 Well, hey everybody. So this is the collab talks a post tweet jam interview and today. I'm here with Daryl Webster. Hey Daryl Thanks for taking your Saturday morning because this is unusual for us We're this is the first time we've done a tweet jam on a Friday afternoon because we were aligned with the M365 Chicago event and it was the closing the end note for that and they're on central time so an hour ahead of me But you know, so it's you know, but hopefully you got some a good night's sleep. You weren't oh like a way It's just gone past 1 o'clock here in the afternoon. So Yeah, that's that's a convenient time for me rather than getting up at sort of 3 4 5 in the morning You have joint because we are generally we do our tweet jams at 9 a.m. Pacific Yeah, that is yeah, that's not a good time for you I realize and yet sometimes you're on those so always appreciate I always point that out when you're able to join one of those Tweet jams, but thank you. Well, this is the topic this month was the Microsoft 365 adoption in a post COVID work from home world And I know that so you had some great your tweets are out there. There was a sizable panel of experts and as well We had the you know the live panel the video at the same time going on for the Chicago event But let's just kick things up. Well, why don't you introduce yourself first and then we'll start going through the questions Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, I'm from Auckland, New Zealand. So I am out on the edge of the world And I think like part of the reason why I've joined tweet jams like this and become part of the The virtual community as I am way off in the distance. I'm in Middle Earth. There's some some people say too So I've learned to use tools like this to connect with people and get to know people like Christian and Getting into the tech community and chatting and stuff. I work in The user adoption and change management space for Microsoft 365 and I call myself an adoption architect because it sounds flasher and And yeah, I I enjoy Enabling organizations to make the most of their modern workplace Well, very cool. Well, thanks for joining and again, so we'd love to get your perspective on these So the first question that we posted as we always, you know, it's an hour long. It's always very fast moving And there's you because you're trying to follow via Twitter, you know These side conversations and people make great points. You're trying to comment back and then suddenly the next question is there So seven questions. I used I used to track this time Christian I know that you post these questions early, which is great because it gives us time to think about it Give us a considered response this time I used the save as draft feature for tweets and I stringed a few and then I just had tweet all each time So then I could focus on everyone else's responses and engage with them. It was really good See I and I have all of my so not not so many there's responses Sometimes I do but of course I have all my tweets that are written out in one note And paste them over so I queued them up there because I've got a there's a cadence to the questions that I tried Yeah, there's a little bit of flexibility there But so question one with most organizations forced to quickly move to remote work. What has worked? Well, and where have companies struggled? yeah, the Answer I gave and it's something that I experienced as I was trying to move our own workplace into using Microsoft Teams that Quickly became my focus Get ourselves Ready to help our customers first and the biggest challenge for us was Honestly, not a technical one. It was more about having established lines of communication to to try and coordinate some of the efforts around Working from home and what did we need and what we need to do? and this Strangely enough is is one key need for adoption and change management if you don't have clear lines of communication and people that You respect and you can You receive the message from them then you're you're going to be floundering and that's what we found was our biggest challenge Yeah, and I made this of course. We kind of come back in and out the questions. There's some overlap I made a comment later in the hour But I think it's relevant here Been working from home working remotely for over a decade and and as you know When you have the majority of people that are in a shared office and when you're out in the field They often forget about you something that has So I so I here's the here's the the correlation here So I for a year of my life. I commuted when living in California on a motorcycle When I stopped when I got back to my car and commuted again longer commute I realized how much more aware of motorcycles that I was yeah conscious of and protective of bikes on the road and The same thing I think will happen even if the majority of people go back into that office environment They will become more aware of those people who are remote. I I hope I think that will be the case Yeah, I hope so too. I think that this has also had an effect on the focus of Microsoft's developments in the space for remote work I know that look they create the tech and there are a good portion of their people that do work remotely and work from all sorts of places across the world, but I think by Many people having to work from home That it brought that focus on hey, we've really got to improve our meeting experience here We've really got to try and bring different ways to coach the interaction Raise hand features looking at the breakout rooms coming all those sorts of things about wrapping up meetings So it was really good to see that Be a focus. Yep Well question two was are there Microsoft 365 features that you didn't use prior to COVID that are now go-to tools in your toolbox Yes, yes, look I Had looked briefly at my my analytics and I looked at it and thought yeah, this is okay. This is fine I think maybe because I was working in a smaller organization at the time adopted embrace that I saw its value But I didn't really give it much airtime and I think it was actually Lorian Strant who showed me a bit around how he used Focus time as part of the my my analytics services and he said look up You can use this plan and it can schedule in two hours into your calendar or focus time with all great I'm in the habit of exposing my Subjects and details of my calendar to The whole log actually I don't I don't mind that people see What it is that I have plans so that they can judge whether or not they want to schedule time over the top of it instead I just free busy But focus time allowed