Introduction
I recently gave an online training course on the biggest mistakes when introducing Microsoft 365. What was the trigger? The trigger was that I keep seeing in many of my customer projects that Microsoft 365 often increases complexity in the company rather than reducing it. And you know, when technology is used sensibly, it really causes me physical pain. And my mission is that people first switch on their brains, then technology and then simply use technology. And that’s why I’ve also put my video training here for you to listen to. This means that you now have the opportunity not only to see this topic, but also to hear it once and once 30 minutes on the topic: what is Microsoft 365, what are the biggest mistakes when introducing Microsoft 365 and also when it comes to Teams, how can you do it better and if you want to not only hear the whole thing again when you are at home, but also see it again, then you will of course find the link again in the show notes. I hope you enjoy the topic of being more productive with Microsoft 365.
Lecture
A warm welcome. Today I’d like to talk about why most Microsoft 365 installations reduce rather than increase productivity and how you can do things differently. And my personal experience is that the bottleneck is usually not the IT, but the question of how we approach this topic conceptually. And that’s why I’d like to give you the top ten fails in dealing with 365 today and, of course, give you specific examples of what you can do wrong in teams. And I promise I’ll also show you a few things in the system.
If you have a question, this time you will not have the chance to ask it live, but this short training is pre-recorded for you. This gives you the advantage of being able to watch it several times this week. And I’m on the road all this week except for Friday. And if you have any questions, you will have the opportunity to ask me any questions on Friday. More on that at the end. It’s definitely worth sticking around until the end.
Introduction to Microsoft 365
Yes, what are the advantages? The disadvantages of Microsoft 365? In principle, you almost can’t get around it any more. Because Microsoft is now making the switch. But the nice thing is that with Microsoft 365, you can ideally optimize your entire processes and become less productive. After all, that’s what the Business Experts Pool is all about. And that’s why I’m switching my background image to the Business Express Forum. Because the Business Experts Pool is all about answering your questions. And in addition to the fact that you can now ask me questions live next Friday, there will also be an impulse that you can watch again shortly beforehand and deliberately so that it can be seen live for four dates and not recorded. Otherwise, I know from my own experience that you just watch it at some point. And that sometime is usually never.
The most important mistakes when using Microsoft 365
So what are the most important mistakes? Once here in dealing with three 65? Mistake number 1 is thinking in terms of IT instead of processes. In other words, people always think that this is an IT project and now we just have to install the systems and then the world will get better. My experience is that digitalization rarely makes us more productive, but usually even more inefficient. Let me give you an example. If you empty your letterbox at home when you get home, you will usually open it. You won’t have 2,567 letters flying at you, but you will have emptied it and there will be a handful of letters inside. What you do then is take them out. You wouldn’t necessarily think of pocketing some of the opened letters because you say, “Oh, now I’m going to open some of them again, put them back and bake 2,465 letters back in. I think if your neighbor saw that, he’d ask what kind of weed you’ve been smoking. And that’s a typical example, we introduce digital systems like email and are much less productive than we are in the analog world. And that’s why it’s important to say okay, how can we do it better?
The second mistake, apart from thinking in terms of IT instead of processes, is to say one-to-one implementation of existing processes. Let me give you an example. Years ago, I helped a lighting advertising company to put installation, repair and maintenance forms on paper. And the briefing was to say, please put these forms one-to-one into the iPad. And I can be exhausting sometimes, because I asked for every single field, what are you doing with this field? And that’s a very important issue, that you think about, okay, what information have we perhaps recorded in the past that we no longer need? Maybe we need something additional, but usually we need less than before. In other words, the idea is not to do the processes one-to-one in the same way as before, but to do them differently.
We will see later on the topic of teams that one of the most underestimated potentials in productivity for me is the Planner. Planner is a Kanban system office. I’ve never heard of it, it’s brand new. Toyota invented it in production in the 1950s. So you see, sometimes it’s a good idea to take a look at how people work in production. Because if we worked in production the way we do in the office, we would never finish. Take this classic example. Imagine someone is fitting the front tire on a car on the production line at Audi. There is a colleague on the other side. Then it goes bing and then you jump back into the office and check your email. You run back again, of course you have to run a little further because the car has moved on, it goes Bing again and you run back again. But by the third time at the latest, your colleague would rightly ask you if you have a wheel off. That means thinking about the processes and really considering whether it makes sense to work the way we have done up to now. And if, for example, we have been working with emails up to now, where can we perhaps replace emails?
