Self-improvement
Starting Over? Here’s the Roadmap We’d Follow
In this episode of 'Make Other Successful,' the hosts discuss effective strategies for modernizing workplace collaboration using Microsoft 365. They provide a roadmap for organizations looki...
Starting Over? Here’s the Roadmap We’d Follow
Self-improvement •
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Interactive Transcript
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We've spent years helping teams from small businesses all the way up to
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huge organizations, tackle communication and collaboration challenges inside
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Microsoft 365.
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No matter the size, it seems like we see the same patterns.
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People struggle to make the most of the tools they already have.
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The truth is, most workplaces aren't using M365 the way it was meant to be used.
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So teams stick to old habits and ignore the better tools right in front of them.
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Sometimes they even go out and buy more software just trying to patch the gaps
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creating even more chaos.
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And honestly, it's not the tools that are bad.
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It's that people were never really given a foundation for how to work
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differently with them.
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That's exactly why we built 365 foundations.
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It's a self-paced video course that's designed to reset the way
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employees approach their work inside of Microsoft 365.
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The old way was all about endless email threads,
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siloed knowledge, that to pack meetings, and wasting money on overlapping tools
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that don't actually fix anything.
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The new way helps your team by teaching things like topic-based communication,
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smarter organization of your knowledge and your tasks will help you choose the right tool
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for the right type of work.
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Honestly, when teams rethink how they use Microsoft 365,
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you'll find yourself thinking, how did we work any other way?
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We're both digital and in 365 foundations, we'll teach your team the mindset
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and core approaches every modern workplace needs,
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especially with the Microsoft 365 tools.
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It's the foundation your workplace needs and you can get started today
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over at all.degetal-slash-365.
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We'll see you there.
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Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Make Other Successful,
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a podcast where we share insights, stories, and strategies that help you build
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a better workplace and get more out of your Microsoft subscription.
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My name is Mitch.
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I'm joined by both Matt and Mike today.
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Say hi.
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Hey everybody.
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How are you doing today?
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I'm doing pretty good.
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We've been doing a lot in the studio.
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Mike has been doing it, so we're getting back in at it.
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Yeah, we're back to back meetings today.
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So to top it all off, we're recording a podcast episode all about
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if we were to start fresh and articulate the vision for someone trying to modernize
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their workplace and get from A to B, what that journey looks like and distill it down into
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little steps.
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So this is hopefully one that you can send to someone who's maybe curious about what would
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it look like if I used my Microsoft tools better or where do I start and kind of what
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should I expect over the course of the next, I don't know, a couple of years of improving my
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workplace because it is not a pain pill.
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It's a long, long term lifestyle.
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So we want to start with what are some scenarios?
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What are some times when someone might, like someone who's curious about Microsoft,
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but who are some other folks who might be interested in like this topic?
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Who would this speak to in your mind?
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Yeah, I mean, I'm going to be putting my mind in the context of maybe someone who is a leader
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in an organization, maybe a technical leader, but maybe not.
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And they're joining the organization and they're looking and saying, you know,
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the organization, oh, we have Microsoft 365, but we don't use it really well,
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you know, and they're maybe charged with or are looking to help improve that, right?
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Coming from a not a complete blank slate, but like, hey, we're starting fresh, if you will,
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right? That would be one persona that I think this would talk to.
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Another one would be somebody who's switching from, you know, another vendor,
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another provider and looking to use Microsoft 365 or maybe they weren't using anything before.
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I'm a really small business and I just had one laptop and, you know, another couple things,
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but now I've got multiple employees and I really need to take that to the next level.
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You know, what does that look like for me? So that would be another one.
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Mike, do you have one?
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No, maybe you've been using it for a while. You've got email and some of the basic stuff.
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Maybe you're even using teams a little bit, but now you're ready to really get organized.
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Yeah, that's actually one of the more common ones that I see with leads who come in, where it's not
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like anything's on fire. It's more about we have these tools. We feel like we could use them better.
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And we want to invest in this. Like, we don't want to find ourselves years down the line,
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not having moved this needle. And so we want to focus on it for a little bit.
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Okay. So that kind of illustrates who might be interested in this.
