 Hey everybody, it's Christian Buckley with another post tweet jam takeaways And gonna do something a little bit different this time this month. This is the 10th anniversary of the collab talk tweet jam So I thought before I jump into the topic of what we did this month and just give you a summary I actually the artwork for this episode has picture of me As well as a photo of me from ten years ago About the time that we started this well, yeah, so any who Why the tweet jam so this has been a question that I know a number of people have asked I am regularly going out kind of canvassing talking to people saying hey you should get involved in this and so that's why there's a Huge number of Regulars as part of every tweet jam because people really enjoy the process But every month there's a handful of new people that are in and of course There's always lurkers people that participate. It is Twitter. It's a conversation. It's open to the community So anybody can get involved, but I just wanted to talk about like what how this started So as some of you may know my from my history, I was working for an ISV in early 2012 That was actually when I earned my Microsoft MVP the first year, which is now you can see the wall. I'm a 10 year MVP but I Wanted to break out of the echo chamber of my immediate community and part of it was I was a SharePoint MVP I was really embedded within that the SharePoint community involved in the creation of migration and administration, you know tools governance tools for the SharePoint space and I wanted to talk about topics around Collaboration and not just have SharePoint people involved I wanted to branch that out and regularly invite people in including competitors to the Microsoft ecosystem because most of our topics While they're on SharePoint related technology. It's part of the conversation Are bigger than that. It's not about the technology. It's about how we're using the technology and what's happening within our organizations It's the small C collaboration discussion So of course didn't invent the concept of tweet jams. They've been going on, you know throughout Twitter Within the Yammer community at that time. There's a lot of question Well, shouldn't you hold this in in Yammer and Yammer communities had created something called Yam jams Which was created as part of Twitter and but we wanted to be open We didn't want to be in a closed network where you had to go and register and sign up for that Process to get into Yammer. We wanted it to be open to the world And so we created that and over the years we fine-tuned the model for this Like how many questions do we ask? How long should it go? You know the types of questions that we that we ask and we've came up with this magic formula that just seems to work It seems to be the right pace. It's very fast when I've removed There's seven questions every time when I've removed a question. It always seems to be slower We tried that a number of times and so we went back to seven So that's what that the tweet jam is. How do you participate? So I have kind of my you know got the questions that we're gonna cover We have a topic for the hour. It's always late in the month at 9 a.m. Pacific always at 9 a.m. Pacific Apologies to the 4 a.m. People in Melbourne who just can't bring themselves to wake up to join Occasionally will have folks from APAC that will jump in But we do have people from all over the rest of the world that do join in and so it's always interesting to see that But at the start of the tweet jam I Kind of launched the announced the topic. I have a bunch of cut and paste You know of different things that I go through kind of guidance on how to participate But essentially is everything that we do via Twitter. I usually have several Twitter pages open So that I can see the live feed everything around the collab talk hashtag And I'm constantly refreshing that page So I see things as well as a page for notifications where people repeat or they ask me questions And then also a folder for direct messages And so that's what I recommend people use back in the old days the Twitter API is actually allowed us to go and There was a Twitter feed API Twitter ended that era There are third-party tools that there's cool things that we could do But we don't have that anymore. You can use Hootsuite or or You know any of the other tools that are out there I don't people use buffer and other tools to kind of manage their their visibility into the conversation But as as I go through I give people an opportunity to introduce themselves And then I post I usually warm up I said here comes question one and then I post q1 question one and post the question with the hashtag and to Respond people put a one answer one and they with the hashtag and then they put their response in there And it's important to always respond with the hashtag that way Everybody who's following the conversation can see that it's in line as in context to the discussion that's happening even if somebody responds to your your Your response to question one and they then don't include the hashtag or don't include the question number if you Respond back answer to them add that in again so we can kind of keep track of everything and we go through that I basically seven or eight minutes for each question over the course of the hour again that seems to be the pace It's very fast It can be very quick to see the conversations that go by and there's no way that any of us can follow Every line of conversation that happens one of our sponsors is tigraph. They provide tool set It's all in power bi so at the end of every session You can go in and on the last tab of the power bi dashboard is Every single tweet over that course of that hour Using the collab talk hashtag you can go through in order and review every response So I always spend some time over the course of the rest of the