How to Drive Real ROI with Enterprise AI

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🎙️ FULL SHOW NOTES
https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/696  

When AI stops being a buzzword and starts saving you 15 hours a month, something shifts. In this episode, Microsoft MVP and Practice Director Chris Hinch shares how he turned curiosity into capability—leading Copilot enablement across his organization and beyond. From overcoming AI skepticism to building secure, scalable adoption strategies, Chris reveals how professionals can move from survival mode to thriving with AI. If you're navigating the fast-changing world of enterprise tech, this conversation is your roadmap to real-world impact.
 
🔑KEYTAKEAWAYS
AI is only valuable when it solves real problems—don’t deploy it for hype’s sake.
Copilot can reclaim hours of productivity by streamlining tasks like email, meetings, and presentations. 
Security and data protection are critical to building trust in AI adoption. 
Enablement starts with empathy—showing small, iterative wins builds momentum. 
“Surviving to thriving” is the new productivity metric—AI should help you finish work, not just do more of it. 

🧰 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
👉 Microsoft Copilot – AI assistant integrated across M365 - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-copilot
👉 Copilot Notebooks - A new way to work with persistent context in AI - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/get-started-with-microsoft-365-copilot-notebooks-0775e693-11c6-4d80-8aba-fcc81a737a06 
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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

Episode Transcript

Mark Smith (00:06):
Welcome to the MVP show.
My intention is that you listento the stories of these MVP
guests and are inspired tobecome an MVP and bring value to
the world through your skills.
If you have not checked it outalready, I do a YouTube series
called how to Become an MVP.
The link is in the show notes.
With that, let's get on withthe show.

(00:31):
Chris is Microsoft PracticeDirector at A&M and a newly
minted Microsoft MVP class of2024.
He's joining me today fromSouth Carolina in the United
States.
Chris turns bold ideas intopractical outcomes, partnering
with talented teams and globalcollaborators to help customers

(00:52):
smash their business goals withinnovative solutions.
You'll find his full bio andsocials in the show notes for
this episode.
Chris, welcome to the show.
Hey, appreciate you having meon Good to have you on Kind of
interested in drilling into kindof what your day-to-day world
looks like, working partner sideand your journey to becoming an

(01:13):
MVP.
Tell me a bit about before weget started food, family and fun
.
What do you do when you're notworking?

Chris Hinch (01:20):
Last year we bought a farm.
So we bought five and a halfacres out in the middle of
nowhere and it was raw pastureland but the house was already
on it.
But we've developing the farmover the past year.
So if I'm not working sittingat my desk or on an airplane
somewhere, I'm out in thepastures and in the fields
making sure all the animals andstuff are good to go.
It keeps me grounded.

(01:42):
Yeah, so family, wife, kids wegot two kids, two little ones.
They surprisingly like life onthe farm.
You would not think kids thesedays would like it, but the kids
they just love it.
Right, it's awesome.
They also like the fact thatyou know dad is into all the
tech stuff.
So if they need anything youknow dad can just fix it.

(02:03):
So there's that part of it aswell.
That is epic.

Mark Smith (02:07):
It's, uh, I'm, I'm.
I couldn't believe it when youjust said that I I have an acre
and a half property, so I andI'm big into creating a what's
called a centropic forest.
I'm um off grid and everythingapart from power, and then I've
got my own backup generators andstuff for that scenario as well
.
So all my water supply, all myum septic systems, uh all run,

(02:31):
uh all self-contained on myproperty, which I've built from
a, a blank piece of land thatwas fully overgrown.
I cut down everything.
I left one tree originallystanding, and now I've got
around 6 000 trees planted.
So, um, yeah, yeah, I, I getwhere you're at and I love it.
My kids love it as well.
They love, they want to beoutside with me all the time.

(02:52):
You know, first thing in themorning, we get up, we go out to
the greenhouse, see how theplants are done overnight, and,
um, they always want to be inthe garden.

Chris Hinch (02:59):
They just love this type of lifestyle yeah, yeah,
they like go going and checkingon the chickens because we just
had some chicks hatch.
So right now the exciting partis running out and looking at
the baby chicks see how they'redoing.

Mark Smith (03:11):
That's so cool.
That's so cool.
Tell me I see your area ofexpertise in Microsoft is
Copilot.
What's been your journey inthat space?