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The journey that we're taking people on is sort of what are the basics? What are the core?
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Like mindset things that people need to adopt. And that needs to be sort of organization-wide.
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And then how does that cascade into the different areas? And how do you push that further
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beyond what we would describe as that foundational stuff?
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Yeah. And some of the things we're going to talk about are going to be very
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end user-focused. Some of it's going to be leadership-focused. Some of it's going to be IT-focused.
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We're going to kind of cover all the bases in here that I think will really do a good job of
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helping someone who is just starting to think about using that, to think about it a little
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differently maybe than what they have in the past.
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Sure. Okay. I'm pulling up our foundation's course page because you probably have heard us
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talk about our course a little bit actually right now. It's like the ad that comes right in front
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of our podcast episodes. So they've probably already heard about it listening to this episode.
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But when we talk about where to start, I do want to sort of scan through some of the topics
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that we talk about in there, briefly touch on them. So we kind of cover what do we view as that?
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Everyone should know these things so that we can talk about what's beyond that easier.
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So just to be really clear, this is the foundation of what everyone, like you're setting the
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perspective of why did we buy this suite of tools? What is it trying to accomplish for us?
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What is it going to do for us? And that's what this kind of covers.
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Yeah. So the first module is all about from knowledge, black holes, to collective brain power.
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So going from a world where you rely on people to translate information between each other.
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And it's a very person-to-person-based organization. And you might have people who are central,
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who have been around for a long time, and you rely on them to be a resource center for people.
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And people go to them for questions, and they rely on them for helping get people unstuck,
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basically. And that person, translating that information, then puts the knowledge into someone
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else's mind. And then it cascades from there, and people spread it through Osmosis. And while that
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is doable, it's feasible, like you can run a business that way. What we promote is the concept of,
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instead of only relying on people connecting with each other in that way, how do you store and
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work on the information in a central way that is organization-based instead of tied to a user,
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so that when knowledge gets created at that user level, it becomes what we call as a
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knowledge-black hole where something gets lost, and your whole organization can't benefit from it.
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And so we try to promote the concept of store in an organizational storage place,
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whether that be SharePoint or Teams and stuff like that. We talk about that all in the course quite
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a bit. But that's the first step of saying, we're feeling pain because all of my people,
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things aren't disparate, people are disconnected. I'm frustrated because the tools aren't helping
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me feel like we're collaborating and being more cohesive, and I want it all to be in one spot.
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And so that concept is the thing that helps start that path. So that's our first module.
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You might hear that and think that feels really fluffy for my people. Like, my people,
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they just need to understand how to use the tools. And we think that's a misconception. That's
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to understand this. You want to talk about that? Yeah, I mean, the reality is that you're spending
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a lot of money on a tool that has lots of components, and as we go through more things in the course,
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there's lots there, but why are you doing it? What can they expect to get out of it?
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Setting that expectation can help them ask the right questions, can help them have the right mindset
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that when they're going through training and looking at these tools, they can start to see and
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paint the picture of how this should work for them. It is really, really important because most
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people, that's the biggest problem they have is that too often they don't get the benefit of what
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we're talking about, the collaborative knowledge, the knowledge repositories getting created,
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just because they don't know that that's what the expectation is.
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Yeah, I think the real thing for me is you're turning something from just a cost or an expense,
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an IT expense into what can actually be an organizational investment.
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Yeah, it's a big mindset shift for sure. So get everybody on that page.
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Module tool is all about translating that into communication. How does that affect how we actually
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have day-to-day communication in our work? So we talk about topic-based communication, or instead
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of talking directly to people, you talk in the context of a topic that is shared amongst people
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who should have access to that topic. We've talked about that before in some other podcasts,
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but that builds upon that organizational knowledge. You want to talk about smart meetings?
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Yeah, smart meetings is the next module, and it's really all about meetings are a huge part
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of businesses. They're a huge part of what people do for work and how they get work done. How do you
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do that in a way that adds value and how do you use these tools to add value? And that's really
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something that we talk a lot about the process and the thought process that you should take into
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meetings. And it really just drives home what you can do in the context of meetings to just make
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them more than just two people, three people in a room having a conversation.
