From Finance to Microsoft Tech - Caroline Kallin's Journey

Mark Smith: 0:19
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Sweden. She works at XOBE as a change and adoption driver. She was first awarded MVP in 2024. Her aim is to help people work smarter with digital workspace in order to free up time and brain power Some of you all need more of. You can find links to her bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Caroline. Thank you so much.


Caroline Kallin : 1:11
So glad for you to have me here.


Mark Smith: 1:14
It's great to have you on the show. This is my first episode recording post-MVP Summit 2025. I was going to say 2024. And I feel there's just so much to talk about. Before we get started, tell me about food, family and fun. What do you do when you're not in the IT trenches?


Caroline Kallin : 1:34
When I'm not in the IT trenches. Food, food. I love food. Um, I think my most favorite food might be vietnamese spring rolls and family. I have a husband here in sweden and two kids and a dog who actually barked just just the other minute, so I hope you didn't get that on recording. And for fun, I love the mountains. I go skiing or trail running or just hiking and enjoying the fresh air.


Mark Smith: 2:04
I love it. I love it, and what a perfect landscape that you live in to do that. Tell me about your journey into tech. How did you you know, where were you and how did your career take a tech turn tech? How?


Caroline Kallin : 2:19
did you you know where were you and how did you take your career, take a tech turn? Yeah, I actually studied to become uh within finance, so I studied finance and but then I realized that, well, when I was working as a cfo and stuff like that, I always ended up doing the tech parts. I was the one who said no, we need to make this more efficient, we need to have a better system for this. So I was super user in all kinds of programs, but then something hit us in 2020.


Caroline Kallin : 2:44
It was this kind of weird pandemic going on Maybe you remember that one and then I was the first to roll out teams at my organization. So then I realized this is so much fun, maybe I can work with this whole time, maybe. So I started sending out some emails to companies nearby and said this is so much fun, maybe I can work with this whole time, maybe. So I started sending out some emails to companies nearby and said I don't understand anything about your ads, but I'm a fast learner and I really like working with Microsoft products because I've been programming in Excel previously and stuff like that and really enjoys it. And so then I got a hit. Somebody actually thought that it would be a good thing to bet on me, and the rest is history. So I've been working within it for soon. Yeah, four years or something like that wow, wow.


Mark Smith: 3:30
That's. That's awesome. That's epic and your focus right now.


Caroline Kallin : 3:34
Correct me if I'm wrong you're pretty focused on m365, co-pilot that area of tech yes, and I mean, if you, the that area of tech is so new so you don't have, you don't need to have like 20 years of knowledge to actually be good at it. You only need to be curious and to be I don't know how to say it but yeah, yeah, you need to be interested in it.


Mark Smith: 3:58
So change and adoption very interesting topic. I find, for the first time in history of tech, that change and adoption is taking much more of a front seat in the AI era that we're in. You know, people are finally looking at the data for the last 20 years which shows 70% of IT projects fail because and generally it's because no adoption program has been put in place. Tell me about when you think of adoption and change as a formal activity to do in bringing people on a journey. What do you think about?


Caroline Kallin : 4:36
I think, exactly as you say, all of a sudden it's in the front seat because it's so important. I mean, in the most IT projects that fails is due to lack of adoption. So I think that's why it's so much fun to be working within this industry with user adoption right now, because now it's more focused and also you get to see, with the whole AI era, you see that people get more interested in other tools as well, because all of a sudden they're like Luke, what is that? Oh, planner, we have something like Planner. Oh, but what is this? Can you do this? Or maybe I can do this with Copilot. And then I say, well, you have always been able to do that, because that is a feature within PowerPoint, for example. And they go what? So it's like Aladdin. You know, we got to show Jasmine a whole new world and I love that.


Mark Smith: 5:27
I like it, and you mentioned a range of products there that all seem to involve Copilot to some degree. Like you know, one of the things I I find with pages as they talk about in co-pilot is really all done in loop and and loop is becoming a pretty important product in in the suite that microsoft has here yes, absolutely.