Chris Hinch (03:22):
So when they first announced Copilot, it was
something that just superfascinated me.
So I just kind of jumped in thedeep end on it and learned as
much as I could.
And as the kind of journey wentalong, with some of the friends
that I have at Microsoft too,we just started doing a bunch of
enablement sessions with howthe marketing buzz that they do
right Kind of actually comesinto play for real world.

(03:45):
And as I did more and more ofthe art of the possible that
Microsoft calls it, more andmore of those kind of trainings,
the more I found myself reallyjust engulfing myself even more
and learning more about it andhow I can use it in my day to
day and how I can help otherpeople use it in their day to
day.
And it's not like it's one ofthose things Once you find

(04:07):
something that clicks, itdoesn't become work, it becomes
a passion, so to speak.
And that's how this technologyhas really felt for me.
Because if you I'm sure youhave to if you looked in the
studies like you can save ahandful of hours per month on
this and the ROI is likeimmediately there.
If you use this right, I meanyou could save 15 hours per
month, if you do it right.
And so my whole goal is how canI be more efficient and

(04:30):
effective at what I'm doing withthe tools that I have?
And that's just kind of what itdid for me is like I'm no
longer just struggling lookingthrough the boards or looking
for this.
It's like you're using all thepower that you have with all the
AI, just tools, like everywhere.
The tools are everywhere insidethe ecosystem.
Now, just in the term that Iuse it if you've listened to
anything else I've done, likehow you can just supercharge

(04:51):
things, and it's just, it'struly, truly that.

Mark Smith (04:55):
How do you run these enablement programs, like
what's the building blocks ofthem?

Chris Hinch (05:01):
So it's the keyword .
I mean it's funny.
I saw a meme come across one ofour team channels this morning.
It's like how did you get thefunding for that?
If you put the words AI inthere, then it automatically
gets approved.
Right?
It's the new cybersecurity kindof buzzword that always got
approved.
So everybody wants to knowabout AI.
And then everybody's scaredabout AI because you hear about

(05:25):
the where some source code gotleaked for this or something,
trade secrets got leaked forthat, and so how do people know
that it's actually safe?
And that took me into, like theenterprise data protection that
comes with it.
I tell people on how it'sstored inside the tenant, how
it's saved inside the tenant,it's not used for training
purposes.
And then we kind of take it thenext step further, where we

(05:47):
talk about don't use it justbecause it's AI, then you're
failing.
Right, If you don't have a trueon use case or an objective
that you're trying to solve, ifyou're just doing it for AI sake
, then it's not the product foryou.
Like when you were talkingabout my bio.
It's like if you're doingtechnology for technology's sake
, you're already losing.
So use technology to solve aproblem, and so the building

(06:08):
blocks is what problems, whatchallenges are you having?
And that's kind of the attackthat I go.

Mark Smith (06:12):
So are you doing this for customers?

Chris Hinch (06:15):
It's weird, I do it for customers, I'm doing inside
the organization as well.
So I mean it's a little bit ofa both, because when I came to
the company that I'm atcurrently, they were super
security focused as they should,as all companies should be, but
they were not as in touch withthe AI capabilities.
And then I started showing.
I showed them at SKO the year,because Copilot was announced

(06:38):
later in the year and then ourSKO happened, and so when I got
my turn to present at ourkickoff and I used Copilot there
, the buzz around the whole show, everybody was messaging the
owner and then my boss and theirdirectors like when can we get
this, when can we get this?
And so doing it inside theorganization and then outside to

(06:58):
our clients as well.

Mark Smith (07:00):
Nice.
What did you show in thatpresentation that got that buzz
going?
I kind of want to find what'sthe catalyst that turns people
from one being fearful, right.
I heard an interesting quoteand it was when Microsoft Teams

(07:21):
went crazy.
Right.
What caused Microsoft Teams togo crazy?
It was COVID.
Right.
It happened not because of goodmarketing.
It happened because there was aglobal crisis and everybody
stopped going to the office andworking, and so Teams became
that tool.
Where it might have been usedfor chat in the past, it became

(07:42):
very much the front and centervideo tool right when it might
have been used for chat in thepast, it became very much the
front and center video toolright for communication.
The thing is, nobody fearedthat Teams was going to take
their job, but now you've gotthis media that's saying, hey,
we're going to see massive jobcuts.
You know we're not going torecognize the workforce in five

(08:02):
years' time.
So there's an element ofskepticism from customers now
going not customers fromindividuals, from people going
hang on a second by me usingthis.
Is it going to replace me?
And so I'm interested if, goingback to that session, what was
that spark that people went from?
A very security forward postureand not knowing much about AI,

(08:23):
to going to you know what weneed to get involved so, because
I work at an organization wherewe're we're a value-added
retailer, right, so we sellservices and we sell product.