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Yeah, can be as simple as make sure everything's recorded. And use AI well, stuff like that. We
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talk about all of those methods in that. Beyond that, the next one is a chunker. It's a Microsoft
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tool overview. So there's a small level that everyone should understand theoretically about
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each tool. So we go through each one of the tools say, here's how it fits in the suite of tools,
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and here's what you should understand about how they all intertwine and what their main purpose is.
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So that one is a couple hours worth of guidance there. And that helps people know
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when they need to do something at their work, they might have a rolodex then in their brain of,
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oh, I think there's a Microsoft tool that might be able to help me with that.
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Does the tool let it do it? Yeah. The two last modules, one is about project process and people.
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So that talks about the frustration people have when they are trying to use tools that are meant
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for one type of work and not for another type of work. And it causes a lot of pain and questions
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and self doubt of, am I able to do this as a threat tool? And we talk about how each one of those
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are a little bit different. And then last one, do you want to talk about managing every day work?
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Yes. The last one is probably one of the biggest ones we get asked questions about. It's really
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taking Microsoft 365 and saying, okay, I can do email, I can create documents, I can do these things,
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but how do I actually manage work? How do I manage how things are getting done? And so it just
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really talks about some of the various tools that are available to you, how you might approach them,
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how much you how you might think about them, and just getting tasks done. It's exclusively about that.
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Yeah, it's like a glimpse of a day in the life of if you were to use all these tools,
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well, how would it look like? What would it look like? Yeah. So that's like fly by hours were
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the content in just a couple of minutes. What we were trying to illustrate there is those are the
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core tenants that we believe everyone should at least have some concept of and understand in
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order to do the things that we're about to talk about like what is beyond this these foundations?
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What should someone say? Okay, I've done a small amount of training for my people. I might not have
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taught them click this button to do this thing, but where do we go beyond that?
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Yeah, as you said, that part of what we're doing is really just getting everyone all lines. So
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I gave the thing of, you know, I'm a new leader in my organization. I've got a hundred people,
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maybe in my organization. They all may be coming from different backgrounds about how what they use,
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somebody used Gmail on their last job, somebody used, you know, spreadsheets for everything.
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Everybody has their own different background and that course or what you would do if you did that,
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if I did that myself is just resetting and saying everybody's got the same baseline. Everybody's
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got the same understanding of why we're buying these tools, what we expect to get out of them.
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Beyond that, you can go in a lot of different directions, right? One thing before we go too far is
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none of what we talk about in that course is like super private things that we haven't talked about
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before. Like if you're, we're 48 episodes into this podcast, if you've listened to them all,
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you probably get what we're talking about when it's, when we're talking about these things.
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Our goal was to try to package it up into something that was just a couple hours for someone to take.
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But don't expect that we're like keeping a bunch of secrets in that course.
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We try to share it as much as we can.
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Yep. Back to you. Take me on what's beyond foundations.
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There's a lot of different ways you can go when you get, now you've got everybody on the same page
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and they know what's going to be, what's about to be happening. There's a lot of different ways
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you can go one way and it's probably one of the first things that I would do. It's one of the
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first things that we do when we did when we started to grow and started having to have more meetings,
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spend money and effort on creating a great meeting experience.
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Have rooms dedicated to meetings, have technology, so monitors and conference room equipment
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that allows an employee to step in schedule a meeting in a room, walk into that meeting,
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start the meeting with no barriers, turn on meeting recording, and have it transcribed
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very effortlessly. And that's just about meetings. We also talk about doing it for people who are
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at home. We give all of our employees a stipend to go buy a good headset and to put a good mic at
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home. If you have employees that are working remote, working from home, give them the resources to
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have a nice webcam. That can make a huge difference in how work gets done. And it can seem silly
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and it can seem like that's not that big of a deal. All I need is my phone. There's no question,
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you need more. You want to have some level of quality. You don't need to spend a thousand
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dollars per employee or per user trying to make it phenomenal. But you want something nice.