Yes, and I’ve already mentioned the Planner. One of the biggest mistakes is that you simply add all the hundreds of apps that are available in Microsoft 365 without thinking about it, and then you just dump them on top of the users. And of course there are great applications such as Planner or Forms that can help to replace existing emails, replace existing other planning systems and save a lot of time. But only when they replace something else and not when they come on top of it. And therefore not too much at once and generally not too many apps. A classic example is. There’s SharePoint, there’s Teams, there’s just OneDrive. I have to say, everything is stored in SharePoint. That’s wonderful. But working operationally in SharePoint itself makes little sense for most companies. So for your own organization in OneDrive, for the team organization in Teams. And then it becomes a shoe.
Yes, the fourth mistake is tackling too much at once. In other words, even if I’m a big fan of Forms or Planner, for example, it’s a good idea to first introduce it in stages and then roll it out in project teams and then simply gradually roll out the things that work successfully in small teams throughout the organization. So tackling too much at once is not a good idea.
Next topic number 5 is a lack of change management. Such a project is a change management project. And I always say it so well, change is stupid. No one wants change, no the other way around, we all want change, but we don’t want to change. We only want it if the pain is great enough or the promise is great enough. And that’s why it’s very important to point out pain and, if necessary, intensify it, to point out opportunities and motivate people to do so and, if necessary, to make it very, very clear that, yes, we can discuss many ways, but we can’t discuss the goal that we have in common, namely to become even more productive.
And in many companies, I don’t know about you, the shortage of skilled workers is a major issue. In other words, how can I do more with the same number of staff or fewer? And that can be a great motivation, because I see a lot of employees who always moan and say that we can’t do anything. And then it’s important to simply say, yes, look here, if you work the same way as before, it won’t get any better, because Albert Einstein is said to have once said that the purest form of madness is to always do the same thing and expect different results. And that’s why it’s a classic management task and change management.
Yes, then the next one. Number 6 is the issue of a lack of user support through training and multipliers. In other words, when it comes to Microsoft 365, we assume that, yes, everyone has worked with Outlook before. We know Teams from video conferencing. Yes, there’s a bit more to it, but it’s so self-explanatory. Even an iPad is not self-explanatory. So I’ll say wiping, yes, I don’t necessarily need training for that. But if I want to work productively, then I definitely need more. And I always find that if there is too little support through training and too little support from multipliers, who can always help in daily business in addition to training, then the employees are left alone, then they become creative and either go back to the old ways of working or they simply create new ways of working, which are sometimes productive by chance and more often are not productive.
Then. We have now talked a lot about systems, about leadership. Communication and rules are also very important topics. If these are missing, i.e. if it is not clear what we communicate via email, what we communicate via chat, what we communicate (…), what we communicate via a planner, what we communicate via other channels, then there is confusion and often double communication. And then I often experience in such projects that in addition to 400 emails, there are another 400 chat messages and then it backfires. That doesn’t make things more productive, it makes them less productive.
Next topic number 8 for me is data protection instead of data privacy. I keep hearing people say no, we’re not allowed to work on American systems because of GDPR, to say yes, if you do it consistently, then please don’t work with the internet either, because the internet was invented by the US military as a fail-safe communications network in the context of a nuclear war. And if you believe that the US military closed the backdoor, then you also believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny at the same time. And I don’t have to go that far. I can even say myself, okay, then please don’t work with Outlook either. Yes, Outlook is more or less the industry standard and you can now also fine-tune the issue of teams in terms of compliance. The important thing is to always find a balance between productivity and security. And the bottleneck is often people. I travel a lot on the train, for example, and when I see what the people next to me are working on on their laptops without putting a screen protector on them, then perhaps it sometimes makes more sense to make users aware that they are working with screen protectors, for example, and perhaps to hold back a little on making phone calls in public spaces, rather than nailing down all data access in such a way that you can’t work productively.
So security and data protection is a very important issue. But please don’t just put the crash barriers straight across the road, but to the left and right and then please make them stable. Sometimes I’m even more restrictive than some IT departments.
