Leveraging AI For Job Satisfaction: Colette Stallbaumer, Microsoft 365

This episode features Colette Stallbaumer, General Manager, Microsoft 365 & Future of Work at Microsoft. Colette shares her career journey from growing up on a farm in Nebraska to leading conversations around the future of work at Microsoft.

Some of the top takeaways from the discussion include:

- Microsoft research shows that AI tools like Co-Pilot can help make work more fulfilling and enjoyable by automating repetitive tasks, allowing people to focus on more creative work. 

- Delegating tasks to AI requires developing new habits and thinking of AI as a team member rather than a productivity tool. Managers should think about how to delegate to AI effectively.

- In times of fast change, like with the rise of AI, people should adopt a growth mindset of optimism and curiosity rather than fear and embrace bringing new ideas to the table through iteration with AI tools.

To stay connected and continue the conversation, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn.

And don't forget to check out our previous episodes for more tips and strategies to boost your workplace happiness. You can find them on your favorite podcast platform or on our website.

If you have any questions, comments, or topic suggestions for future episodes, please reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you!

Stay inspired, stay motivated, and stay happy at work!

Transcript

Laura Hamill: 0:06

Welcome back for another episode of the happy at work podcast, with Laura, Tessa and Michael.

Tessa Misiaszek: 0:14

Each week we have thoughtful conversations with leaders, founders and authors about happiness at work. Tune in each Thursday for a new conversation. Enjoy the show

Laura Hamill: 0:38

Welcome to the happy at work podcast. A big warm welcome to our guest today Colette stall bomber. Thanks so much for joining us, Colette.

Colette Stallbaumer: 0:47

Hey, I'm thrilled to be here. Awesome. Thank you. Well, we'd love to start the conversation with learning a little bit more about you and about your kind of past, and specifically around your career journey. And there's some funny things that I've heard about having to do with herding cattle, about a Nebraska debate, they can. So tell us a little bit about your passing and how that led to your role now at Microsoft. Yeah, you know, yes, I grew up on a, I grew up on a farm on in Nebraska, in the Midwest. And, you know, I think there's certainly a lot of career character building experiences I can draw on from that, you know, including, as you said, sort of, you know, standing in front of a gate, there's something standing in front of a gate with a big stick and, and your dad saying, Don't let any of the cattle pass through here with you know, 600 head of cattle coming at you, you learn, you learn sort of from a young age, right, how to how to stand your ground? And, and so, yeah, you know, I did have an interest in, as you mentioned, sort of, you know, speech and public speaking and persuasive speaking early on, and some of those things, you know, have definitely, you know, stuck with me. And, and, and, and have been threads throughout my career is what I would say, it's so the power of the power of words and the power of messaging. That's kind of a big red thread.

Laura Hamill: 2:20

Seriously, tell us a little bit more about what you do at Microsoft? Yeah.

Unknown: 2:25

So you know, I started here, in advertising, I have a journalism degree and a marketing advertising background, I created the first ever cloud campaign at the company was part of that when we said we were all in on the cloud. And, you know, really, you could sort of chart my career at Microsoft, by the technology, inflection points. And, you know, cloud being one of those, but kind of the shift from when we've started to become really open and interoperable with Linux and others being another and now, you know, certainly, and then the pandemic, and the future of work. And now here, we find ourselves, obviously, at another very big inflection point with AI.