Chris Hinch (08:35):
Um, if you're if you're not on the rent turning
side of things, you're in kindof a day of meetings, right,
right, that's what you had yourcalendars, double book, triple
book.
I mean, it's not as muchanymore because I use the
technology, but people need thattime back, and so I was telling
them things like if you couldcreate a PowerPoint in 25% less

(08:58):
time, if you could be inmeetings without having to recap
it for you.
Or if you need to send, likepolish up what's hot in my inbox
.
Or polish up an email, like,instead of review, like you're
writing it and then you'rereviewing it and then you're
tweaking it, you're reviewingand tweaking.
What if you take some of thatout?
What if I can give youiteratively throughout your

(09:21):
whole week?
What if I could give you acouple hours back?
Would that interest you?
And granted, as we've used thismore, we know it's more than a
couple hours, right, but if you,if you just start showing them
how it can trickle in, versusbeing a big bang, because nobody
wants to big bang, like youdon't want to move their cheese
so far down the road.
But if you can just show them.
You're not looking at a blankWord doc, you're not looking at

(09:43):
a blank PowerPoint.
You're not looking at a blankemail, like you don't have to
even read, like you just gotbrought into a thread of an
email.
It's like crap, I don't have 20minutes to kind of go all the
way down and then read all theway up.
It's like hey, summarize thisfor me so I know how to respond.
Like if I can give you justiteratively throughout your day,
pull, pull the parts back,would you want that?
And then I showed them withsome of the hype videos that

(10:04):
microsoft has, and you kind ofpair those together and and, as
a company from our org, we werebought it, yeah, but then to the
point it got a little scary.
Right, who has access to mydata?
And that's where the where Ireally come in.
And then I show people here'show you can do it safely and
protect your data, and that's awhole other conversation.

Mark Smith (10:23):
Let's just drill into email just for one second,
because I was listening to ScottHanselman the other day on a
video last Friday and in it hewas like, if my prompt is going
to take me a minute and a halfto write, why wouldn't I just
write the email Right?
When it says, you know, you jumpinto email and it says, hey,
let's use Copilot to help youwrite this.

(10:44):
And then you craft a prompt andyou're like, well, I could have
written email in that time.
And he brought up an interestingthing what about when that
email prompt, if you like, atthat point has memory which of
course we know is Cumbering inthe platform, memory which of

(11:08):
course we know is cum ring um inthe platform and it can
remember the last nine months ofa conversation that I've had
with you via email.
So, in other words, not justtaking context of the email
today and let's say just what'sin the immediate thread, but it
has context of all our emailsthat you and I have had over
that period of time.
And let's say nine months is anice window of size that you
would understand what wecommunicate about if we're
frequent communicators via email.

(11:29):
Do you see that people are justlike blown away that it helps
them draft an email or coachesthem on an email.
Or is it enough yet that andI'm just talking about their
co-pilot email experience at themoment, not teams and all the
other type of great things thatyou can do with it- yeah, so I'm

(11:49):
interested to see how thatdevelops.

Chris Hinch (11:51):
I was in the conversations when they were
talking about the stored history.
But the way how I've beentelling people to use it is go
ahead and respond, but don'tsend, and let it auto rewrite.
Because if you just jot yournotes down, maybe this is just
how I work, like when I write anemail I'm just going to type my
notes down really quick, I'mnot going to hit send and then
I'm going to craft it into anactual email.

(12:11):
So now I don't have to craftthe email, I just jot my notes
down on how I want to respondand then hit audit rewrite and
then sounds like me and I'm doneright, so done right, so it did
like.
Again goes back to thatiterative thing.
I took two steps out for me,because all I'm doing now is

(12:32):
like how I tell people to builda powerpoint, I'm just outlining
it and letting it do it for me.
Because when you build apowerpoint, like you can go into
powerpoint, say, create me apresentation on x, y and z, to
be honest, it's not going to bewhat you want.
But if you give it an outlinefirst, then it's going to be
what you want.
So you're it, not to be likekind of um cliche, but it's when
this was first coming out.
He was listening to what jaredsaid.
Jared spitero, it's truly meantto be somebody sitting in the

