Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams: Applying Leadership to a Remote Workforce 1484279921, 9781484279922

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Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams Applying Leadership to a Remote Workforce — Peter Ward Foreword by Matt Wade

Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams Applying Leadership to a Remote Workforce

Peter Ward Foreword by Matt Wade

Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams: Applying Leadership to a Remote Workforce Peter Ward New York City, NY, USA ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-7992-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9

ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-7993-9

Copyright © 2022 by Peter Ward This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Trademarked names, logos, and images may appear in this book. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, logo, or image we use the names, logos, and images only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Managing Director, Apress Media LLC: Welmoed Spahr Acquisitions Editor: Smriti Srivastava Development Editor: Laura Berendson Coordinating Editor: Shrikant Vishwakarma Copyeditor: Mary Behr Cover designed by eStudioCalamar Cover image designed by Pexels Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer Science+Business Media LLC, 1 New York Plaza, Suite 4600, New York, NY 10004. Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax (201) 348-4505, e-mail [email protected], or visit www.springeronline.com. Apress Media, LLC is a California LLC and the sole member (owner) is Springer Science + Business Media Finance Inc (SSBM Finance Inc). SSBM Finance Inc is a Delaware corporation. For information on translations, please e-mail [email protected]; for reprint, paperback, or audio rights, please e-mail [email protected], or visit www.apress.com/rights-permissions. Apress titles may be purchased in bulk for academic, corporate, or promotional use. eBook versions and licenses are also available for most titles. For more information, reference our Print and eBook Bulk Sales web page at www.apress.com/bulk-sales. Any source code or other supplementary material referenced by the author in this book is available to readers on GitHub via the book’s product page, located at https://link.springer.com/ book/10.1007/978-­1-­4842-­7992-­2. Printed on acid-free paper

This book is dedicated to my wife, Geeta, without whose love, encouragement, and advice, none of the chapters would have ever been written. Thank you to Allison Kennedy, Microsoft Certified Trainer & MVP, Consultant Data Platform & BI Reporting, for her wonderful technical review and feedback. https://www.excelwithallison.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisonkennedycv/ Audrey Merwin https://www.linkedin.com/in/audreymerwin/

Table of Contents About the Author�������������������������������������������������������������������������������xiii About the Technical Reviewer������������������������������������������������������������xv Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xvii Foreword by Matt Wade�������������������������������������������������������������������� xxv Chapter 1: Personal Governance: The Art of Tidying Up�����������������������1 Why Do We Need To Focus?����������������������������������������������������������������������������������2 Tidying Up Principles��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������3 Where To Start: Dispose����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������4 Deciding What To Dispose Of��������������������������������������������������������������������������������5 Recategorization����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������6 Chapter Workbook�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������7 Disposing���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������7 Recategorization��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������10 Pitfalls of This Art������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������13 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������15

Chapter 2: Creating a Growth Culture with a Truly Remote Team������17 The Only Way Is Up, Ideally���������������������������������������������������������������������������������17 SoHo’s Growth Mantras���������������������������������������������������������������������������������18 Chapter and Book Disclaimer������������������������������������������������������������������������18 How Does SoHo Dragon Go Remote?������������������������������������������������������������20 The SoHo Dragon Story���������������������������������������������������������������������������������20 v

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SoHo Dragon’s Non-Microsoft Tools��������������������������������������������������������������23 The Expansion�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������27 Unorthodox Advice for a Culture of Growth���������������������������������������������������������28 Create a Culture of Shipping�������������������������������������������������������������������������28 Create a Culture of Accountability�����������������������������������������������������������������29 Automate Anything That Can Be Automated��������������������������������������������������29 Do Not Do Tasks Below Your Pay Grade���������������������������������������������������������29 Turn Emails into Tasks�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������30 Stay Out of Meetings�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������30 Delay Your Responses. Be Patient (Yeah, Right).�������������������������������������������31 How MS Teams Meetings Should Be Run������������������������������������������������������32 Measure What Needs To Be Measured����������������������������������������������������������33 Build to Spec�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 Chapter Workbook�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������34 Shipping��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������34 Accountability������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������35 On the Go�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������35 Automate�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������35 Delegate��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������36 Meetings��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������36 Measure���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37 Overruns��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37 Chapter Summary�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������38

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Chapter 3: Using M365 To Be an Effective Executive with Remote Workers����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������39 Responsibility and Accountability�����������������������������������������������������������������������40 Understanding Results and How To Get Them����������������������������������������������������42 Tiny Improvements Add Up To Massive Differences��������������������������������������42 Good Decision Making����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������43 The Three Elements of Decision Making�������������������������������������������������������44 Underperformance����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������45 Time Killers���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������46 Hiring Talent��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������47 Delegate��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������50 How To Delegate More Effectively�����������������������������������������������������������������50 Chapter Workbook�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51 Accountabilities���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51 Hires��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51 KPIs���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������51 Time Killers����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������52 Delegate��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������52 Chapter Summary�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������52 Reference������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������53

