She built Microsoft's Great Copilot Journey Program. Now, AI is her Co-Founder | Kristin Ginn

Unlocked Professional: AI and Future of Work: Because they feel like it's no longer their work. And so when they start using AI, they either s ⁓ try to hide it and actually say it's their work, but then they feel bad inside because they know they used AI, but they don't dare to say it. It's it's interesting and I it's just part of the psychology that you have to help people overcome to realize it's still my work. My work just shifted a little bit.

Hey, just letting you know I've been using it a lot at work, but but I'm not telling my employer that I'm actually using it to help me draft these emails and I was kind of thinking like, what what are you scared about, right? Like why why are you concerned? But I guess that marks that point. In order for AI to help you build out your business, you use them as AI focus groups to I actually use free AI tools and I told them assume the role of a CIO, a CTO, a CMO, a CFO, pretty much any of the C suites at mid and large size companies that I would have to interact with.

through the onboarding process and to actually convince them that yes, they do want my services. And so by being able to use AI in that way, I had access to that, you know, C suite focus group, for example. Same like for pricing. I can use it as my pricing strategist.

I can have a creative agency. I actually use AI to identify The name for my company, the brand, the look and feel, the narrative, the website copy. Like it's access to these resources and to the agencies that I never would have had access to. Every company right now is either rolling out an AI tool, about to roll one out, or just trying to figure out why the one that they rolled out isn't being used.

And somewhere in that process, the employee gets completely forgotten. Today's guest has spent her career on the inside of that problem. Kristen Jin. Built her career in demand generation and integrated marketing at companies such as Five9, Tanium, and Bolt before making a deliberate move to Microsoft as a product marketing manager for Copilot, where she wasn't just talking about AI adoption, she was engineering it.

She designed programs like the Great Copilot Journey, real initiatives built to get real people actually using AI as part of their daily work. Then she left and did the whole thing herself. She founded Transform AI Shin, a consultancy built around one idea that the human side of AI adoption is what companies are getting wrong. She launched the business in 60 days using AI as her operational partner and co founder.

She also hosts the AI but human podcast, and she's a competitive tennis player, which has absolutely nothing to do with AI and everything to do with how she thinks about performance. If you're a professional or a leader trying to figure out What's next when you adopt a new AI tool and call it transformation? This one is for you. Kristen, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for the conversation today. So, Kristen, before the frameworks, before Microsoft, before Transform AI Shin, where did you grow up and what was the earlier version of Kristen like? Yeah, it's actually nothing like the person that I am today.

I grew up in a tiny town in Germany called Ebbes Buddesheim. We had around 800 people, and now I think we've grown to 1400, so a very big town. But I moved to the United States in two thousand nine and I never had any plans to actually be my own business owner and run my own consultancy. I've always had a corporate background and I started my career in marketing, working on integrated marketing, working on lead gen, paid media, et cetera.

But when AI was released to the world through ChatGPT at the end of twenty twenty two, I really realized how much of a game changer this would be. And By just playing around with it a little bit and seeing the potential that it creates, not just for businesses but for individuals, I knew that this is the space that I want to be in. And fast forward a few years, here I am and I'm running my own AI consultancy, helping organizations with AI rollout strategies by focusing not so much on the capabilities, but on the humans behind it.

So yeah, that's pretty much my career in a nutshell. W when you back in Germany, were you did you have Corporate experience there? If so, I was just curious, was it significantly different than the way we work here? A little bit.

I started going to university there, which was like a combined program between spending three months in university and then doing an apprenticeship for three months. I did that for one semester before I decided that I actually want to move to the United States. So I have a little bit of background there, but the vast majority of my career was really here in the US. Okay, great.

Really looking forward to this. I know obviously you have a pretty extensive background, and I know a lot of the audience out there is probably using Copilot. So if we can extract in as much value as possible from you today, that that would be great. And obviously you're doing with Transform A AI Shin is extremely valuable to note as well.

You built your career in DemandGen, which is a marketing strategy that helps drive awareness around businesses. Products and services. You worked at companies such as Five9, Tanium Bolt, and then made a deliberate move to Microsoft, specifically to work on copilot adoption, which was a completely different path. What pulled you in that direction?

