Change-readiness navigator
Give a sponsor or change lead a view of who is affected, what is changing in the work, and the unanswered questions before communications begin.
Typical roles · sponsors and change leads
Concept brief
Win statement
Enable sponsors and change leads to use Change-readiness navigator to reduce friction in the work, with a visible source, an exception path, and a human owner for the decision.
Description
Give a sponsor or change lead a view of who is affected, what is changing in the work, and the unanswered questions before communications begin. In a cross-industry setting, the concept should be designed around the moment the user gets stuck, the approved information or action that helps, and the handoff when the agent should stop.
Key benefits
- ·Helps people prepare for change, learn, transition, and find support without turning an agent into a hidden performance-management system.
- ·Makes available resources and next steps easier to find.
- ·Supports managers and employees with a more consistent experience.
- ·Gives change leaders better evidence about where people are getting stuck.
Potential impact
Qualitative
- ·People receive practical help in the moment of change.
- ·Managers prepare better conversations and handoffs.
- ·Change teams see the difference between attention and capability.
Quantitative
- ·Shorter time to confidence for a defined task.
- ·Fewer repeat support requests about the same transition.
- ·A measurable increase in completion of the intended new workflow.
These are pilot hypotheses, not promised outcomes. Validate them against a real baseline, quality sample, and user feedback.
Success metrics
Time before users can complete a newly changed task with confidence.
Pilot target · Measure through a before-and-after pilot.
Establish the current baseline before claiming improvement. Review this metric with user feedback and quality evidence.
Users who find the correct resource, peer, or next step.
Pilot target · At least 75% in usability testing.
Establish the current baseline before claiming improvement. Review this metric with user feedback and quality evidence.
Evidence that people are using the new workflow effectively, not merely opening the tool.
Pilot target · Pair telemetry with interviews and task observation.
Establish the current baseline before claiming improvement. Review this metric with user feedback and quality evidence.
Evidence that the experience does not create unfair barriers or rankings.
Pilot target · Review before scale and after material changes.
Establish the current baseline before claiming improvement. Review this metric with user feedback and quality evidence.
Services needed
Copilot Premium
- ·Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) licenses for the intended users
- ·Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and the applicable Microsoft 365 application surfaces, such as Teams, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, OneNote, or SharePoint
- ·Microsoft 365 Copilot Agent Builder or Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit for a declarative agent
- ·Declarative-agent instructions, scoped knowledge, and actions
- ·Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft 365 admin controls
- ·Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) for work-in-context guidance
- ·Copilot Studio for guided journeys, tools, and service workflows
- ·Foundry only where custom matching, analysis, or product experience is genuinely required
A focused, employee-facing assistant that helps a licensed user find, draft, summarize, analyze, or take a contained action in the flow of work. Move to Copilot Studio when the primary need is a dedicated conversational experience, a repeatable workflow, broad channel delivery, or Power Platform automation. Move to Microsoft Foundry when custom orchestration, specialized models, vision, speech, or an application-grade runtime is the actual work.
Data sources
- ·Approved learning materials, role definitions, support resources, change impacts, and user feedback
- ·Permissioned work artifacts where the user has access
- ·Survey, interview, and help-request patterns
Implementation considerations
- ·Name one accountable business owner, one technical owner, and one content or data owner before the pilot starts.
- ·Define what the agent may advise, what it may do, and what must remain a human decision.
- ·Use representative test cases, including incomplete, conflicting, and out-of-scope inputs.
- ·Design the exception path before measuring straight-through success.
- ·Measure user effort, quality, and rework together. A high interaction count alone does not show value.
- ·Confirm the intended users have the appropriate Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) licensing and the needed access to underlying content.
- ·Scope declarative-agent knowledge and actions to the smallest useful boundary, then verify permission trimming and citations.
- ·Plan distribution, ownership, and lifecycle through Microsoft 365 administration rather than treating the agent as a one-time prompt.
- ·Category-specific focus: People & capability.
Human review · A named qualified person reviews exceptions, low-confidence output, and any recommendation or action with material consequence.
Executive FAQ
Next actions
- 01Observe 5-10 real examples of change-readiness navigator and map the current work, delay, handoff, and exception path.
- 02Name the accountable decision owner, source owner, technical owner, and pilot audience.
- 03Choose the smallest approved content set, data set, and action set that can prove or disprove the value hypothesis.
- 04Create a representative test pack, including success, ambiguity, bad input, and escalation cases.
- 05Run a time-boxed pilot with a measured baseline and a structured user-feedback loop.
- 06Review quality, rework, safety, adoption, and value together. Expand only when the work is demonstrably better.
Estimated timeline
6-10 weeks after discovery
- Discovery and source check1-2 weeks
Observe the real work, select approved sources, define permissions, and set a baseline.
- Configuration and test design2 weeks
Write instructions, prepare scoped knowledge and actions, and create representative test prompts.
- Pilot2-3 weeks
Pilot with a small, named cohort in their normal Microsoft 365 work.
- Measure and scale decision1-3 weeks
Review quality, rework, adoption, and user feedback before extending access.
Provenance
Inferred candidate · M365 Copilot (Premium)
- ·Inferred from the anonymized source corpus
- ·Next 49 logical candidate #33
Candidate. Discovery and validation required before any build commitment.