Caroline Kallin : 5:50
I mean with now, when you have the meeting agenda in loop in teams and now the facilitator will operate in the loop agenda as well the facilitator, the facilitator agent. Maybe I should add uh, so yeah, it's so exciting because finally, I mean, I I have I think that people have thought I thought it would be hard. What is loop? Where do I add loop into my already busy schedule of apps? But now loop has has actually just, yeah, came on top. I like it.


Mark Smith: 6:20
Yeah. So tell me, what do you do if you land a new project and you've got to think about change and adoption? How do you drive that?


Caroline Kallin : 6:32
How do I drive it? Yeah, that's a hard question because it depends on the organization. But I really want to find sponsors first of all, to find those in top management that actually are willing to be on my back, so to speak, and also to make them look like heroes. I always suggest that we have like digital PT hours for the management, where they can feel comfortable addressing everything they don't know, so that I can learn them to be the great ambassadors that we want to have. Because if the management is not a part of the adoption and change journey, no change will take place. But it's also important to find the ambassadors or the champions in the grassroots level as well. So I think it's both a bottoms-up and a top-down journey that needs to be taking place.


Mark Smith: 7:28
That's interesting about it definitely being a a bottoms up as well as a top down, because, you know, in pro sci they talk about very much about getting your sponsorship in place and getting that senior leadership, you know, but it's so, so critical, as you say, to actually um look from you know the individual people that are going to use this technology and and the impact that it's going to have on them. Are you finding that AI and the discussion around things like Copilot is quite different than any other change work in the past? In that you mentioned Microsoft Teams. When you implemented that inside organizations, nobody worried that Teams was going to take their job. But we hear in the media all the time that we adopt AI, ai is going to take our jobs. That's got to have a rub effect on the change journey with individuals, right, because all of a sudden now you're dealing with somebody that's perhaps highly skeptical of why do I want to learn about AI? Because will I have a job in five years' time?


Caroline Kallin : 8:45
Yeah, and that's very important to address that early on in the adoption journey, I think, Because AI won't take our jobs, but people who know AI will probably maybe take your job.


Caroline Kallin : 8:57
So I mean it's important to be early on to this journey, I think. But of course, we need to address that, and I think that's maybe that's hard when you're talking to management, because they only focus on the ROI, on the return on investment, right when they buy these licenses. And then all the calculators that you can see, or in all the calculators you can see that, okay, we save two hours a week, we save this much time, but the time is actually people. So I think it's very important to address early on that this is not so that we will get paid, that people will be laid off. We do this to decrease sick leave, perhaps to decrease that employees will rotate and change, because that costs a lot and this is something that's hard to measure and therefore it's so important to have management with you so that management doesn't come knock on your door and say I need the figures, how can we be profitable with the help of these, Instead of focus on the value it actually adds?


Mark Smith: 10:03
When you think about the skills that somebody is going to need, let's say, in the next five years, in an information worker type role, we're seeing more and more agents. You mentioned there an agent in the meeting to, to, to coordinate the, the agenda and and whatnot. Are we, are we going to need to develop different skills in an ai world as as information workers?


Caroline Kallin : 10:34
yes, I think, but I think also that I don't believe that everybody needs to have those skills, but we need to have people that can drive this agentic world.


Caroline Kallin : 10:45
We need to have people who knows how to, or that is curious to set things up, can do it's actually will become more easier for end users. I mean Microsoft, for example, has introduced several buttons that will help instead of prompting, and I mean these buttons can help by themselves. I'm talking about you know, the glitter pen in Teams or that can help you write your messages so that it becomes easier if you're dyslexic or something, and also the schedule with Copilot. So I mean all these small kind of buttons will help us with AI and with agents Also. I mean just to mention an agent and you will get help. You don't need to know how to create that agent in order to use it, because everybody is used to using bots on different sites. So I think we need some ones. That's on the front that will help to help all the companies move further. But maybe not everybody needs to be agentic experts.


Mark Smith: 11:51
Yes, have you worked at implementing champion programs inside organizations? Tell me about that.


Caroline Kallin : 11:59
Well, that's always a journey and it's always hard to keep them enthusiastic and along, but it's important to find those people that are really engaged, and you can look at that.