me to show hey, this is what I'm going to I'm gonna spend at least two hours On on a task and then what I do and Lorian suggestion again was really good Was you actually put your task alongside that focus time and it's like double scheduling that times You know what you're working on, but here's that protected time And I do find you do have to protect it sometimes people look at it. Yeah, it's just focus time, right? So, you know, no I schedule that for a reason, right? Yeah, it's a I you know I used to have that philosophy as well as it's allow everyone to see what's happening on my calendar Look if you have a doctor's appointment or something you can always go in and make that private You can yeah kind of hide that but I for the same reason It's it's if people are aware, especially if you have direct reports, so they know what you're focused on I think is really important there Especially which I've had people coming in like you're focusing on the wrong thing like this is much more urgent like Oh, you know, you're right Yeah So question number three, so what are the biggest roadblocks to Microsoft 365 at user adoption today? There are there are a few again, I think it is You know what one of the the trends I saw in in Colo talk today was The pace of change the the features that are just being pushed on out there and this this nature that's been built around Oh, it's new. I've got to understand it I've got to use it and You know, therefore you're like well hang on I was just trying to get used to this thing over here and now there's this new thing I think there's still a need for organizations to have One to a body of people that that do evaluate what's new and coming so they can determine where it fits in priority So there is that the pace of change I think there's also still some some gaps and things around security and compliance that some organizations still feel look That's not really going to fit within within our needs and still fit our compliance requirements Yeah, coming across some things where you might make a choice and Settings further up the chain in Azure AD and as it filters down That means that you can't do certain things, but you can do certain things over here But yeah, I'm an adoption standpoint Pace of change. I think because a lot of people are still Working through just what they need to do. I mean look we we live technology and So we we're always looking at change, but it's that's because it's primarily our part of our job Other people have got other things to do and they just tend to Take things on board just gradually slowly don't deliver too much to me or I'm just going to shut you off But I like this in fact I shared one of your tweets Responses to this question with the panel and I said, you know, it really needs to be a Cultural change you need to if you're a manager if you're an organizational leader to let people know that Unless it's their jobs like they're the change management people to keep up on every minute feature iterative change to the platform It's okay to to not be on top of that stuff Focus on the work that needs to be done and on the end work life balance And I think that's something that needs to be repeatedly, you know, again within the culture of your organization These people need to be reminded of that like focus of the work. What are the right tools for you to get your work done and You know and as new features and we've had more time to kind of go through it and think about it And the impact and then let's move that into and adopt that within the organization It's okay to not be on top of every last thing. It's the it's the FOMA. It's the fear of missing out Yeah, yeah, I think it's a it's a real thing and and I mean certainly for us for MVPs I think there's the the FOMA while we may deny it a lot But of course a lot of our jobs are keeping on top of you know, what's happening with the technology But even then I'm okay to let a lot of things pass by and instead rely on my community connections Like your podcast your V-log stuff like I know that hey, I saw that Darrell covered this and Darrell Daniel have this I'm gonna go and I'll catch up with that at the end of the week and I don't need to go and dive into it midweek so You know find those to find those resources that you can tap into and make time for it later during the Exactly during the focus zone I think it's important to to slow down and see where this fits into a relevant scenario Like you can you can pull out 50 different features and say these are 50 tips that I've got for teams and I watch them Okay, because I want to catch up with how people are talking about things and what they think and their viewpoints But so often it's go over here into the product and do this and go over here and do that and it's like well Can we just string things together so that it all makes sense? Because a scenario is gonna stick with me a little tip is gonna be forgotten in an instant, right? Well, there's a There's an opportunity was you know your Tom Duff and I do our productivity tips and they're all just to that point They're all over the place and we've talked about going in and writing Ebooks where we capture of all the tips not gather all of them but say for teams Here's the 50 we've shared in the last 12 months But we'll edit it down to where it makes sense. There's a flow of it We'll categorize that based on those features So I think that there's value add that we can do of course time to put something that together That's the issue we have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Let's see so question number four With so many people foregoing the commute and working where they live. What are your recommendations for ensuring work-life balance? I I like this thought of a virtual commute, right? So, okay, first of all My main goal is scheduling my work and I guess I've done that more often now as As we've shifted into remote work and working from home It gives me focus but I'm also scheduling my availability So if I am going to work from 8 30 to you know 5 30 day, that's great Maybe I've got a chunk of time at some time where I've got to do other things during the day because of family needs whatever You know that happens So it's great to have flexible time, but I do try and schedule Focus time time for tasks and also time to be available for people So that helps me to set some rough boundaries but this virtual commutes thinking and Walking down the hallway and literally trying to put some distance between me and my machine Walking up the the road and and taking a break away from even the building I mean, we're lucky