(12:57):
pilot seat with you like it's aco-pilot.
It's not here to do your job,it's somebody to assist you with
your job.
So if you think about it thatway, there's always going to be
the scare task, except AI isgoing to take your job.
It's always going to be there,but right now it's not
innovative, right?
So if you can and here'sanother term that I throw around
, and this is what really helpspeople kind of think of how this

(13:19):
can empower them.
If you can get out of this modewhere you're just kind of
trying to make it by, you'rejust trying to survive, and you
can move into this moment whereyou're actually thriving.
So if you go from surviving tothriving because you purchased a
tool, that's worth it, right?
So now you can startaccelerating and enhancing your
business versus just trying tokeep the lights on.

Mark Smith (13:40):
I love it.
I love it that surviving,moving from surviving to
thriving.
And you know, I heard a ladysay I don't need a tool to make
me more productive, I'm superproductive, like.
The issue is is that my day islonger than I have hours, in
other words, my tasks, myactivities and so I like this

(14:03):
word efficiency, right, makes memore efficient, if I can.
You know she was saying don'tmake me more productive so I can
get more done at work.
Make me productive so I canfinish work on time and go home
to my family, right, and I wasjust like.
You know the whole M365 story.
Forget Copilot.
The M365 story has been sold onproductivity and I think people

(14:26):
are wanting more thanproductivity nowadays, and I
like that.
What was that phrase you justhad then around becoming super?
It wasn't efficient.
What was it?
Supercharger productivity.
No, you were saying something.
You just said something that Isaid.
I really like that phrase,which is oh, go from surviving
to thriving.
That's it Surviving to thriving.

(14:47):
I think that totally capturessomething that people are in the
survival mode of work and theycould go into thrive mode by
enabling this technology.
You know we're recording thisin May and Microsoft is dropping
a bunch of stuff this month forCopilot.
What do you think Every week?

Chris Hinch (15:06):
Yeah, right, yeah, it's the velocity that they're
adding things.
I mean, even in the MVPchannels it's just hard to keep
up with the velocity thatthey're adding things.
I mean, I'm glad that they are,I'm glad that they're investing
in this technologyno-transcript enterprise data

(15:50):
protection because a lot of thethings they're using the other
companies, that is, is the, theprompts that they're using those
to train, and my opinion, I'mglad that they're not microsoft,
that is are there any thingsthat you're kind of like?

Mark Smith (16:04):
I wish it did this, but it does this type scenario
and I'll give you two examplesthat I have run into.
I've only got two that are mykind of pet little peeves.
Let's say I do a sales call andI've got transcription on.
You know, I've said, you know,done the.
Hey, is it all right if wetranscribe a meeting, et cetera.
And it's great, right, you geta summary.

(16:26):
What do we agree, action items,etc.
I want to run a prompt that saidhey, you're an expert sales
coach and I want you toretrospectively look at this
call.
So this is after the meeting,right, where did I not do so?
Great, and it's RAI kicked inand said sorry, I can't give you
any advice.

(16:46):
And I was like that's random,like I've asked you specifically
to coach me on how I could havedone this better, and obviously
RAI kicked in.
The other one I did which ticksme off is I asked for a bunch of
links, like so I say, hey,listen, give me a list of
companies in Canada that areMicrosoft partners, that are in

(17:09):
the SMC space and a link totheir website, just so I can go
check out their website.
It gives me a nice table inloop right and puts the company
name, puts the URL and thenwithin three seconds it removes
the URL, redacts it all out andsays sorry, to protect your
privacy, I'm removing the URL.

(17:30):
I'm like I just asked you forit.
Now I don't need you to protectmy privacy because that's it.
I'm protecting your privacy,hence removing the URL, and I'm
like you've now.
That's frustrating to me.

Chris Hinch (17:44):
Yeah, yeah, so one of the.
So there's two things that cometo mind One that they did at
least finally announce and soit's coming out, and the other
one they haven't fixed yet.
But if you go to some of theother designer the images that
they create, you don't have toworry about the trademark and
the spelling of things.
The other designer apps outthere actually get it right, and

(18:07):
because Microsoft has thecopyright protection right,
anything that it creates it'sgoing to stand behind.
So it can't use some logos andit can't use some full-on names,
and so when you try to createan image in it, you can't use it
unless you drop it into, likecanva or something.
Uh and yeah, so you have totake that.
So that's annoying.