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Yeah, something like that pays off. It's nice for the employee to have that. They might feel
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good about that, but that pays off for the business. It pays off for your customers because they're
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getting better audio quality, better video quality. All of those things are happening. And that
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has not having to ask somebody to repeat themselves or figure out their camera situation or whatever
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that is goes a long way. And even if you're an organization that's focused on in-person meetings,
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you're still going to do a whole bunch that's not. You just cannot get around it. You couldn't
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get around it before COVID and before the pandemic, et cetera. You really can't get around it now.
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Right? You're going to have it. So set up something that's nice.
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Yeah. Let's put some numbers around that because I think people might be wondering if they're small,
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they haven't invested in conference room equipment before stuff like that. What are we talking here?
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I think we spent, we have a Logitech Rally bar with a nice speaker and camera that like
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focuses in on people and then a couple microphones on the table.
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And a big TV. Yeah. And a touch screen on the table that we can use to join the meeting and
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control. I think we spent like seven grand or something like that. Right? So for us.
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But that's the only conference room you have. Right. Right. Yeah. That is the premier conference room.
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So that has, every, that is the space. Right? If I had three or four other conference rooms that were
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smaller, whatever I might do, something a little bit different for some of those. But yeah, I mean,
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that's, I would say seven grand is on the sort of upper. Like if you have a boardroom, a bigger,
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because ours is, I would call it medium size. Yeah. If you have a big boardroom, you're going to spend
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more. Yeah. If you have more of smaller rooms, you'll spend a little less. Right? Right. So I just
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wanted to clarify one thing. You called it the premier conference room. It's actually known as
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Prestige Worldwide. Oh my goodness. I'll throw back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good times, you guys.
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Love talking about that later. Yeah. So seven grand for that, something like that.
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Something like that is probably reasonable. Don't look to us to install your
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camera. No, we're not like that. We, we, we kind of did it ourselves, but kind of had someone help.
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So it was like we, we made it work. Fortunately, we know enough about technology to rig it together.
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And then individual. So if I were to articulate what you should give someone as a stipend for
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like getting their desk set up well, if I'm looking at a webcam and a microphone, it's something like
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200 bucks, 300 bucks. 200 bucks is what I would say. I mean, I think, I think a nice, the cheapest
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you can do is probably a nice headset with a mic, boom, mic kind of thing and a webcam. And I
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think you can do that for 200 bucks ish. Yeah. You can go way higher. Like there's way way fancier ones.
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Yeah. There's way cheaper ones. Some people, you know, like their AirPods or their whatever
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Raycons, whatever with a mic. Some people, you know, I don't really care what I care about is that
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it's quality audio, et cetera. You don't buy AirPods with a Windows computer though. That's,
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that's a mistake. That's a, that's a, that's a recipe for, which, yeah, compatibility.
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If you're interested in what the bulb crew uses, let us know. We'll put that together.
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No, I want people to tell us otherwise we're going to waste much, of course. Yeah.
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Okay. So the physical equipment is, so we talk about digital tools and then bring it back
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into the real world with you kind of actually need some equipment to facilitate this
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yep, beyond a laptop. Usually what's next? What should someone be looking at investing in?
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Yeah. So I mean, the very next thing, like let's say you got your meeting stuff sorted out,
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or maybe at the same time is probably what I would do. You know, then we're talking to teams.
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Like teams is a cornerstone of all of this stuff. You need to get that set up and working and
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doing what you want. I'm not talking about spending a ton of times analyzing and planning and big
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roll out, start following the guidelines, create teams for projects, create teams for groups of
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people that work together, start having them focus on using that stuff. You're going to see a
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transformation in your business by doing such such a thing. You're going to see a drop in direct
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message chats. You're going to see a drop in emails. You're going to see an improvement in people's
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just awareness of what's going on. Collaboration, creativity will go like that. You'll just see that
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stuff happening. I would definitely focus on that as my next main focus from a Microsoft 365
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technology stack. Yeah. One thing you're painting it a little simply of like once you use this tool
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and set it up, you'll experience these benefits. There's a little more nuance than that because there's
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some habits. There's some causing people to work differently than what they're used to working
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that takes some time and effort to get over. I'm just painting it as it's not a snap your
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fingers and it's there. It's something that if they have the right mindset and approach,
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it's start to work on communicating this way. That is what enables a lot of the other teams,
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the parts of teams to work really well. Yeah. Having that mindset that you get out of something
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like the foundation's course and letting that sink in, but then maybe one of the next things would
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be implementing some governance in your environment so that you have that structure,
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so that people aren't tempted to go off the rails and come up with their own mindset.
