Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently revealed, in an unusual manner, how he personally integrates GPT-5 and Microsoft Copilot into his daily work, using them as core leadership tools. In a post on LinkedIn on August 28, Nadella shared five specific prompts driven by artificial intelligence and claimed that these tools are reshaping his time management, strategic decision-making, and significantly boosting executive productivity.
"We have been using GPT-5 integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot for several weeks, and it has quickly become part of my daily workflow," Nadella wrote. "It adds a new layer of intelligence to all my applications."
Nadella's prompts vividly demonstrate how Copilot acts as an administrative assistant with near-infinite memory. One of his favorite prompts focuses on meeting preparation: "Tell me the top five things to consider for the next meeting based on my previous interactions with [person]." This instruction drives Copilot to scan past emails, chat records, and meeting notes, generating a precise list of priorities for upcoming conversations.
In project management, another prompt highlights Copilot's powerful analysis and integration capabilities: "Draft a project update based on all meetings in emails, chat records, and [series]: KPIs and objectives, wins and losses, risks, competitive initiatives, as well as potential tricky issues and answers." With this instruction, Copilot can integrate scattered information into a comprehensive project summary, including key metrics, risk assessments, and even anticipated questions from stakeholders.
Nadella also demonstrated how to use Copilot for quantitative evaluation to support decision-making: "Are we on track to launch (the product) in November? Check engineering progress, pilot results, and risks. Give me a probability." In this scenario, the tool combines engineering data and pilot feedback to provide a probabilistic assessment, offering data-driven support for critical release decisions.
Time management was another focus for Nadella. He used the prompt: "Review my calendar and emails from last month and create 5-7 buckets for the projects I spent the most time on, along with the percentage of time spent and a brief description." This clearly analyzes his time allocation, often revealing gaps between strategic goals and actual time investment.
The final example showed Copilot's role in meeting briefings: "Review [select email] + prepare for the next meeting in [series] based on past discussions with managers and teams." By extracting key background from historical conversations, Copilot can create a tailored briefing for leaders, ensuring they stay ahead of the information during meetings.
Nadella's sharing clearly shows that Microsoft is positioning Copilot as something beyond traditional productivity tools. For executives, it is evolving into a powerful insight engine, enabling them to understand communication patterns, decision bottlenecks, and strategic priorities through natural language prompts.
