In every successful Copilot rollout we've observed in an SMB, there's a small group of people who quietly carry the whole thing. They're not in the official rollout team. They don't have 'AI' in their job title. They're just the people who, by week three, have figured out how to make Copilot useful for their own work and started sharing what they've learned with the people sitting next to them. They are champions, and they are the single biggest predictor of whether a Copilot rollout sticks or fades.
The good news is that champions are not rare. Most SMBs have plenty of them - they just need to be identified, supported, and given a small amount of structure. Here's how to build a champions programme that works without becoming a corporate-style L&D project.
Pick the right people, not the obvious ones
The instinct is to pick managers, or people who put their hand up, or the tech-comfortable people in IT. All three are usually wrong.
Good champions share three traits. They're naturally curious and will try new things without being told. They're respected by their immediate colleagues, which usually means they're good at their actual job. And they're generous - they're the people who already informally help others in the team. The combination is what matters; any one trait on its own doesn't make a champion.
Look for them by asking team leads a specific question: 'when someone on your team gets stuck on something new, who do they usually ask, and it's not you?'. The answers are almost always your champions. You want one in each team of 10 to 15 people, no more.
Give them a small, real role
Don't make 'champion' a vague honorific. Give it shape. Three responsibilities, no more.
- Run a 30-minute weekly clinic for their team where people bring real tasks and work through them with Copilot together. Same time every week. No slides.
- Maintain a small library of the team's best prompts and use cases on a shared page. Updated monthly.
- Be the first person colleagues ask when they're stuck. Not the only person, but the first.
That's it. Three things, all of which fit into roughly an hour a week. Champions in an SMB cannot have a 20% time commitment - that's an enterprise pattern that doesn't survive in a small business where everyone has a real job.
Pay them in time, recognition and access
Champions need to know the role is recognised, but you don't need a budget for it. Three currencies work.
Time: explicit, manager-acknowledged permission to spend an hour a week on the champion role. Not 'find the time'. Properly allocated, with the team lead's buy-in, so the champion doesn't feel they're stealing time from their day job.
Recognition: a short mention from the CEO or the senior sponsor of the rollout, at an all-hands or in a written update, naming the champions and what they've done. Public recognition is genuinely motivating - and signals to everyone else that this work matters.
Access: champions get to attend the monthly rollout meeting, early visibility on new features, direct access to whoever owns the IT side of Copilot. That visibility and voice is the single most appreciated benefit in our experience.
Bring them together monthly
The champions programme has one central event: a 45-minute monthly call across all champions. Each champion shares one thing that worked in their team that month and one thing they're stuck on. The owner of the programme brings updates from Microsoft, the IT team, and the wider business. People swap prompts and use cases. The call ends with a short list of actions for the next month.
This call does several things: it makes champions feel part of something larger than their own team, it spreads what's working horizontally across the business, and it surfaces problems early. Most useful innovations in a Copilot rollout come out of these monthly cross-pollinations, not out of central training.
Track what champions notice, not just what champions deliver
It's tempting to measure champions on usage in their team, training session attendance, or other metrics. Be careful with this - it makes them feel like middle managers rather than peers, and the metrics rarely capture what they actually contribute (which is informal one-to-one help, often invisible).
Instead, ask champions to report monthly on three qualitative things: what they're seeing working, what they're seeing failing, and what would make their job easier. That information is more valuable to the rollout than any dashboard, and it keeps the champion role focused on learning rather than enforcement.
Refresh and rotate
Champion energy declines over time. The same five people doing the same hour-a-week role for two years will quietly run out of steam. Plan for this. Every six months, run a light refresh: thank existing champions, ask who wants to continue, add two or three new champions to the group, and rotate any volunteers out. The role should feel like a rolling responsibility, not a life sentence.
Common mistakes to avoid
Three things kill champions programmes in SMBs. First, asking for too much time - if it takes more than an hour a week, the role becomes a burden and quietly lapses. Second, micromanaging from the centre - champions need autonomy in how they support their teams, not a script. Third, picking champions by hierarchy rather than influence - a champion who isn't actually trusted by their colleagues has no power to change behaviour.
Avoid those three and almost any champions programme will work.
The honest summary
Champions are the difference between Copilot becoming part of how your business works and Copilot becoming a renewal conversation in 12 months that goes the wrong way. They don't need a budget, a job title or a major time commitment. They need to be picked well, given a small clear role, paid in recognition and access, brought together monthly, and refreshed over time. Get the champions programme right and most other adoption problems become much easier. Skip it and you'll be fighting the same uphill battle that most disappointed Copilot customers describe by year two.