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Hi Team,
What if the future of work isn’t about mastering formulas but mastering conversations?
Back in one of my earlier roles at E&I, I had the pleasure of working alongside our team of sourcing analysts. While we weren’t the only go-to people at E&I who knew how to master Excel (there are a lot of power users here), there was a moment that has always stood out in my memory. I was in one of the breakout rooms at the Jericho office with our leader at the time, and he commented on how our team could really make the data dance. I must admit, it felt pretty good being recognized. I told him, “It’s kind of fun for us, learning what Excel can do.”
Fast forward to today: I’m supporting our AI Champions team as we plan to make our upcoming Copilot Day an exciting event for everyone here at E&I. And yet, just last week, I found myself slipping into my old habits inside Excel as I tried to merge two data tables (add the worksheet, insert column…). If you’re familiar with Excel at all, you know where I was going.
I paused as a thought raced through my mind. What am I doing? I’m leading the AI Champions, right?
So in that instant, I consciously stopped my fingers mid-VLOOKUP, clicked on the microphone in the prompt box, and I spoke to Copilot in Excel.
Here’s the exact prompt I spoke into the microphone:
“Could you look at the list of AI champions on the AI champions worksheet and indicate in column N inside of the employee list worksheet whether those employees are or are not AI champions? Use the values true or false.”
Copilot got to work. And I let it.
Could I have done it faster with my formula knowledge? Maybe. But that wasn’t the point. Copilot in Excel is my agent. It’s there to do the work for me.
So as Copilot in Excel was thinking about my request, I shifted my attention to Copilot Chat (my other agent) for a quick second and asked it to suggest three descriptions for a promotional image for one of our Copilot Day sessions, based on its knowledge of my latest draft I was working on earlier that morning. I spoke to Copilot Chat too.
It felt like working with a team, simply asking for their help.
As Copilot Chat was responding, I thought about that conversation from the past in that breakout room in the Jericho office. And how, before remote work became the norm, I might have planned an event like this with a team:
“Hey Jim, could you do a quick merge of these employee lists so we can see what the team assignments might look like?”
“Hey Mary, we need a promotional image for the event. What do you think might work for this session?”
But back then, before we could have that discussion, I’d have to check the availability across everyone’s calendars, see if a breakout room was available, coordinate schedules.
Now? I’m learning how to work with my team of agents. Availability? Always there. Ready and waiting.
Learning to work with agents is the essence of the Frontier Firm, a concept introduced in Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index Annual Report. These are organizations powered by human-agent teams, where every employee becomes an “agent boss.” And it’s the type of organization we’re envisioning for E&I. We don’t just do the work ourselves; we guide agents to do it for us. We delegate. We direct. We decide.
And yes, shifting from something I could do effortlessly to this new level of working with agents takes thought and a little effort. New things can feel uncomfortable, until we’ve practiced these new thought and action patterns enough.
All these thoughts were in the blink of an eye. In just a few seconds, Copilot Chat had given me image descriptions to choose from. Having it as a brainstorming partner was nice. And when I turned my attention back to Copilot in Excel, I saw that it was done with its task too.
I thought about what had just happened with my new team and I realized, all I was really doing was having a conversation. And that’s something I already know how to do. Having conversations is something we all do. And now, it’s the key to mastering this new way of working.
👉 If you’d like to see the chat I had with Copilot in Excel, here’s the image.
Let’s have a great week. And let’s keep learning, experimenting and sharing.
Best,
Doug
