The future of work?!

A few weeks ago, Microsoft (MS) released their annual Work Trend Index Report. A good read for leaders and curious minds probing the future of work trends. With platforms like M365 and LinkedIn, MS accesses lots of data on current trends, which, combined with 31,000 interviews, yields a substantial basis for their report.

📝My one-paragraph summary
Today we're submerged in more data (meetings, emails, chats, PowerPoints,…) than we can manage. This overload prevents innovative work. AI is the lifeline we need to improve productivity and we must all learn how to use it effectively. Now.

👀Now, let's dive deeper into some topics

🗣 Communication - More talk less do.
Interestingly, we spend 57% of our time on communication and only 43% on creation. Most of this communication (60%) is text-based (emails and chats), yet we view meetings as the largest roadblock to productivity.

🚧 Top 5 roadblocks to productivity:
1. Inefficient meetings
2. Lack of clear goals
3. Excessive meetings
4. Feeling uninspired
5. Difficulty in finding required information

🧐 But why do meetings, supposedly collaborative platforms, become productivity barriers? Let's speculate.

❓Could it reflect our action bias, where we feel more productive when actively doing something (like composing emails) rather than listening in a meeting?

❓Could it be linked to our desire for increased autonomy (self-determination theory) - we can choose when to write emails and chats, but we're usually invited to meetings set in time?

❓Could it be FOMO, where we join meetings to avoid missing out on “crucial” information?

💬 What's your take? Are you swamped with meetings? What's your ideal balance between meetings and focused work? Do you find emails and chats more efficient than meetings?

🆘 How can AI help?
AI can certainly help streamline meetings. The report outlines a few common difficulties in meetings:

✅ Catching up if joining late (57%),
✅ Understanding the next steps (55%), and
✅ Summarizing the meeting (56%)

AI excels at summarizing, so these issues should soon be solved.

Also, AI might reduce the need for information exchange meetings by making information easier to access. It's often simpler to call for a meeting than search for information on the intranet.

🎓 Up-skilling - The Way Forward
About 70%-80% of the interviewees welcome AI's help and believe it will boost creativity and reduce administrative work. But this shift requires new skills.

The top 3 "new" skills for this new era of work:
1. Analytical judgment
2. Flexibility
3. Emotional intelligence

Who needs to up-skill? Everyone.
"82% of leaders in our survey say their employees will need new skills to be prepared for the growth of AI.”

How are you planning for the significant up-skilling that's coming?

📖 It's refreshing to read a report grounded in such a vast data set. It's worth your time, even though it leans towards Microsoft.

Two Highlights from the Microsoft Build 2023 Keynote

The ongoing developer-focused Microsoft Build conference offers a glimpse into the future. As the event unfolds, I anticipate hearing announcements that eventually will benefit us regular users, reshaping the way we work.

🎙️ Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, kicked-off the conference with several big announcements. As expected, the spotlight was on AI, with two thoughts stuck with me.

🔑 Trust is the cornerstone of AI integration
One demo involved MS Word, supercharged by AI and plugins, editing a legal document. The AI was tasked with making a specific change, which it accomplished by locating the correct paragraph, implementing the change, and then analyzing the enforceability of the law under California jurisdictions.

Would you trust the outcome?

The current workflow is to forward the draft legal document for final approval by (carbon based) lawyers. This is an excellent initial step that promises to reduce costs. Now, imagine a scenario where you trust the system enough to bypass the human element. This could significantly expedite the process and drastically reduce costs!

This thought process can be applied to any situation where AI assists us. However, the stakes are considerably higher with legal documents compared to, say, creating a Spotify playlist.

The question then arises: what would it take for us to trust the system enough to eliminate human verification?

I'm not tempted by a future where my job is to check the output from AI systems.

Let’s build trust! How!?

🗣️ The Evolution of User Interfaces: From Clicks to Conversations
We are witnessing a transition from mouse-click interfaces to natural language interfaces across all applications, including navigating Windows!

Given that text has a low bandwidth, will we soon be conversing with our computers to accomplish tasks?

If so, the ambient noise in office landscapes could shift from 'tak-tak-tak-tak' of keyboards to a of 'bla-bla-bla-bla' as we speak to our computers.

How might this constant verbal interaction with computers reshape office layouts? Could this signal the end of traditional office landscapes?

