Name: How Prosci and Microsoft Are Redefining Change Success in the AI Era
Uploaded: 2025-10-15T16:30:41.295Z
Duration: 1 h 1 min
Description: How Prosci and Microsoft Are Redefining Change Success in the AI Era

Transcript for "How Prosci and Microsoft Are Redefining Change Success in the AI Era": Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's session. We are so excited to have you joining us here for the next hour or sixty minutes or so. We have a great conversation lined up between Microsoft and Prosci leadership. Prosci has been a partner with or Prosci has partnered with Microsoft for several years, and today, we'll we will be unpacking how Microsoft has built their internal change capability to enable not only their internal team, but also the partners in their network. Now Now before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items to run through with you. So first off, we have a couple polls and chat falls scheduled for today's webinar. So I'm gonna launch the first one just to get everybody warmed up and started. So I'm gonna open that. And you should see a notification on the bottom left of your screen that says go to polls where you can participate. Or in the right side of your screen where you might see people chatting in where they're calling from, there should be a couple tabs up there. If you click on polls, you'll be able to see the poll that has been launched. Our question today is, what's driving the biggest change challenge in your organization right now? So go ahead, click on that poll, and you'll leave that open to the rest of the housekeeping items. I see people already chatting in some responses. I'll share that so you can start to see, here in a minute. Now I have a couple other notes on the screen here. We are recording today's session. I know that's a very common one that people are always asking, so don't worry. You will receive the link to the recording in either tomorrow or the day after. If for some reason you don't receive it, we will be posting this, recording to our website at proside.com/webinars. So you can check for that link, tomorrow or at the latest Friday. We also have closed captions available and translated subtitles. So you can activate those by clicking on the menu item in the bottom right of your screen. And as always, if you have questions throughout today's broadcast, please use the q and a function. So you may have already seen in the chat, we have a lot of people on the call. It'll be very difficult for the people in the backstage to follow along in the chat. So if you need to reach us, either to submit questions for our speakers today, or if you're having any issues and would like to get in touch with the backstage, you can use that q and a section. Alright. So let me see if I can share the poll results. Okay. Oh, I had to close it. So get those last polls in. We hit close. And alright. I'm having trouble sharing the poll, but our options were AI technology is definitely number one with 439 votes. Let me see if I can try to open that again. I think I know why. There we go. Here we go. Here's our results. So you can see, you might have to scroll down to the purple screen. AI technology is definitely the number one, concern that you're you're facing today. So great time. You'll you're you're in the right place for this conversation. Also, digital transformation is another one. Alright. So we are getting to the point where we're about to get started. Now many of you are familiar with Prosci. You've maybe been on several of our webinars before. So thank you so much if you are a frequent flyer with us. Hold on. There we go. So you are here today to partner to learn from Prosci. Since our founding in 1994, we have been a leader in change management. By combining our deep understanding of people with the proven methodology that's rooted in our ADKAR model, we have an unprecedented understanding of how people thrive through change. And hopefully, you'll see a lot of those insights come through in our conversation today. Our programs and our advisory solutions and our body of knowledge are trusted by change experts and Fortune 100 companies across the globe, and our focus on research based insights and innovation ensures that our programs, digital resources, and software, are parts are and on the leading edge of the industry to be effective and sustainable. Organizations worldwide partner with us for our research backed enterprise solutions that drive change success. And since we are focused exclusively on change management, Prosci has conducted 12 benchmarking studies over the past, 25, and we've had over 2,600 participants from organizations all over the world contribute to the studies, which form the foundation and the body of knowledge of many of our solutions and our training programs. Now many of these studies highlight, variables over long periods of time. They're longitudinal studies. And so some of the topics that will maybe come through today are ones reflected in our research, especially around organizational change capability and readiness. And so we are very excited to be having a conversation of what this looks like in the real world with people who have been there and are actively working on these types of projects. So to that end, it's my pleasure to introduce our speakers for today on how Microsoft and Prosci are redefining change in the era of AI. So I will hand it over to Michelle Haggerty, Prosci's chief operation officer. Thank you so much, Michelle. Take it away. Thanks, Diana. Appreciate you, welcoming all of the people joining us from so many different areas around the world. Thank you for taking some time out of your morning, afternoon, or evening, to join our chat and learn a little bit more about how Prosci and Microsoft are redefining change success in an AI era. Really excited to be leading this conversation with Steve Green, the director of business programs from Microsoft. I've had the pleasure of working with Steve for several years in a true sense of partnership. He has been such a great voice in a lot of our innovation and our research and really pushing Prosci to think in this AI space as Microsoft, clearly was a an early driver in the space. So excited to learn more about what's working in their areas and and how they brought success to life. One of the key takeaways you're gonna hear about, from Steve today and and hopefully along the conversation today is that change sticks through people, not through features. And that remains true in AI. So Steve's gonna walk us through how Microsoft is navigating that, what change capability looks like within Microsoft, and so much more. But before we dive into that larger conversation, Steve, welcome. Thank