November 2019 | Dallas – RealFoundations (RF) attended KMWorld 2019, billed as the Knowledge Management (‘KM’) and Enterprise Solutions Conference, in early November in Washington, DC. KMWorld, designed for CIOs, CKOs, and those who want to run an innovative, knowledge-driven enterprise, brings together 1,000 attendees across multiple industries annually to share practical advice and thought leadership as well as deliver training and workshops on how Knowledge Management (KM) can provide value to an organization and help transform a business. RF’s Director of Presence and Assets Naomi Souza attended multiple sessions at the conference primarily focused on KM Models, Frameworks and Methodologies as well as Digital Transformation and AI in the field of knowledge management.
Additionally, Naomi Souza co-presented at the session titled ‘Accelerating Collaboration: Platforms & Strategies.’ RealFoundations has been on the leading edge of the use of the tools and places in the Microsoft365 collaboration ecosystem — namely Yammer and Teams — for the last several years. RF has been recognized as a ‘top performer’ for its Yammer usage several years in a row by SWOOP Analytics, and SWOOP’s co-founder Dr. Laurence Lock Lee also spoke about the importance of collaboration and connections. Naomi then gave a quick overview of RealFoundations and talked about the firm’s collaboration journey which began with a small group using Yammer in 2010, prior to its purchase by Microsoft, and the adoption of Microsoft Teams as RF’s digital workspace in 2017. She also shared lessons learned and how RF uses SWOOP to measure engagement across Yammer and Teams today. Finally, Naomi shared some foundational principles important for collaborative success:
Leading collaborative enterprises believe that:
- There is content in exchanges (emails, text messages, meetings, calls, conversations) that has value beyond the moment and to more people than are part of the in-the-moment exchange.
- Outside of work, virtually every working professional has materially changed how they communicate, converse, meet and exchange ideas and interests over the past 10 years (and these changes can have a positive impact inside the work environment).
- What all of the people inside an enterprise ‘know’ is vastly larger than what the enterprise ‘knows it knows’.
- People are much more used to exchanging information in a loosely-defined and shifting ‘network’ of peers rather than sending/receiving through a ‘chain of command’.
Specific to the Microsoft 365 Ecosystem:
- Teams is the communications, interaction and collaboration center (‘hub’) of Office 365 – not Outlook, not SharePoint, not Yammer, not Skype.
- An individual inside a leading Working Out Loud (WOL) enterprise should expect:
- To be checking on and engaging in Teams as often as one has checked email in the past;
- Their email messages to decrease as their activity in Teams increases;
- To be conversing about all project or initiative activities in the appropriate Channel in a Team;
- To be learning about or contributing to topics of enduring interest to the enterprise, LOB or practice area in Yammer (not in Outlook); and
- To be sending private or ad hoc messages to one individual (or a few specific individuals).
Tips and Tricks:
- Commitment from the leadership team and a willingness to model the right behavior.
- Articulate the business goals for Working Out Loud.
- Clearly define and communicate the places you will use to WOL (i.e., Yammer is the company’s virtual water cooler and Teams is for defined projects or departments or efforts with a beginning and end and specified outcomes).
- Position Working Out Loud as just a part of working (and not another thing, or not unlike anything we do in our personal lives today).
- Set clear expectations on engagement within each place (i.e., visit Yammer at least once each day … keep Teams open and check it like you would your email).
- Articulate ‘what’s in it for me’ at both the individual level and the enterprise view.
- Designate WOL champions whose goal is to initially monitor and promote engagement with each place.
- Start with #widt (What I am doing today … ) a quick post to start the day within a Team (quick, easy and habit forming).
If you’re experiencing the ‘another tool!?’ pushback in your organization, consider this artifact RF used to help people think about the old and new places for communications.