day. I'm looking back through the responses Finding gems seeing what the side conversations were some of the jokes the memes What happens if we have a really active tweet jam? We tend to trend nationally on Twitter and you start to see the bots pick it up You see the advertisers jump in utilize the hashtag and promoting things in there Which is always fun to see but the output of this. Why do I do this? Why have I been doing it for ten years? it's because one of the Kind of the the reasons for starting it in the first place as I mentioned was to To break out of the echo chamber of the people that I was working with day in and day out and get other ideas I wanted to validate ideas. I wanted to hear other opinions get other perspectives I don't think any topic that I've done for ten years There's there's always Some response from someone within the community that I never thought of And so it's great to have that perspective as a content generator I get ideas for videos and blog posts. I push ideas to my teams I also see based on the responses I reach out to people say hey, would you like to do a video or would you like to do a guest blog post or Hey, would you like to collaborate a night on an idea around this? and so I'm sharing that information and Strengthening the relationships that I have out in the community and building new relationships and so extending that social network It's also just a great way because people provide links to other articles to other to books and white papers and research And companies that are out there and so that's fantastic to get those resources as well And I guess the the number one idea a benefit of participating Is it allows me to share my ideas and expand on those things so again as a content creator I'm looking for validation of some of my ideas get some refining ideas in there But then to be able to go and five an idea around an article or a new session that I want to give it a conference And so it's a great way for me to kind of break the ice and get that initial feedback So that's why I started that that's what the how you participate the tweet jam again It's wide open to anyone so if you ever see a tweet jam topic if I'm talking about it If you're able to join just mark it on your calendar Let reach out to me and say hey, this is something I'm an expert in or I'm passionate about I'd love to participate I'm happy to add you add to add new names to the panel. So just reach out to me and connect So for this month for the 10th anniversary we Discussed the topic of objectives key results and the employee experience And so that of course I we dig a little bit into the questions. I'll go through here in a second But cover Microsoft's recent acquisition of ally.io, which is an okr or objectives key results Technology company and they're adding that solution into their Microsoft Viva platform, which is part of their broader Employee experience Effort, you know that initiative so exp of course it's not a Microsoft thing It's a focus on your end users on employees and making sure that their end to end experience and whatever it is that that You know, they're they're doing over the course of their day that we're thinking about that ISVs that solution providers like Microsoft like my company have point are thinking about that end to end you know end user experience and Whether we're providing the end-to-end experience or just a piece of that experience that we understand The what the customer needs is the end-to-end and so even if we're just a little piece of that experience We need to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to make that end-to-end experience exactly what the customer needs and to work with all of the other players that in that continuum that are part of that experience and Looking at not just what people are doing. So the technology that they they purchase a piece of software They're out there utilizing the capabilities. That's not just what it's about But it's whether they're being productive whether they're being efficient whether they're happy Are they getting burned out in this activity? And so what can we do to? To have longevity in the solutions that we provide as well. So I know there's a lot more to it than that I'm just trying to provide kind of a synopsis, but that's what the employee experience exp is and Having shared objectives shared goals shared outcomes as part of your organizational planning is something that in my experience a lot of Organizations fail at I started my career early on I spent a number of years about a third of my career in the project portfolio management space so Task management task tracking project planning all those kinds of things the portfolio view would be Multiple projects and having kind of a global view of time and people and resource management kind of all those components Did that for a number of years and what my my path into? Collaboration into knowledge management space into the SharePoint world and and now the Microsoft 365 ecosystem Was through project and portfolio management in fact my first? Microsoft deployment technology deployment. I'd use the office apps and things before But my first deployment was actually project server back in 2004 2005 And with that an early version a free version of SharePoint and a year year and a half later I was working at Microsoft in what is now part of Office 365. So I kind of caught the bug I caught the vision of what it could be although my project server experience wasn't that great But even then a big part of that project portfolio management was it's a key to success of a lot of those solutions Were those that had like an okr component the ability for at the top level a company to come in and say Hey, here are three Pillars of what we're trying to accomplish this year to move forward These are three big items that we're focusing on for the fiscal