 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley with another post-tweet jam takeaways. I'm here with David and great to have you. Hey, thanks for having me, Chris. So why don't you introduce yourself real quick? So my name is David Drieber. I am a Microsoft MVP five times on the Office Absence Services category. I started in SharePoint, SharePoint online. I dabble a bit in Power Platform and all the good stuff along there. I'm also a senior manager and enterprise architect with Potivity. And you are based in? I'm based in Crossfield, Alberta, which I know you probably haven't heard of that place. It's just north of Calgary, which I know you have heard of that one. So about 15 minutes from Calgary. Yes, we were talking about previously. It's like I've been meaning to get that part of word. I've flown over, you know, between your Toronto and Ottawa and British Columbia and just it's never made it to the middle of the country there. But I've been talking for years about getting up and seeing the, you know, the activities that happen in that part of the world, a lot of cool stuff. So but let's let's jump into this is an interesting topic. And I know that it's in our sweet spot. So it's, you know, SharePoint and teams and kind of collaboration and knowledge management, kind of everything that's involved in that. But the topic of the tweet jam this month was planning for the hybrid workplace. And, you know, a lot of that kind of stems from, you know, the the article that Satya Didella wrote out on LinkedIn where he's talking about like that work life balance that differs in the paradox between wanting to have flexibility that again, that work life balance. I want to be able to manage my own time. But at the same time, I want to be in it. I want to be constantly in contact with everybody and that's that paradox. Like, how do we do that night? I liken it to like I want to live in that rural life, but I want to be, you know, five minutes away from the box stores and the movie theaters. So basically what I want is I want to live in a house in the middle of Central Park. Yeah. That's what that's what people want. That's the paradox. Yeah. And so anyway, so it was a great discussion. We had a decent turnout, a lot of great interaction there. But let's jump right in with question number one and get your thoughts on this. So what does it mean to adopt a hybrid work operating model? Yeah. And that's that was a great start to the tweet jam. And one of the things that I find when when someone says I want to adopt the hybrid model is they just mean they think I just want to be able to work from home. But it's really is more than that. It's the ability to work from anywhere at any time, whether you're, you know, at the office, whether you're at home, whether you're on a plane, like being able to do that at any time, but also being engaged, know, engaging your people. And that's a big thing right now is being able to engage the people. One of the things I remember from the tweet jam was that Kevin McConnell made a point. He says being able to work in at your office and your home or any place with no issues continuing where you're left off. And that's a big thing, being able to go from one place to the other, one, you know, one location to the other and still continue work and interact with others. You know, I kind of I didn't mention it. I thought about this. And I think I just got sidetracked by the discussion. But I was thinking of some of the parallels, again, around that idea of a hybrid operating model around that and thinking about some of the same things that, you know, we would talk to customers about about digital transformation, saying, look, it's not just about the technology, the tools themselves. It's about realigning people, process and technology. It's it's all of those things. And so hybrid is like obviously to the core piece of hybrid is that where we have people that may be remote, you have people that might be in the office and they might some people might go back and forth between those. But, you know, it's but it's not just like one thing. It's not just I am going to go deploy Microsoft Teams and hey, we're hybrid. We're good. It doesn't work like that. Yeah. No. So this question, too, was what are three business benefits to a hybrid workplace? So I had a couple of things that came to mind and a lot of it, honestly, is, you know, even think about your office space. You if you would fully adopt a hybrid office space, it usually a workplace, it means you're probably not going to have your full team in the office every day. You don't need to worry about that. So I actually see the need to maintain a constant office space for everybody is going to vastly decrease. You still need to have that. But maybe you don't need to maybe you have a rental place. You know, I still think there's going to be some of that. I think one of the biggest things is we've already already realized is you don't need to book your your meetings around the availability of the boardroom. That was that's a huge thing. I know, like even, you know, three or four years ago, if I wanted to have a meeting, it wasn't about getting everybody else available. It was about finding a boardroom. Well, it's years. We used to just go like we would give up on looking for meetings and go meet, you know, not during lunchtime, but in the cafeteria. Yeah, that did that many times, too. So and what I always found, too, was that a hybrid workplace means flexibility and employees love flexibility. And