🥳 Interesting things are happening to the tools we use every day! Looking forward to diving into more presentations from the conference, have you seen anything interesting?

How will AI change the way you work?

May is my month for exploring Microsoft, and it has led me to Microsoft Worklab. It's a fantastic resource that combines science with ideas about the future of work, with a particular focus on AI in recent content. It's a user-friendly site for us non-techies and leaders. Check it out. 

I've reviewed the site through my AI lens and found three inspiring podcasts where Marcus Wohlsen, John Maeda, and Erik Brynjolfsson are interviewed. I highly recommend listening to the episodes to stimulate new thoughts. 
  
Topics discussed:
  
1. Understanding AI for Leaders, Leadership Strategy for AI Adoption and Integration 
2. Getting Started with AI in the Workplace 
3. Ethical Considerations and Data Privacy for AI Implementation 
4. AI Applications and Future Opportunities 
  
My key takeaways
  
AI for Leaders 
🧙 There's a profound transformation on the horizon that will affect all of us. 
  
🧙 The gap between what technology can do and what our organizations are using it for is growing. We need to close that gap by speeding up our adaptation.
  
😱 What should I do? 
  
🧙 Use the AI tools yourself to see what they're capable of and be comfortable with everyone in your organization using and exploring them. 
  
🧙 You need to rebuild the processes and organizations from the ground up, leveraging the capabilities of the new AI tools, not just using them to supercharge the current processes. The biggest benefits come from doing new things that we haven't done before. [Personal remark: to frame it in Henry Ford's way, it is about building cars and not faster horses.] This requires a lot more creativity than simply asking - how can a machine replace a person? 
  
 
AI Applications and Future Opportunities
  
🥳 Freedom to choose, 
AI could give us the possibility of doing more of what we like and less of what we don't like. You need to ask yourself: what do you want to keep doing? 
  
🥳 More specificity, 
using ChatGPT today leads us into a somewhat generic discussion since it is trained on public information. Soon tools like Microsoft Copilot will be informed by the specific data that is unique to you and unique to your organization, giving much more specific answers. 
  
🥳 Remove blockers, 
you won't start with a blank page. AI can easily create the first draft. It can also assist in brainstorming sessions by expanding on your ideas. 
  
🥳 Enabler, 
AI will empower you to do things you haven't done before or do it better. Take DALL-E, which helps us create better art as one example. 
  
❓Have you started working on AI strategies? Are you considering how to educate your current staff? What do you want to do more or less of? 
  
💡Go ahead and explore Microsoft Worklab to challenge your thinking on leaders.

📣 Huge announcements by Microsoft, check it out!

Yesterday, Google had their big I/O day with exciting news. What a coincidence that Microsoft released exciting news a few hours before the Google event 😉 They have us a glimpse of Copilot and a fresh work trend report.



In summary, Microsoft:
✅ Expanded access to Microsoft 365 Copilot from 20 to 600 selected enterprises.
✅ Released its 2023 Work Trend Index report.
✅ Introduced new features for Copilot in Whiteboard, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Viva Learning.
✅ Introduced the Semantic Index for Copilot.

💡 My first impressions
🗺️ With the Semantic Index for Copilot, search is improved by not only including results from the search phrase but also providing results that match your intent, in your specific domain (company).

The example used is searching for “March Sales Report”. It understands that “sales reports are produced by Kelly on the finance team and created in Excel.” and will provide related search results.

Time will tell if this is actually helpful or just provides a lot of information that isn't what you're looking for. Since this is likely to be powered by GPT-4 (or GPT-3.5), I’m optimistic that this will work well and decrease the time spent finding the right information - which I spend a lot of time on as a knowledge worker.

👩‍✈️ The new Copilot features in Whiteboard, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote clearly take advantage of the GPT-4/DALL-E capability of summarizing, categorizing, and generating pictures, great!

From what I see, all the functionality mentioned by Microsoft is available today in different applications. Now Microsoft is bringing everything together in a nice package directly in the Office tools you use. When Copilot is rolled out and approved by your company, you can use all new functionality while being IT-compliant.

A few examples that will be useful for for a project manager:

✅ Rewrite in PowerPoint, taking text-heavy slides and turning them into bullet points. This means that you can focus on writing a manuscript which will be automatically turned into bullet points with good flow and precision.
✅ Image generation in PowerPoint, with direct DALL-E access.
✅ In Outlook, Copilot will coach you with the tone. This can be helpful when you must write an important email but are exhausted or have a very tight deadline.

