Meet the Chief Digital Officer on a mission to help ‘organisations thrive’
UK Stories met up with former nuclear scientist and defence analyst Jed Griffiths, now Microsoft UK’s Chief Digital Officer, to find out more about his role and discover how AI is transforming Microsoft’s relationship with customers.
Q. What does a CDO actually do?
JG: In a nutshell, the CDO role is about bridging technology and business, supporting teams to turn ambition into practical outcomes, and helping organisations thrive.
The role is still relatively new. It started to emerge when boards realised that, from a strategic point of view, digital wasn’t just “servers in the basement and laptops on your desks” anymore, but had become fundamental to how the business operates.
The CDO has evolved over time to become an interface between technology and the business: we need to understand innovation and transformation, be technical enough to grasp platforms and data, but also the business side – profit and loss, markets, customers and employees.
I keep asking how we can take new software, data platforms and partnerships, and merge them with business strategy, growth plans and operating models, so organisations can thrive.
For our customers, it’s joining up their digital ambitions with our technology and ecosystem, and turning ideas about AI and data into something that really lands.
Q. How does your role differ from a Microsoft customer CDO role?
JG: If you’re a CDO inside a customer organisation, you’re usually accountable for execution. You own platforms, teams, delivery, ongoing operations, and you sit deep in the organisational structure.
My role at Microsoft UK is very customer-facing. I spend most of my time with my opposite numbers – Chief Information Officers, Chief Digital and IT Officers and the like – understanding their context and the challenges between their ambitions and the technology they have available.
I help them open the doors to their business counterparts – Chief Technology Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Risk and Compliance leads – helping them translate technology transformation into business benefits.
Q. Can you give us an example of what you do?
JG: A recent engagement with sustainability engineering company Spirax Group illustrates how I work alongside our account teams and customer executives to unlock value.
Their leadership saw technology – and especially AI – as a way to create differentiation, not as just another tool. We brought together their executive team and explored how innovation could empower their people and customers.
The conversation quickly centred on sales engineers – their frontline experts. Together, we identified the need for a tailored AI-powered knowledge assistant, called MiM, designed specifically for their roles. Rather than pushing generic solutions, we focused on co-creating something that respected Spirax Group’s unique governance and expertise.
Collaborating closely, we ensured MiM delivered trusted insights at the right moment, drawing from curated, approved content. This partnership allowed Spirax Group to concentrate on what truly matters: empowering their people with better information, precisely when it’s needed.
Q. So is Microsoft’s relationship with customers changing because of AI?
JG: AI has shifted a lot of relationships from “you are our software supplier” to “you are our strategic partner”. One large UK insurer I worked with is a good example. Historically, we had mainly spoken to the CIO and the technical side.
I came in to work with their Head of Strategy and Chief of Staff – people we didn’t usually talk to – and we reframed Microsoft as a driver of business change rather than just the “Windows and Word guys”. We talked about how AI and the Cloud could reshape core processes, customer experiences and products.
Once the board saw that potential, the relationship changed. Our account team could then follow up with very concrete solutions, and they now use our capabilities far more broadly to deliver measurable business outcomes, not just buying software licences.
Q. How well are UK businesses coping with the challenge of AI?
JG: I often say AI adoption is maybe 10% technology and 90% people. Generative AI has pushed software right into the heart of business processes. You can talk to the system, ask complex questions of your own data, and get answers that previously needed a team of experts.
That is incredibly disruptive. You can’t just roll out a tool and run a bit of training. You need programmes for behaviour change, process redesign and skills – how people structure prompts; how they judge data quality; how they validate outputs.
So the real question isn’t “can I buy the right tool?” It’s “can my organisation adapt fast enough – culturally, politically and operationally – to get full value from it?”
Q. Do you advise customers to build their own tools or buy them from a vendor?
JG: This comes up all the time. Early on, some customers built quite sophisticated services – for example, a custom language translation workflow that stitched together multiple AI components – at significant cost.
Six months later, similar capabilities were available out-of-the-box in first-party products like Teams, at lower cost and with better integration. That is painful if you’ve just invested heavily in a bespoke solution.
So I talk a lot about having a platform and a roadmap, and about partnering closely with us. If we understand where you really want to differentiate, we can help you decide whether to build something bespoke, bring in a partner, or wait because a capability is about to land in the product stack.
There is no single right answer, but with that partnership you can avoid over-investing in something that becomes a commodity.
Look out for part two of our interview with Jed Griffiths, in which he advises organisations on the best way to approach AI transformation and the pitfalls to avoid.