There’s a temptation when we think about AI to start with the tool.
What can Copilot do? What can I automate? Should I build an agent?
Try starting somewhere else:
What is one piece of work you or your team does over and over again that you wish worked better?
Maybe it’s turning a messy collection of inputs into a newsletter. Preparing an executive for an employee event. Building a campaign brief. Repurposing a long-form story into multiple channels. Pulling together a communications plan from meetings, documents, emails, and stakeholder feedback.
Whatever it is, don’t automate it yet. First, understand the work.
A simple exercise: redesign one workflow you own
Choose one communications workflow that is repetitive, manual, fragmented, or simply takes more effort than it should.
Then work through four questions.
1. Find the work
Start with: Our team repeatedly spends time on…
Be specific. “Creating content” is too broad. “Turning our monthly business update into an employee newsletter, executive talking points, and three social posts” is something you can actually examine.
The goal isn’t to identify everything AI could possibly help with. It’s to find one real piece of work worth improving.
2. Map the work
Now map what actually happens.
- What kicks off the work?
- What information do you always need?
- Where does that information come from?
- What steps happen every time?
- Where do you search, summarize, rewrite, organize, or copy information from one place to another?
- Where does the process slow down?
Don’t design the better version yet. Map the version you have today. Adding AI to a frustrating process doesn’t necessarily make it a good process. Sometimes it just makes the frustrating process happen faster.
3. Find the human moments
Now look at every step and ask:
Who should do this?
Use three simple labels:
- AI DOES - AI can take on the task when the instructions, context, and expected result are clear.
- AI ASSISTS - AI can create a first pass, synthesize information, organize inputs, generate options, or help move the work forward, but a person remains involved.
- PERSON DECIDES - Human judgment matters. A person determines the audience, intent, tone, context, tradeoffs, approvals, or whether something should be communicated in the first place.
For communicators, this may be the most important part of the exercise. The goal isn’t to remove people from communications. The goal is to give people more time for the judgment, creativity, context, and relationships that make communication good.
4. Define the result
Finally, ask:
Done brilliantly, what would this workflow produce?
Not just faster work. Better work.
- What would become easier?
- What would become more consistent?
- What could you stop spending time on?
- Where would you want more time to think?
Now you’re ready to redesign the workflow.
Try it with Copilot
You can do this exercise with a whiteboard, sticky notes, or a piece of paper. Or you can ask Copilot to walk through it with you.
Instead of giving Copilot a giant description of your process and asking it to “make this better,” try using it as a workflow coach.
Copy the prompt below and let Copilot ask you the questions one at a time.
Prompt:
Act as my AI workflow coach. Help me redesign one communications workflow that I or my team owns.
Do not jump straight to recommending AI tools or automating the entire process. Walk me through the exercise one step at a time, asking me one question at a time.
First, help me identify one piece of communications work my team repeatedly spends time on.
Then help me map the current workflow: what starts it, what information we need, the steps we repeat, where the work slows down, and where we spend time searching, summarizing, rewriting, organizing, or moving information.
Next, examine each step with me and classify it as:
AI DOES
AI ASSISTS
PERSON DECIDES
Pay particular attention to moments involving audience, intent, tone, organizational context, sensitive messages, executive voice, approvals, and whether something should be communicated at all.
Do not optimize for removing people from the workflow. Optimize for giving people more time for the judgment, creativity, relationships, and decisions that matter.
Then ask me what the workflow would produce if it worked brilliantly.
Finally, show me the current workflow and a redesigned version side by side. Label each redesigned step as AI DOES, AI ASSISTS, or PERSON DECIDES.
Recommend the simplest way to put the new approach into practice:
PROMPT when a repeatable prompt is enough.
WORKFLOW when multiple repeatable steps or handoffs need to work together.
REUSABLE CAPABILITY when the pattern could be useful repeatedly across people or teams.
End with one practical thing I can test first, and ask me: What is one part of this workflow you would never want to hand entirely to AI?
The interesting part isn’t the prompt
It’s what happens when you look at your work differently. You may find steps AI can take off your plate entirely. You may find places where AI can get you from a blank page to something worth reacting to. And you may discover parts of the process that become more important for a human to own, not less.
That’s the point. AI gives communicators an opportunity to rethink how work gets done, but redesigning the work shouldn’t begin with AI.
Start with the work. Find the human moments. Then decide where AI belongs.
Pick one workflow you own and try it.
Microsoft