Laura Hamill: 3:07

Yeah. Fascinating. I think what you do at Microsoft, I'm curious about how do you think your past and all your experiences that you've had have really influenced the the kind of work that you're doing now, because you're really focused on the future of work and some pretty innovative things that Microsoft's been doing and an interesting kind of shift over the past few years, maybe more than few years around really focusing on the future of work. So curious about how your experiences have influenced that. Yes, it's been it's been, it's great to sort of take a step back on that in terms of the career journey. Yeah. You know, I was a, I was a speechwriter for Satya Nadella, our CEO in his office. And, um, you know, we were we were, we found ourselves often talking about Microsoft's role in sort of shaping and leading the conversation on the future of work beyond, you know, our, our productivity and software tools, you know, the Office suite that millions of people use every day, Microsoft 365, and that really did lead to the role in the charter that I now have around helping to shape and drive that conversation on the future of work for the company, as well as, which was, you know, became critically important during the pandemic, as well as what you mentioned now in terms of AI, and, you know, really launching Microsoft 365, copilot, and this whole shift to working in a new way. So, you know, you think about how dramatically work has changed in the past, you know, first with the pandemic and the past four or five years and now with AI and we really found that, you know, customers, our customers are turning to Microsoft and saying Help us now navigate all these changes. And so a lot of what my team does, and my charter is really born out of that burning customer need. And you know, what I would say about that if you kind of have to take the career career learning nuggets, if you will, is, you know, really embracing ambiguity, right, in retrospect and saying, saying yes to the biggest opportunities that excite you, um, you know, that's really how I went from market or to speech writer. You know, I really didn't, I didn't know a lot about that, when I took that what I kind of described as a pretty big left turn in my career. But I was really good at messaging and positioning and telling a story. And I think that is one of the most critical skills today that every product marketer, and leader needs is, you know, any part of the organization really, you need to be able to tell a story. And so, that ability, my ability to, to tell a story turned into one job, and then another than another. And so, you know, I think that's I think that's one of the big, big opportunities is, say yes to those things that, you know, really terrify you, but at but also excite you. And even if you don't even feel like you're stepping into something that you don't have all the answers, that's where real growth comes from, when you're stretching yourself in that way. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I, I love that. And then sometimes it feels like we need to know, like, how is this going to go down? And will I have career advancement? And you know, like, all we want to know, right? We want to have some control. And some of the coolest things happen when you just sit, let go of that a little bit. And it does.

Colette Stallbaumer: 6:44

You know, I think increasingly, and we see this in our research, too, by the way, you know, careers don't have to be linear, right? And you look at the generation today, they have by and large figured that out much more even then than mine had. But I think this idea that, you know, one of the hardest things ever, for me early in my career at Microsoft was having a manager who sort of sat me down and said, okay, like, what do you want to do next, right. And he was the type of person who had his entire career mapped out, and he could draw it out on a whiteboard. And you know, that's one approach. But that's not the approach the approach that ever worked for me, I've been much more opportunistic, about following my passion. And I think that has served me following my passion and saying yes to opportunities when they arise. And without having everything be clear, as you're saying, and I think that has served me really well.

Laura Hamill: 7:36

So good. And I'd love also, I wanted to just kind of dig into what you were saying about storytelling. Because, you know, we sort of think sometimes people think of storytelling, it's just like, Oh, it's just this thing you should be able to do. But that underlying idea, right, is that we are translating and connecting with human beings and our stories, right? And that we're helping people understand things through the stories that we tell. And I think you're so bright around tech. And I think even more now, as we think about AI, like, how do we tell the story about why this is not awful and scary? And why it's you know, what the upside is? That's what I feel like, there's been so much in the news about how awful AI is, and very little about the amazing potential, that it has the really cool examples. I mean, every once in a while we'll hear maybe a medical example. But so that I'm curious if like in what you're doing now, do you feel like the work around AI, specifically to the future of work piece? Yeah, is there? I'm imagining there's a big role of storytelling in that.