when you have, you know, employees feels like they're being you know, being a catered to a certain extent. You know, it makes a happier employee. Happier employee tends to work a little bit better, more efficiently. And in the end, a hybrid workplace could actually open overall benefit for the organization because you your employees are tend to be a little happier because they see that the businesses are the the managers trying to work with them at the same time. So maybe they'll be a little more efficient and overall the business improves. I think another benefit, too, is especially it really it's so I know with geographically dispersed organizations, you know, finding the right person for the right role. And I think there was a couple of people who made the same comment that said, you know, you don't have to like find the perfect fit that person for that role. But then they're unwilling or unable to move. And then you have to keep looking for that. So it gives more flexibility in the hiring process to find those people. I'm a perfect example. I'm the farthest West employee of a productivity in productivity Canada. And I was hired by my nearest neighbor is in Ottawa. So, you know, I was a perfect example of that. It's good to have a little bit of space, though. So no one's dropping in while you're in your pajamas working there. So I guess it's another benefit, you know, the pants are optional, I guess. But oh, yeah, I have the so I had the stickers for that. Well, there you go. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So that's I mean, I think there's definitely the operating costs can can go down. You're you're not having to pay for that space or and so repurpose a lot of that space. But a lot of flexibility around that. Well, question number three for organizations struggling to transition to a hybrid workplace. Where is the greatest friction and why? So there's a couple of friction points to be honest. I think a lot of times, let's be honest, the pandemic really forced a lot of this on people and organizations, a lot of organizations, they weren't ready. So they didn't have the technology in place. They didn't have the hardware in place to support their users. And that is still an issue today. And you made the point as well, too, you say, you know, I install two teams or install Zoom and again, we're hybrid. That's not the case. People have to know how to use the tools. They don't have to be able to work together. So I think it's not a friction points is a training in the tools that they're getting, but I think the biggest friction point was actually a culture change. Because historically management, they think in order to get the work done, you have to have people butts and seats and at the office. And I think they've quickly learned through this whole pandemic that that isn't necessarily the case. Work is still getting done. Goals are still being met. People are being able to do this all from home. But that's a culture change. And I think I still see things I've heard. A lot of businesses, as soon as they can open up the office, they want to get people back in there. So I still think that that is probably going to be the biggest friction point of this whole hybrid model is culture change. I think another one, too, is just people having to go out and buy the hardware to be able to do that. I mean, obviously not everybody. And we saw this even in education with all the kids that were home for the pandemic. You know, so I grew up in a big family. I was thinking, what a nightmare that would have been. I'm the second oldest of 10 kids. Yeah, when I was a teenager and there was the most kids at home during that period, you know, had we had the technology in the early 80s for a lot of it, it still would have been a struggle to have multiple kids and parents trying to get work done. So those issues. But then there's other stuff. Just buying the cameras and lights and microphones and headsets and and laptops for those that had desktop units in the office, those kinds of things. So it was the hardware dilemma. Well, when I started this whole thing, working remotely and things like that, it wasn't a huge deal. But when it became the only way to do things, my webcam was easily 10, 11 years old and you could not find a webcam anywhere. It was impossible. And so, yeah, so exactly. Even as a perfect example, not having hardware in place. You know, so I've been working from home since the middle of since summer of 2009. OK, so I've been doing this for a while. And the greatest friction that I had was more on the people in the process side is that when you're, you know, and it's it's still a problem, even with everyone remote is getting people to remember that everyone else is remote or when those that go back to the office, hopefully they won't forget that there are people that are dispersed that are out there. And so, you know, they they need to remember that in their interactions. You know, are we including everybody that needs to be included? What is the right way to engage with all those people? But and this goes back to, I think, one of the business benefits. I think regardless of the size of your organization, I think we're we're also going to be more prepared for, you know, globalization of of companies as they expand and grow. So that's definitely a positive as well. Yeah. Oh, definitely. So the next one I was trying to get more specific because I know that we hear a lot about, you know, what we hear a lot about. We we live in meetings. So a lot of work