you for taking time and joining us from Redding today. Delighted to be here, Michelle. Thank you for having me. Yeah. It's great to see some familiar names as well coming up in the chat saying hello, so that's wonderful to see you as well. Good. Some some friends in the conversation for sure. Well, we'll still see if they ask questions. Right. The the type of questions that are asked later, we'll find friendlier foe. Before we dive into all of the capability and change success and adoption, topics, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your background. I know the audience would as well and your career journey at Microsoft and what brought you to the position you're in today. Yeah. Thank you very much. I mean, from my perspective, it's nearly it was just over two decades now that I've had the pleasure and privilege of working at Microsoft, and I'm seeing quite a little bit of change happen in the technology world in that time. When I joined, my role was in the presales team, helping our customers understand the capabilities of products such as Windows XP and Office February three. And, you know, some folks were still installing from disks as well from that perspective. And so over time, though, my role shifted a little bit, really to focus not just on the capabilities, but how can our customers deploy, support, and realize the value from that investment that they're making. Because what they're looking to achieve is a business outcome, and our technology might well be an enabler for that, but, actually, it is about making sure that we're addressing the people side of change. So having transitioned from that sort of presales into the, well, stop talking about it and make it happen, I moved into our what was known as Microsoft Consulting Services. And today, I'm part of what is now industry solutions delivery, and in particular, working for the adoption change and service or modern service management practice. And our remit there is to help our customers, equipping them, help them embrace, adopt, and use the latest technologies. I also, as you know, oversee our strategic partnership, our relationship that we have, which has been in place now for, what, eleven, twelve years, I think, from that perspective. And beyond that sort of formal remit, though, I'm absolutely delighted to be afforded the time to build a community of change across Microsoft. And we do that through a number of vehicles, not just the, Prosci classes which we deliver. And I'm one of the instructors that, Microsoft folks have, had the pleasure or displeasure of me educating them on the the methodology and the framework. But it's also about building on the growth mindset and the learn it all culture that we have here, providing that environment where information can be shared. What's working? What's not working? How can we deliver even better outcomes to serve our customers' needs from that perspective? And I've been able to do that through fantastic leaders from the very first manager who recruited me into Microsoft back in 02/2003, a lady called Lily Harris, through Sue McDermott, Duncan Taylor, David Howe, then moving into services through Diana Gibson, Corinne Martinez, Alastair Lo Norris, and for the last couple of years, my long suffering manager, Laurie Simolek. They've all encouraged me to build this competency and capability in our organization. And as we move into the AI era, if you like, what we're finding time and time again, and we're hearing it from our CVPs and EVPs here in Microsoft, that a lot of transformation is not just about the technology. It's about the people. And I'm more than happy to share if folks haven't seen this content that people like Jared Spataro are talking about, which is the human led engagement approach. Really appreciate you walking us through that as you've talked about your career And also just watching, and you've hit on quite a few of the the key pivotal moments in technology. I think it's an incredibly important component of that shift that you mentioned there at the end. Really fundamentally thinking differently about activation and implementation and what definitions of success look like when it comes to technology. I'm curious if you can share with us that moment at Microsoft where you went from, kind of thinking about the installation of of of a, a technology or a solution and needed to think differently about your approach to change and and what that meant for you internally and through your customers. Yeah. I think from the sort of real pivotal shift was that move into cloud based compute, computing and subscription models. Previously, we probably focused on the go live. And so did the system launch on time? Did it work? Were there any bugs that needed to be remedied, etcetera and so on? And that is still important today because we can't drive change if this technology solution doesn't work. But we had to start thinking more about adapting metrics. And if you think about consumption economics as a framework, then that is really focused not about the purchasing, but that you realize the value, when the tool, the system, the service is being leveraged by individuals. And, ultimately, if we're not encouraging our customers to leverage the technology, they're not gonna get the outcomes that they're looking to achieve. And so as we were embracing that approach of thinking about the deployment, the support, and that realizing value, we had to start to really focus in on the people side of change. It wasn't that we'd ignored it until that point, but we really had to increase the emphasis for our own teams to have these conversations. And so we got into, looking at programs of work that we were undertaking and what were those sort of missing pieces. So if I give you a sort of an example, and there are many of these customer examples, they had deployments which were technically flawless. They had no issues or pretty much no issues, but only a small percentage, ten, twenty, or 30% of their employees were actually leveraging those platforms and those services. They were still working in their previous ways. And so what we look to do is in one particular instance, it was a three day adoption workshop where we started to highlight that actually some of the challenges that they're facing are focused or being caused, for want of a better phrase, by not getting people on that journey, bringing them on that journey. And almost immediately, within a couple of months, the adoption rate had soared by over 450% just from that initial education awareness type session and giving them the knowledge. As we've seen those results, what we did do is, as you know, standardized as a foundational understanding on the Prosci methodology