Copilot Training: The Stuff That Actually Works (And the Stuff That Doesn’t)
AI hype is everywhere. New features every week, endless demos, endless promises. But when you’re in the room with a team trying to use Copilot in real work, the noise fades fast. The gap between what people think AI will do and how they actually work day to day? Huge. And that is where most adoption stalls.
After running a lot of sessions, including two solid days of workshops this week, here is what keeps proving true.
Passive demos aren’t useless, but they won’t change behaviour
Yes, demos have a role. They solve the “I don’t know what I don’t know” problem. People see what’s possible, learn the language, and sometimes even get excited. I still get enthusiastic about a clever Copilot trick.
But demos don’t fix broken processes. They don’t show people where this fits in their actual work. At best, they give vocabulary. At worst, they add to the hype cycle.
Real progress starts with real pain points
The sessions that work skip the theatre and go straight to the messy stuff.
We start with one question: “What slows you down?” And the answers are never abstract. They’re painfully specific:
Rebuilding the same PowerPoint deck for the fifth time because no one can find the last version.
Formatting a 40-page Word document to match brand guidelines, manually.
Digging through six different SharePoint sites to find the one file you need.
Writing the same customer email over and over because there’s no template.
Summarising meeting notes that live in three different places.
Switching between Teams, Outlook, and Excel so often you forget what you were doing.
And then there are the big, structured processes, the ones that eat hours because the steps never change, even though the inputs do:
Drafting proposals or RFP responses where 80% of the content is boilerplate, but someone still has to copy, paste, and tweak every section.
Building reports that follow the same template but require pulling fresh data from multiple sources.
Comparing datasets or consolidating information for decision making, the process is identical every time, but the data changes.
These are the tasks that drain time and energy. They’re repetitive, they’re predictable, and they’re perfect for Copilot if people know how to use it.
One practical example: I’ve helped teams map proposal writing workflows to a “what good looks like” folder with guidelines and reference material. Once Copilot knows where to look, drafting responses becomes faster and more consistent. That is not magic, it is structure plus AI.
Testing together beats talking
When teams throw their actual mess at Copilot, results speak fast:
Some tasks break → good to know
Some tasks get faster → lean in
Some tasks transform → adoption moment
That is what drives trust. Not slides. Not hype. Evidence.
Cool features aren’t the point
I love a clever feature as much as anyone. But the real excitement in the room doesn’t come from novelty. It comes from watching something boring, repetitive, or time consuming get done in seconds.
That is what makes people lean forward and say, “Wait, show me that again.”
Copilot adoption is about people, not tech
This is the part that is often missed. Copilot isn’t a software rollout. It is behaviour change.
If people don’t know why they should use it, where it fits, or how to test its limits, it becomes just another icon in the ribbon.
The teams that succeed:
are honest about what’s broken
experiment openly
fix process gaps instead of ignoring them
don’t expect magic
treat AI as a tool, not a saviour
Simple, but not easy.
What I’m Seeing Across Organisations
The companies that get this right don’t start with a big bang rollout. They start small, with working sessions, not presentations. They pick a team, map friction, and test Copilot against real tasks. Then they share wins internally and build momentum.
I’ve seen this approach work for proposal teams, finance teams, and operations teams alike. The pattern is the same: start with the work, not the hype. Build structure where it’s missing. Then let Copilot amplify it.
Bottom line
You can’t demo your way to adoption.
You can’t hype your way to behaviour change.
If you want Copilot to make a dent in productivity, start with the work - the real work. Map friction. Solve problems together. Test, adjust, repeat.
The most useful sessions aren’t performances. They’re working sessions. And that is where the interesting stuff happens.