(18:27):
I wish that, that I understandwhy it's annoying.
So then I go to the other onethat I don't have to do that, uh
, and then, um, so I can saythis, because it's been released
and it's actually it came outin wave two, so Copilot
notebooks came out and I've beenwanting that for a while,
because the other one I almostsaid that the other one had
projects which was super slick.

(18:50):
I mean, it's like exactly whatyou need.
It's like you can save somechats, you can upload some
documents.
You can reason against, likethis subset of data where, yeah,
copilot can do it across thewhole graph or you can designate
it to a whole SharePoint site,or you can designate it to just
one document, but you can'tcollect a bunch of different
artifacts, and that's.
That's been super helpful.

(19:10):
Now I don't have it yet, butdoing it in the other one it's.
It's going to be as one of theposts that I put out there last
week.
It's going to be as one of theposts that I put out there last
week.

Mark Smith (19:21):
it's going to be game-changing in my opinion.
Yeah, it is, because what I'mfinding I'm doing prompts that
go over the course of a month tosix weeks.
In other words, I've donesomething, I come back to it, I
do some more work on it, but Idon't want to kind of reset all
the context that I've alreadygiven it.
I do some more work on it, butI don't want to kind of reset
all the context that I'vealready given it.

(19:41):
And so that idea of having whatare they calling it?
Is it projects?

Chris Hinch (19:47):
No, that's what the other one calls it.
It's called Cabal notebooks.

Mark Smith (19:50):
Notebooks, notebooks , that's it.
Yeah, yeah, it's veryinteresting because it even
comes with an audio feature likeGemini, right it?

Chris Hinch (19:57):
does, it does.

Mark Smith (20:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It's interesting times.
I love the speed of change.
I love the new UI that it'sgoing to.
I think that's cool getting theconfusion out of what's on the
right-hand side of the screen,having that structure on the
left.
I just man it's.
Yeah, I'm looking forward toeverything that lands in my
tenant, hopefully in the shortterm.
Final questions How'd youbecome an MVP?

Chris Hinch (20:22):
So at a previous company I worked with two
different MVPs.
They were on staff, theyreported up to me and I never
really gave much weight intowhat it was to be an MVP, but I
did get a lot of impact on whatthose two individuals did being
an MVP, which being thecommunity effort that you get
from this.
I'd always been super productknowledge, relevant.

(20:47):
People always came to me as anexpert on this solution or this
product kind of thing.
But I never really did thewhole evangelism type thing.
I did evangelism as my companyright.
I was like, yeah, put me infront of anybody, I'll talk to
them about whatever you want totalk about.
But then I guess, if you takeit to transitioning it into the
conference world like I neverreally thought it was useful for

(21:11):
me as an individual to speak ata conference, but then I did it
, it and it took me back to thecollege years when I was on
stage in bands.
It's like, man, this is nothing.
I can talk in front of peopledrunk in a bar.
I can talk to people at aconference as long as I feel
confident about the topic, thenlet's go, kind of thing.

(21:33):
And then that turned into beingable to curate the content and
set myself apart.
Where that actually helps me inmy world, where it's the I
don't sell things, I educatepeople.
So it's been how I've alwaysdone.
It is just educate people onwhat the products out there and
the challenges and the hurdlesthat they can overcome, and so I

(21:54):
use the term that I tell a lotof people I sell through
education.
Right, I'm not here to sell youa box.
I'm not here to sell you alicense.
I'm here to help you solve aproblem.
Tell me your problem and I'lleducate you on how you can do it
.
And if you want me to help youdo that, then I'll do it right.
And so it's helped me kind ofelevate myself in those
situations where people hear mespeak at conferences now and

(22:14):
they hear me speak on podcastsand they hear me speak in video
blogs that I do and other thingsthat we put out there.
And it's one of those things Icome into the conversation
without having to prove my worth, like they already have it.
So that's the kind of why Iwanted to do it after I saw that
you could get with all that.
It was a long-winded answer,sorry about that.
It's good man.

Mark Smith (22:34):
It's been good.
It's been good.
Thank you so much for coming onthe show.

Chris Hinch (22:37):
It's been great talking to you, yeah absolutely
Appreciate your time and thanksfor the invite.

Mark Smith (22:44):
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication MVP Mark Smith,
otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.
If you like the show and wantto be a supporter, check out
buymeacoffeecom forward slashNZ365 guy.
Thanks again and see you nexttime.
Thank you.