gets done or doesn't get done via meetings. So question four was how can organizations improve the way they hold meetings? And there's there's and this is a great question. And it's probably one of the hardest questions we had today. And the reason being is that there's lots of answers, but it's hard to follow through those answers. I think the biggest thing is for an organization to build and adopt some rules and guidelines around that. And it has to be at the organization. It has to be at the top level because and what I mean is, you know, have, you know, think about things like, you know, don't start a meeting until five minutes after 10 minutes after the hour or something along that line or finish it early, give people time to decompress from the meeting before they have to jump on another meeting. And I'm sure you can attest to this since people have gone hybrid, remote, that sort of thing, because you're not having to add time to get from one meeting room to another, you just jump from one call, jump to the other while call. And what's become a huge thing in the last year, two years, is a concept of meeting fatigue. And and and and users are and well, everyone is just like, I'm so tired of meetings. I can't get anything done. And I think organizations have to develop rules and guidelines around, you know, minimize meetings to like, you know, three or four meetings a day to get some work done. The problem is, wait, again, I said, I didn't say anything. It's easy to adopt and to say what they kind of need to do. You theorists, I don't think it's crazy. Yeah, no, but I but I get it. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's having the concept of less than eight meetings a day is is unheard of. And you know, how do you get any work done? Right. So it's things like that. You encourage techniques to cope with the meeting fatigue, have days, you know, block time off where you can't have meetings in that time frame so you can get some work done or just, you know, decompress things like that. Is there somebody brought up like the suggested and I kind of added onto it during the the tweet jam. Somebody had said, like, you know, enforce having agendas beforehand. And I commented like back in my, you know, PMO days. So back in the mid to late 90s and I carried it forward for for years where like, you don't even hold a meeting if it doesn't have. In fact, there were people who refused to attend a meeting if there's not an agenda. They would just not show up for that if it wasn't that organized. It's just a waste of their time. And I think that is it's it's not a bad policy. Like I don't want to be the guy having to enforce that. But it's it's nice to have that as a best practice and drive that cultural change in an organization to have that up front. Yeah, that's that's that was a great idea. And and I've met people like that too. They won't come to a meeting if there's no agenda. They'll respond. I'm not coming to your meeting. Give me an agenda that I'll come to your meeting. Right. So, you know, it's not a bad idea. Some of the most successful, you know, governance groups that I've run. So again, back in the kind of that era and in operations where where we had that agenda and we had a specific structure to that. And and so based on items that were submitted as part of the process for this regular, this recurring meeting and if there were no items on it early one, we would hold that item until there were more than one. So we had, again, it just became part of the culture, the motion of this governance body to meet that we just didn't want to waste people's time and want to be productive that way. And so there's nothing wrong with getting in, getting stuff done and saying, OK, hey, we had blocked out 45 minutes. We took 10 minutes. We're done. Thank you very much. Go. You know, even to this like today, you know, you say I can give you 15 minutes of your day back. The happiness on people's faces when you say stuff like that, it's unreal. It is. It's a good thing. And of course, there's other ways, too. There's other things that are out there like you have like the whiteboard capability, one of the things that else the other tip that I have in the Microsoft Teams world is I'm a big believer in the default recording of internal meetings so that it's captured so that stream goes through and does the transcription. It's automatically searchable. It's part of your knowledge. So meetings are an important information asset. It's part of the IP that your company creates. I think then there's nothing wrong with turning off the recording, depending on the content of the meeting. But by default, having that there and capturing that record and and letting other people go back and review that, but also making it searchable, I think is is a good best practice. Yeah, and it's not. It depends on the industry. And although some industries that can't do that. But that's not a topic for today. But it's a great idea because, you know, sometimes you can't make the meeting and it's just not possible. But you need to be able to participate having that turned on, being able to back and watch it and then maybe finding feedback after the fact. It's a great way of doing that. You know, you want people that don't show up for meetings to pay attention of what you covered in the meeting. You record it and just tell them it's a cool new podcast and maybe they'll listen to me that one time that you tricked them into listening to your meeting. So question number five. So what are the