Yeah, so when I first started in integrated marketing or even paid media, a big focus of the work that I did was working with other teams. Yes, I focus on the product and trying to come up with a marketing strategy, but a big part of it was enabling others. Like for example, when I worked in integrated marketing, I worked with people in the different channels from paid media to social to web to blog, really anyone that makes a marketing campaign. And that's the part that I really enjoyed, like working with the people and really making sure that I can do my part to empower them to achieve the most in their specific role.

And I did that for the various products. Five nine is contact center software, Tanium was security, bold was a checkout technology. So it was pretty agnostic of the product itself. But as I mentioned earlier, when I saw the potential of AI and then I saw the opportunity At Microsoft as well to work on adoption for AI, their Microsoft 365 co-pilot tool, that to me felt like a calling almost.

That I can actually go and work both on a product, but then also really developing programs that help people achieve more. Because I saw what I could do with AI tools. I use primarily the free ones for my personal life, like ChatGBT or the free version of Copilot, but then realizing how much that can actually change how you do work in your corporate environment, that was really enticing to me. So I made the decision that I want to move from focusing primarily on marketing campaigns to actually creating resources and experiences that help people learn how to use, in this case, Microsoft 365 Copilot for their day-to-day work.

And I was very excited to see that opportunity and then also getting the chance to actually develop all of these programs. Like you mentioned the Great Copilot Journey, some other programs that I worked on as well, really focusing on What are people needing right now in this moment to really reimagine how work gets done with AI? Right, which is such an important conversation right now. And and even the tool and how to use it, I think this comes up pretty consistently as a theme in these conversations, is that the workforce is, and we'll get into this later, but the workforce understands that or the these tools get integrated, but there isn't enough enough training, if you will, or enough understanding of exactly how to leverage the capabilities of those tools.

And pretty cool. I see this as a consistent theme of a lot of people who basically started dabbling with Chat GBT and then they said, wait a minute, maybe I can take this skill or this tool, leverage the skills and experience that I have and build something more exciting or like bolt on and add to that. Yeah, very interesting. And one of the things, Kristen, I just curious curious about, and again for the audience, tactically speaking, when you're talking about your previous role, what does that actually entail?

What is a day in the life of somebody that's doing the demand marketing role that you were doing? Yeah, so for demand generation or even integrated marketing, a big part of it was really understanding the environment that the company is operating in. So understanding not only the capabilities and the features of the product, but also understanding what are competitors doing? Who is your target persona?

Like really understanding the profiles of the people that will decide whether or not they want to purchase your product. And then understanding where do they consume information? What are the watering holes if you want that they go to understand what tools are out there, if they're actually beneficial for their organization, if it's worth the investment, et cetera. So I think it's a part of doing it's partially doing research to understand just the environment that you're working in, but then also understanding the different channels that can actually help you craft a message and get that out in front of those people that you're trying to reach.

So A lot of that was that part, but then on the back end, like not thinking about what you're actually doing, but how you're doing it, that is where the relationships between the different channels that you're working with come in. So both from product marketing, for example, a lot of times you have the more technical marketers that understand the exact in and outs of a product, how it works, what's differentiating it from competition, etc. But then you have to be able to create that narrative around, okay, what's the benefit for the customer?

What's the value that they can get out of these features? Because when you start to sell or create an integrated marketing campaign, it's not so much highlighting the features and what it can do, but it's answering the question of what's in it for me and my organization if we purchase that. So it's actually really interesting when you look at the things that you do as an integrated marketer because it spans creative work to analytical work to people work as well. Which I think obviously all that experience that you had and the work that you were doing re relates to what it is that you're building now and the tools that you're doing.

And I think that's something that I like to expose. And even back to the that move that you made back to co pilot. If you put all the pieces of the puzzle together, what I think there's a huge opportunity for people to do right now is to dive into something new. Take the experience that they have, add the tools on top, such as Copilot, Chat GBT, what have you, any type of AI tool out there that they feel comfortable with, and then And try something new out and go down a different path.

And so I think I I just see this whole world where I think there's going to be a lot of cre creativity because people aren't necessarily stuck to that one swim lane for their life now. Maybe every couple of years they might be able to go hop into something else and be enough to be maybe skilled enough to be dangerous. They might for the next couple of years where it would have been very difficult to adopt that type of experience previously. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think that's really one of the benefits of AI and just what doors it opens for people. I feel like I'm almost a prime example for that because I mentioned earlier I never planned on having my own business and actually leaving the corporate environment. But when I had the idea for the consultancy that I want to run, I had AI access through free tools, through pay tools, et cetera. And so it actually allowed me to build out the idea and have I I call it my co founder, have AI as my co founder to help me with identifying like the strength and weaknesses, the opportunities and threats for the business that I was trying to run.

