microsoft

Future of Work, Sense Making

Effective Meetings and Collaboration at work and Microsoft Teams

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

I’m often frustrated with how meetings are misused and ineffective at work. I know I’m not alone šŸ˜¬

I think a whole lot more thought needs to go into things before a meeting is held and included in that is whether virtual collaboration could do the job in place of a meeting.

At some point a meeting may very well be necessary and even a face to face one at that, which is best for driving certain outcomes at times.

By virtual collaboration by the way, I am also thinking of effective working out loud.

I read a really good article on Harvard Business Review: Do You Really Need to Hold That Meeting? It had a great decision flowchart which you will see in the article.

I decided to take that a little further and extend that into how Microsoft Teams which I am currently using heavily at work (in my work and in supporting customers to use it successfully) can be used. Here is the result below:

Click to view larger image

Not sure I’ve quite nailed it yet. So in the working out loudĀ spirit, if you have any feedback that you think would make this better, please let me have it šŸ™ šŸ˜†

PS: the definition of Hell in the featured image is mine and I’ve created an entry on Urban Dictionary for a laugh – vote for it if you agree (but mostly for some irreverent funšŸ˜œ ). Find the entry from here.

Future of Work

Favourite demos from Microsoft Ready and Inspire 2019

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

Ready is an annual employee focused event run by Microsoft and Inspire is partner focused. We generally run them in July and present some really cool demos and content and so here is some public facing material I can share and my favourites from a bunch.

Notice in the case of theĀ Teams in the Classroom demo, how rich theĀ scenarioĀ is in terms of the technology being put to use to achieve really useful outcomes for the lecturer and students. And don’t let the Classrooms in the title put you off, this shows how Teams can be used to drive learning in any organisation. Its a great example of the approach described in this previous post: Beyond technology adoption ā€“ business scenarios with Microsoft Teams.

And there are some pretty cool adoption hacks in there – more about adoption hacks here and I’m tracking them with this tag.

Future of Work, Sense Making

Thought Rocket: State of Enterprise Collaboration

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

As the title of this post suggests, this is a very quick thought on the state of enterprise collaboration, mostly captured in the form of a DanelDoodle – the one above. Some added thoughts/considerations:

  • In my view, each new phase supplements the last, not replaces and all products and forms of activity still exist and have a place today. But there is a natural, progressive emphasis.
  • There are many other products, I have just highlighted the major ones, no offence to the ones I left out šŸ˜
  • The penetration & value axis is wildly subjective and not intended to be accurate. Also because it conflates two characteristics it will be difficult to judge accurately. It’s just a stab at plotting what’s important.
Customer Success, Future of Work

Beyond Technology Adoption – Business Scenarios with Microsoft Teams

Stephen Danelutti 1 Comment

Microsoft Teams is such an incredible work productivity tool. It doesnā€™t just bring work from other applications into the conversation but the whole tool itself. That plus the ability it offers to structure activitiesĀ into logical workflows provides perfect context for bringing business scenarios to life.

Business scenarios are an important mechanism in beyond adoption to drive business value.

Check out a brief intro and demo I’m using with customers into the use of Teams in the context of an example business scenario (marketing), focusing on getting things done and driving value.

Sense Making

Thought Rocket: The Conversation is the Collaboration

Stephen Danelutti Leave a comment

Workplace chat is something I am heavily focused on at the moment, i.e. my customers use of Microsoft Teams. Either through lack of knowledge or legacy thinking, I’m faced with initial confusion. This quick video aims to tackle that.

I’m trying to emphasise that it’s not about the many things I get asked to address first. After doing a demo, often the immediate questions are around how to structure files and folders, Teams and the different environments themselves, how to organise Teams and Channels, Tabs, etc.

I try get to the essence of a tool like Teams. For me it’s first and foremost about the conversations – in channels or chats. That is where the essence of teamwork and collaboration happen. Get that right and then the structure will flow – that is the right order and based on getting the hard but most impactful stuff done first.

That is the essence I am trying to distil in the short video which is a play on Marshall McLuhan’ famous view on the Medium is the Message. So since this is a thought rocket, a super quick view on things expressed in a short video, doodle or blog post, I’ll leave it at that and for you to make of it what you will.