A change problem, not a training one
Most Copilot rollouts focus too heavily on a single, jam-packed training session. Then leaders wonder why they don't see continued impact.
Earlier this year I spent three months as AI Advisor on a structured Copilot experiment across the operations team at Mallesons, one of Australia's top tier law firms. While the full case study is published on our Customer Stories page, including Michelle Mahoney's perspective as Chief Innovation Officer on why they brought in external advisory support, I wanted to walk through the benefits of the approach that we took.
Two questions to answer
A pilot usually asks one question: is the tool any good. The experiment at Mallesons had two jobs. Find out whether Copilot was useful, and build enough capability that people were still taking advantage of it after the experiment ended.
Building capability for GenAI is a change problem, not a training one. The shift we were after was with people's own relationship with AI, and with their own work. Not what can Copilot do, but where in my week could this help. Training alone will rarely get you there. It reinforces the features and the basics, but then stops.
So we built the program around behaviour. People need time (and encouragement) to try things on their own, time to work on them as a team, and to share stories of their experiences and learnings.
Most rollouts go for efficiency, and stop at familiarity. That approach does nothing for building a person's desire to change how they work, or provide the reinforcement that helps to embed it. No wonder usage plateaus.
What told us it was working
The usage numbers grew through the program, but that is not the signal I look for. Conversations that had started in one team popped up in another. Not everyone learns from the front of a room, which is why sharing experiences is an important part of the process. The shift happens when someone is ready to change how they work, which is very different from knowing how to use a tool.
Mallesons greenlighting Copilot licences across the whole operations team was a milestone. The real measure was that people were starting to work differently.
The full story is on our Customer Stories page: how the program was built, the advisory work on agent design and governance, and Michelle's view on what external support added.
If most of what you have had delivered so far is training, it's worth asking what is carrying the change. Always open for a chat!