Um, people are going to make good use of it, people are going to innovate with it, but where does that leave people? Let's say, in five years time, if you're in this information worker space?

Tiffany Songvilay : 5:57

Yeah. So I'm actually going to steal my answer from Aaron Reich. He is one of our leaders here at Avanade and he said to us something that was really interesting and that was in the mid-90s. Could we imagine all the jobs that came out of Amazon, right? So it's a matter of similar to what you just said. Yes, it's going to, yes, it's going to. I'm not going to say it's going to take jobs, right. I would rather say it's going to make some jobs irrelevant or unnecessary or unnecessary. And so it is our responsibility, I believe, as tech advisors and good partners with our clients, to help them see the future of work, and the truth is we're not so sure what that looks like yet. So for me, it's a huge opportunity for people to get into this space, learn as much as they can to help define that future.

Mark Smith: 7:01

Yeah, so, so important. And are you seeing kind of if you think about skills that people should be adopting or developing now to kind of future ready themselves? I don't believe in future proof, I don't think that's possible anymore, because we just never know what's coming next. But how do you really gain new skills in an ai world? From your perspective, and even the work that you've done with co-pilot, what are you seeing that's really allowing people to, to upgrade their skill level using this tech?

Tiffany Songvilay : 7:39

Yeah, I think for me, you start with prompt engineering, you learn how to write a really good prompt and you practice, you practice prompting. I mean, I want you to use prompts that might take you an hour to build. I want you to use prompts that aren't just an internet search, right, because you know they named it co-pilot for a reason, and it really is supposed to be like an assistant, somebody you can bounce ideas off of, somebody who can draft that that first. You know email, right, and these things seem so simple. I think what's stopping people is they're like, well, well, I can do this myself, you know, so I might as well just do it myself, but to me, in the time it takes you to do it yourself, is you could have crafted a prompt that increases the quality of what you can do yourself.

Tiffany Songvilay : 8:44

It helps you not get distracted, right? Think about neurodivergence and ADHD really being able to focus on the task at hand and using that technology to benefit you. So for me, I feel like this is one of those. A rising tide lifts all boats. I do believe that, yes, we will be able forget about the taking jobs, because the truth is it's probably coming from AI, is coming for expensive resources. It's coming for white collar. It's coming for lawyers. It's coming for white collar. It's coming for lawyers. It's coming for consultants. So think about people who are just now entering their career, or entry-level folks. It is going to help elevate their ability to do their job, and I think that someone who learns prompt engineering is the future of work. So that's where I would start.

Mark Smith: 9:43

I like it. I like it. What are you seeing in the projects that you're involved in, without revealing customers names, etc. But what are you seeing is is working really well, like what are the scenarios that you see that people you know? Obviously we've got the summarization of meetings and we've now got agent-assisted around meetings and things like that. We've got things like you know those drafting emails, but are you seeing stuff outside that arena where people are really starting to get some massive benefits?

Tiffany Songvilay : 10:17

Yeah, gets a massive benefits. Yeah, so there are. There are a couple of job functions and a couple of industries, so for me, I focus a lot on people who have to do a lot of research people so, sales, marketing and, uh, internal communications. People who have to, who have to, um, technical writers, right, people who have to take technical writers, right, people who have to take a concept and try to understand it. So one of my favorite prompts is tell me about this thing using an analogy, right, like using a sports analogy or using some kind of an analogy, so it allows me to understand something very quickly.

Tiffany Songvilay : 10:58

So, again, sales marketing, internal communications, legal, I will tell you. Actually, let me pick that as my number one. And they even have a custom agent where they've taken all of their approved contracts and language and all of that, and they're able to use Copilot to actually craft new writers or new pieces in the contract but, more importantly, review a contract that a client has brought back with a comment and ask Copilot, what are the risks in me accepting this wording? So I think risk management is a huge, huge place where I would expect to see M365 co-pilot. So corporate communications but also risk management.

Mark Smith: 11:58

I like it, I like it and so so relevant, and it's great to hear that legal use case because it's something that I'm coming across a lot as well. In fact, my neighbor's a lawyer and she was like, oh, it feels a bit like I'm cheating, and you know when I use it. And I but you know my raised a certain interesting point and she was like, well, but you know, as a lawyer, whether what it's returning is correct, where, if I wrote that same prompt and got that result? I don't know, because I don't have the legal profession right, so so I'm just guessing that it's got it right where you. So it's not cheating, because there's no way I could validate what came out, because I'm not trained in that area of law that you focus on, and so I do think that there needs. I don't, and I think it'll fall away, naturally, this kind of concept of is it cheating? Should I?

Tiffany Songvilay : 12:49

you know, um, I think that well, and it's also am I supposed to divulge that co-pilot did this right like and I think that's where where the concept of cheating is coming in is people are kind of ashamed that they used it right, and so I agree that feeling needs to fall away.

Mark Smith: 13:10

Yeah, but it's interesting, it is, it totally does Like if I write a blog post, I'm dyslexic and so therefore I don't do good via keyboard input, right. So what I do? I take my iPhone, I go outside and I have a concept and I will record for 30 minutes into just the recording app on my iPhone and I just download my thoughts and it's you know, because I'm neurodivergent it's all over the place, right. And then I take it, I use Whisper, I have it, you know, transcribed out into text. Then I will give that to a co-pilot and say, hey, make, can you see the patterns in what I'm talking about?