greatest gaps in technology? So specifically talking about technology when adopting a hybrid work model. So you have to have the technology in place before you can say we're high before you go hybrid, if you're if you're in an organization that provides desktops to your to your to your people, it's not going to work because you can't pack that desktop up in the monitor and take it wherever you want to go. It's just not possible. You need to have this offer in place to you need to have a way to collaborate, whether it's teams and SharePoint or any other tool that we don't want to talk about. You know, yeah, I've heard there are other platforms, other tools that things are out there all vastly lesser than, of course, you know, you know, but that's that's the thing. You need to have all of that in place. And that's what I was finding and actually the adoption of the hybrid and it will always come back to this piece is that when the pandemic started, everyone was scrambling because everyone was told it wasn't a case of the business being told. It was a case of the government telling the business, your people have to work from home while if they don't have those, they don't have the technology, they don't have the laptops, they don't have the webcams, they don't have the mics, it's not it's not going to be it's not going to be possible. If you don't have a Microsoft 365 subscription with teams, are you going to have to go and use something like Zoom or or something, you know, lesser of lesser of the collaboration tools? And so, of course, you know, this is an opinion, but the other thing too is the biggest. I think this is is it's not a technology, but again, it's the culture. And if you don't have if the culture is in a place to support that and and, you know, having the sense of inclusion and everything that you're doing that goes along with the technology, it's just not going to take off. Right. Yeah. I think you know, something else that I'm you know, passionate about, but I just you're thinking about you're the last six months of my job, so I'm back in a company that really believes in the social side of the of the company culture as well. Having so all of our work getting done in teams, for example, that in that structure, you've got the knowledge to capture that with the SharePoint that's in the back end, but we also have our your SharePoint infrastructure. But when we have Yammer and I know there are other tools that are out there and some people utilize teams as also kind of that social interaction. But there's different scenarios for that. But I think the larger the organization, the more important it is to have that place that's just broad and open and more community focused discussions and a lot of activity that's not work or project or customer related specifically, but are about, you know, the health and well being of the employees and our our passions and our like and family and pictures of our pets and and and have those conversations that help balance everything that we're doing and further develop the relationships are increasingly important to the larger the organization, 100 percent. Yeah, because it can be it's it's it's easy to get lost in and feel forgotten in the larger the organization is. So I don't think it's as much a problem. There's 20 of you. You're usually in pretty constant contact across the people. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, happy hours, things like that. Bring bring, you know, not work or just getting together for a virtual drink or something. It's like having an open mic is what do you want to talk about? What's out there? What's going on? What do you consider about some of those conversations? Go back towards work topics. But other times it goes go sideways. Exactly. Nothing wrong with those. Those are the best meetings. Those aren't a lot of fun. Those are the memorable ones. So number six was in a hybrid work model. What are some best practices to ensure inclusivity? So my biggest thing when we're dealing in this sort of a situation, I do a lot of projects day to day and we have members coming in, members being part of these conversations and these meetings and discussions. And I think a big thing when you are dealing with a lot of different people coming and going and things like that, make sure you introduce and introduce them or have them introduce themselves. Get an idea, because now you get that connection, right? So when you're having a meeting, when you're having a hybrid model there, it's not just about connecting, saying your two bits and getting off. It's about being able to connect and work together in this situation. And so if you have a chance to introduce people, introduce yourselves, a big thing here. And I know it's impossible really to mandate, but encourage video calls, turn your video on, let people see your face, let them see your visual cues. Myself, yourself too, Christian, speaking at conferences and things like that, conferences, they moved into a hybrid model that did the virtual things for a while and they're slowly moving back to in-person now. But I thought we could do it and we did. But I didn't like it. I liked being in the room, being able to get the visual cues and things like that. And that's why video calls are so important. And again, it's not possible really to enforce that, but it is to encourage it. I will say a couple of things. I actually kind of sat back on this one, because I was actually looking for some best practice myself beyond those things I talked