Yes, then the next big mistake is the lack of integration, the management work. I often experience this when I’m on training courses and I also accompany organizations where we introduce Microsoft 365. I always hand out these paper cards at the end. And where I say so, and these paper cards, please write down the first point that you will implement within the first 24 hours. And when that’s done, again after 24 hours, then do plus, say, yes, great implementation and then the next point. And that’s number one, that you implement things for yourself. The even more important thing is that I always say, especially with in-house, when you have the next regular meeting, then please always take out the cards and see what you have already implemented, what has worked well, where do you still need support? So it belongs in the regular meetings that you don’t just say we’re having a Microsoft 365 meeting once a month, but that you use it in your existing meetings.
Yes, and finally, last but not least, number 9, the issue of a lack of leadership by the Management Board. It’s the same if you, as a board member, stand at the front and say we have to tighten our belts and order a fully equipped S-Class. Then the employee says okay, why should I hold back? And it’s the same when the board members say, well, it’s too complicated for me with the teams, I still have emails, then please don’t expect the employees to do it accordingly. So that’s why I even say that I like to train top-down, that the managers do it first and they don’t have to be the most perfect IT specialists. But they have to set an example by living these systems and the communication rules. To summarize, what are the top ten fails?
- Firstly, think in terms of AT instead of processes.
- One-to-one implementation of existing systems.
- Too many apps.
- Starting too much at once.
- Lack of change management.
- Lack of support for users through training and multipliers.
- Lack of communication rules.
- Species protection or data protection.
- Lack of integration into day-to-day work and
- Lack of leadership by the Management Board.
If you would like to have the whole thing in writing, simply send me an email in reply to this email or to the address t.jekel@jekelteam.de. I will then send you a checklist, and if you have any questions, I promise to answer them at the end.
Next step after we have looked at what are the basic issues when it comes to the top ten mistakes with Microsoft 365. The second question is when we use Teams
Microsoft Teams
teams, it has the potential to significantly optimize the entire collaboration in project or physical teams if used correctly. What are the typical mistakes?
The typical mistakes are point number 1 the inconsistent use of the activity feed and what do I mean by that? And I promised that I would switch to the system. In other words, you can see here that I have my teams here, and when I’m on these teams, you can see that the activity feed is like a kind of inbox. And so you should definitely go into this activity feed once a day. And in combination with this, there are also practical ways of tagging important things. People also tend to forget this – another mistake. This means that if someone wants something from me, I only see it in the activity feed if it is tagged. Tagged with a bracket monkey like this, you know the drill. So it’s important to say please use this activity feed consistently.
Point number 2, you can see one of the biggest cases here, namely the chat. And you can see that this chat is empty next to the system messages, because I always say that before you chat, you should always check whether there is a post somewhere in a team where I have something on this in some form, where I say I can comment accordingly. And that’s what this search is for. It’s a great way to search. And this search is very powerful, by the way. If I go in here with the slash, for example, you can search a lot more here. So using chat instead of posts is not a good idea. Better to have more teams than more chats, by the way.
Yes, then it’s also a typical mistake that people read here in all channels. Of course, it’s nice when something is bold here, then I know okay, there’s actually something new, I can look in here. But that doesn’t mean it’s new to me. And many people always go through all the teams and waste a lot of time. And that’s why it’s all the more important to tag and then go back to the roots and use the activity feed, because it contains everything where you are tagged accordingly. And it’s also a good idea to replace the CC emails there when tagging, because where you might have included people via CC in the past, it’s now a good idea to tag someone.
Yes, the next one. You also have the option in Teams here and it only shows an example. You can store files here. And the basic idea is that I say, if I have my own files, then it’s a good idea to put them in OneDrive. Because OneDrive allows me to keep my files on my PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android device in sync at all times and even take them with me offline. I can do the same on my PC. Unfortunately, what is often forgotten is that the files that you need in Teams are also very consistently packed into Teams. They continue to save them in network drives because, as I often hear, it’s much more convenient. It’s so cumbersome with Teams. If you don’t know this little trick, which I’m going to show you here, there are either three dots or you immediately see the synchronize command. It depends on how big your screen resolution is.
If I now click on Synchronize, you get a short message and then it says, we are now synchronizing this with Drive. And the nice thing is, if you now use OneDrive, excuse me, I sometimes mix things up too, and if I go in here now, you’ll see IHK Reutlingen here. In other words, you see manuals here, for example, and then you see checklists, emails, etc. In other words, you see the same files that you see here in Teams. This means that when I go to manuals, for example, I see checklists, emails, etc. and when I look at them, I see the same thing. And whether you save it on the network drive or whether you save it in Teams, once you have synchronized it here, it makes no difference to you in terms of handling. But it makes a huge difference. And the idea is that you say, everything that’s in Teams, create the structure once in Teams, synchronize once, go to it, and then I still have my own OneDrive up here.