Colette Stallbaumer: 8:45

Huge! Storytelling is huge. I think anytime you're sort of, you know, birthing new products or ideas, or, you know, bringing things to market that the world hasn't really experienced before, right? Like, that's what's, you know, so amazing about this, this inflection point that we're in regenerative AI, and, you know, certainly, we saw that happen with the rhino, with the rise of chat GPT to hundreds of millions of users in a very short time. But I think what people don't realize is, we really just are at the, you know, we're just still at the very tip, you know, at the tipping point at the very beginning, scratching the surface on how this can really, you know, I think, Unlock and open up opportunities for people. You know, take a take someone who's just starting out, say, an entrepreneur or someone has a business idea, you know, the traditional way of how you would need to get that business off the ground, right and hire, you know, a bunch of different kinds of people who do very distinct roles, whether that's a, you know, someone to do the books and invoicing and someone to do other aspects of the business. Now you can do so many of those things. I'm using AI. And so you know what, how many more really creative innovative ideas will go from, you know, just the seed of an idea to being fully, you know, brought into the world. Because we now have these powerful tools through generative AI, where you have this always on, Assistant, you know, really ready to help you out. And you can ask questions, and you can, you know, it can help, it can help propel your work forward and your creativity forward in really interesting ways.

Laura Hamill: 10:37

Completely. And I think that's, we just don't hear as much about that. Right. Like, that's, and I think when people are starting to experience it from themselves, I mean, just simple user using something like, you know, check GPT and seeing, Oh, my gosh, it's a great place to start to get me going to get my creativity going just to give me some ideas. It's, I mean, that's the simplest kind of version of it. And it's, there's so many other opportunities in that.

Colette Stallbaumer: 11:00

Yeah, we were just talking about this yesterday, you know, like with copilot, it's sort of a dream realization machine. Right. And so whether you are a marketer and a company, or, you know, have a have a small business that you're trying to grow, you now have so many more tools at your disposal, to bring things to life, you know, both through words, and also visually.

Laura Hamill: 11:25

I mean, just seeing that term, right dream realization machine, it just, it's, I don't know, it just makes you excited about it. And then just connecting that to your storytelling piece. It's so cool. Well, I know one of the things I've been just blown away about from Microsoft is, it's kind of the resources and the commitment to the future of work piece, and just the number of researchers that you have, and then the cool research that that you all produce. And so I'm curious about whether or not you could share some of the findings from the Microsoft workforce trend index and some of the kind of recent research that you all have been doing.

Colette Stallbaumer: 12:04

Yeah, I'm happy to and again, this kind of, you know, this conversation today, it has a very, has the red thread of storytelling, right? So yeah, we started publishing in early 2020, something called the work trend index. And, again, it was born out of, you know, in the pandemic, when overnight, the world shifted to remote work. And, you know, customers were saying to us, how do we navigate this? What do we do, and fortunately, we had, you know, a platform called teams, which many customers, which, which was, became critical in the pandemic, to just keeping the doors open for many businesses and for just just for all of us to connect as humans. But essentially, you know, that sparked an idea. That was, okay, let's do some research. We do a lot of research at Microsoft, we, as you said, we have researchers all over the world, we hadn't really brought all that to bear on a single problem in the way that we did during the pandemic around work and how work was changing. And so the work trend index was born. And we've been studying this now year over year ever since, and, and really tracking the trends and reporting on the trends and helping customers understand how they can help their employees keep pace with the changing landscape of work. And so in this latest study that we just published on AI, you know, we talked to people about their use of generative AI tools like copilot, and you know, what they told us with copilot in particular is that, you know, 77% of our early users said, they don't want to give it up. They don't want to go back to working without it. And again, I think that speaks to what people are experiencing, when they have an always on assistant that they can turn to and you know, ask any task about work or help them draft a document or help them break through writer's block, and number of those, you know, help them help them find information, all those kinds of things. And they people told us, they made it, they made it, they made them faster and more productive. 70% of copilots users said they were more productive 73% They could said they can complete tasks faster. And you know, but maybe one of the more interesting findings is how it can help people have more fulfilling satisfying work. You know, they said it helps them focus more on that 52% And, you know, 51% said they they find work more enjoyable using co pilot. And so those are just a little those are just a few of the findings. And you know, they also our best users told us it saves them 30 minutes a day, that's 10 hours a month. And you know, who of us does not want to get 10 hours a month back?

