The Path to Modern Collaboration

Clearing the Path for Change | Part 3

When I was just shy of 2-years- old, I drove our old red minivan into a tree. My mother had left the car running and parked in our neighbor’s driveway, just stepping out for a quick moment to drop something at their front door. In the minutes she was gone I successfully broke out of my car seat, climbed over three rows, put the car in drive, and drove down the hill into a tree. Before you try to cast blame on my mother, you should know that I also tried to jump off the dresser claiming I was super baby and therefore could obviously fly. So clearly no number of straps were holding this child down. At least not in 1987.

It is needless to say that I carried out a behavior that no mother would want their child repeating. One of our natural instincts when it comes to unwanted behavior is to reason someone out of it. We just need them to understand why it’s not good for them, then they’ll stop. While I’ll be the first to tell you that explaining the why is extremely important, it is only one piece of the puzzle. We also need to consider what we can do to the environment to make these unwanted behaviors harder to achieve, and the desired behaviors easier to achieve.

Over the last thirty years, workers in the car industry had the same idea. The modern car seat has gained safety clips and we even have mirrors and toys designed to keep kids entertained. In the event that those additions still couldn’t subdue my super baby powers, I would have been out of luck when I reached the wheel because modern cars cannot shift into drive without a foot on the break. Not only did they make a two-year-old staying in their seat easier, but they also made driving the car impossible.      

Many IT Project Leaders or Team leaders make the mistake of pointing to the collaboration tool they want everyone to use and expecting the rest to fall into place. What they don't realize is that every "click" required, every action that is outside a person's normal routine, is one more frustration that will send them running back to old habits. In this article, I will outline three key collaboration tips along with steps for adjusting the environment that will help your company and team feel the benefits of the modern workplace*. Let's make those old habits harder to get to and the new desired habits the default option that sits front and center.

Make Communication Visible

A good rule of thumb for modern communication is to start with the widest audience and then work your way down. Will the whole company find this valuable? If so, and assuming it is not private information, applications like Yammer or Company Intranet sites like SharePoint are a great way to keep everyone in the know without cluttering up their inbox with non-urgent information. If it is a better fit for your Team then choose collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, WebEx Teams or Slack. Most of these applications typically include private chat messaging and then group or channel messaging. It can be confusing when to use which and so I recommend reserving "Chat" for short term "projects" or 1:1 personal conversation that will not be valuable in a few months.

The Tool to Use: Microsoft Teams

10 steps to make adoption easier:

1. Create your Team, but don't add anyone yet

2. Create a "Read Me First" tab inside your General Channel and identify how you will communicate in your Team

3. Change the settings in the "General Channel" so only team owners can post announcements

4. Create a tag for key sub-groups like Project Managers so you can effectively utilize @ mentions

5. Create a Channel for anything your team is responsible for (most Teams will have 5-10)

6. Move any documents into the appropriate channels and make important documents, websites, or videos a "Tab" in the channel for easy accessibility

7. Turn on notifications for the channels that matter most to you, so you don't miss anything and turn off notifications for the channels that matter less to you, so you don't get overwhelmed

8. Invite members to the team (by waiting until now, they will immediately see value and structure that will make contributing easier)

9. Set your team up for success by providing a quick training on how you will communicate in Teams. Host the meeting in the General channel and record it.

10. Add the Recording as a Tab in the General channel to give visibility to all future members

Store Your Files in the Cloud

If you were born before the mid-90s, you remember the agony of staying up all night on a term paper only to have your computer freeze and realize you hadn't saved in the last few hours. With the cloud, those horror stories are a thing of the past. By saving your document to a cloud storage like Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint or Google Drive, your file is automatically saved every few seconds. Also, just like online banking, if you have an internet browser and your password you can access your documents from any device. As if that weren't enough, storing files in the cloud also means your entire team can be working together at the same time. Instead of emailing files back and forth with hard-to-read paragraphs of the changes you made, we now can have live conversations and leave comments about specific changes that live with the document.

The Tools to Use: OneDrive, Teams, & SharePoint Communication Sites

10 steps to make adoption easier:

1. If your company hasn't already done it, go to www.office.com, open your OneDrive, and Sync it to your desktop (this will make all your files available from your file explorer)

2. If you have Windows 10, right-click and pin any key applications to your taskbar at the bottom of your screen

3. Next time you create a file, Save it to your OneDrive

4. For files you use often, right click on the taskbar icon for that application and pin it to your jump list for easy access (all the benefits of the cloud with the ease of access you've always experienced on your desktop)

5. When your file is ready for the team to see it, move it to the appropriate channel in Teams for collaboration

6. Enable Track Changes for collaboration or utilize version history if you need to un-do someone's addition

7. If your file reaches permanent status, move it to a SharePoint communication site where it will live

8. If you want to protect files in Teams, the team owner can manage access and change the file to view-only

9. Utilize the search feature in teams to easily find documents no matter which team or channel they are stored in

10. Train your team on all of the above and eliminate the decision paralysis that inevitably will occur with the "which tool when" question

Choose an App to Track Your Tasks

There are plenty of reasons to send someone a chat message during the workday. Asking someone for a status update is not one of them. With applications like Trello, Gira, and Planner, we now can make our progress visible to the whole team and automate reminders for upcoming due dates.

The Tool to Use: Planner

10 steps to make adoption easier:

1. In the General Channel of your team, add a tab and add a Planner Board for visibility

2. Create "Buckets" for each of the things your Team works on (these may reflect the Channels you have, project milestones or company-wide initiatives)

3. Add "Labels" to create a different way to categorize tasks (these may reflect sprint cycles, company values/pillars, or other areas of focus)

4. At the start of the next quarter, review the planner board with your team and create different cards for the tasks you want to accomplish

5. Assign tasks and due dates for each Planner Card

6. Clarify expectations for keeping the cards up to date

7. Utilize checklists and comments inside cards to communicate progress on a task or give visibility into why a task may be delayed

8. Use the "Group by Assigned to" view to make sure one person isn't carrying too much weight

9. Use the Charts view to track progress and catch any delays before it's too late

10. Train your team and then model the behavior you expect

*If you are skeptical on the idea of the modern workplace, check out The Harvard Business Review 2018 Report, "The Workplace Evolution." Here you will find case studies and data that show these collaboration tools are not unnecessary frills but rather business-driven tech investment that result in improved business outcomes such as improved customer satisfaction, increased revenue, business agility and the ability to innovate and act on data.

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