to be able to do that here in New Zealand and You know, just just get out. I know some are still very much about staying inside an icicle But these are important things distance yourself from you take Yeah, I it's it's funny my my kids more than anybody get frustrated with me on the weekends I sent my phone down like I've been trying to text you. I'm like, yeah I've been upstairs in my my off my basement office. My phone is down on my desk It's sitting on its little charger pad right back there and and there it'll it'll sit and unless I'm going somewhere and need it Like and I'll I'll miss, you know miss that Where during the week, you know, somebody can text me and minutes later, I'm able to respond back But that's a very intentional thing and that's where I would add is he be Intentional about the time that you have set up and stick to that that schedule. So what I'm here in the command center I'm present. I'm focused. I'm working but like you and I I'll get up And when I'm upstairs and I I'm I leave this behind. I'll be back after I eat lunch, you know, and I'll come down Manage those channels, right? If you've got if you've got lots of channels open for communication for people to reach you You've got to learn to shut some of those things off or that constant changing of context is going to drive you nuts I I have to say that it's it's really funny when you look at people sharing through social networks You know something like somebody out on a like a Facebook marketplace and you see something similar is every once in a while they're selling something and They'll come in and and see that, you know, 15 minutes ago somebody asked a question about the product and When they didn't get answered five minutes later, they had a desperate message then they a rude message for not responding all within the span of 15 minutes and Had this this person just demanded instant responses to something and you see that more and more and you have to realize that You know, I that a lot of that kind of communication unless we are on the same team or we're working together And I have the presence awareness to know that you're there It's an asynchronous connection and my expectations need to be appropriate for that connection type Definitely Question five with the work from home boom. We've seen more collaboration data in analytics So you're talking about the analytics. How will analytics impact future adoption and management of these platforms? I've been taking a closer look at The productivity score recently, right? I have been using the Microsoft 365 analytics dashboard for a while, but the productivity score It actually makes a lot more sense of that data for me as I look closer at it so I think analytics like this are going to be important for driving those best practice behaviors now a Part of me also thinks okay, that's Microsoft suggested best practice based on foresters research and stuff But you as an org or you as a team or even as an individual have to work at your own best practice, right? But it's a start So looking at analytics like that and saying how often am I connecting with my team or how long am I in meetings and Let's go a bit deeper. How are those meetings being run and are they too long? Do they have an agenda or are we just sort of prattling on and There's very little interaction there because it's more of a broadcast So I think looking at that those sorts of analytics are going to be important from this hybrid and remote work standpoint because we don't have that same connection time or Ability to wander over and and talk to people and see those sorts of interactions happening And I think to your point too is that even with Microsoft's the productivity score It's a cool thing and it does get smarter over time as more data goes through the system And and I think that there's like, you know, the tigraph guys as well And so they have their their analytics package that they do and they also have the ability to look at You know based on the customer data that's running through their dash dashboard in some ways is is You know more granular in certain areas than what Microsoft provides through their their dashboards but it's a you have to Look beyond just the data you have to then have the hard conversations of what does this actually mean? It was this name for our organization even with the productivity score to come back to those recommendations you'd need to then Understand how Microsoft is providing that what the data is saying about that and then what that actually Translates inside your organization about how people are actually working and what to go and do next Yeah Let's see question number six. I like this one Without the promise of cookies and the smell of popcorn to entice participation How can you successfully virtualize adoption efforts for a work-from-home organization? You are you are limited aren't you? I mean you can't really deliver things to people Or maybe maybe if you arrange some kind of online delivery service The Chicago event Apparently they sent coupons or something to they paid for pizza for every And yeah, I thought that that was a smooth move Yeah, I had limited sponsorships, but they had a little bit of funding and they were able to do that for their speakers That was really cool Adoption campaigns, how do we make them more interactive when we've only got this flat screen here available to us and some audio? Like I saw some good suggestions and it reminded me Who was it? I think it was Noah Sparks who reminded me of the the Scavenger scavenger hunts. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, so I know they don't have to feel like that Childish and basic that can actually be quite advanced and really quite Quite amazing but about trying to follow that trail Going through certain activities and doing something getting a result and proving that you've done it remind me of a Youth group thing that I did years ago where we all just given those Throwaway cameras and had to go around all these different places and Auckland's and our cars and yeah take pictures to prove that we've done it So similar sort of thing Yeah, look you can't do food. I think it's it is definitely about providing Mechanism for conversation ongoing conversation. So it's one thing to have you and I meeting And and doing things but people are going to have ideas Feedback questions and answers and that's where I mean my suggestion was about take a fresh look at Yammer if you've been pushing it to the side Because the communities the way that they tie in to a Sharepoint communication site where you're communicating what's happening