10:45 · Block one
Nearly eight months of change in 45 minutes
20–21 January to 1 September. 224 days — seven months and twelve days.
We last went deep at Tändstickspalatset, with JJ and Christina. Today we pick that thread back up.
The unfinished promise
The room left January highly energized, intending to build an AI colleague for CMT meetings: meeting-aware, context-holding, something close to an executive assistant. The initiative met friction and quietly fizzled. We are not going to guess at the blocker.
Two things are different now. The Microsoft platform is materially more capable than it was in January, and the Convoy gives us a mechanism for removing friction instead of abandoning the idea.
What Microsoft changed
Work IQ
Copilot answers using context across emails, files, chats, meetings, people and projects.
Why it matters: the executive-assistant idea can draw on connected work context rather than a single pasted artifact.
official source ↗Specialized and custom agents
Researcher and Analyst for deep work; Agent Builder for your own agents grounded in work data, SharePoint and connectors.
Why it matters: a useful helper can now start as a bounded agent prototype rather than a full implementation project.
official source ↗Copilot Cowork
Generally available. Multi-step work across Microsoft 365 with approval checkpoints and usage-based billing.
Why it matters: this is the surface where a design becomes something that actually runs.
official source ↗Agent governance
Agent registry and Agent 365-style visibility: lifecycle, ownership and tool governance for the agents in the tenant.
Why it matters: the leadership question moves from 'can we?' to 'under what authority, with what evidence?'
official source ↗
Meeting recap, transcripts and Copilot in Teams are the closest thing to January's idea already within reach — where they are enabled for you.
Licensing, admin enablement and tenant configuration all apply. Today we use what is actually switched on.
Which of these bites hardest in CMT right now?
0 people answering · change your mind any time
Volatile
Technology and demand move faster than annual plans.
Uncertain
Available capability depends on license, admin settings and tenant enablement.
Complex
Context lives across meetings, mail, files, business systems and permissions.
Ambiguous
The same AI can be assistant, agent or coworker. The right authority boundary is contextual.
Five shifts we are living with
- 01
From answers to ongoing work
Agents can plan, use tools and keep going. As the work gets longer, the brief matters more than a clever prompt.
- 02
From apps to conversation
More work starts with intent instead of navigation. When conversation becomes the interface, the threshold to begin drops.
- 03
From task to outcome
Delegation moves from ‘do this step’ toward ‘deliver this result, within these boundaries.’
- 04
From co-intelligence to co-existence
Ethan Mollick calls this co-existence: not an occasional helper, but a working relationship you negotiate and re-negotiate as systems improve.
- 05
From checking everything to designing evidence
Human judgment where it matters, not manual approval everywhere. Leaders define authority, required evidence and escalation paths.
The thing being managed is no longer primarily people or agents.It is the flow of agency through the organization.
The old manager loop
- assign work
- coordinate people
- review deliverables
- decide
The emerging leader loop
- define outcome
- design roles & authority
- orchestrate capacity
- observe evidence
- intervene on exceptions
- improve the system
Where must CMT build muscle first?
- 1Define outcome
- 2Design roles & authority
- 3Orchestrate capacity
- 4Observe evidence
- 5Intervene on exceptions
- 6Improve the system
Drag to reorder, or use the arrow buttons.
The room ranking appears once you submit yours.
Leadership becomes less about controlling execution, and more about designing the conditions under which execution can safely happen without you.
Sources
- Microsoft · Copilot Cowork
- Microsoft Learn · Cowork documentation
- Microsoft · What information does Copilot use to answer my prompt
- Microsoft Learn · Researcher agent
- Microsoft Learn · Agent Builder
- Microsoft Learn · Manage agent actions
- Microsoft · Catch up on meetings with Copilot in Teams
- Ethan Mollick · Co-Existence and the End of Co-Intelligence
- NIST AI RMF · Govern