Identify the gaps in the framework, et cetera. So it I felt very empowered having AI by my side and using it like my strategist and my co founder. So I didn't have to do this on my own. And but it's pretty much what encouraged me to take the leap of faith in a way to say I'm leaving Microsoft and I'm going to start my own business.

So it really opens up new doors if you just dare to actually experiment with it and then step through that door as well. Look at it. I would not be here today without AI as my co-founder. So for me, there's just no other way to describe it other than it's my co-founder.

Absolutely. So you going back to that co-founder experience. So you launched Transform AI Shin in 60 days using AI to run the whole operation. What was the hardest part of going from a full corporate infrastructure to doing it completely alone?

Honestly, I think having the confidence to take that step. When I had the idea, essentially what I realized is you can do only so much when you focus on the product itself to drive adoption at scale for mid or large size companies. the missing piece a lot of times is the human side because we have all worked without AI a certain way. And so changing that and really adopting AI and an AI mindset, that was the challenge.

So when I had that idea, I actually wasn't sure if that was actually viable enough to leave a corporate environment and actually do that full time as my own business. And so having AI really walk me through this in a way. And really playing devil's advocate, I tried so hard to get AI to tell me that this is not a good idea, that you should not do this, that it's not viable, it's not sustainable. But no matter which way I ask, and no matter which tool I ask, it kept encouraging me.

And I know that AI generally can be pretty agreeable where no matter what you ask, it's ⁓ yeah, great idea, awesome, this is great. So I really tried my best to say what is wrong with this, or this is not a good idea, like trying to bias it a little bit, but every time it came back and I said, no, there's a demand for that. You should definitely do this. And so after going back and forth and I started developing it, I used it in different ways as well to help me with the framework and the deliverables that I needed to create to actually get started.

I asked again, it's like, hey, here's what I have. Is it okay to do this step? And when it kept encouraging me, that's when I said, okay, I think I'm confident enough to make this step and try and see how far I can take this. And Without AI, I definitely would not have been in this place at all.

I'm pretty convinced of that. It's funny you say that too, because I I'm glad that you pushed back on it because I when you're saying it, I was just thinking because I've gotten that feedback from so many people. And I actually am making some content around that too, where you gotta be cautious because the AI tools are agreeable. So if they tell you a lot of information you don't want to hear, maybe then you don't pay for their service is the way I like to think about that.

It's a fine line, but it sounds like you did your diligence, you pushed back. And that's, I think, what you got to do a lot of times, just ask a lot of questions, try to poke holes in it from every different direction, make sure that it makes sense. It's that lens of being supercharged. And so you add a little confidence, you know you have the capabilities, and now you have a tool that's working as your co-founder, you're in a strong position.

If the data behind the business plan is strong and you have the skills, put those together. And if you're less risk adverse or you're up to a challenge, then go for it. That's what I'm doing too. And I'm not looking back.

Yeah, same here. And like I said earlier, I really tried to get AI to tell me to not do it. I almost wanted it to convince myself that, yeah, this is an idea, but dream on pretty much. But it just didn't.

And now I'm really glad that I actually took a chance to do this and to actually see how far I can take this. And it's been an absolutely amazing experience, an amazing journey that has been much better and much bigger than I ever dared to imagine. So it's definitely been very exciting. You've said that when companies mandate AI usage from the top down, without really considering the human side of AI, employees do a quiet retreat.

What does that actually look like inside the company? And how does a professional protect their career when this happens? Yeah, I think you hear a lot in the news right now about companies obviously investing in AI, but also questioning the return on investment that they can actually see from it. A big part of it is that they consider it a tech rollout rather than focusing on the human side of AI.

And what tends to happen is they roll it out and because they treat it like a tech rollout, a lot of times all they do is announce that, hey, this tool is now available, whether that's Gemini within your Google Workspaces or copilot within Microsoft 365. And all they do is say it's available now. Maybe they will share a few prompts to get started. And maybe they even do a quick demo for what the tool can do.

But for us as employees, it really means that we now have to change how we work. And the challenge is that we all know how busy calendars are, we all have deadlines, we all have a lot of work that we need to do. And because we have all worked without AI for years, sometimes decades on the job, we're pretty much on autopilot. We can do things in our sleep and we feel pretty confident and comfortable with how we're doing things.