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So you use some governance and structure to keep people inside between the ditches.
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I was making it kind of simple. It's not something that's going to happen overnight, but I think
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exactly as both of you guys are saying, you need to get people to start using it and to change
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that mindset. Then as you change the mindset, you have to put up guard rails. You have to
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provide some guidance to them about what that is, which kind of leads into the next part that I
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would focus on, which is IT governance. It's not so much that I want my teams, my employees,
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to have a consistent experience and have a quality experience. By locking everything down.
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Mitch, Mitch, Mitch. There's definitely much less to experience once it's all locked down.
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Okay. Now, guys, there's a lot of tools within Microsoft 365 that allow you to protect your
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business and to protect your data, protect your devices that a lot of organizations are not taking
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advantage of either because they aren't at the right licensing level. So some of it is a cost
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thing. Hey, I got to buy more to be able to get this. Some of it is just not understanding.
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Right? People oftentimes will use MSPs to do a lot of those things. MSPs oftentimes just do what
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you tell them to do. And if you don't know to ask them to implement MFA, which is eventually going
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to be a default, you can't get out from it. If you don't tell them to do it, they won't do it. If
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you don't tell them you want conditional access policies to stop somebody in jibbuty from connecting
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to your data, they're not going to set that up. Right? And so spend a little time to understand
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what you want to get out of it from that from that side, the compliance governance security
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end of it and work with your MSP or work with your IT department to maximize that as much as
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you can without impacting people. Right? Like Mitch, I think you're joking. I'm pretty sure you're
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joking because we're not too super- I've been blocked anything down. Anytime I have to integrate
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with any sort of tool in a tenant, I have to put in a request in every time the message is
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something like, please, Lord, take me away because this is miserable to me and I should be able to
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just click this button and integrate it. Everyone in the company should just be able to click
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a button and integrate everything. I think at a high level, the basic thing that people need to
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understand is like, yes, protection is important, risk mitigation is important. And there is a cost
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associated with it. But that is not nearly as exciting as the benefit, the value that you might
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create through standardization and structure and everyone having a consistent quality experience,
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doing things the same way and building that organizational value. And the risk mitigation of
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400 people in your organization at all various levels of IT knowledge and knowing that they're not
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going to get themselves into a bad situation. I know, but nobody likes to think about that. It's not
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exciting. The compliance team is for another podcast. It's just like me here. Nobody goes,
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yeah, I want to spend a million dollars on that. No, but my point is they already spend it. That's
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really off the rails. I think the thing I'm trying to say is something like, it's not that you
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shouldn't do it. That's not what I'm saying. It's that we have to figure out how to get people to
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understand that they're going to spend some money in order to not spend way more money later
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when the worst fear occurs because they didn't. Yeah, and all I'm encouraging anyone to do is to say,
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work with your MSP to find that the low-hanging fruit is easy to do. That way. Why don't you just say that?
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I agree with that. That is what I'm saying. I'm just messing with you. That is what I'm saying.
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Whatever that low-hanging fruit, though, is putting some sort of crazy wild bird in on Mitch.
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Yeah, supposedly. I'm just playing my role in this team. I'm obligated to speak for the common man
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who has been oppressed by I think. I'm just happy to not be on the compliance team. Yeah.
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So anyways, that's enough of that one. That's when it's probably not as exciting to people, but I think
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it's honestly especially for small to mid-sized businesses. It's a huge area that they're lacking.
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We worked for companies where all we're doing is an application integration. We've told them that
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there's a challenge and it's taken them years to get to the point where they go, oh, yeah,
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I probably do want to do something about that. When they could have protected themselves or
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done something different or managed it or standardized to get more value. Wait, yeah.
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You'd be surprised how many times we hear something like a client saying, well, I want to make
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sure my stuff is secure and they don't have something like device-specific policies set up where
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someone from any computer can log into their account. They're like, why would I ever need that?