in this project What is the the campaign that we're trying to run? Where are the learning resources put that all together pull it all together and have a place where people can ask their questions attend live events And keep that conversation going. I think it's really important. Yeah, you know, it's even when we were all in a shared office You know training and education You there was no one way to do that. You had to mix it up and try different things I think having Rotating the responsibility of different people in the organization Sharing what they've learned or what they've done on their project You know how you know highlighting that having you know guest outside speakers come in all things again You can do remotely but be get creative about you know and mix it up with the different types of activities that you do People need the variety need to break up the day We can't just be in an endless series of teams meetings And like I think in a two was offering to try and run a karaoke So right yes I keep seeing all of these Especially like 80s bands getting together and doing these things and I yeah, my thought too is just like, you know You know, maybe if we're all in the same part of the world where we have Solid bandwidth and you can do that and comes out as that otherwise it has to be so tightly edited to make it sound good But have you ever tried to sing happy birthday to a team member on a team school any actually any online call? Hilarious timing is way off Correct. Yeah, I don't I don't know how you do that, but no All right, so the final question does the future of work include a remote first approach What are your predictions of how we will work in the future? That yeah, again, I saw some great responses there and I think one that you you had to was around Floor space and and what that looks like for I think it's gonna change dramatically. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah, look There there will still be roles where you you can't work remotely So they you know people are gonna have to come into their place of work for certain roles but for those who Can work remotely. I think that shifting to that hybrid scenario where it's good to have at least maybe one or two days in the Office that you can connect with people that seems to be working well for our team We set one day where everyone does come in and then there's an optional day around that that you can choose to come in and connect But yeah, I think Remote first. There's a remote first mindset that we need to have and you mentioned it earlier I know adopt and embrace they practice it too. They actually They took it one further So this was you know making sure that even people within the office Joined a meeting from the laptop even though they're in the same meeting room And it was so that we were all in that same experience Headsets on webcams So that we could all have the equal opportunity to interact in the meeting Free-for-all in the room and the poor remote people not being able to get a word in over the conference phone, right? What's why I think that it's you know having gone through this shared experience It's going to make people more sensitive to Those folks that are geographically dispersed. I mean obviously the biggest thing that's missing and and Mark Cashman brought this up in from Microsoft that Made this this comment on the panel for the Chicago event was you know the not having the ability to walk down the hall following a meeting and Discussing some of the announcements what came up Hey, how's this going to impact this thing that we're working on together and and you know have those kind of you know like touch casual conversations go grab lunch and build those personal connections and It it takes more work to do that Yeah in a virtual dance, so we're limited by we're limited by like one audio tech You and I can talk right now and sometimes we cross over the top of each other But there's enough of a signal and a delay or whatever that we can we can manage that soon as you add four five six ten Twenty people in it becomes a one-at-a-time thing So breakout rooms and things like that are going to be important But I do want to see more development around smart audio tech that gives us that opportunity for More people to interact maybe the virtual way of doing what mark was talking about is you plan your meeting to be 45 minutes long You deliver your content and then you say we're going to go into breakout rooms for the last 15 Where you can talk and discuss and react and think about it. Yep I I'm excited to get that feature and play with that as well. Yeah, but it's a you're right You know sometimes in and it gets overwhelming when there's too many people But having the ability to have that crosstalk is important, you know, and and there could be You know side conversations that are going there, you know Somebody made a comment. It wasn't today was a I don't know a it may have been You know a call the last couple days about how they thought that the hand raised feature in teams was gonna be a huge thing It was high demand But this person commented that like hardly anybody uses that feature Well the panel today I started doing that and where I needed to as I was running the tweet jam While the panel was going and it came to that time where I posted the new question and so I raised my hand and Somebody would finish their point They would just naturally just kind of pause for the next person and I would say hey, I had my hand raised Here's the next question to move on to and it kind of made that, you know natural break It just seemed to work But you need to I think discuss that make it part of the etiquette part of the culture of the organization to utilize that but Yeah, no, I agree and you and I were in a meeting. I think it was yesterday similar sort of thing where One or two of us slipped into that role of moderating to say such and such as had their head raised or just just politely Handing it off that I've just had my hand raised. I've had my turn to talk I'm gonna now look through the list and say oh, there's there's another person handing over to That person right Agreed well Darrell really appreciate your time going through. Thanks again for participating today People want to get in touch with you follow you. What are the best ways to find you? I? am Darrell a a s which is Darrell as a service on Twitter You'll find my content now at modern workplace change calm and modern workplace change on YouTube as well Excellent, well, thanks, and we'll hopefully I'll see you next year Alright, hey, we'll talk to you soon. All right by now