and framework, complementing what we were doing around the learn it all model, etcetera, and so on. And what that meant was that we needed to give everybody a common language that we could use internally, not necessarily replay that out to our customers and lead with the logic of a methodology, but really start to focus on what does that success look like and how do we get people to transform. And so a decision was made, and, I was very early on in this program of setting up exactly what does delivering change management programs look like. We made that investment in the enterprise license, and what that empowered us to do was build a community where today, over 50,000 people have been through either instructor led or elearning led programs. We put in place, the right level of instructors. We educated working with yourselves. We built out a community of instructors who deliver that program and can tailor it specifically for the conversations, whether they are internal in Microsoft or whether they are with our partners or with our customers. And it isn't just about putting in that process. It is about making sure that we humanize this journey. So whilst we've built that, community of people, we need to make sure that we're providing them with the space and the time to collaborate, share, learn, and even challenge one another on what might be the most appropriate approach in this situation. So we're making sure that people remain curious and that they are applying what they are learning in these programs in a practical way. So if, actually, you do hear Microsoft people leading with the logic of the methodology, There's nothing wrong with the methodology. But if they are leading with that, they perhaps not not grasped this, fully. So we should be always focusing on what are the outcomes that the customer is looking to achieve, how do we ensure that our technology and our services will deliver against them, and we bring people on that journey. And so, effectively, we've made change management, available and accessible to everyone in our organization. And perhaps a little later, if there's time, then I can share a little bit of how we're publishing this out a little bit more further to, publicly on microsoft.com for both customers and for partners, because we don't wanna keep all of this information to ourselves. Yeah. And so from my perspective, and I know that this is, with I'm seeing lots of, prompts coming up as we're going through on the chat, etcetera. I think for the audience, I would encourage them to think about perhaps a recent technology rollout in their organization. And when they were thinking about what was that success, was the success that you deployed it and you've gone live, or is it about the actual usage and that the outcomes are being realized? Yeah. That's a really interesting pivot. Right? The usage, the proficiency, the adoption of the tool, and appreciate the 450% increase that you all saw. That uplift is phenomenal. I think oftentimes our customers or our partners struggle with what is that that value that change management returns. What does that look like? How do we make it tangible? And you've done a a brilliant job within Microsoft of figuring out how do we shift those success metrics internally, and and measure the things that are not just on the implementation schedule or the feature schedule, but also on the people side, to drive those adoption levels, not just internally, but through your partners and customers is is really impressive. Diana, if you don't mind putting that prompt into the the audience, I think it would be great to hear, from from everyone. If you can chat in how, success was measured or deployment was, looked at differently in your organization as you're going through your technology rollouts, as as Steve Green has prompted us. I think it's great to learn from one another. And one of the things that you shared that I think is, an incredible highlight is you really walked individuals through that whole change process. It wasn't just an organizational shift in mindset. You were helping people understand along the way through education, through awareness and desire. And now, honestly, through some of those reinforcement mechanisms that you have in your community, to keep that front and center and how you drive value and redefine what value looks like. Yeah. And, again, we we began that journey with what was initially felt be a small community of people. That small, you know, series of what we call architects and consultants who are working with customers, and we thought that number might get to around about 600 people. That was the sort of target. That's where we were gonna go. But it soon became evident that there was a increased demand, not just from our own internal teams because we go through change as well just like anybody else does. Mhmm. But also importantly then, how do we make this much more accessible globally? And so there there was that sort of linear increase in adoption and usage, or adoption, if you like, of understanding how do we get people to change their behaviors. And so this has been a solid framework that we can build upon, complemented by other factors around, again, individuals having good facilitation skills, understanding what the business challenges are. The answer isn't, dare I say it, change management. What is the question? The answer is what are you looking to achieve? How much of this return on investment is dependent upon people embracing, adopting, and using the solution? Yeah. Lots of really, great ways to ask that coming from the audience as well in terms of the way you can measure engagement or different, you know, distinct ways you can measure adoption. So I think you're prompting quite a quite a great conversation in the chat there as well, through your own experience and how people can continue to evolve that. I would I'm curious, you know, as we start to get into AI transformation and how we work. Change management is is a key component, hopefully, of of how people are investing or or hoping to build it as a core capability in their organization, which is how they work. But AI is shifting how we work across the board, whether it be, operationally, in change management, with our customers, within revenue. So I'm curious what's different now, than when we met those eleven years ago and you were kind of getting into the change space. I would say it it is about there are a number of challenges that and opportunities that people are facing today. I would argue those organizations, and I think back to when we first met, it was a very much a, dare I say, a waterfall approach in terms of how technology was introduced. As people have became more comfortable with