Office 365 Distilled

Steve and Marijn check out a HBR article (https://hbr.org/2024/08/is-your-organizational-transformation-veering-off-course) that identifies some traits of team that have lost focus and need a little but of a push to move forward.

In this podcast they discuss their experiences and drop a few practical ideas of how a team can move forward when energy is low and some ideas on how to motivate the team and have things in place to resolve issues and steps to take to ensure projects move forward in a positive way.

When you are rolling out MS teams or Migrating SharePoint sites this podcast might help you spot potential delays or problems with delivery in time to step in and keep momentum to the end results and scope.

The boys drink what might become a rare whisky from Mackmara after they recently annouced that they will file for bankrupcy and finding a new buyer to take over the operation... enjoy...

This is the last of the series of podcasts called the apologise series as Steve managed ot catch up with the programs recorded and published so hopefully we are back to 5 days from recording to publishing.

Marijn read an article (Microsoft Teams increases collaboration in the modern workplace at Microsoft - Inside Track Blog)… it was not a podcast but real words and it created the idea of a podcast for the duo.  Microsoft have been looking at how they can improve collaboration using their own tools and a process that has some alignment with ADKAR.  

Steve and Marijn talk through the ideas shared in the article and how it can be adopted practically and where it all makes sense.  Microsoft use to cool analogies’ that we like and that everyone can use to improve their collaboration in their organisations.

And the boys re-christens KevinM as Saint Kevin after drinking this extraordinary Irish whisky the boys take in this episode of M365Distilled 

So Marijn talks about indecision and the trouble in deciding on a Twix or not… and missed out on a Peated Yamazaki, depriving Steve of a chance to taste one of his favorite Japanese distilleries.   In this second of the Apology series… 

So Steve, Anouck, and Marijn did Commsverse TV (https://www.youtube.com/@Commsverse/streams ) and in this episode we talk about all the things they learned including the longest and first case of remote working, that FAX is still a big business and ghost calls that Analysing software need to remove to get accurate figures…

Speaker bags this year were very funny… and we stole Mark Vale's designer back for the title of this podcast…

Check out what the team talked about as the boys look into their bag of Shit and discuss what was the coolest thing for them…

This is the first of a new series of podcasts called the Apology Series… Life has been a little tricky over the last 3 months for Steve with a separation from my long-term partner, not having access to Max all the time and Moving house to the city of Antwerp, so enjoy the catch-up of podcasts in the coming days that we already recorded,,,  Welcome to the Apology Series. 

Make changes Obvious, Easy, and Satisfying from James Clear's book Atomic Habits. The boys are provided with a slide from a conference, and they decide to apply some of James's thinking to a communications project. They then break the gold rule of having 2 subjects per podcast. Will it work? Well, listen in…

So James gives us 4 rules and Steve and Marijn want to talk about communications, judge for yourself if you can find all the Golden Nuggets in what turns out to be a very satisfying podcast…

We hear about Steve Folding his arms and being all about himself and yes a little cocky, and Marijn being wrong… or is he… only you can judge in this very cool Steve & Marijn discussion…

OK, we talk about SharePoint and a question that Marijn received about Sorting our SharePoint Shit.  You know the scenario, what do you do to help a company that Set up an M365 tenant, opened up SharePoint and made it available within 24 hours... recipe for disaster right... and then they call us in to help sort out the shit

In this episode, Marijn has a plan, and Steve helps him think it through as questions arise about what direction to take to sort three terabytes of content on a Tenant and turn it into a solid, stable collaboration platform.

But the Shit does stop there as their whisky involves elephants and is a real definition of a Whisky that you might not easily get hold of... but if you can, then you should.

It started when we discussed how mail is still the prevalent business communications tool and how good or bad it is for collaboration.

Unusually for the M365 Distilled team of Steve and Marijn, things went a little sideways to start with but eventually got back on track. OK, maybe going sideways is just normal for us, but why change a good thing?

In this podcast, the boys talk about the definition of collaboration, check out the list of best practices to include in the collaboration process, take some statistics about communications, look at all the tools we have available and mash them all together...

And like all the other 143 podcasts before it, the whisky at the end makes it all worthwhile and helps you understand that it all does hang together into one aligned program of greatness...  and this time, it's an Indian Whisky that performs the alignment duty.  😉 

Poland was a blast at Collab days a few weeks ago. Steve and Marijn spend time in this podcast looking at Jenga and how they used to consider governance risk in their workshops.