In other words, these are the documents that only I can see. And then you have one or more teams that you have connected here. You can see that I also have a team of customers in front of me, where I then say I have manuals here, for example, which I can copy back and forth in the same way. So to say the fourth mistake is no consistent document storage in teams.
Fifth mistake, not working in blocks. So if you go in here every time there’s a red number, you’ll never get anywhere. Then you’ll never get anywhere, because you’ll go back to the office from the production line every time there’s a red number. That’s why it’s a good idea to go into the three points here, for example, and to be very disciplined about notifications in the settings. And fewer notifications are more. Incidentally, you also know that if I go into Teams here, you can also set the channel correction for each individual channel here. So the important thing is to turn off channel notifications as much as possible. For those where a lot happens. If you have a channel where something only happens once a month, then I would always include a notification. If you say it’s a channel where a lot happens every day, then take it out, because otherwise the whole thing will bing, ring and honk.
I’ll start with Outlook, where you should ideally not always work with all the notifications.
Yes, then there’s also the issue of too many channels. Channels, you see, I have a team here, we have an umbrella conference on the one hand and we have different road shows and we have a general one here. That makes sense here, because we really do have separate events. I have contributions for this, I have files for this and you can also see it here. For example, we have a planner with tasks. And here it’s important that we don’t get mixed up between the seven road shows and the one conference. That makes sense. Otherwise, however, I always say it’s better to ask for one more team than one more channel, because you have contributions, files and you can add things for each channel. You have added posts, files and in this case ToDo here again, you have that here too. This means that if you have too many channels, you always have to search. Please also note that you can of course also add private channels. This means that if you add a new channel, I can always say here, I’ll do that, add channel, it always asks you Should it be one where everyone has access or should it be a private channel? Please be very cautious with these private channels. Because one of the main problems with Teams is that you are still very functionally limited in these private channels. That can change. But at the moment, you can, for example, hold an instant video conference with Teams. But you can’t schedule a video conference. In addition, the whole topic of tagging only works very rudimentarily in the private channels. With this in mind, please hold back a little with the channels and private channels until this becomes more efficient.
Yes, then a typical topic that people like to do very, very much is to say, well, I’ve got mine here too, what I’ve got in here now, for example, I’ll go into the Chamber of Industry and Commerce. For example, I have a notebook here. And a notebook is OneNote, which I can integrate wonderfully here and what is then very popular is to use this notebook to take meeting notes. And I always say to people that it’s perhaps not such a bad idea to hold meetings with customers, because you don’t have a CRM system and can add something here. But for internal meetings, it’s a typical example where things are implemented on a one-to-one basis, i.e. they are noted down, so you have to transfer these things as a task afterwards. And that’s why, for example, when it comes to meetings, I recommend using the planner a lot more. For me, one of the biggest mistakes is not using the planner for meetings. The important thing is to always do it this way, for example, you have a pool of topics here, then you say what the current meeting topics are, what the to-dos are, what is in progress; and the nice thing is that you can also add comments to each point. You can add attachments and at the end you can also say again what questions there are, what has been completed and what has been documented. So it’s a different way of working, but once you’ve got used to it, it’s much more productive. So instead of always having a note that gets longer and longer, you have a board here that everyone in this Jourfix has access to. And you have a board and you can immediately see what is in the topic memory. What’s going on in this meeting. Who is currently doing what, where there is still something to wait, what has been done, what has been documented, i.e. a different type of task. So that’s why I always say, notebook for tasks, not a good idea. Don’t use Planner for meetings. Not a good idea. Don’t use Planner for projects. Also a bad idea. So if I look here, for example, I have an iPad app with the iTempus there and here I communicate with an external person exclusively via a Planner Board. This means that we can always see what is in Milestone 1, Contracted, and what is already Approved. This means that there are a lot of comments here and there, but zero emails. So a typical example of Planner really has the potential to completely replace emails in projects. And you can immediately see what is in which milestone, what is in which status and you can even group them differently. This means that if I’m on a board here, for example, where we’re a team of three, then I have ideas to discuss here, to-dos. And I can then say at any time, for example, that I would like to group it differently, i.e. I can filter it and I can also group it to say, okay, who is responsible for this, without having to redesign such lists. So against this background, I always say that you should ideally just make the most of the opportunities.