cloud computing, it became much more iterative. The pace of change was increasing. And AI has whether that's Copilot or any other AI platform that you might be using, it is, almost a very steep learning curve for individuals and a very steep learning curve in with regards to the pace of change. So whereas we might have been planning in long cycles, months, perhaps, sometimes even years, the updates are much, much more frequent. And it is about integrating that and being having this, foundational acceptance that change is going to be happening. I can think of personal re examples of where, in the very early days of, internal versions before it became available of Copilot, we were exploring and I was exploring ways in which I might have to change my prompts or indeed started to look at having agents to challenge me or work alongside me. And from that perspective now, I don't need those agents anymore. That agent had a shelf life, and it's no longer necessary. But what we are taking as an approach is very much an AI first. How can we use AI? How can it be my I don't wanna use the word intern. That sounds very disrespectful to interns. But how can my AI be my assistant who works alongside me? So it's a human plus AI assistant as it were. Then we need to start thinking about, well, how can AI with an agent, how can that do things for me? And so we have to think about this in the, and this is where I love the conversations that I've had the privilege of having with, Tim, where he's developed and published the AI integration framework of this. This is my work, This is with me, and this is with for me. And you have seen people like, Jared Spataro, again, I'll mention that, has been openly talking about we need to think about AI complementing the human. And much of our engagements with customers is humans plus Copilot plus agents. And so from our perspective, what we're looking to do is also make sure it is contextualized and that people can relate. So for what feels like decades now, we've talked about personas and scenarios. And a persona is an individual, groups of individuals who might be working, in a particular area, HR, finance, sales, operations, whatever that may well be. And you have to contextualize their capability in the context of what they are doing. And this isn't something that we just tell people. This is what we have done internally and then published. So for example, when we've been working with our finance teams who might be looking at AI being a way to complement, monthly reporting or quarterly reporting, That scenario is relevant to the finance teams and perhaps some others. But then when we're talking with HR, maybe they're looking at how can we use AI to streamline the onboarding process, to make the experience for individuals when we're, much richer, when we're working with our customer services, customer operations folks, how can they use AI to get an answer to make the customer happier quicker and get, a resolution? Now we have to do all of that, of course, alongside our responsible AI principles, which, again, Microsoft has published, where we talk about fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, transparency, accountability and inclusiveness. And that has all been, published. That's on Microsoft, and that's baked into everything that we're doing. So when our engagements are running, especially when we're, engaging with customers around AI, we've got to have the guardrails in place so that all of our change initiatives factor these elements in place up in the right way. And they're core components. They're not parallel work streams or seen as being sitting outside. They are fundamental to everything that we are doing. And so as we start to think about how the conversation is shifting, we have to adapt our approach. We can use AI, for example, to inform perhaps some of the challenges that one's faced. How do I write a communications message about a particular change that is relevant to a financial services audience or to a pharmaceutical audience? And it's great that there's a lot of emphasis has been on that sort of personal productivity, things like meeting recaps. I'm sure that individuals will take this recording. They'll download it and use AI to get a summary because it was too long, they didn't read or didn't attend. Those are great things, but as we start to really look at this in detail, it's about what are those business processes and outcomes. It's not just about that productivity. So it's incumbent upon people like ourselves with our partners and directly with our customers to think about how do we redefine work. So it doesn't just necessarily become, hey. I can reduce my headcount, which some people are quite excited about, but, actually, how can we amplify and empower more people to do things? How can Steve show up as perhaps five or 10 I might need five or 10 individuals in the past? So that's where we've really got to start thinking about it. And and it means that we shouldn't just treat and perhaps a reflection for folks. Maybe we shouldn't just treat AI as another IT project. Maybe we should be thinking about, let's have the dialogue and the conversation on redefining what work is, what is important to us. And I know there are lots of conversations around this, but that's where we really need to start thinking about, let's make sure we're building that trust and driving those real business outcomes. Yeah. I think the context is incredibly important. I really, really value and appreciate their reflection that AI can amplify and accelerate the power and unlock the power, of the individual, of the human being, and how do we do that. And it resonates. Our our research just this year in the AI space said that executives that are deploying change, excuse me, AI strategies are really focused on and challenged by, really that workforce capability. So how do we give people the skill sets in context of their day to day work? How can I leverage the power of of Copilot to make me more impactful, to make my work, more valuable to my customer, to my organization? And then also just the adoption of, through change management and and your overall organizational capability around change are the two things that, executives had said were were quite challenging. So very much aligned to how you described, some of the things that you're focused on at Microsoft, but also, where people need to focus and invest and not just look at saving through AI. I am curious, on on that investment side. Why do you think it's so important and and how do you, continue to invest the time and the training in the humans that are doing change management, not just relying solely on AI? That is a question I get almost daily. Why