The Best Wins Happened Between Training Sessions

On day one I told the team something that could sound bad coming from a trainer:

“Most of what you’ll learn, you’ll learn outside the training.”

Listen to this post on Substack.

We met for four hours on a Friday afternoon. Then, two weeks later, four more hours on a Friday afternoon.

The magic was in the two week gap. Here’s what they built on their own, no trainer in the room:

→ Email triage. Started in class, then one manager kept tuning it until it sorted the way he needs.

→ A monthly client touchpoint deck. One sales leader dumped raw client notes into a Copilot notebook and had Copilot turn them into a polished deck for the next client call.

Then, as a class, we built an agent that creates such decks for any client, given the expected inputs.

→ “Free time for Richard.” A skill that reads Richard’s calendar the nuanced way Richard would. It knows “he’s driving then, but he can still take a call” and “that’s just a to-do he can move.” The skill works consistently because Richard is relentlessly organized and actually uses his calendar categories. This skill saves him a few minutes a week — and a few minutes a week compounds.

Training doesn’t just hand people AI skills. It gives them the confidence to try new things and go build their own solutions for meaningful problems.

Field Notes from a Real AI Rollout — Part 5. What actually happened training a 7-person leadership team on Copilot. #hiTechAIRolloutFieldNotes

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