about. One of the key things here, and this is especially for those of you like those of us in the service industry where we're providing a service to others, is be very cognizant of, John White said this, of time zones. And that's a huge thing. Like right now, what time is it for you right now, Christian? It's six thirty two p.m. Oh, so you're in the same time zone as I am, so that's not a big deal. But most of my people are two hours ahead of me. I'm working a project right now where we actually cross four very different time zones and someone, if you need to have everyone in the call, someone staying up at midnight, like it's just the way it is. You've got to be very cognizant of that. Yeah. So, you know, the things like that, simple things to making sure there's a phone number to call in if you don't have the ability to to connect online. Yeah. Well, this is a again, this goes back to, you know, my earlier comment about, you know, that knowing your stakeholders, so part of the setup, preparing for a meeting, having that that focus out there, part of that is understanding who the stakeholders are, where they're coming from. Especially if you know, you've got like your, let's say you have a and I did this for years, worked with an engineering team in India, worked with architects that were in Toronto and down in Sydney, Australia. Those were fun meetings where I was in Pacific time zone talking with India and Australia and a counterpart that was over in Toronto and trying to find those right times. My meeting started at 10 p.m. The Toronto guy joined not every night, but at 1 a.m. it started for him, just brutal, brutal. But but anyway, you know, so understanding that, but then also recognizing that different people like to contribute in different ways and participate in different ways. Some people will get on and they may have their camera on, but they're just very quiet. And then as soon as the meeting is wrapped up, or they might be adding notes and chatting over on the side is watching that conversation, they may be compile a long email around that. Or they may, you know, have time to kind of absorb that and come back with questions and other comments and things as to provide those kind of different speeds and different methods of communicating together. And just be aware of that as you learn about the styles of those stakeholders in that organization so that everyone feels like they're heard. Yeah. And I realized that we're moving fast sometimes and we need to get things done and we need people to be upfront with their their thoughts. But sometimes it just takes time again for them to think about it and what they want through and then come back and say, you know what? Like I've thought about it, but here's how I would approach this and and giving them that stage, that opportunity to come in and share the feedback. The the other thing I was just going to comment on. I used it as an example. Years ago I was living outside of Sacramento, California. I bought a motorcycle and commuted for a year on that bike and pretty dry out usually clear weather. So it was it was a fine commute, not very far. Just got on the freeway to exits, you know, back off the freeway. So not so bad, usually took back roads and things. The experience I had, it was one year. What ended it was it was parked. Thankfully, I wasn't on it when it was hit by a car. Somebody smashed it pretty good while it was parked overnight. And I went back to a car. But what I found is that having ridden on a bike for a year, how aware I was back as a car driver of all the motorcycles and, you know, talking with other people that rode or still ride and they'd always reflect on that. Like it would be great if everyone was required to go and get certified on a motorcycle as well as as an automobile, how much more aware we would be of motorcycles. I like it. I tell that story because I really hope that, you know, as a best practice that we don't lose what we just learned from this experience, that we don't, you know, people don't go back in the organization and then, which was frustrating for somebody that's worked remotely for over 11 years and discussions, areas, products, activities that I owned, but I would be cut out of the conversation because they forgot to include the person who was three time zones away. Yeah, exactly. You know, and so we just can't forget that. No, that's that's a great thing that that's a great point to bring up. Yeah. So the final question, David, was what are your predictions for the modern workplace in three to five years? That's a hard one because technology is moving so far and being able to allow us to do so much. I actually think that and I think we've talked about this a lot today. We talked a lot about it in the tweet jam as well. I think that the modern workplace isn't going to be just about the technology that allows us to collaborate. It's not going to be about the SharePoints, it's not going to be about the teams. Although a lot of it will be about those because they're the leading products. They are, but they are the tools that get you there. Just being the funny shill. It's all good, man. It's all good to drink too late, right? So, you know, it's about going, you know, it's about being able to be able to to do what you need to do, how you feel comfortable doing it. You know, there's a lot. I work with guys who are fantastic people, the fantastic workers. They don't feel comfortable in an office space. And that's just their own, you know, you put it in front of a