are we still educating people? I wanna be clear from a personal perspective as well. I know we hear a lot of, if you think about the spectrum of excitement, you know, excitement at one end or a spectrum of how people feel about AI, there is a spectrum of, you know, the world is over to this is gonna be incredibly exciting. And somewhere in between is where we'll probably end up as a as a balance, I I believe, as human beings. AI can help us, but I don't think it's a choice. I think that humans I still want to have a conversation with you, Michelle, and the rest of the Prosci team. I use AI to complement a conversation, to give me some insights. It can help me refresh my knowledge. But when we think about change and we're talking about human beings changing now, then we need to make sure that we've got the right leadership sponsorship in place. AI can't necessarily build trust, and I know people will say AI hallucinates all the time. Just remember the best inventions were a hallucination effectively by somebody. I'm not suggesting that every answer an AI engine gives you, which is perhaps not what you expected is therefore a good hallucination, but all inventions were a hallucination effectively by someone. And the local context is important as well, where you work, perhaps the city, the country that you live in. All of those things are fundamentally human aspects. And, therefore, whilst I could undoubtedly ask an AI engine, hey. I want to drive the adoption of Copilot, or I want to drive the adoption of Teams or a product, whatever it may well be. Can you pull together a change management plan for me? It will give you the plan, but that doesn't mean it's gonna execute. And is that plan appropriate? How are you gonna be in a position to effectively challenge the responses that are coming back from AI and be able to contextualize it if you haven't got a good understanding of what change management is? It doesn't mean that we can't use the tools to perhaps overcome some fear of of crikey. I don't know how to write a communications about this or to invest, get a sponsor to communicate the business reasons. Doesn't mean you can't use those tools, but, fundamentally, you still have to have a, I believe, a base understanding to be able to challenge the responses that are coming back. So we are using AI internally to complement. It's not to replace. What it may mean is that we can accelerate the time or shorten the time to achieving a particular outcome, to helping our customers be successful. But humans are still in the loop for all of the decisions. I don't know about folks on this call. There are some things that I'd be quite happy for, and it's been around for a while, whether I'm using, an online purchasing, for a commodity perhaps or buying a new phone, etcetera, that I would use AI to give me some recommendations and insights into what I want to do and what I'm looking to achieve. But, fundamentally, what we are talking about when we're changing human behavior, I don't want an AI to tell me. I want a human to tell me. I still believe that that is critically important. And all of this sounds like, oh, crikey. That's quite difficult. Well, if you're building this continuous learning, you're getting this feedback from people and, again, I wanna be crystal clear. Internally, everyone in Microsoft is empowered to respectfully challenge assumptions, surface counterarguments, have the dialogue, stress test some of the logic. Is this the right thing to do? And I know through the change management programs, I'm incredibly privileged to meet hundreds, if not thousands, of people a year who do come with that mindset. And so we see it very much as being that combination of the human insight plus the scale that AI enables us to, or enables us to then deliver much more consistency, higher quality change management plans. And so, again, you know, I I'd ask you this question, Michelle. How would you feel where the communications are automated? The a almost generic mailbox is sending that message to you. Would that energize and excite you as a human? No. It's no. It would not. And what's interesting as we get more and more familiar with AI, especially drafted communications, it's you there's some tells. Right? You know when it's not in the human voice or there's some, suit certain grammar rules that are very, well leveraged in AI machines that become create a trend. And you can pretty quickly identify them, especially during announcements of large change. I think as a sponsor internally at Prosci and doing a lot of the work with our customers as well. As soon as that shows up in an important communication, they know it wasn't really you, that that sentiment wasn't really there behind the message. Engagement, definitely goes down. You can see that, in the data. I do think having Copilot help generate some of that or, you know, give you a starting point, have Kaya give you the pro side based research approach to it, The power of those two coupled, that saves hours. So then you can focus on, to your point, that faster, human element. And it also frees up the calendar to say, well, let me go have those conversations that maybe I wasn't able to have in the past because I was drafting or because I was planning. That that a 100% agree. It's not, you know, when you're presented with that sort of blank box in a a Copilot or any other, you've gotta give it some context of, like, what is it you're trying to achieve. And so I would use it to say, look, here are the bullet points that I'm looking or the messaging that I'm looking to convey. Now can you formulate for this audience in this culture or this language? That's powerful. It gives me then more time to think and more time to explore. Okay. Well, what if this doesn't work? What adaptations do I need to make? And that comes back to, you know, moving to a much more iterative approach. You're measuring as you go through to see are you achieving are you moving the needle achieving those outcomes that you're looking to achieve? And if not, how can we adapt this? Yeah. It's been really very interesting interesting to see Prosci's methodology. I think, oftentimes, people think it's quite structured. To see it come to life in that iterative way of saying, okay. My barrier point was desire. I have the data now that says majority of people are actually having a barrier point at, ability. You could pivot much more quickly. Without that results oriented or data informed approach or that personalized approach, change is much harder. And now you're even stronger with those tools in your back pocket, but not alone. They need to, again, to your point, be used within context. I think that it it is a structured approach. That's