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  • Microsoft leading the Future of Work

    We’re in the middle of a massive uncontrolled experiment. Microsoft where I work (disclosure), is uniquely positioned to understand its impact on the future of work.​ That is because its technologies and the services it provides customers to support them are so intrinsic to the workplace. That has been the case for 30+ years building…

  • On the value of innovation

    I’m part of an innovation community at work. A question was asked of the community, why innovation, what is its value and can we provide any examples. My answers:

  • InnerVentures in a doodle

    I’ve taken a short break from work and as you do when you have time, I’ve been thinking. For one, about this site, it’s activities and it’s purpose. I thought I would try and capture it in this doodle (DanelDoodle actually), which is in itself a function of many aspects of this site and my…

  • Microsoft Teams as a Platform – the next frontier

    Microsoft Teams, with its 115M users, is way more than just chat or meetings. From this Geekwire article: “Meetings are important, but they are transactional. Work happens before meetings, during meetings, and after meetings. That ability to have the workflow completely stitched together is where Microsoft 365 really stands out. That reinforcing effect of Teams…

  • Another shift the pandemic has accelerated – enterprise sales

    B2B selling was already changing before COVID-19. I’ve written before about how I think customer success practices with their emphasis on product usage is changing sales to be more data and impact driven and more receptive to the user, not just the purchasing unit. This change is not unique to enterprise software sales – think…

  • The future of work needs better insights and the path is clear

    The path with Microsoft that is, which is all I can talk about based on my experience (disclosure). I’m working with several customers to support adoption of Microsoft 365 technologies and a key part of this is what and how to measure the right impact of M365 on workplace productivity. At this time with COVID-19…

  • Mindfulness in the enterprise – enlightenment attained

    For good reason (escalated by the COVID-19 pandemic), enterprises realise they need to ensure employee’s mental wellbeing is taken care of. Also that employees are helped to better take care of themselves. It’s in the enterprise’s interest. Activities geared to supporting them are booming and IT and HR departments are driving them. Mindfulness practice is…

  • Writing skills for remote asynchronous work and how you can master them

    As we’ve moved to remote work, calling and virtual meetings have exploded (see chart below). Much is being done to simulate the advantages of in person meetings to get things done which is useful. But what if that gets abused? Wasted hours in meetings (virtual or physical) has become a trope for good reason. And…

  • Crisis renewal and the future of work

    A brief intro and some sense making on a recent article and book covering the topics in the title. And as the captions states, I continue to explore new ways of communicating or publishing – video mixed with content created on Canva. Experimentation coincidentally also a theme covered in the short video so n00b alert…

  • Features that delight – congratulations Outlook

    I’m not normally one to getting too caught up in features as I have written about many times before. But sometimes they are so delightful and unexpected that, not because they have any intrinsic value, but purely because of the delight they create, they should be celebrated. This is one such feature. Details below.

  • Update on As a Service Trends

    Here is list of recent announcements and posts in the As a Service trend which I am curating in a magazine on Flipboard. Here they are (20 of the most recent) after the jump, in a convenient list of RSS fed posts 💥

  • Customer Success is not about tech or human touch but about the right touch

    By touch I mean the way and frequency of times a customer is touched by representatives of a company, whether by technology (think BOTS, automations, etc.) or a human. I would also argue for less touch as there is a danger of bureaucracy creeping in to this fledgling profession, which comes on top of customer…

  • Content Marketing 2020 – six things that work

    Six of the things that I think work in terms of content marketing in 2020, captured in a DanelDoodle. This list is not exhaustive and the brief points for each are also not set in stone. Below is a brief additional paragraph on each.

  • The supremacy of business outcomes in a low code no code world

    You may know of the new low code / no code approach to developing technology solutions (good primer if not). Simply put, it offers a development platform to users that requires little to no coding capabilities to build applications. There are benefits to this but also challenges which is why its important to consider the…