But AI isn't really replacing that old way of working. It's just offering us a new way to do the same things. But because it's a new way, it also means that we as humans we have to pause for a moment and really make a conscious effort to identify ways how AI can actually help us. And what that means is our role is shifting a little bit, but if we don't get that prioritization or the North Star from our leaders, Most of us are probably thinking, I can play around with it a little bit, but I don't have the time and energy to actually invest into trying to figure out how to implement AI into my day-to-day workflows.

And so when you don't have leaders at an organization really embracing AI themselves, modeling the change and also creating that North Star that people can rally around, it there's just something that's missing. And that's why most of the organizations that I work with are at the point where They're questioning whether or not the investment in generative AI tools was actually worth it just because they don't see the adoption and they don't see the usage coming out. So it's a little bit of a chicken and an egg.

You want to see the adoption, but if you don't have leaders actually showing that, hey, we're actually invested in this, this is part of our culture now, you don't really see that adoption coming through unless you have some very excited users. So it's a chicken and egg situation a little bit that I see a lot. Yeah, and I think one huge takeaway is that this isn't just another tool. This is a huge productivity gain.

But as you mentioned, and I talk about this a lot, but people have their lives. They've got soccer games on the weekends, they have work that they have to do right in front of them. So just throwing a new tool into the mix isn't isn't necessarily gonna bring the mentality then that there's this huge level up or a lot of value that's involved in using it. It's just another thing to learn.

So I think that's an important shift is that Companies have to recognize that maybe treat this a little bit different way than you do on typical software rollouts. I'm I don't have all the details on this. I'm curious if you heard about this. I heard about a company recently, Canva, who does marketing software tool.

They help you create marketing slicks and different types of content materials. But I believe, if I'm not mistaken, and if they didn't do this, they should consider it. I think they gave their employees a full week off. To literally just try to adopt and play with AI tools.

Did you had you heard about that? I have. I think it was Canva. I don't remember exactly, but I remember hearing about that, yes.

And that kind of forward thinking is probably unheard of that that for most software rollouts or tools that are gonna be leveraged, but I think they understand the value add behind that. Yeah, that that there is true ROI when you're when your company is. Now, learning and sharing, and you've established maybe some type of council or subject matter expertise group that understands how to leverage these tools, they can promote that value to others. So I think we're still very much in that state where adoption is critical and rolling it out and getting the company to understand how to use it and what are best practices is still extremely valuable.

The future, as we all know, involves the agentic world where maybe a lot of these things do it for you. But you're still gonna have to have that understanding of how to how to work through it, how to work through problems and challenges as they come, how to make sure you're setting up the infrastructure correctly so they can perform well. So I think there's a lot of stuff that should be or a lot of processes right now that could be that are valuable to invest in that will also be valuable in the workplace of the future.

Yeah, and I think you see a lot of companies approaching it differently too. That example is just one way to approach it. And I think companies in general are just starting to realize that they have to treat it differently. They can't just treat it like any other tech rollout because of that human side.

And so giving your people one week off, I think it's an attempt to really free up people's minds a little bit and just experiment with it because they probably realize that it's really hard to actually take that time and rethink how your work gets done when you have meeting after meeting, you're in back to backs all day, you have deadlines coming up, etcetera. So I think that's just one way how they try to approach it. In my opinion, like it takes more than a week to actually drive adoption and to get people to reimagine what can be done.

It can be a jump starter where you actually say, Hey, one week we're focusing on nothing but that, but it still is that muscle memory that people have. So when they get back into the regular day to day, do they actually have the energy and the time and the conviction to actually do what they just discovered last week? Or are they just thinking, hey, it's way easier for me to just do it real quick how I've always done it, because I don't have to do the iteration with AI. I still don't have to do the experimentation, the course correction a little bit.

So I think that's just one way that some companies are approaching it. Another way that I have seen, and I think that was a few months ago, I don't know if that's actually still the hot topic, but token maxing was one way that another big companies are started to actually say, If we're forcing people in a way to start using a lot of tokens, that can mean that we're actually seeing innovation because when they start using it, that means they're getting more comfortable with it.

I can see why they did that, but like in my opinion, that's not really the right approach either. Because if you're forcing it and you're actually using a metric as a target, that metric of usage is actually no longer a real metric because What is preventing somebody to just use tokens for very low value tasks? Right. All just to get the ten thousand tokens or whatever it is, versus actually tying it to the output.