❓ I was not clear on how integrated the company data will be (except for semantic serach), e.g., could DALL-E generate new illustrations following your brand guidelines?

Regarding the user interface, it seems as if the Bing integration in Edge is an indication of how it will look in several Microsoft applications.

🤩 Exciting times, looking forward to reading the Work Trend Index report in depth.

Microsoft Copilot for Bing is open for everyone, how did Microsoft get here?

04 May 2023: Bing went into open preview, just sign into Bing with your Microsoft Account and try the new GPT-4 powered. It's a paradigm shift, it will fundamentally change how you consume information on the internet - you are in for a treat!

🥳 It has made the research process for writing this post much quicker and more enjoyable.

AI is not new for Microsoft, but as the graph shows, the public exposure has been limited until ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022 - then boom, it seems to come from nowhere - did it?

March 30, 2016, Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft makes the direction clear:

“As an industry, we are on the cusp of a new frontier that pairs the power of natural human language with advanced machine intelligence. At Microsoft, we call this Conversations as a Platform, and it builds on and extends the power of the Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Windows platforms to empower developers everywhere.”

That was 7 years ago!

Back when OpenAI just was founded and the important “Attention is all you need” paper was released by Google researchers. Insiders from Microsoft and OpenAI reveal that the years between 2017 and 2019 were a whirlwind of innovation, experimentation, and collaboration.
GPT-1 was released in 2018, and Microsoft was confident enough to place a $1 billion bet on OpenAI in July of 2019.

📣 In May 2019, Microsoft kicks off a more open and frequent communication on AI by sharing its updated vision for conversational AI:

“Copilot will eventually power conversations across all of Microsoft’s products and services.”

From 2019 and onwards, Microsoft publishes AI news on their website more often, still not extensively on conversational applications:
📌 May 25, 2021: Introduction of the first product features powered by GPT-3, integrating it into Microsoft Power Apps.
📌 October 12, 2022: rollout of DALL-E 2, starting with Designer and Bing Image Creator.

💥 Then boom (GPT-3…) “Conversion as a platform” is becoming a reality with AI-powering more and more apps:

📌 February 3, 2023: Viva Sales gets AI seller experience.
📌 February 7, 2023: Bing and Edge get AI-powers.
📌 March 15, 2023: Dynamics 365 Copilot is introduced.
📌 March 16, 2023: Microsoft 365 Copilot is announced.
📌 March 22, 2023: GitHub Copilot X evolves.
📌 April 20, 2023: Viva AI functionality is Viva Engage, Viva Learning, and Viva Topics.

🌟 With this boost in GPT integrations in the big office productivity tools, I believe that the revolution among “normal users” will start during late Q3 to Q4 of 2023. Exciting times

💡What are your thoughts around this? How will you make sure that your organization realizes the promised boost in productivity? Do you have any story from Microsoft/OpenAI collaboration in the early days (2016-2017) to share?

i’M Making May My Microsoft Month

💯 Hundreds of new AI tools are released every week, which is great, and I love exploring them.

However, for me, it's mostly about getting a sense of what's happening in the world of AI, not for professional work. Agile startups might be able to keep up with the pace, but for enterprises, it's a slower rollout cycle.

🏢 Most of us rely on Microsoft or Google for office productivity, and when these companies roll out a new AI tool, the effect is huge. Hundreds of millions of users, including the "laggards", suddenly gain access to new tools that might revolutionize their work – my work.

Microsoft is currently in an extremely interesting position, owning a large stake in OpenAI and implementing AI in their popular office suite. However, the ecosystem is complex, with at least 15 different tools in M365 and many other services. How is this playing out? What are they up to?

🔍 To get my head around this, I will focus on the month of May to understand how Microsoft is leveraging AI, with the ultimate goal of understanding:

📌 How will daily work in the Microsoft suite change in 3, 6, and 12 months?
📌 How will it be rolled out? considering privacy and confidentiality aspects?
📌 Examples of companies using it today with internal data.

📢 If you have any suggestions on where to start (podcasts, YouTube, websites...) or who to talk to? have you already started using Microsoft AI tools at your company? feel free to contact me. I'm eager to start 🥳