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I only ever use my computer. Can we set that up? And their IT is like, well, what do you mean?
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I have alerts set up on if someone else logged. And it's like, no, we're trying to prevent something here.
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So let's create those policies and it doesn't have to be super complex. It doesn't have to be
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no extravagant. And the big point that I'm trying to make is Microsoft 365 allows that.
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Yeah. And it's definitely a thing that I would consider, look at, try to utilize, investigate,
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to whatever level you're comfortable with. There's organizations that work with only
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external users and only other, like there's a whole wide gambit. I'm not trying to prescribe that
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you have to do one thing or that just be aware it's there. Look at it. It would be one of the things
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I would look at if I start from scratch for sure. Okay. So let's recap. We went through foundations.
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We talked about what's beyond. And one of those things is physical, IT, physical technology to help
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with meetings and stuff like that. And then you talked about from an IT compliance, you know,
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governance standpoint. What else is there? Yeah. So the next big one, and I think it might be,
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the big remaining one is intranet, SharePoint, communication sites. We've talked about it a lot
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in the past. Once you get everybody collaborating and doing the everyday work regularly,
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the next thing you need to do is be able to communicate about that, about what's going on in the
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organization, how things work in your organization. That is a huge part of what organizations lack in
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being effective in how they do things. And SharePoint is one of the market leading ways to do that.
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Right. It is built into your tool. You can do a lot with it. You can go crazy with it. You can
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just be basic with it. But I would definitely be looking at how to use that and implement that
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across the organization to help promote that communication to an organization. Yeah. And we've
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talked about in previous episodes, like what is an intranet, iterative intranet, stuff like that.
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That stuff is all still relevant and good. I think what you're getting at here is to build on
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that organizational knowledge on top of the everyday work that your people are doing inside of
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teams. How do you abstract and share information with your employees when news happens, when new
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things happen that you want to share and provide updates on and have it feel like a news article,
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right? That you want locked in time. And where do you want to have as a source for all of your
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resources and a place for someone to go to be able to access what they need to do their job
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in intranet can play a big role in that. Yep. And the last thing, very last thing that I would
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definitely and it's new, it's not something I would usually recommend up until very recently,
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this last spring, honestly, I would spend time thinking about what impact AI and Copilot can have
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on your business. There is a free version of Copilot. Your employees can get tremendous value
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by just leveraging that, just the free version. People can get even more value out of the paid
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version, but I would look for specific use cases thinking about that. And then there's the whole
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concept of agent AI and all of that. Like this data that you're building by putting things in
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teams and putting it in SharePoint and having all of these tools that you've just been working towards,
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all of the stuff we've been talking about up until now, now can get unlocked more even more value
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by using AI and Copilot with that data or without that data to just take it to the next level.
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Yeah. Okay. So you're saying there's a scale of like people can get by with free,
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but maybe still have some guidance around how to use those free tools. There might be a subset of
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your users that benefit from the paid version. It's not quite a blanket. Everybody go by the thing
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all the time. And then beyond that, how do you leverage the organizational knowledge in an AI
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context? And if you have everything in someone's one drive, that's not going to get access to that.
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And then the agent will be able to see that. So it's it all plays together and is sort of a happy
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accident that happened to us where we're teaching about get everything central. And now there's
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all certain tools that can. I know what's smart. And we were on this train for me and we knew AI
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was going to take over the world and we've been planning on it for 20 years. AI in his brain. Yeah.