Use it in meaningful ways that can help move your business forward, move your day to day tasks from tedious work that is really time consuming to actually impactful work. So I think companies as a whole, like they're just trying to be more creative to and figure out how to Close that adoption gap that they're all seeing and giving a week off or token usage, et cetera. Like I think these are just two examples of companies trying to figure it out. Agree.

And just so when you're talking about token maxing and I'm thinking about what I've done in my career, whether it was sales or even into marketing and sales, we all know that make more calls, make more make more outreach towards the customers, d you know, and your results will be Better. Those are inputs, but do but inputs do not equal outputs, like you just talked about, whether you're talking about sales, whether you're talking, it's a contributing factor, but it definitely doesn't tell you that whole story.

One thing that I just think is interesting, again, that I've learned about this whole social media space and think and people that's been an eye-opener along those same lines for me is views. If you're looking at your Instagram and you're a business or an individual and you're looking to promote your brand and you have a thousand views, you're like, great, 20,000 views. This is great. But it's the engagement rate that's important, meaning who actually did 20,000 people maybe saw that, or probably less if it's 20,000.

Those are views, not people. So you start breaking it down. Those are views, and that doesn't necessarily mean that those people liked it or shared it with somebody else. And so again, it's not just about the number.

I think token maxing is obviously it's a way to start. It's a starting point, but it's definitely not. the end. Just give us a whole high level overview of what it is, the service that you provide typically, and what does that process look like?

Yeah, so I work with organizations, both large enterprises, mid-sized companies, and even some small businesses as well, to really help them reimagine how work gets done with AI, but not necessarily by focusing on the technology itself, but actually activating your people. And when you think of it, I touched on that earlier you can't treat AI and generative AI tools like any other tool. For example, if you are a Google company and you're switching over to Microsoft, one day your people won't be able to use Gmail anymore for emails.

They have to use Outlook. They won't have an option. But with AI tools, nothing is preventing you as an employee from working the old way without AI. It's just something that's there to augment you if you choose to use it.

And so when I come and I work with organizations, I think of it as three layers that you have to activate to really drive adoption and to almost create AI as part of your company culture. And the three layers are the leadership. As I mentioned earlier, you really have to activate and empower your leaders to lead that transformation from the top down by modeling the change, really communicating why it's important for employees to embrace AI and to reimagine how work gets done and building that North Star.

A big part of that is also addressing some of the fears that employees may have. We hear that a lot in the news as well. So if I as an employee start using AI, am I essentially putting myself out of a job because now AI is going to do my job? So leaders really have to be able to address that, address those underlying fears, and create that culture where everybody is part of the journey and everybody is brought along.

The second layer is Focusing on those employees that are actually embracing AI on their own. Like I call them the champions. And those are really the ones who are out there, they're reimagining how work gets done, they find prompts, they pr find use cases, and they're the ones who are leading the early adoption effort. So how can we as an organization tap into that potential and really activate those champions to show not only their peers that hey, AI is actually really helpful?

in saving time, increasing the quality of the work that's being done, you name it, but also communicating that up to the leader so they can actually weave that messaging into the communications that they send out to their employees, for example. And the third layer that I work on is just getting everybody a foundation to understand what AI means, how to use it, how the tools are being used, and really building that momentum from the bottom up. Because your employees are the ones in the end Who are really either using AI or they're not.

And so how can you actually bring them all together? Everybody is starting at a different foundation. Some of them are already using it, some of them are really reluctant to use it. So how can you bring them all to the same starting line and then from there start the journey together?

So we're all moving in the right direction. And AI really becomes part of the entire organization. So that's really the work that I do, focusing on the human side of AI with a little bit of the technical side. Of the tool itself.

Kristen, you've done a number of these transformations now. What do you think are the key takeaways the audience should really recognize about what this looks like when it actually rolls out? So thinking about your employees, like I mentioned that you have to build a foundation for everybody because most people are using AI to some capacity in their private lives, but it's a whole different ask for them to actually realize or identify ways how to use it at work. And to use it beyond just writing text or creating an image.

Because it's so hard to understand that sometimes and seeing the different capabilities when it can really do so much and the sky is the limit. The way that I think of that is four layers, and that applies both to how individuals can approach it, but then also how companies can actually roll this out for their people. And the first one is what I call AI 101. That is really creating the foundation to help all the employees identify How to shift into an AI mindset, identify the different ways how AI can help beyond just the writing and the creating images, et cetera.