year for our company Then the next level down is each business unit needs to be able to say well Here's the five things we need to do and all five of these Drive towards achieving that top three and then you have the team level down to the individual level the idea is that we have a shared understanding of What is it that we're trying to accomplish as a company and that I as an individual Understand how the tasks that I'm doing on a daily weekly monthly quarterly annual basis Drive towards all the way up to those top line Goals or objectives the desired outcomes as a company So having tooling to do that and that's the the project portfolio management side that I that I worked on But even then a missing piece of a lot of that that technology was the actual the the Objectives the the results the outcomes and so it's just a different way of thinking and planning and making sure that people are on the same page and we're working towards the same goals and and Because we have that shared understanding those shared goals and they're measurable They're traceable through the organization then we can measure those things and know well how close are we do achieving our Goals, what are our stretch goals? How do we go above and beyond what those goals are so that's that's this space? I'm very excited that Microsoft is it's been I think a gap in Microsoft's technology And so I'm excited to see them do that. I'd love them to fix some of the problems This is a longer discussion around their project management software We can have a discussion about that Microsoft would call me we can talk about that But I'm hopeful that there's movement in task management. I'm just not seeing it yet, unfortunately But back to the focus of this okay ours So here's the questions that we discuss and I'll just I'll run through these very quickly and share some of my thoughts and just wrap This up and you can always go on Twitter and do a search on the collab talk hashtag and just over The it was it was January 25th was the event date and you can search you can find all of this as well As I'll have a link to the tigraph stats so you can go into power bi and you can go see every single tweet That was sent out and all of the sentiment analysis and other information of who participated I think we had 31 31 active tweeters Hit for this discussion. So just a lot of great content as within that so the first one So what are your key employment experience goals for 2022 and beyond I can tell you organizationally ours is to So we were actually moving forward with we're looking at ally.io Prior to Microsoft acquiring them So that is actually something that's on our calendar year plans as a company is to deploy that start using that and so that We can have better alignment by team by business unit and all the way up roll up to the top levels of the organization So a key part of our experience is to do a better job of getting Everybody on the same page so that we know as individuals What we're working on how that impacts what the business is trying to achieve which I think is just so important Especially having just gone public last year. We have huge growth plans Our revenues is growing the number of products that we're releasing is growing We're moving into new areas and so it's important that we're all on the same page The second question we discuss is what is your company's internal management approach or culture for goal-setting? objectives intact the task execution So I'd say we're it's kind of a mixed bag. I'll be honest, you know without getting into detail around it There is now we're a very flat Organization a lot of the ownership the responsibility falls on the individuals We try to hire the smartest people possible And so we expect them to own and go and drive and shape their own career To ask for help when they need it those kinds of things But I do see and while we do a great job of communication Especially during the pandemic. We're constantly, you know meetings when there need to be but a lot of just one-on-one Conversations a lot of chat that's happening people aren't shy And so they reach out and connect but we are lacking in that Clear-cut top level down to each business unit down to each Organization to the team level to the individuals and it'll be great to have that kind of structure that kind of alignment so we'll have very clear areas of what we own and When we go above and beyond it'll be easier as an individual contributor It's easier for you to go and show that you're going above and beyond when everything is clearly defined Because if there's no definition of success How do you know you've succeeded if there's no definition of success of what we're trying to achieve? How can you go above and beyond? There's no measurement. You're always just claim that it's it's a project management term called scope creep That happens when you have no definition it gets defined for you So three so that's that's kind of the culture. So it's just kind of open people talk But we could use more structure Three how does your organization connect the work that people do every day to broader company? Objectives and outcomes that I said it's it's meeting culture We do have I mean we we do a good job of on part of our monthly Discussions company-wide town halls of here's what's going on. Here's what's changing Here's what we need to focus on and the leadership the VPs the GM's and the directors do a good job of Translating that down to the teams, but as we get bigger. We're close to 2,000 employees I mean, it's gonna be untenable to to do just that method We have to have it documented there needs to be some level automation in place It's easier when you're a small organization But you know kind of a management 101. I mean the the the most effective team size is a manager with five direct reports I don't know where I read that. That's that's my