Marijn recaps his SMART goals session, and each subject is finished with a Whisky—of course, two Polish whiskies, to be precise!

The Boys talk about the new gameshow “ IT Depends” which you can find here  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcB3Ba6K6N3HMUbt6yVT1Bg 

and then.... 
🎙️ Ladies and gentlemen, fight fans from around the world, welcome to the podcast showdown of the century! Tonight, we bring you a clash of titans that will shake the very foundations of the digital realm! In the blue corner, hailing from the land of traditionalists, we have the undisputed champion of news dissemination, the Sultan of Press Releases, none other than Marijn "The Publisher"!

🥊 Marijn steps into the ring with a steadfast belief that the intranet is nothing more than a digital bulletin board, a platform solely designed for the dissemination of news, announcements, and updates. But will his perspective withstand the ferocious onslaught from his opponent in the red corner?

🔥 And in the red corner, we have the challenger, the master of efficiency, the architect of productivity, the one and only Steve "The Gatekeeper"! With a fiery passion burning in his eyes, Steve believes that the intranet is not just a news outlet, but a gateway to unlocking the true potential of workplace synergy and collaboration!

💥 Get ready for a battle of ideologies as these two formidable contenders step into the ring, each ready to defend their corner with everything they've got! Will Marijn's traditionalist approach to intranet dominance prevail? Or will Steve's vision of a digital doorway to productivity reign supreme?

🔔 The bell is about to ring, the tension is palpable, and the stage is set for an epic clash of perspectives! So grab your popcorn, settle into your seats, and prepare to witness history in the making as Marijn and Steve go head-to-head in the ultimate showdown for intranet supremacy! Let the battle begin!

We have a guest who has been listening to the podcast since Episode One “ Gianni Solito “ Gianni uses SaFe AGILE methods for managing adoption and change as we talk through how this model can be used to improve the process of keeping M365Distilled updated and aligned.  You can check him out here  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gianni-solito-2221561a3/ 

The Boys talk about the new gameshow “ IT Depends” which you can find here  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcB3Ba6K6N3HMUbt6yVT1Bg 

The boys with Gianni dig down into the roles and process of the SaFe AGILE framework and try to identify the simplicity in what feels like a lot of moving parts.

Marijn aligns SaFe Agile to the Fellowship of the Ring headed up by Gandalf in a SaFe role and it Kinda works... all working towards a big picture that they all know about....

It seems a long time since we talked about AGILE working and how M365 grows on our podcast as we add in SaFe where we look at Scaling the Agile Framework and finalise the way to look at update adoption and change through the SaFe process.   

Then we took a breath and drank a whisky from a distillery we had tasted before, but this time it was peated.  The Loch Lomond distillery is one of the most beautiful locations for a distillery and the Whisky is the same.  Loch Lomond Heavy Peated is a lovely peated dram which Steve does not fully agree with as he takes some time to feel the smoke.

Its an area of Scotland that the boys no well and re-live the small road and the experiences with the buses.  Driving to Oban along the loch is one of life's pleasures for anyone finding themselves in that area. 

As always the start is about our travels and community speaking events was from Miami to Bremen we talk about Tetsi flies and the rule of ‘Don’t look at the Boob’ when Steve knew it was the answer to another memory problem…

The Boys talk about the new gameshow “ It Depends” which you can find here  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcB3Ba6K6N3HMUbt6yVT1Bg 

After 15 minutes of community talk the boys went around the world… Ami Diamond posted a great LinkedIn article comparing M365 to the new wonders of the world.  It was so cool that we decided it required more in-depth expertise from Steve and Marijn.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7159248067244765186?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7159248067244765186%29

So maybe this is AKA Jules Verne “Around the M365 World in 80 minutes”.

So, enjoy the humour of Steve and Marijn as they discuss Ami’s great post… check it out.

Listen to Steve try all the tough words from around the world as we describe the output from the post and add a bunch of disrespect and fun…

Then eventually the podcast gets technical as we bring in the M365 bits and break down the article from AMI.

Enjoy even if the Chat GPT analogies are weak, the humour is good supermarket listening.

Then we drank a whisky, I know a surprise right?  This was something interesting: a special bottled edition of the Edradour distillery from 1st fill Oloroso casks out of the smallest distillery in Scotland.  Dark and a powerhouse of flavour.