what is provided, but it doesn't mean you follow it sequentially and start with a, then b, then c, then d, etcetera, and so on. You obviously need to know what are you looking to achieve, and I love the, updates where the plain language questions, what does success look like, rather than leading with the tools. Those are so important for people, and people should remember that you have to go through a structured learning. Going through structured learning then enables you to start to identify what is most appropriate at a particular point. Is this you know, if we're following the ADKAR model, then perhaps are people stuck at desire? Have they made that decision? Is it that we've enabled the technology, but they can't put it into practice ability? Right? Yeah. Having an educated human in the loop to your earlier point. Yes. Very important. Them out. There there are plans to do that that I know of. Well, to that end, you know, as as people on the call, I'm sure all facing technology implementations, and customer adoption challenges potentially, what is your advice? What are the top three things, people need to consider or or where do they start? What's something that you've learned that you would wanna share with the audience? I cannot underemphasize having a good understanding of what does success look like, what is the outcome. You've gotta start there. And so, you know, it's great to say, well, the outcome is that we'll have Copilot on everybody's desk. Great. But is that gonna drive value? So what's the real value? What is the outcome that you're looking for? And how are you gonna ensure that you understand what the measure of success is? What are the signals that you're going to have that will confirm it is, moving in the right direction or you're moving forward? We know that people will change, and, again, the research will tell us that sponsorship, those business reasons for change are critically important. So having that sponsor communicate the vision, which means that you as a if you're in a change, practitioner role, you might have to work with the sponsor to script almost what their role is going to be and then equip the managers. So for example, as, over the years, we will have conversations around, accessibility, for example. How do I ensure that all of our content is accessible to be inclusive? Now that can come from the Microsoft leadership quite rightly so. But on a day to day basis, I have to work with my manager to understand what does Steve have to do differently with regard to making content more accessible. And, again, you know that this has been a a an ongoing conversation for many years and delighted to see so much of the materials coming from Prosci meeting, and or exceeding the standards that we expect. And so, you know, if you were thinking about this, you've gotta have what is the outcome. We've gotta have the right leadership and sponsorship in place along with coaching those managers. And then thirdly, think about how do we know how are we measuring that we're achieving that outcome? So those are the three things that I would focus on. So what's the outcome, who is the sponsor, and how will we measure success? And do that upfront because it's very easy to sort of launch broad and almost a shotgun approach where you blast out and everybody has now got this, but are people gonna know how to contextualize it in their way of work? Yeah. Starting at the beginning with that is an incredibly important component of alignment to drive the results. I think I'm reminded sorry, Michelle. I was just gonna say I'm just reminded now of, begin with the end in mind. Isn't that part of one of the slides in one of our our classes? Important change principle for sure. Yes. It will as you were talking, it was to take me back to that 450%, it's such an incredible increase in customer adoption that is just something to be celebrated, and ideally replicated. So I'm curious if you can break down for us what specific changes in your approach, Microsoft took with your customers that drove those results. And, you know, I would assume 450 wasn't the expectation upfront. But No. It's probably higher. It was probably higher, Michelle. No. No. No. Yeah. Matrix. I'm sure it was probably higher. Again, I'll just remind folks that we have a foundational competency capability that is available to everyone in Microsoft. Anybody who is involved in, delivering change, they have the ability to either consume elearning, consume the research because of our license, so they can go and self study. And we have instructor programs where we can coach and guide three people and facilitate people through. And so what that enables us to do is almost have a this base level of knowledge, which allows us then to create almost a playbook on what does it take to achieve success for product a, product b, product c, whatever it is. That scaled, as I said, from initially, it was around about sort of, the the 600 person mark as technology has moved forward, as cloud adoption become pretty much the norm these days, then we expanded that capability and, as I mentioned, certified over 10,000 folks internally, enabling that consistent execution at scale. So everybody's talking internally. I wanna be clear now. A change manager to a change manager, they are talking the same vocabulary and language. We also made sure that our programs have worked. So when we think about the offers that, customers can take advantage of, either through the, professional services arms here inside of Microsoft, They range from those sort of short three day education, coaching, and guiding workshops through to multiple year engagements over long projects, but always making sure that the content is practical and it's action orientated. It's not about the answer is we need to send you on a three day, five day, ten day training program. It's let's put this into practice and use the language that is appropriate for the audiences that we're engaging with. One of my colleagues often says, Steve, the the biggest challenge that we face many times is that Microsoft uses a lot of TLAs, three letter acronyms, which isn't the language of our customers. So we have to talk in their language. And it's part of our DNA. So it's now included in all of the materials, every single solution offer that our teams make available will include an element of adoption change and services management, but we've also shared this publicly. And if you don't mind, I'm I'm happy to show some of the the resources if I can remember how to press the right button to share my screen. So if I think I feel like it's a live demo. Go for it. Would would that be alright if I do this? We're not going off peak, are we too much? No. Please