MBA speaking But I know in my own experience when I had five to eight employees I was the more most effective when I had more employees. I've managed up to 40 50 people directly That was very difficult to go and do needed to put some structure in In place around that, but you know, so how can you? Understand all of the tasks all of the objectives all the desired outcomes of every one of those employees The more people you have the more complex that it gets so We're doing everything via chat. We've got plans. We've used some planner some other task management I've never seen a Gantt chart any kind of formal project management tools to that degree It a lot of PowerPoint But it's just through Through those discussions like I know what my individual commitments are I talk with my manager We've agreed to that and so every time we meet. I'm basically running through here's my high-level commitments So in some ways, I'm essentially doing what the technology Can't provide. We're just going to get better at it Number four was how do you work within or change a company culture that is task focused instead of objective focused? You know, there were Number of people whose respond to the sayings like is that is it either or can't we be both of those things? Yeah, no It's not meant to be a lot of the questions that I the way I pose them is I I want them to be open Sometimes I want them to be like people that question the question itself and have discussion around that It's up to interpretation around what that means one way of looking at this are some people are just so focused on You know like task-driven they kind of lose sight of you know, the of the forest They you know, what is it you the who's the forest for the trees? You know, anyway, there's a saying that's out There's a mark, but you know, we're so Focused down on our work that we lose the perspective And sometimes it's great to have the perspective, but it never translates into The the the tasks of what people actually do you would need to have both of those things You need to have the high-level objectives, but you need to have the day-to-day tasks people Not that I'm a I'm not a believer in the ticket-taking approach to to most things people should have I'm much more of a here's what I need you to go and do. Here's the time frame for that Here's the success metrics It's up to you on how you go and do that whether you're working at your desk Whether you're working from a table in the cafeteria surrounded by people you're working from a hot desk in the middle of other support org or you're working from home in this this era, you know, it's irrelevant if You're achieving the goals if you're if we're getting the desired outcomes as the company So a big part of this is looking at you know our how much are we focused on the tasks? Are we losing sight of the goals or vice versa and make sure that it's a balance of those things? How do you work within your organization to change the culture around that? One of the things I talked about I've experienced at three companies now where I've done stood up like a daily scrum And again, this is something where as me as a people manager with a small team It's difficult to do with a larger organization and be effective, but for smaller working teams is to To do this on a regular basis, especially if you're in a fast-paced environment a lot of changes constant barrage of Customers you're coming in with new requests and you're constantly having to reprioritize things Here this you can tell I that I've worked in operations organizations support organizations when in IT project management Type organizations where there's constantly those requests coming in with a limited number of personnel of engineers and project managers and Analysts to be able to go and solve these issues. You're constantly prioritizing based on who's asking them for the request What's the urgency of this project? What's the dollar of value that's attached to it and you are then applying resources to these things based on those priorities and so you you need to You need to have communication open communication. You need to be clear on the process when I did the daily scrums So I did this at well get a couple companies One just before I joined Microsoft I did it again when I was at Microsoft where I did I instituted daily Standing meetings were literally stood in the hall. I did it both locations I installed a whiteboard on the wall in a central area and said it's mandatory people must be there in the morning it wasn't meant to be a permanent thing, but it was an opportunity for us to get together and Restate here's what we're working towards. Here's the high priority things. Here's all the new requests that have come in let's talk about the the prioritization of these new requests these status of the existing requests and the consistency of having that discussion it developed the team culture and then spread out to our Customer groups who could see and they built it built trust into our process They knew that when they were asking us for help on things that we went through this process We reviewed it we considered it when we came back with our ETA of delivering the results that we would you know that was based on Everything else that's going on out there with all of our priorities and we were thoughtful about that process So we built trust within that process So that's what has to happen to make change happen you have to be clear on what the goals what the objectives are have a process communicate that and then be consistent in sticking to that process and And keeping it open so people would were very understanding when they would come in and would ask for You know, I need this this is a huge priority and we'd look it and say well look It's a lesser priority than the ones that we have in but you're the next on the list and as soon as we deliver on