And really getting solid on the prompting best practices and prompting techniques that can help you throughout your day. Because you may understand a use case with AI, but if your prompt isn't good, your output isn't going to be good either. And that's where you risk having people reel or think. that, ⁓ I tried it, it didn't work.

AI is not worth my time. When it was really the prompt that they used that wasn't good. So usually when I come in and I work with organizations, I do the AI 101 program, which is around 90 minutes, but is really focusing on that AI mindset shift, building habits and building the skills to start using AI effectively. Once we have done that, we move into what I call tech 101.

And so that is either Copilot 101, Gemini 101, whatever tool you use. And it's going through some of the specific use cases and how to actually access the tool, how to use it, and just giving them some inspiration of what they can do with a tool that they now have access to in the apps that they already use every day. And then once we do that, I actually developed a fr ⁓ framework that's almost like a little fitness plan for how to get inspired and to get exposure to different things that you can do.

Because having one training that's ninety minutes, two hours, it won't really shift how people work. Like habit building just takes a lot longer. And so by exposing them to one, two, sometimes three use cases a day that are really easy to comprehend and really easy to weave into their day to day without needing dedicated training time, that can actually help them build the habits and understand all the different things that the tool can do for them. So once we do the AI one ⁓ one, we go into tech one on one, then we go into the AI trail and What I do with a lot of the work that I do, especially when it comes to the users, is making it a fun experience.

Because when we learn something new and we have fun doing it, we will want to do more of it. There's nothing worse than the best training that is super dry and you're leaving exhausted. So I really try to inject as much fun as I can into these experiences, give people a laugh every now and then, and just create an experience that sparks conversations too. So For example, at the end of each of these daily fitness AI fitness experiences, I actually have a fun prompt that is still useful, but it just adds a twist to it that maybe you you won't actually use the output S is to send an email to your manager, but it makes you have fun and it still shows you what's possible with it.

So I think just thinking about it that way that you create the foundation, you give people a chance to understand the tool, and then you just need to inspire them and keep that momentum going. 'Cause Like I said, like a one-time training just won't do it. It won't change the habits of how people work. Yeah.

And side note, I was just thinking about some of those long full day, multi-day trainings that I've sat through in the past and how I was like a lot of times starting to fall asleep during those. Just hoping that break time came. But as I think but not to knock them because they're important. It has to be done.

But I think the reason why maybe I was so disinterested is because it wasn't connecting with me. But If you were showing me how to use a tool that was gonna make me how to was gonna show me how to do my job that much better, I think I would be, and maybe I'm just nerding out on this, but I think I would be highly interested in that and probably a little less sleepy. Yeah, like it's a balance between providing the value and the skills to people, but then you also have to connect with them at a much more personal level.

So one of the examples that I use a lot is if I want to, for example, learn about quantum physics. That's a topic that is way above my head. If you explain it to me like to a 10-year-old, okay, maybe I will understand it. But how can you actually learn about a concept like that in a way that relates to you?

And for me, tennis is something that I've lived my entire life. I started playing tennis when I was five years old, and if I'm not doing something AIO work related, I'm pretty much doing something tennis related. And so if I go to AI and I say, explain quantum physics to me using tennis analogies, all of a sudden that really complex topic is presented to me in a way that is highly relatable to me because I know tennis in and out. So if you explain quantum physics to me through the lens of tennis, I will not only have fun learning about quantum physics, but I will actually be able to grasp that really complex concept as well.

So it's things like that where you can show people how you can do the task, but you can actually inject something personal and fun into that task because AI can do it, which another training experience without AI probably wouldn't be able to do because you're stuck with what's provided to you. But AI allows you to personalize that. So that's something that I'm personally super excited about. Okay.

You spent years at Microsoft and you designed copilot adoption programs at scale, including the great copilot journey. What's the number one hack for copilot that everybody should know? The biggest part is that copilot is already there in the apps that you're already using. And that's true for Gemini as well, within your Google Workspaces apps, et cetera.

So the biggest hack is really just Take in a moment and ask yourself, how can AI help me with the task at hand? And I actually developed a framework for that is giving you four lenses through which to look at the AI tool that you use, whether that's Copilot or Gemini or Claude, whatever you have access to at work. And that's thinking of it as either an assistant, so how can AI help me get this task done faster? An assistant might not be able to finish the task for you, but if it's like an assistant or an intern, Can it actually help you get 70, 80% there?

