The AI Adoption Dilemma

A proposed strategy for deploying Microsoft Copilot avoids tenant‑wide cleanup by blocking Copilot from analyzing all legacy documents. Employees still access those files normally, and licensed users may apply Copilot to any individual document they personally select. Each major department creates a new SharePoint site with a companion Team, secured using an M365 group — its own “Safe Zone.” A few hundred authoritative documents (policy manuals, HR guidelines, financial models, sales playbooks, operating procedures) are copied in by subject‑matter experts. A periodic synchronization keeps the documents in the Safe Zone current. When Copilot performs analysis or generates insights, the only content it can see are the curated Safe Zone libraries. The libraries are protected by strict governance rules. As more departments build Safe Zones, they interconnect into a Strategic Relational AI for the entire business. Executives placed in a management security group spanning all Safe Zones can ask cross‑department questions (e.g., how retention patterns in HR relate to sales performance, or how operating costs affect margins) and receive trusted, organization‑wide answers. Evaluate whether this approach is more effective than a cleanup‑first strategy, given the organization’s provided context.