Laura Hamill: 14:50

Yeah, that's a lot of time. We could do other things with completely on what I wanted to ask you about that you're sharing about the more fulfilling and satisfying work and making work more enjoyable. Do you think that's the connection? Is that a lot of the things that about our work that maybe are repetitive? Or that somebody else could do that we can use AI to kind of pull some of those things out? And focus on the things that actually require me as a human being to dig into? I mean, is that the, is that too simple?

Colette Stallbaumer: 15:20

No, I think that's exactly the aspiration. Right? We all have to do things in our job that we don't love. Right, right. That just comes with the territory. I don't care if you're CEO, or what level you are, right? Like, that's just that just comes with the territory. And so you know, when you have you with generative AI, and tools like copilot, you know, 71% of people of our early users said it did save them time on those repetitive, mundane tasks. But yes, I think it's how can you automate the things like that out of your work day, so that you can free up time to do the most important work? And, you know, I think again, and again, we see in our research, that that's what people tell us, they don't have enough time to do.

Laura Hamill: 16:02

Well, a couple of years ago, I did a study with some other people around the biggest stressors at work. And one of the things that was like, the biggest takeaway was, I was expecting these biggest stressors to be things like you would think of like, you know, somebody bullying you at work, or having being harassed or, you know, just those really awful things. Right. When the finding that blew my mind was the biggest stressor was just having way too much work. You know, and it was like, yeah, it was like, Well, yeah.

Unknown: 16:37

I think sometimes those obvious findings are the ones that jump out at you, right, but only in hindsight...

Laura Hamill: 16:42

Exactly. But either, I feel like there has been this trend over in my career of, in the olden days, it used to be you had a job, and it was sort of fit within this kind of, you know, job description. But now, and especially I think, in tech, your job is becomes more and more of just how much you can handle right? Like, it's just becomes a pile on especially, you know, smaller companies too, right? That you just are asked to do many, many things without any kind of rhyme or reason to it unnecessarily. So I think that idea of having too much work is just, it's so real for people because we're just asked to do more and more things. So that's a really, I think, curious or interesting way that this tech could be helping us with that problem right now. Right?

Colette Stallbaumer: 17:28

Absolutely. Yes. I mean, I think, you know, what, we kind of describe a separating the signal from the noise, right? How can you use copilot or any generative AI tool to get at what's most important? We see that in our data as well, you know, that's how we know that our heaviest, Microsoft 365, users get over 250 emails a day and send and receive 150 chats. And that team's meetings are up three 3x, you know, globally since 2020. And all of that points to exactly what you're describing. You know, we're always looking for in our studies and our research, what jumps out at us and what what is that emotionally resonant finding, and it's interesting, you mentioned your stressor study, because we saw the same thing, right, that people just said, you know, I'm I, the drudgery of work is what's got me down. And so how can you know, how can we use AI to really address that for people at scale, and make them you know, and augment our own natural human abilities to be creative? I mean, that's, that's really why we called the product copilot. It's not autopilot. It's copilot. And so, um, you know, you as the human are always in control, but you just have this whole new, always available always at the ready, you know, really smart assistant that you can delegate things to. And I and I think, you know, and I think also, interestingly, we're learning working in that way, does take practice, right, it takes developing a whole new habit. Oh,

Laura Hamill: 19:04

I bet completely. I mean, it's a it's odd in some ways, right? If you thinking about having somebody who's right there, who's very smart...