And then all you have to do is finish it up, verify it, and make sure it's including all the information that you need, and then you can hand it off. So one way to look at it is as AI as your assistant. The second one is what if you can look at AI as an explorer that helps you think in new directions? So getting different perspectives, evaluating the task or the information that you have, and identifying gaps.

looking at it through the lens of your target persona if you're in marketing or your audience for an executive briefing that you're about to do, for example. So really getting it to look at it in a different way that you as a person might not have either the experience or the knowledge or the insights to review and identify those gaps and how to actually improve the quality. The third part is using it as an editor. So anything that you already have, can you use AI to actually help you make this better?

Either something that you have written, that you have created on your own or with AI, can it help you polish that up a little bit? And the last one, I touched on that earlier, is can you use AI as a coach to help you get better at what you're trying to do? And that can be as simple as, hey, how can I improve my prompt? Or what can I do to learn about XYZ?

But it really allows you to learn in a way that works for you. Like the example that I gave earlier about learning about quantum physics through the lens of tennis, that's an amazing way for you to actually leverage AI. So thinking of it in terms of an assistant, an explorer, an editor, or a coach, I think that can help unlock a lot of people that look at it and all they see is a prompt bar that can write text. That's what I have found to be One of the most inspiring things that I touch on in AI one ⁓ one.

When I first started that program, I thought this was just like a fun thing to do, but a lot of people actually hone in on that. So I actually didn't realize how much that resonates with people until I started doing it. And you really see the people's eyes light up. Whoa, okay, now I have something tangible that I can look at when I think of how to use AI.

Very helpful. So you've said that professional identity, which is people who've built their careers on mastering complex manual processes, like me, is one of the biggest blockers to AI adoption. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, so that's usually a big question that I get when I start working with organizations and when we do these user trainings as well.

Because we have all worked without AI our entire careers, again, sometimes that's years, sometimes decades on the job. The biggest challenge is that we feel really confident in the way we work and in the work that we have done so far. And asking to now use AI to do some of that work, it can be challenging for people. For one, there's the human nature to avoid change, meaning there's status quo bias.

Like we don't necessarily have a logical explanation for that, but for us as humans, it just feels like the way we've always done it is the better way. Unless you're really adventurous and you really start embracing new things immediately. That's just something that's human nature for us. Similarly, like the loss aversion, because we have done things a certain way, we are comfortable with it, we understand it in and out in and out.

We're really on autopilot when we do this, but it feels like we're losing the sense of this is my work when we start using AI. And there's actually a lot of research that shows that Women are using AI less because of that, because they feel like it's no longer their work and they even look at it as cheating, for example. And so how do you address this? That is something that you as an organization have to ensure that you address it with your employees so they actually feel comfortable starting to use AI as well.

So think of it or I usually come to organizations and I say, if you communicate to your people that it's still their work, they just ha now have a different way To do the work. So instead of focusing on the tedious tasks that require a lot of time, but they don't necessarily require a lot of brain power. What if you can look at it that way? You just hand off that work to your AI assistant, to your AI editor, whatever it is, and then you can become the finisher.

So you're still reviewing it. It's still your work. For one, you use the prompt, so that's your work. You did the verification, you may have done some edits in the report.

That you're creating, the marketing copy, whatever it is that you work on. So it's still your work. Your job role just changed a little bit. Where you don't start with a blank page, you react to it and you become that finisher.

So I think that's just part of the mindset shift that people have to be comfortable with and to understand that you're not handing it off to AI, you're just shifting the way that you actually do your job. That's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. But what you called out specifically about women or I'm sure there's other people too where they feel like AI is cheating.

I've never really thought about it that way. Yeah. There's there's research showing that's one of the reasons why women don't embrace it as much because they feel like it's no longer their work. And so when they start using AI, they either s try to hide it and actually say it's their work, but then they feel bad inside because they know they used AI but they don't dare to say it.

It's interesting and I it's just part of the psychology that you have to help people overcome to realize it's still my work. My work just shifted a little bit. This is really funny because my sister in law, I remember this was maybe a year ago, I was telling her about Chat G B T and how to use it and she hadn't didn't have any exposure to it. And then about six months ago she got back to me and she said, Hey, just letting you know I've been using it a lot at work, but but I'm not telling my employer that I'm actually using it to help me draft these emails and it's gonna get like What are you scared about?