do. I think people would would enjoy the opportunity to see. So I'll start with, adoption.microsoft.com. This is, publicly available. Everybody can get access to this information, and it is broken down by resources that can be available for particular products and or services that you are looking to consume. So here are a few examples. And if I drill into these a little bit more, when we start looking at areas like Copilot, for example, then you'll see that we've got a success kit that's available and a scenario library. And that scenario library comes back to what I was saying around contextualizing the change for the individuals. So over the years and, again, this is an added to on a regular basis. We've started to group scenarios by function, for example. Steve, I don't know if you changed something on your audio settings, but we've lost your audio. Hopefully, we haven't lost Steve. I cannot hear you. Don't worry. It's just you and I. We've got some time. Just take take a breath, and we'll, we'll get you back after. Sure. Oh, Steve, don't be mic. I think we mic you. Well, while while you see Oh, now they're now they're looking for if they don't mind maybe muting using me. How is that working? Am I back? You're back. You're back. I I've changed to a headset. Sorry. Apologies. So I don't know what's happened with my microphone there. Obviously, sharing didn't work. Am I sharing my screen still? Is that working? I'm hesitant to talk to the other one. Go. One second. How is that? Are we back? We can definitely hear go on with your with your I'll talk talking. Okay. You you can hear me. So I'll I'll carry on, and we'll go from there. So what I was saying sorry, folks. What I was saying is that adoption.microsoft.com is that one stop resource that we have made available building on the work that we have been delivering to our customers. We make that available to everyone. And so this content is available. From here, you can look at individual products, but we've also started to build out specifically taking you on that journey around, for example, Copilot. So if you're looking to embrace, adopt, and use Copilot, then you have the success kit and, the interactive scenario library. Why is that scenario library important? As we start to go into that library, we start to build out some of the scenarios that would be relevant to a human resources individual from that perspective. That success kit provides overviews from enablement guides, readiness guides, again, linking back to the scenario library, and it includes areas such as the adoption score. And I saw briefly, through all of the questions, and, yes, we will share all these resources. I just saw that come up. The adoption score isn't just tracking daily, weekly, monthly active usage, whatever is important, but it's now starting to break down and understand areas around how people are collaborating, whether people are using applications specifically for engaging in a particular way, if there is meetings, how the meetings are being leveraged, and so on. And this is all available to our customers through adoption.microsoft.com. And then for those, from the partner community, we obviously share the the the public information, but then we start to work with our partners, again, based upon our best practices, what we have seen working, and provide that foundation that our partners think can also then take advantage of. So, we'll make sure that these links are shared, and I will stop sharing my screen and see if I can come back to having an audio video conversation with you, Michelle. Awesome. Hopefully, we've resolved the echo challenges. I'm sure the audience will let us know if we have not, but appreciate the demo. I think that was incredibly helpful with even with the the live the live demos are always a wild card, and I think always worth it even if there's a bit of a glitch in between. So, thank you for sharing. Oh, gosh. No. Don't be. I think that was super helpful for people to see and I think very excited to get access to that as a follow-up. As we kind of round out our conversation, I think just your kind of key insights, if you will, on how you balance that internal capability, ensuring that consistency and that quality across such a massive scale. Microsoft is so large, and and a lot of organizations that are are are large, but maybe not as large on the call today. And and for those that are inspired, kind of what is that first step? How do you get to the level that you've just demonstrated and and shown us today? We we have the adoption change in services management practice. That is a collection of what we call architects and consultants who are subject matter experts working with customers on a day to day basis. That is where many of our instructors who teach the methodology and bring that methodology to life also reside. What has also happened internally is that there are the centers of excellence. Different communities have, again, taken that foundational knowledge and adapted change and the introduction of changes to those communities that they work within. And so we are enabling providing that standard for everyone, if you like, centrally by us standardizing on the Prosci methodology, which is right for our business as it is very data driven and very, data centric approach supported by that information. We then build out, role based curricula. So whilst we obviously have the pro side training pathways as well, we might be and we do regularly complement that with upscale and other upskilling activities, which are much more, again, tailored to a particular audience. And then we're constantly measuring success. So on an ongoing basis, whilst I get, you know, a huge amount of feedback and I mentioned around that there is a learn it all and that there is a a desire internally for individuals to provide feedback. I know, for example, on our change management programs, we get an 80% response rate, if not higher, to every single program that we deliver. People choose to give us that feedback. It's all anonymous, so I can't see it was Michelle or Grace or Diana who said something. But I get that feedback, which allows me to then make adaptations for future programs and first future deliveries. And because we are using that those signals from individuals coupled with telemetry data, we can usually spot when there is a a challenge or a dip and react accordingly. So why is this not happening, being curious, or why is this change not, moving forward in the direction that we want to? Yeah. And then we can target in particular areas. Right? If it's a particular community that we have missed, and I don't ever want to get into the a situation where I was with one customer and they missed 25,000 