Colette Stallbaumer: 19:13

That's right. So you know, we talk about things like how to build a daily habit with copilot right, like, it's just like learning a new language, you know, or exercising, you really have to be intentional, and it takes everyday practice. It takes pausing and thinking, okay, is this a task that I should do? Or can I delegate this to co pilot? Yeah. You know, and like you said, that overwhelming volume and pace of work, that's part of what we want to that's part of what we want to and at the scale of Microsoft can take on as a real problem to address

Laura Hamill: 19:45

right. I think the kind of finding that I always talk about, like the sweet spot, right, because we know it's not about it's not about people not doing work. It's not about people, not necessarily even having some stress But it's that that sweet spot of like having the work that you work on be the stuff that gets you excited and energized. Right? Is that Yes, we're focused on how do we create more employee engagement and less of the, you know, the really bad distress and the overwhelm feeling for people? So yeah, that's such a that's really cool. I'm, I haven't used Co-Pilot yet, but I need to... I need to try it.

Colette Stallbaumer: 20:24

Absolutely. So, we'll get you we'll get you set up.

Laura Hamill: 20:31

Question for you is, in this kind of world where things are changing so fast again, I just, I can't even believe how much the AI piece has changed in just such a short period of time. So what kind of advice would you give for people, leaders, managers, anybody really? Who's working around how to navigate this time? What to be kind of thinking about how we can learn and not get freaked out by it?

Colette Stallbaumer: 20:59

Yeah, you know, I think I think a little bit of it is, you know, putting on that growth mindset. I mean, that's one of our core cultural, you know, that's a cornerstone of our culture at Microsoft. And I think this is definitely, this is a time to lean into optimism and curiosity, not fear. And so you know, some of the I mentioned earlier, sort of starting to build that daily habit of using copilot or other AI tools. Interestingly, we talked about sort of thinking like a manager, it is sort of exercising or building that muscle on thinking about how to delegate to AI. And that, you know, people who have those skills and are good at delegating to AI, I think will will, will free up more of their own time for the work that they love to do, and unleashing their own creativity. And then think about how you repurpose the time you get back. Right? What are you going to do with that reclaimed time? You know, I think there's another emerging learning we're finding around as you begin to work with AI, it's like a client, you need to think of it not as it's very different from other productivity tools, if you will, you really need to think about it. It like a, like a team member, how do you have a conversation? All right, it's an ongoing conversation. And so you need to keep coming back to that you need to build that habit every day. There's a little bit of don't give up, you know, if you don't get the if you don't get the answer you want or need the first time try again, we're building that those kinds of things into our tools to help people, you know, there's something in Word, we use copilot, you can use rewrite, and it will give you six, you can hover over a paragraph. And and I use this a lot, let's say, you know, you're not having writer's block on a blank page, you know where to start. But you're writing something, a draft of a marketing plan, or a blog or whatever, it might be a story, and you just need help with a paragraph, right? So you can use this and copilot will give you it will, it will generate six different ways to say it. And if you don't like those six, you can just keep going. And that that notion of iteration, and being in the conversation is a really key part of successfully using these new tools and working with generative AI.

Laura Hamill: 23:21

Yeah, that was a great example. And I love what you said about the delegation piece. I mean, how to delegate to AI, I think I mean, it's so again, one of those simple things, but it made then it sort of like really clicked for me about that, and how to think about where to kind of put it in my head. And then that second part about repurposing the time you can use that in that space. Right. Very, very helpful. Yeah,

Colette Stallbaumer: 23:46

I kind of like to tie it to another thing I think about which is sort of broader career advice. You know, don't be afraid to bring usefully wrong ideas to the table. And that's a little bit like sometimes what it's like working with AI, right. It's not everything is going to be right the first time we're going to be exactly precisely what you need, it's going to put you further ahead. Right. And so that concept, you know, we think is really powerful, both in life. It's great career advice. That's one of the things I always tell, you know, anyone but especially women, you know, don't be afraid to bring an idea to the table and put it put it out there. And it's interesting that the same is sort of true with AI.

Laura Hamill: 24:32

Oh my gosh, that was so good. Colette, thank you so much for joining us today. I've learned a ton and just really appreciate you sharing your stories with us. So thanks for joining us.

Colette Stallbaumer: 24:43

Hey, thanks so much for having me.