The Future Of Collaboration Needs Your Help

Editor's Notes

1. New technologies are changing the way people work with each other, their organization’s partners, and their customers. Employee expectations have grown and are being met by innovation that delivers greater accessibility, lower costs, and faster results. The catch? Organizations and employees need to understand, adopt, and use these technologies or risk being outpaced by new competitors or changes in the marketplace.Join Richard Harbridge in an insightful discussion as he explores why collaboration can be challenging in organizations today, what we can do about it together. ROOM 6  Fri 6:00 PM
2. Richard Harbridge is the Chief Technology Officer and an owner at 2toLead. Richard works as a trusted advisor with hundreds of organizations, helping them understand their current needs, their Soon needs, and what actions they should take in order to grow and achieve their bold ambitions.   Richard remains hands on in his work and has led, architected, and implemented hundreds of business and technology solutions that have helped organizations transform both digitally and organizationally. Richard has a passion for helping organizations achieve more; whether it is helping an organization build beautiful websites to support great content and social strategy, or helping an organization leverage emerging cloud and mobile technology to better service their members or the communities that they serve.   Richard is an author and an internationally recognized expert in Microsoft technology, marketing and professional services. As a sought-after speaker, Richard has often had the opportunity to share his insights, experiences, and advice around branding, partner management, social networking, collaboration, ROI,  technology/process adoption, and business development at numerous industry events in around the globe. When not speaking at industry events, Richard works with Microsoft, partners, and customers as an advisor around business and technology, and serves on multiple committees, leads user groups, and is a Board Member of the Microsoft Community Leadership Board.
3. Think about your own definition of a mobile worker. A 2015 study by Nicholas Bloom and coauthors found that when employees opted in to WFH policies, their productivity increased by 13%. When, nine months later, the same workers were given a choice between remaining at home and returning to the office, those who chose the former saw even further improvements: They were 22% more productive than they had been before the experiment. This suggests that people should probably determine for themselves the situation (home or office) that fits them best. Leaders at GitLab, too, pointed to employee retention as a positive outcome of the company’s decision to be all-remote. The net benefit, they believe, including the productivity increases and property cost savings they’ve seen, equals $18,000 a year for each worker.
4. There are lots of companies and employees that think that flexible working is already here. And in some cases this is true. In many cases, however, all people hear is “working from home”. While this is obviously a key component of what flexible working offers, this simplistic understanding actually misses the point and belittles the true potential of an authentically flexible approach. At its core, genuine flexible working just means being thoughtful about the tasks you have to achieve each day and choosing the most appropriate location from which to accomplish them. This is where the transformation happens, where work no longer is defined by a specific location, but instead is simply an activity, something you do. Flexible working is about being able to be effective regardless of your location; whether that’s at home, in the airport, on the train, in a café, or at a specially designed drop-in office. It’s also about being effective because of your location. It is about being liberated by the cloud services and devices now available, not being constrained by it. You might need to be closer to customers; or you might need space for deep thinking. Flexible working lets you accomplish either with minimal fuss. It is most definitely not an employee perk or HR arrangement made for individuals based on their personal preferences or situation. Organisations that adopt this strategic approach to flexible working will stand a greater chance of success not just because they have changed their culture and objectives to ones that unlock and reward the natural entrepreneurialism of their employees. They will also have addressed the key issue of trust. By focusing on the outcome for the organisation rather than the individual the entire trust dynamic changes, liberating employees and their creativity. Study: conducted by FlexJobs and Mental Health America 40% of people report work disrupting personal/family time at least weekly - Based on a study of US knowledge workers conducted online, PSB Research, commissioned by Microsoft, 1,400 participants, April 2018; actual percent at +/-3% at 95% confidence level.
5. Our world is rapidly changing – History is the best teacher, so let’s start with this striking picture. This is the convocation of Pope Francis in 2013. [CLICK SLIDE] Here is what Pope Benedict experienced in 2005 No iPads, smartphones w/42 megapixel cameras, or HD videos. [CLICK SLIDE] There is only one cell phone being used to capture the moment – and it doesn’t look modern to us anymore. Yammer Android – 5M+ Downloads SharePoint Android – 1M+ Downloads OneDrive – 1B+ Downloads Office – 100M+ Downloads Outlook – 100M+ Downloads
6. Sixty percent of employees report working with 10 or more people on a day-to-day basis (and one-half of these employees report needing to work with more than 20). The  Corporate  Executive  Board,  “Breakthrough  Performance  in  the  New  Work  Environment,”   http://www.executiveboard.com/exbd-resources/pdf/executive-guidance/eg2013-annual-final.pdf
7. People spend 80% of their time collaborating - https://hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload  44% of meeting time seen as unproductive - Based on a study of US knowledge workers conducted online, PSB Research, commissioned by Microsoft, 1,400 participants, April 2018; actual percent at +/-3% at 95% confidence level.
