You have Copilot. Who showed you how to use it?

The owner of a small organisation sat down with me for a training session.

His specialists inspect sites and write field reports. He takes each field report and turns it into a paper for his board, using a Word template. The work was slow and laborious.

We worked on it with Copilot.

What I did with him#

I started with his own work. I had Copilot study his last five board submissions and produce a blank, generic template from them.

Then I asked what the template was missing. What would make a paper stronger and more compelling for approval? What financial information belonged in it?

I took a new field report from one of his inspectors and had Copilot rewrite it into the improved template.

He nearly fell off his chair at how accurate it was.

Where I stopped him#

I stopped him there. I told him it was a draft, and that it had to be checked for correctness.

"You are now the editor."

Then I had Copilot show where its own draft was weak.

The result was hours taken off every report.

The chainsaw#

Imagine starting work in a forest. On your first morning somebody passes you a chainsaw and walks off. There is no lesson, and not a word about staying safe.

No one would run a forestry crew like that. Plenty of organisations give their people Copilot like that.

The owner in that session got the opposite. He was shown.

Five of his own papers#

That session only worked because five of his papers existed to learn from. If you cannot put your own standard in front of Copilot, it has nothing to copy, and you have nothing to edit against.

He could judge that draft. The template had been built from five of his own papers, so he knew what a good one looked like. He stopped being the writer and became the editor, and the paper that reaches the board is still his.

A draft from Copilot reads as finished whether or not it is right. It can state something the source never said, in the same confident sentences as everything else. That is why I stopped him when he was most impressed.

Try it on one piece of your own work#

This is the order I ran it in.

1. Pick one document you write again and again. Gather your last five.
2. Have Copilot study the five and produce a blank template from them.
3. Ask what the template is missing. What would make it stronger for the person who has to approve it?
4. Take real source material for the next one and have Copilot write it into the improved template.
5. Stop there. It is a draft. Check it against the source, then have Copilot show where its own draft is weak.