Caroline Kallin : 12:13
Okay, let's start from the beginning.


Caroline Kallin : 12:15
If you want to create a champions network, I think it's important to dig into the data first to see which people in the organization actually uses lots of the platform, because you can see that in the admin portal, because then you will find people that are actually interested. So my first 10 cents is to go and ask them do you want to be a part of this and can we enhance your knowledge even further? And then you have to really be helpful and give them swag, give them your time, give them personal trainers or whatever they need in order for them to excel, so that they can distribute their knowledge further, because that's the very important part. That is the most hardest part, because usually people in the champions parties are like, yay, I want to come, I want to learn, but when it comes to investing further to their colleagues, that can be hard. So you need to be very, very clear to begin with that this will take some time for you to learn to distribute your knowledge further yes, and and how do you equip them to distribute their knowledge?


Mark Smith: 13:25
like, how do you, um, you know, do you provide them resources, do you set up kind of uh, a cadence of meetings? Like, how do you encourage those champions to, to, to talk about, to share, to, you know, spread out their ideas and thinking?


Caroline Kallin : 13:44
and, and, uh, you know, in regards to the, the co-pilot technology, when it comes to the Copilot technology, I think it's easier because then you can use Copilot to actually write those tips. You need to distribute and stuff like that. And I think also when I'm doing Champions Network within Copilot, I like to keep them smaller. If you do Champions Networks with a whole Microsoft 365, it's okay to be a larger group because then you distribute, you can have like meetings, meeting scheduled meetings and stuff like that.


Caroline Kallin : 14:16
But when it comes to copilot, we need to all the time be top of mind for all our colleagues to use copilot. So you need to be more efficient with your or have more high frequency within your tips or how to say it. So if I had budget, I would give them a lot of swag every time they post something, but otherwise I mean it's the knowledge they get. I mean if we sit down first we talk about what have happened and then they will distribute, by the end of the meeting we will all come together and decide okay, you can take this tip that we, or this prompt or this function that we now. Okay, you can take this tip that we have, or this prompt or this function that we now have learned. You will post that next week and then I take it the other week, so that you have a schedule that's running out. I think you need to do it in some kind of way like that.


Mark Smith: 15:07
And then you know, have you been involved in things like prompt-a-thons and agent-a-thons or any of these type of things to grow the buzz inside an organization around the art of what's possible?


Caroline Kallin : 15:20
I haven't yet, but I really want to because it sounds like so much fun. Yeah, yeah, I see that Microsoft that's on top of my bucket list.


Mark Smith: 15:27
Yeah, microsoft are bringing out Agent Days now, which I think they're wanting to get into 200 different locations around the world. Those events, so I think there's, yeah, lots of new opportunity, uh, in this space to develop, um, your thinking. Tell me, how did you get nominated as an mvp?


Caroline Kallin : 15:45
uh, it was, after I've been a part of teams dog again, a teams conference in sw. I was sent in, I submitted for a call for content and I got chosen. And then they liked me the organizers and asked do you want to come and join us organizing? And I thought, whoa, yes, of course that sounds super fun. And then they said you're a perfect fit as a MVP. And I was like what is that? Almost Because I was so new in the business. So that was. And that guy who nominated me also became my colleague. Oh wow.


Mark Smith: 16:26
That's so cool and tell me the best part of being an MVP.


Caroline Kallin : 16:32
The community, I mean I love people and I love the, because there's jobs for plenty of us. And I also got job proposals from fellow MVPs who said that, oh, this is an assignment I can take this and I think you will be great in it, and I was like what? This would never have happened in my previous field of work and I really love that. And also I mean tech people. I mean, if we are honest, tech people can be pretty introvert. And now you take the percentage of tech people that are extroverts or most of them are not all, of course, but most of them actually like to speak at conferences and like people, which makes it so much fun.


Mark Smith: 17:34
I like it. My last question for you what was the highlight of MVP Summit, your first MVP Summit?


Caroline Kallin : 17:42
I think it was the people and also to get to chitchat with all these Microsoft people that I only seen, like on Ignite, on the screen getting to shake hands with Karana, that was a big highlight.


Mark Smith: 17:57
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.