And last but not least, you may see that those of you who have known me for a long time know that I have long resisted a microphone that you can see. I hope you can hear here that the sound of this microphone is really, really good. And what is very, very important is that one of the top ten mistakes when it comes to using teams is not using headsets. And now wait a minute, Jekel doesn’t have a headset either. No. But what Jekel does have is, when he’s in meetings, I’ll show you, just a moment, I’ll be right back. Then I have an in-ear here and this in-ear goes into my ear from behind. My wife recently said that people think you have a hearing aid in. No, it’s not a hearing aid, I can hear. And the idea is that when you’re in video conferences, if you hear the sound over the loudspeakers, then you may have already experienced that if someone hears the sound very loudly over the loudspeakers, then you have an audio echo effect. And if you do it in Zoom, Zoom gets rid of it relatively well. The only price you pay for this is that you have a sound quality like a telephone call from 1965. And so, hopefully you realize that my sound is very, very good and you can watch a bad picture for a long time, but you can’t listen to bad sound for long and that’s why you should make sure that the sound is as good as possible. And that doesn’t have to be with an expensive microphone like I do here. It can also be with a Sennheiser PC 7 USB. It’s a USB headset that costs less than €20, has excellent quality and you can simply plug it in via USB. And it’s also important that there is no backlighting. You don’t necessarily have to work with a professional green screen like I do here, but even I don’t have any studio lighting here at the moment, I just have good daylight and have made sure that I don’t have any light behind me. In my opinion, the top ten mistakes made by teams are inconsistent use of the activity feed. So please use the activity feed just like the inbox, chat instead of posts. So please prefer posts and search first to see if there is already something. Thirdly, read everything in Teams instead of strategically tagging it and then seeing it again in your activity filter. Fourthly, no document storage. You use document storage for teams and for physical projects really consistently in Teams. Fifthly, no working in blocks, i.e. constantly jumping back and forth. Take out the notification. Work en bloc and you know, for example, that my emergency channel, which I always communicate to my customers when there is a fire, sends me a text message. Works like a charm.
Yes, another mistake, far too many channels, which then tend to confuse. Better to have more teams and fewer channels, especially because the private channels are also functionally limited. Yes, then using the notebook for meetings or for tasks is always like a one-to-one implementation of a digital process without using the other possibilities. I recommend using the Planner for projects and meetings. And last but not least, please use at least one good headset. Make sure you bring your camera up to eye level, even if you just place it on a salad bowl or a few books. Otherwise your participants will always have the feeling that they are looking down on you when you look at them, this beautiful nose-hair perspective, and unfortunately many people still think of school and not everyone has such good memories of that.
Yes, if you would like to have the points mentioned here again as a summarized checklist, just send an e-mail to t.jekel@jekelteam.de, and I will also put the corresponding links in here again and next Friday I will have the next Q&A session, which means you can ask me, of course on all topics Microsoft 365 and of course also on other topics, so that it means that technology is not annoying, but makes technology more productive. So just click here now so that you can join us next Friday and ask your questions live.
I look forward to seeing you. Yours, Torsten Jakel.
(End of the lecture)
Conclusion
Yes, I hope there was a little something in the presentation for you where, if you are already using Microsoft 365, you think about how you can perhaps use it even more productively or if you are perhaps about to introduce Microsoft 365. You think, okay, how do you do it right?
Yes, if you have a DATEV tax consultancy or if you have a Volks- und Raiffeisenbank, then as a DATEV tax consultancy you already have the option of using Microsoft 365. And if you are a Volks- und Raiffeisenbank, then you are about to. And if you haven’t booked it yet, you are welcome to book the ADG Digitalization Forum in July. I will not only be moderating it in my usual way, but will also be giving a relatively detailed presentation on Microsoft 365 together with my colleagues from Atruvia.
And if you want to introduce Microsoft 365 in your cooperative bank from the second half of 2023, please contact me! As you know, I have already supported many cooperative banks in the productive use of iPads. And the great thing is that Microsoft 365 can also be wonderfully used to exchange notes and files between your bank PC and your iPad. As you can see, where we worked with makeshift solutions in the past, we are now coming full circle.
With this in mind, I look forward to seeing you again next time. And if you would like advice or training on Microsoft 365 in your company, I would be delighted if you simply send me an email to t.jekel@jekelteam.de.
Yours, Thorsten Jekel.
Also available in: Deutsch