Like why are you concerned? But I guess that marks that point that you're saying. You use your tennis background a lot when you're talking about performance and learning curves. Walk me through that analogy.

Yeah, so think of it. So I've been playing tennis my entire life. I started when I was five years old. And imagine that you're playing a singles tennis match, for example.

It's pretty much just you on the court. You're the one who has to figure out how to work with your game of the day. Sometimes that's great. Sometimes your game is just off a little bit.

But you also have to assess your opponent. So it's really on you to make those decisions, both strategically and technically as well. And when we're working, we're pretty much on autopilot because we have done things a certain way. And with AI coming in as a new option for how we can work get done, we have to really make that conscious decision to put the effort in to learn how we can actually implement it through our day-to-day.

And for example, I've been working with a high performance coach in tennis and watching him change my surf, for example. I feel very comfort comfortable with my service motion and like how I'm actually going through the motion and how my surf ends up being fast and having spin and all of that. But he actually changed the toss motion, the motion of my racket, the swing and all of that. And so when you actually play a match All of a sudden it feels very comfortable for you to just revert back to how you've always done it.

And that's exactly what's happening in your day-to-day work. You may know that, okay, if I'm practicing, I will practice the new motion, the new swing, and all of that. But when it actually comes to a pressure situation where you have to get stuff done, like in a match, you will revert back to how you've done it before because it just feels more comfortable. And so it's the same thing for AI.

You just have to give yourself the grace if you want. to really start embracing it and to say, I'm going to stick with that. Even though it might be uncomfortable in the beginning, if you continue to stick with it, it will actually help you improve the quality of the work. You will get things done faster, you will be more productive, you will gain efficiency and all of that.

But you just have to commit to sticking with it, even if it feels uncomfortable in the beginning. I couldn't agree with you more. Stick with it. Things are that's the best part, is when things get difficult, it's the most stressful part.

But it's also that the opportunity, the best opportunity you have to learn is when you do per push through and persevere. I'm curious, does your performance coach use AI tools? Actu actually, no. I think there are some clients potentially that may be using it, but when it comes to tennis, I think it's just such a personal sport as well.

And you just need that. personal and that human touch for it, that AI it covers maybe one percent of what a tennis game or the technique is. I definitely would not recommend any AI tools for any serious tennis player, that's for sure. Okay, so you built Transformation AI as an operational partner, your co-founder, not just for output, but for strategy pressure testing ideas and also playing different roles.

How do you see that type of partnership shaping the workplace of the future? Yeah, it really gives you access to resources that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. For example, you can use AI to conduct really deep research or to analyze not only internal data. But also external data from competitive information, from market trends, really you name it.

AI gives you the access to that information. For me, as the founder of my consultancy, for example, I never would have been able to have access to a C-suite focus group to identify the gaps in the framework that I was trying to develop, for example. So I actually used free AI tools and I told them: assume the role of a CIO, a CTO, a CMO, a CFO. Pretty much any of the C suites at mid and large size companies that I would have to interact with through the onboarding process and to actually convince them that yes, they do want my services.

And so by being able to use AI in that way, I had access to that C suite focus group, for example. Same like for pricing. I can use it as my pricing strategist. I can have a creative agency.

I actually used AI to identify. The name for my company, the brand, the look and feel, the narrative, the website copy. Like it's access to these resources and to the agencies that I never would have had access to, both from a financial resource constraint, but then also just the vast network that you need to actually create focus groups like that, for example. So I think it just helps you with that access that otherwise would be prohibitive for the work that you do or even the ambitions that you have.

Like for me starting my own business, for example. Where can people follow your work and find more about Transform AI Shin? Yeah, so you can go to my website and learn a little bit more about the services that I provide, including some of the workshops that you might be interested in as well, or the entire framework that I mentioned. You can find me on LinkedIn as well.

Just search for my name and you can connect with me there as well. And there's also an ebook that you can download on my website and both on my LinkedIn company page as well. If you want to learn a little bit more about the framework that I developed and how I might be able to help you and your organization with the AI adoption efforts as well. Perfect.

And everything that we talked about today is also in the show notes. And it was a pleasure chatting with you today. I learned a lot, Kristen. Thanks for helping us stay unlocked and don't be a stranger.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me.