I freeze when asked to demo Copilot in meetings

I open my laptop before the planning call and see the agenda item I was hoping would disappear: “show Copilot on the Q3 deck.” I know the deck. I know the spreadsheet. I also know that the last private test gave me a tidy answer that missed the question my manager actually cared about.

Before the meeting, I try one quick prompt against the file. The answer is not terrible, but it is not something I would want to defend. It uses different wording from the finance sheet, skips one of the numbers I expected, and gives me no easy way to explain why. I tell myself I will handle it live if it comes up.

In the meeting, someone says, “Can we ask Copilot to summarise the variances?” Everyone looks at me. The freeze is not because I cannot click the button. It is because I do not know whether the answer will use the right file, whether the number will match, or what I will say if it invents a category we do not track.

The small win is that I can see how Copilot might help if I had prepared the moment properly. What I want is a 15-minute rehearsal routine: choose the file, write the exact stakeholder question, run a safe prompt, check three known facts, decide go/no-go, and keep a fallback line ready if the output is not presentation-safe.