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The takeaway there is don't expect to pay for co-pilot and turn at least on your organizational
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content if it's all locked away in person. Yep. Yep. If you're doing all these things together,
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you're going to see that's that's this is the thing is if you're doing all of these things,
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you're leveraging your subscriptions. Great. Like you're going to find tons of value. There's going to be
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no question about the spend that you're you're doing on these tools and the value that is bringing
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for your organization. Yeah. And I think there's maybe one thing beyond that we could touch on
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which is on the business process side and automation side that speaks to once you have all of these
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core things in place and you're able to communicate well, collaborate well and and be working well
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and you figure out a process that works for you. You can develop intellectual property. You can
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develop ways of working in systems that you can then dial way up using these tools and then your
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business can can take off but it's very difficult to do that without all of the rest of the other
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foundational stuff. Yep. What is that reality that we might paint for them? Well, when I think about
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some of the business process and an app side of it, I often think about scenarios where in any
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industry there's like a specific domain. There are always software tools that help whether it be
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trades or banking or whatever that thing is there are a plethora of brands out there that offer
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software packages that you can buy off the shelf that will do that thing really well. And that's
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an investment that companies often make in that thing and it does what it needs to do. And then as
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time goes on and they start to realize there's these other tools that they might be able to integrate
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they are looking at Microsoft 365 and wondering how they can automate things and connect things to
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those tools that they've purchased. They start to look for other packages that integrate with those
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industry specific software that they've purchased and so they'll get themselves in a situation where
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they're making an evaluation on whether or not to spend extra licensing dollars on another
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software package or some integration tool. And the thing that I like to make people aware of is that
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that's fine but you need to be able to make an evaluation of build versus buy and know that you have
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at your fingertips if you're using these things all the way to their potential. You have the opportunity
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at your fingertips to be able to control your destiny when it comes to integrating with those other
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tools. It's very highly likely that you can integrate on the Microsoft 365 side in the power
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platform with whatever those other software packages are. Most of those things are delivered as
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software as a service. They're cloud based and so they often have endpoints that you can connect with
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and then you can kind of own your own destiny. It depends on what maybe skills you have in house.
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If you don't have the skills in house you could pay somebody to come in and build that for you but
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it can be your own thing and the way that you implement that can be a differentiator for you in
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your business. And then beyond that once you like if you really tap into something and you think
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you have like a magic pill or you can do it better than anybody else you can even consider
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building your own complete package. ERP whatever that might be in the power platform or inside of
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M365 to do that thing for you and then you can even more control your own destiny. Just depends
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on what type of organization you are the capability skill sets that you have but I want people to
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understand that they need to learn about the ability to make that build versus buy decision.
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Yeah I have to listen back to our you build versus buy or like off the shelf versus custom versus
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low code and now that was one of our episodes and that dilemma still exists today. I think what
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you're trying to articulate is there is a relatively low barrier of entry into this low code power
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platform world where you can spend I don't know five figures setting something up that all of
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a sudden automate something that you don't have to jump through five different hoops to do anymore
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and it does it for you. And then there are people that like you said turn that way up and they
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spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on saying this is core to our business. There is nothing that
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I could buy that will do this. I don't want to build it custom and these tools can get me
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as plenty far in the power platform to be able to do the work that we need to do and we've
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seen that before and it's pretty cool but everyone has their own spot that they land on that
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and there's no one. No there's there's not one answer for that question right it depends on who
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you are and what you're doing. Yeah but I think maybe that the most important part is saying
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you enable that question to happen once you have your teams working well together so that you
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can start to lift your head up from day to day work and say how do we capitalize this and make it
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better. Well even just the basics from the foundation's course that tool overview knowing and
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understanding what the capabilities of some of the process automation tools are should plant a seed
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in your brain when you're evaluating those other software packages. Oh hey maybe I could do
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this another way. There's no awareness aspect of yeah it's valuable. Even sitting quiet over there.
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I have a meeting in one minute. Oh my gosh Matt has a meeting you guys that does get us to the end
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of what we're talking about today the topics we're interested to know kind of what you think about
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this maturity this model of what is beyond for someone who is trying to adopt these Microsoft tools
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so we would love your feedback we have a link like I said all that digital slash feedback we'd
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love to know what you think about this episode and yeah I appreciate you guys sitting down
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to chat today. Another good one thank you. Thanks. Hi everybody. See you.
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Hey thanks for tuning in to make others successful. If you enjoyed this episode we'd love to hear
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from you. There's a couple ways you can do that. One we'd love for you to rate our show on your
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Topics Covered
Microsoft 365
communication challenges
collaboration tools
workplace modernization
365 foundations course
topic-based communication
smart meetings
knowledge management
organizational investment
employee training
digital workplace strategies
task management
effective teamwork
IT leadership
small business solutions