these others and we'll put personnel on this one or Standard project management we could if you had more funds We could take action if you have personnel you can give us we can move forward on it Nope can't do either of those things are like all right Well, then that's the priority around that we built trust in that where people understood it even if they weren't happy with the Answer they knew that it was thoughtful that we you know that we took into consideration Kind of all those different things that if there was a reason why the ETA given was you know Something that was reasonable if people are involved in the process that they understand the process They are more likely to support the process if it's a black box if they don't understand the reason the thinking of why you push their Their request down in priority priority then they're going to push back. They're going to complain or more likely they will go around you Number five was how does or would an okay our objectives and key results solution fit into your employee experience plans? So I've talked about it fits into ours because it's just the next step We're moving so quickly We're growing that we need to make sure that everybody is working on the same page that we're driving Towards the same Objectives the same goals and so that's something where I think even if you're an organization with 10 people You can still benefit from this strategy. I Would argue you may not need to go buy a tool or look at some of the free options that are out there But if you as you start to get more automated to be able to have the links to the project that to the task Activities as well. So you have the high-level objectives down to the day-to-day tasks that need to be done I've made all the assignments and have people report back and track their activity Tools are great for that. That's the things that they can do well So it fits into our employee experience plans because we understand that we need to have tighter management of Those plans and the outcomes that are progress against them. So we're just at that stage Naturally Number six does Microsoft's acquisition of okay our solution provider ally to IO alter your plans around Microsoft Viva No, well for us. I mean we're in the Microsoft ecosystem. That's the primary partner that we work with Although we work with Google and Salesforce and other clouds but Microsoft is our number one and We're doing more and more around Viva. We have ideas for other products. We have other solutions We have things that we do that support Microsoft Viva and Ally just fits right into that. So we're going to be using it as a customer And then you know, we can't use a solution out of the Microsoft ecosystem Without then also looking at it from a partner perspective of what can we do to improve this and for our customers? What else can we do? Are there other gaps that we can fill because that's what we do We're product people and then the last question is what feedback would you give Microsoft on their employee experience strategy so far? Well Now I think you could dive into each of the pillars the existing pillars And there is probably some feedback around each of those areas I think overall and I'm Microsoft is is Moving forward on this strategy at the right time. I think just where we are in the market You know, hopefully not too much longer But here in the era of the pandemic where organizations are looking at you know employee burnout and they're looking at it's not just Hey, are we productive? Are we efficient in the work that we're doing? But we're having a high level burnout Are people feeling like they're getting the most out of you know, they're experience are they is their balance in their lives And so having these different solutions that allow organizations to get a better overall sense of the health and well-being productivity and effectiveness of their employees Will lead to a healthier relationship between employee and employer and that's a good thing so I'd say Microsoft can probably do a better job around the overall packaging of You know the the story around Viva, I think there's a lot more that can be done there But it's just where we are it's still kind of early and it's it's it's still a new thing some of the feedback that was given I know that Probably the strongest level of displeasure with the Microsoft Viva is the licensing issues I Think most people would love to see all the capabilities Available through the most mainstream licenses like the e3 e5 licenses not having to go and pay Additional for premium services for a lot of this capability The only thing I would say about that is that like fast search is a great example of that where initially it was You know a side solution you paid extra then it was a premium service is more integrated But you still paid for and now you have while there are still search solutions You can go above and beyond the majority of the technology has been integrated into SharePoint search and that is is there so I think just over time That's gonna constantly change and evolve But people would love to see that with something as powerful as this and what Viva could be That it was more of an integrated license that was just tacked on to the solutions that we already have today so that's kind of my takeaways from The the tweet jam this month Once again, if you'd like to get involved just follow me on Twitter at at Buckley Planet You can check out the videos the summaries of past the past ten years of the tweet jams You can find it out on my blog and on buckleyplanet.com and Whenever you see a topic if it's of interest reach out to me and connect everybody's invited so with that Thanks for watching and Have a great rest of your month. Oh, yeah. Oh, and we're back by the way February 22nd 2022 will be the next collab talk tweet jam. So 9 a.m. Pacific on February 22nd. See you there