8. For example, experts on deep work report that setting aside regular blocks of time to focus on challenging work can have massive benefits. However, only 32% of knowledge workers set aside time daily for deep, focused work (This finding is based on a study of US information workers conducted online with 1,400 participants in April 2018 by PSB Research, commissioned by Microsoft). At work, people average 40 seconds on a computer screen before switching - Gloria Mark, Shamsi T Iqbal, Mary Czerwinski, Paul Johns, and Akane Sano. 2016.Neurotics can’t focus: An in situ study of online multitasking in the workplace. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems. ACM, 1739–1744. When interrupted, an information worker can take about 25 minutes and a half minutes to get back to their original task – Gloria Mark Center for Humane Technology | Your Undivided Attention Podcast http://humanetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CHT-Undivided-Attention-Podcast-Ep.7-Pardon-the-Interruptions.pdf
9. 42% of IWs rarely meet new people at their company; when they do meet new people, it’s most often through a formal or informal company event - Based on a study of US knowledge workers conducted online, PSB Research, commissioned by Microsoft, 1,400 participants, April 2018; actual percent at +/-3% at 95% confidence level.
10. 42% of IWs rarely meet new people at their company; when they do meet new people, it’s most often through a formal or informal company event - Based on a study of US knowledge workers conducted online, PSB Research, commissioned by Microsoft, 1,400 participants, April 2018; actual percent at +/-3% at 95% confidence level.
11. This is just as true for operating systems, browsers, office, and supporting technologies like the Intranet, Teams, Exchange, CRM and so on.
12. Doctors told heart patients that they will absolutely die in 6 months if they don’t change their habits around lifestyle, diet, and exercise. Those individuals certainly had the motivation, and a sense of urgency. They even had the tools and the vision as well as an understanding of the end state. Yet in this situation only 1 in 7 or 14% could manage to carry out the change on their own. Desire and motivation aren’t enough on their own: even when it’s literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive. Think about that. If 1 in 7 people with an absolute need to change can’t change, what chance do we have of individuals in our organizations changing how they collaborate or communicate on their own? What are the odds of them adopting Office 365 and new ways of working without our help? The answer? Very low odds indeed. Kegan, R., & Laskow Lahey, L. (2009). Immunity to change. How to overcome it and unlock the potential in yourself and your organization. Boston: Harvard Business Press. ISBN 078796378X. OCLC 44972130 - http://www.amazon.com/Immunity-Change-Potential-Organization-Leadership/dp/1422117367
13. User subscription based licensing: If our customers’ users aren’t using Office 365… why would they continue paying for it? Smarter based on usage: The more people use the platform the more value the technology provides (Delve example). It also helps us build better experiences and target enhancements (in organizations and in Microsoft).
14. Employees also get intelligent and actionable insights in the flow of their work. <<CLICK>> For instance, inline suggestions that appear as employees read or compose emails and invitations encourage them to follow best practices, such as scheduling delivery to align with the recipient’s working hours.
15. The ”Plan your time away” checklist <<CLICK>>
16. helps employees seamlessly set their out of office notification, inform top collaborators of their time away, resolve meetings they’ll miss, and schedule catch-up time with colleagues when they’re back. All of these insights are personal and private for every employee. The data is stored in their mailbox and protected in the same way as their email and calendar information.
17. Cultivate an engaged, productive, & happy workforce Today’s work environment can easily create a sense of imbalance, fragmentation, and stress. It’s more important than ever to ensure employees are empowered to do their best work, have the opportunity to learn and grow, and maintain a sense community and connectedness. Prioritize customer relationships & align revenue related functions As companies across the globe navigate economic shocks, it’s never been more important to prioritize customer relationships. Organizational level insights provide visibility into how collaboration patterns with customers, partners, and vendors have changed, and ensure revenue-related functions are aligned across the business. Understand what drives success & make better decisions faster Organization agility is key to building a resilient business. Workplace Analytics helps organizations understand quantitatively what drives success, empowering leaders to make better decision for the business and the confidence to act quickly for maximum impact.
18. Cultivate an engaged, productive, & happy workforce Today’s work environment can easily create a sense of imbalance, fragmentation, and stress. It’s more important than ever to ensure employees are empowered to do their best work, have the opportunity to learn and grow, and maintain a sense community and connectedness. Prioritize customer relationships & align revenue related functions As companies across the globe navigate economic shocks, it’s never been more important to prioritize customer relationships. Organizational level insights provide visibility into how collaboration patterns with customers, partners, and vendors have changed, and ensure revenue-related functions are aligned across the business. Understand what drives success & make better decisions faster Organization agility is key to building a resilient business. Workplace Analytics helps organizations understand quantitatively what drives success, empowering leaders to make better decision for the business and the confidence to act quickly for maximum impact.
19. Other customers and partners have tons of experiences they are willing to share.
20. Year after year voicemail use has dropped 8%, with only 14% of people bothering to listen through the entire voicemail message. 38% of video users report increase of improved retention in meetings that use video instead of just voice. 100% of video users say it helps them accelerate decision making. From Forrester TEI - Another interviewed organization described a use case that has resulted in millions of dollars in additional revenue: “Opening an office used to take three to four months. Our latest opening, using Office 365, took 18 days. When we get a grant, we can only start to invoice once we begin to perform work. That means we were losing three months of revenue.” This amounted to nearly $200,000 per month for one office, and five offices were being opened in a typical year.