mic. You don't even have to have a camera on. We kind of talk about on four snap, but maybe some people use it. You just can't. But they can they can speak eloquently. They can they can work with others. They can collaborate. They just don't feel comfortable in an office sitting. On the other hand, you know, there's people. You know what I miss most about the office is going to get a cup of coffee and looking over a cubicle and having a chat. You know, you can't do that. So he's serendipitous encounters. Yes, exactly. You don't have that. Like literally I have I'm having a meeting with a friend tomorrow. I booked a half hour just so him and I could connect because we just don't have that ability, right? So being able to the modern workplace to me is being able to do just that. If you want to go to the office, you can work in the office. If you don't need to work in the office, you don't have to. You have the tools to allow you to do the work you need to do from wherever you need to do, you have the the processes in place to ensure there's inclusion in all things, going back to your comment, making sure that people are involved in and have their have their say. So I think to me that is where the modern workplace is going. Yeah, it's funny. It's been over a decade now. The whole bring your own device. It's been 15 years. And how difficult it was. And organizations had valid reasons for refusing to allow people to have personal devices that would access work, you know, information and and and and so while that's still something that organizations need to be thoughtful about how they manage that. But there's a lot more flexibility now. And so with the VPN, just software based VPNs, how easy that is to to kind of put the container around the walls, around the guide guide rails around how we work across the various devices of things. Be right. I think one of the comments that I made during the tweet jam was that I think it'll be easier to transition between like we're even seeing this. I love the feature in teams. If you're sitting in a meeting, you're sitting in a recording or something. You're like, hey, you know, the meeting is still going. We're going to go another 20 minutes. But I need to leave because I need to pick up my child from school. You know, and so you can actually transfer it, transfer it to your phone and continue listening in. And then when you get the pick up your child, you get home, transfer it to your home system. And it's, you know, seamless to the rest of the participants of the meetings. I think one of the things that I feel is missing, you get with the special devices that have the cameras that that pick up on depending on who's speaking, the very expensive devices for a conference room. I would love to see that capability. And I think that's part of something that is coming so that all of our cameras, all of our devices for our personal devices will automatically have that capability, so we'll have a more seamless, multi-screen, multi-location experience where the software like teams will be able to recognize if you're sitting in a room there with three other people, that it will just dynamically be pulled between whoever's speaking and pick up on that. So I think that's going to be an important part to make that a more fluid process. You know, the other thing I was thinking about too, as we were chatting here, the one thing is going to be a big change in the modern workplace. Granted, you have worked from home for a long time, but when was the last time you printed something for work? Oh, for work. Yes, for work. Yeah, that's just because I was printing some stuff for my wife yesterday. Yes. I don't remember the last time I printed something work related. Yeah, I actually think this is this is this is the starting of the nails in the coffin for a for a papered office. I think that because most most businesses now have worked for almost two years remotely where they didn't have to go print out a report to sign. You have the digital signing software now. You have all that sort of thing. So I think that's I really think that's a big thing that's going to come in three to five years. You are not going to have paper. It's funny. We've been talking about moving away from paper for over 20 years. Oh, yes. You know, longer than that. I mean, that was again, some of you, if you've worked in I.T., you know, for the last 30 years, they've been talking about that. Yeah, my first effort to go paperless was when I was working for EDS in like nineteen ninety two and I was digitizing a lot of our you know, our engineering documentation for our platforms. That was that was a major project. In fact, what was that it was? Now, forget it was like this HTML based boy would have been cool if I remember the product name. This this anyway. Well, David, really appreciate your time and joining and talking about the discussion today and participating, of course, the Tweet Jam is my pleasure, Christian. Thanks for having me. So it's great. And for those that again, the collab talk, Tweet Jam is almost every month. We've been pretty consistent almost every month since January of 2012. It's been going for a long time. So thanks again to TIGRAF or for an ad point for sponsoring and TIGRAF for providing all the stats and you could find out more and find this video, of course, be out on the cloud talk page out on YouTube, but you can find more on my blog on buckleyplanet.com. Anyway, David, thanks a lot for your time. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you.