people from, an adoption plan, but, hopefully, we should mitigate that more quickly. Well, it's an incredibly impressive, culture of innovation and adoption, which is really cool to see from Microsoft powered by a really nice change capability that you've built over these last eleven years and and really impressively continue to scale, and continue to be very intentional around. I've taken away certainly several even just from our conversations today around really having that outcome focus, and and appreciate the opportunity to partner with you to have that data to inform those outcomes, and drive better adoption that you've realized internally through the capability you've built and had a huge hand in, Steve. So congratulations to you and to the team that I know support you. Yeah. I'm one of the team. There is a whole, not army. That's unfair. But there there is a whole collection of people who continue to remain curious, want to empower every person and every planet on the and every organization on the planet to achieve more. And every day, I'm excited with the opportunities that this affords me. So I'm incredibly grateful. Yeah. As are we. It's been a ton of fun, and we continue to to learn so much from from all of you and hopefully from from us, you learn as well. Appreciate everyone's time today and spending, your morning, afternoon, or evening learning a little bit more about how Microsoft has redefined, what success looks like looks like and how to drive adoption through our partnership with them at Prosci. I know we have a couple of minutes to do some q and a. And so, Diana, if you don't mind helping guide us through that, that would be fantastic. Steve, thank you so much. No. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for everybody for listening, either live or recording. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. Questions. Oh my gosh. There are so many questions. So thank you everyone for your engagement. The chat has just been an ongoing ticker tape, and we like I said, we have a ton of questions. Before I dig into those, just a reminder, we did record today's session. So we'll be sending that link out to you all. And I opened a poll, so if you went over to your polls right now on the on the right hand side of your screen. If you'd like someone from Prosci to come and follow-up with you on your about your organization and building this kind of enterprise change capability, please let us know. So we're always happy to reach out and help even if it's just a conversation, no commitments. So go ahead. If you respond to that poll, we'll gather that information. It's anonymous to the folks on the call, but we'll gladly follow-up with you with additional resources. So I'll leave that open here until the end of the webinar. To that point, I know Steve was sharing a lot of great information. We'll make sure we gather all of that, and we can put that in a follow-up email as well for you. So I'm going to jump over to our questions. Like I said, there was a lot that I was trying to keep track of. So I had one pinned here. So from Elena, it was back in our time on the AI adoption front. She asks, what strategies ensure that the AI enabled testing and training don't just reduce effort, but also enhance the adoption, data integrity, and user trust in your systems? I don't know if you had any thoughts on that. It's on a specific one. But I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question. We have the Microsoft AI responsible principles. And so everything that we are doing must always be in compliance with those with regard to fairness, reliability, and safety, etcetera, and so on through to inclusiveness. Those are underpin underpin anything that we do. And so you you almost get to, we could do this, but should we do this type question when it comes to developing from, an AI perspective. When so from that point of view, that's all I could probably answer on that, Diana. I'm more than happy to have a follow-up conversation on that with Aina. Yep. No. Fair enough. I do feel like those principles and the fact that they're so embedded in your approach and in your tools does establish that level of trust. There's a predictability to that. There's a values based orientation to it, that builds, I think, confidence in your partners. I know we've experienced that. Your customers, we've experienced that. I'm sure your team members as well. I know you have. Yes. When it comes to being a supplier to Microsoft, for example. Yeah. Let's see. Here's I'll just share this one. Oh, perfect. Maybe another one here from from Joni. What methods do you use, Steve, to achieve that 80% feedback on the change initiatives? How do you collect that feedback? So I'm collecting that feedback through the change management programs, specifically or directly. So how we're getting that is that we encourage and, again, it comes with a culture and a mindset of that people are actively encouraged to give their perspective and their opinion on anything that is happening to them here in Microsoft or with them in Microsoft to them. Sounded like bit bit, direct. And I don't use anything, for for the change programs, for example. I don't use anything which says you're not gonna get a badge or a completion certificate until you filled this in. But they've been going through a change program, and they will have heard how critical it is to get feedback at various points. And so that sort of resonates with them, and therefore, they choose to provide that feedback. Nice reinforcement. Anonymous survey. It is not, anything fancy, as in it is a survey that we use, and they rate the instructor, the knowledge, how is this before the program, and then after the program, how do they feel that they can deliver and put this into practice. Fantastic. Very nice. I know we are at time. I really wanted to say thank you, Steve. It's been phenomenal to learn from you over the last eleven years, but also over the last sixty minutes. I think it's an incredible feat that you're trying to accomplish and are being quite successful in, redefining what success looks like and what that means, and focusing on adoption. So lots more to come from our team on how to continue to do that in your organization as reinforcement. Share a lot of the tools that Steve highlighted today for you, and ways that you can look at building your own change capability, or your own supportive change management in your organization to drive the results that Steve and Microsoft have been successful, in establishing in their services. Michelle, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for hosting me. Thank you, Diana and team as well. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day.