Craig Stanley.
I work on Microsoft 365 and AI adoption. SharePoint, Copilot, agents, and the change work that decides whether any of it gets used. This site is the reading habit that job requires, made public.
What I actually do
Most Microsoft 365 and Copilot programmes do not fail on the technology. They fail because nobody decided what the tools were for, who owns the information, or what good looks like six months in.
My work sits in that gap. Information architecture and migration decisions on the SharePoint side. Licensing, readiness and guardrails on the Copilot and agent side. Then the part most programmes skip: turning all of it into learning people will actually complete, and use cases specific enough to argue about.
The through-line is clarity and governance rather than enthusiasm. A tool that nobody understands the boundaries of does not get adopted, it gets quietly avoided.
How I work
- Decide what it is for. Named workflows, named people, a measure that existed before the project started.
- Set the guardrails first. Labelling, permissions and cost visibility before rollout, not after the first incident.
- Build the learning, not the deck. Short units tied to real tasks, with a knowledge check that would be embarrassing to fail.
- Measure the thing you said you would. Including when the answer is that it did not move.
Why this site has one subject
Because Microsoft publishes faster than any one person can read, and almost everything written about it publicly is a press release with the logo removed, or a summary of a summary.
Tracking it properly is a habit rather than a talent. I already have the habit because the work requires it. Publishing it weekly is the cheapest honest proof that I do the reading, and it is more useful to you than a page of logos.
Everything I make that is not about Microsoft — the zines, the music, the labs, the odd experiments — lives at anorthernman.com and is not coming back here.
Working together
If a Copilot or SharePoint programme has stalled, or is about to start and you want it to start well, the fastest route in is a reply to the Friday email. It comes to me.