Mark Smith: 13:53

What's the structure of this? What's the core point? And so was it AI written or well, I think it's a very much a, you know, an assisted process. Right, it was all my original thought. It just structured my thinking and and I like your term before you mention analogies and how analogies are so important in communication and to know your audience, you're going to change the analogy so it the message lands, and I think AI is massively powerful in assisting in that scenario.

Tiffany Songvilay : 14:24

Yeah, 100%, and I think we need more of this. I think, instead of being scared about it, I think we need more companies to start creating think tanks around AI and how the company can use it. And even if AI here's what I think is going to happen You're going to come up with things that just can't be done yet, right, but you're going to put that on a roadmap so that, when the technology is ready for you, you already know how you're going to use it. I think that's what happened with M365. Copilot is people kind of got blindsided by it. It just kind of showed up in the market and there was no real clear understanding other than this blanket statement that AI is going to make your business better. Well, that's not very helpful. I need to know how. So what we're hearing from clients is they want to know the industry specific use cases, because they need to understand from a total cost of ownership how having AI is going to impact their bottom line. So even Microsoft says this.

Tiffany Songvilay : 15:37

Think about every product Microsoft has ever rolled out. They always roll out something for productivity. And then we get into business and business realizes you can't measure productivity. And in fact, somebody last week said they said I'm sick and tired of you telling me that it's going to make me more productive. I am a highly productive person. I don't want to hear that I need to get more work done with less. That is not what I want to hear. But if you tell me that I can stop working 10-hour days, or if you can tell me that I won't feel guilty taking every other Friday off, right, whatever that is, don't make me more productive. Get me out of working overtime.

Mark Smith: 16:25

Yeah, it's so true, right, Is that? So many people you know that are productive work way too many hours, way more than perhaps even what they're paid for in most situations, and this is going to allow balance to that right. Spend more time with family, I just like that idea. It means I can get home, you know, pick my kids up from school or daycare in my case. I love that right and it's that productivity. Even just before this, I've got a website that I need designed.

Mark Smith: 16:54

It was in my diary to do just one task write a design brief. I went to AI I said, hey, I need a website design. This is the audience, this is what I want to achieve. This is the parameters and I'm going to be posting it on a. I use a tool called 99designs for my design work and graphic designers bid on doing that work. Now, if I had tried that two years ago, that would have I would have needed a lot more than the 20 minutes it took me to do that brief, right? But allow me to get stuff done and I really like that concept of it. Allows you to get stuff done. Um, now, and uh, I think, yeah, it's, it's amazing. Tell me about your highlight from MVP summit this year.

Tiffany Songvilay : 17:35

Hmm, well, let me go back real quick and then I'll come back to that. I believe that what AI or I know that what AI does for me is I stop. I stop fearing tasks that I'm not good at, and so I'm, and so I will actually bite off the task that I know AI can help me with, which is typically something I would have procrastinated to do because maybe I'm not good at it. Right, those are the tasks I'm not good at that I can't do in 30 minutes. But now I'm like you know what? I'm gonna let AI help me do this, and something I thought was going to take me an hour, of course just takes me that 15 or 20 minutes. So I just wanted to validate, uh, what you were saying there.

Tiffany Songvilay : 18:22

Yeah, as far as what I took away from MVP summit, I'm going to tell you something that one of the presenters said that blew my mind. He was talking about power pages, and you know where the data comes from, you know for, for power pages, and he just flippantly, just like everybody already felt this way, he says well, eventually we won't need lists. And my brain just broke because he's right. What happens in a world where it doesn't matter where it is in the database, right, like where the list can be created on demand and then automate a task. And then that list, we don't have to store it anymore, you don't have to store that list anywhere anymore. And I just think, man, what a future If we can consistently make it so that we don't need a list. We just got better didn't we?

Mark Smith: 19:31

I think it applies to navigation as well. Yeah Well, we need navigation right. As long as the data's there and it's accessible. Produce it in the format that's relevant to whatever I'm doing right now. I think it is, and that's what I like. Those nuggets, those kind of sound bites, that kind of become pivoted points in your thinking right and allows you to switch paradigms and move forward. I think you've given a brilliant example of one of the benefits of going to Summit and hanging around amazing, amazing people. Final thoughts what are the? What's the value of the MVP program to you?

Tiffany Songvilay : 20:12

So this was my first year, and so when I gave my feedback to other MVPs, they said you know, that's what it's like your first year, right, but it gets better.

Tiffany Songvilay : 20:26

So I don't want to say I was disappointed in it, it was just, you know and I think Microsoft takes responsibility for this too Microsoft is no longer brave enough to give MVPs information before they're ready to announce it.

Tiffany Songvilay : 20:46

So my disappointment was I felt like this was just another opportunity for Microsoft to announce things, because they were literally presenting something to us and we asked when it was going to come out, and they're like the announcement's going to come out in two hours or it's going to be in GA next week. And I'm like, well then, what am I doing here, right, other than to be kind of a marketing engine? And so I think for me, the value I expected to get out of MVP Summit and what I think will happen in future years is as I develop those relationships with the product team. Apparently there are things where there are like side conversations or side meetings where you're able to actually contribute to the life cycle or the path of a product, and so I think for me the value is and I'm trying to be altruistic about it, it's it's my ability to take my client's stories directly to the product team, and if that's all I get out of this program, it was worth it.

Mark Smith: 21:57

Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.