Chapter 4: Entrepreneurship��������������������������������������������������������������55 What Is EOS?�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������57 Using MS Teams To Implement the EOS Methodology����������������������������������������58 Vision�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������58 People������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������61 Data���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������63 Issues������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������64

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Process����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������64 Traction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65 Chapter Workbook�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65 Roles��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������65 Your Time�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������66 Free Time�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������66 What Gets Seen Will Get Measured���������������������������������������������������������������66 Chapter Summary�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������66 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������67

Chapter 5: Being Productive with Your Productivity��������������������������69 What You Will Learn��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������69 Eisenhower Matrix: Where To Start���������������������������������������������������������������������70 Start with a Good Plan����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������71 Pareto Principle���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������73 Establish Priorities and Focus on Them��������������������������������������������������������������74 The Path to Progress Is All About Self-­Exploration���������������������������������������������75 Sleep Hygiene������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������76 Time Management�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������77 Final Point�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������77 Chapter Workbook�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������78 Create an AM and PM Task List in One����������������������������������������������������������78 Prioritize These Tasks with Letters����������������������������������������������������������������78 At The End of the Day, How Did It Go?�����������������������������������������������������������78 How Many Emails During the Day Did You Resist Responding to Immediately?�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������79 After One Week, Did You Notice Any Improvements?������������������������������������79 Chapter Summary�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������79 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������80 viii

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Chapter 6: Decisive Communication Over MS Teams�������������������������81 What You Will Learn��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������82 Figure Out Who You Are and How You Must Speak and Lead������������������������������82 For Projects To Thrive, the Doers Must Also Be Deciders������������������������������������85 Numbers Give Me Good Comfort�������������������������������������������������������������������85 Be Vulnerable������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������85 Identify the Muscling�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������86 The Type of Project����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������86 A Meeting Is an Alternative to Work��������������������������������������������������������������������87 Chapter Workbook�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������88 List the Projects/Initiatives That Report to You����������������������������������������������88 With the List Above, Ask Yourself Which Level You Operate From�����������������88 With the List, What Actions Do You Need To Implement To Operate at the Define Level?���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������88 With Each Status Team Meeting, Reflectively Look at Your Communication Style and List How Many Binary Questions You Ask������������89 After One Month, Are You Operating at the Define Level?�����������������������������89 Chapter Summary�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������89 References����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������90

Chapter 7: Selling Over MS Teams������������������������������������������������������91 What You Will Learn��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������92 Become Fast Friends������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������92 Project Technical Requirement Questions Template��������������������������������������93 The Sales Pitch/Demo�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 Focus on the Why������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������95 Respect People and Their Time���������������������������������������������������������������������96 Give Them a Takeaway����������������������������������������������������������������������������������97 Use Digital Ink�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������98 ix

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Do the Same Demo Over and Over Again������������������������������������������������������99 Give Them Insight into Scenarios����������������������������������������������������������������100 Watch Your Language����������������������������������������������������������������������������������103 Chapter Workbook���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������104 Add the Questions to Your Pre-­Demo Questionnaire�����������������������������������104 Record a Sales Demo and Ask Yourself the Following Questions����������������104 Are You Noticing a Pattern with the Pain Points of Customers?������������������105 Has the Win Rate with Demos Increased?���������������������������������������������������105 Chapter Summary���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������105 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������106

Chapter 8: Get Organized with Your Organization����������������������������107 What You Will Learn������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108 SoHo’s Org Chart�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������108 Why So Late for Me To Be in the Know?������������������������������������������������������110 Creating a Good Org Chart��������������������������������������������������������������������������������111 Org Chart Rules�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113 Understanding an Org Chart������������������������������������������������������������������������114 The Discovery of Empty Suits���������������������������������������������������������������������������117 SoHo Had Several Fragilistas����������������������������������������������������������������������118 Job Descriptions������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������118 SoHo’s Job Descriptions������������������������������������������������������������������������������119 The Butterfly Effect of the Org Chart�����������������������������������������������������������������121 What the Butterfly Effect Is Not�������������������������������������������������������������������121 Chapter Workbook���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������122 When Was the Last Time You or Anyone Looked At or Studied Your Company Org Chart?�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������122 List All Departments in Your Company���������������������������������������������������������122

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Add Your Current Employees to the Org Chart in the Roles They Perform��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������122 Is Anyone in More Positions Than They Should Be?������������������������������������123 Are People in the Wrong Positions?�������������������������������������������������������������123 For Each Role, Define the Position Agreement��������������������������������������������123 Chapter Summary���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������124 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������124

Chapter 9: The Wrap-Up Chapter������������������������������������������������������125 How to Start the Actual Implementation�����������������������������������������������������������125 What Will Move the Needle?������������������������������������������������������������������������126 Gridlock�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������126 Create Your Next Day�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������127 Chapter Summaries������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������127 Introduction�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������127 Chapter 1�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������128 Chapter 2�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������128 Chapter 3�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������128 Chapter 4�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 Chapter 5�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 Chapter 6�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������129 Chapter 7�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������130 Chapter 8�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������130 Final Words�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������130

Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������133

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About the Author Peter Ward is a Solution Architect on Microsoft Cloud software. He is the founder and CTO/CEO of SoHo Dragon, a New York-based Microsoft Gold partner focused on helping CXOs and technical teams obtain as much value as possible from Microsoft Cloud. He prefers taking the technical lead on Microsoft Azure / M365 projects from an architect and deployment standpoint. He is an M365 trainer and motivator. •

A Microsoft MVP, co-author of four Microsoft SharePoint books, and a frequent contributor to GitHub

•

Is keen on UX simplicity and stays on the leading edge of technology

•

Thinks on his feet in meetings and complex situations and gets to the heart of an issue while not ruffling too many feathers

•

Loves yoga, vegetarian food, and reading books by Malcolm Gladwell

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About the Technical Reviewer Vikas Sukhija has over a decade of IT infrastructure experience with expertise in messaging, collaboration, and IT automations. He is a blogger, architect, and Microsoft MVP and is known by the alias TechWizard. As an experienced professional, he has assisted small to large enterprises in architecting and implementing Office 365 and Azure.  Community contributions from him can be found at @Blog http://TechWizard.cloud @Page www.facebook.com/TechWizard.cloud @Twitter https://twitter.com/techwizardcloud @Coderepo https://github.com/VikasSukhija

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Introduction Guy Finley: Nothing in the universe can stop you from letting go and starting over.

The Fundamentals People will look back at what COVID changed and they’ll see it changed the way we worked, as it has forced people to experience a different type of working that they wouldn’t have normally done. For our industry, in the medium to longer term, it will be transformational. Of course, it has also created problems for both employees and organizations. Employers and workers have been forced to shift to remote working and have crammed years of transformation into just weeks and months. Keeping workers cooped up in spare bedrooms and entrenched social distancing rules has had a dramatic impact on other parts of the way we work. The Zoom economy has as many losers as winners, but it’ll have a profound, lasting effect on our daily work routine. Technology is part of the solution, but it’s the way we use the technology that provides the win.

The Zoom Economy “Zoom” is a cool word. It means getting somewhere super-fast. The Zoom product name was a great marketing coup with COVID impacting the economy, and soon journalists started to bounce the term “Zoom economy” around.

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Definition of the Zoom economy: People can telework and still do their normal job functions by communicating not via the watercooler or in the conference room, but over video conferencing technology, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams (MS Teams). Another popular phrase that journalists bounced around was “Zoom town,” where a community experienced a significant population increase due to telecommuting. This name is a play on “boomtown.”

About Me and This Book For those who do not know, like a lot of readers of this book, I am Peter Ward, the founder and CTO/CEO of SoHo Dragon (SoHo), a New York City-­based Microsoft Gold Partner. There is nothing eye-opening about SoHo. We ain’t putting rockets on Mars or defining the metaverse. We are a Microsoft partner that was started in 2010 and has had impressive growth for the past ten years, with a semi-remote workforce leveraging MS Teams to aid the leadership activities of the employees. You always read about expansion and growth in bigger companies, but it’s the smaller companies where this is a struggle. According to Forbes, only half of small businesses survive past the five-year mark, ranging from 45.4% to 51% depending on the year the business was started. Beyond that, only about one in three small businesses get to the 10-year mark and can party. Statistics from The Small Business of Entrepreneurial Council state that almost 90% of companies have fewer than 20 employees and firms with fewer than 10 employees account for 78.4%. Looking at the statistics, the odds don’t look good to build a company with over 10 employees, and although SoHo’s activities probably won’t make the pages of The New York Times, for the owner of a small company that has ambitions of growing to 50+ employees, I hope this book provides value. xviii

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Often owners will write a book where they are the hero of their own story, which I’ve tried not to do. Rather, I explain how SoHo operates with a growth mindset in a new world of a remote workforce. The book charts a very personal account of what I’ve experienced in growing a company to over 100 employees, with 3 offices on different continents, and how organizational principles are key to building and scaling a company, but also how MS Teams is a fantastic aid to supporting leadership processes and teamwork altogether. I’ve been working with collaboration software since 1993 and the now-obsolete Lotus Notes, and I started writing about my SharePoint collaboration experiences on my blog in 2006, www.wardpeter.com. I’ve co-authored four SharePoint books with Microsoft, Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), and other talented SharePoint peeps, so I like to think I know how remote teamwork works and doesn’t work in the workplace. This book shares everything I have learned about running a distributed team and how I grew as a team member, manager, and leader, and how SoHo Dragon grew—the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Prior to 2020, the company had always been working semi-remotely, with staff in multiple time zones: Philippines, California, New York, Lithuania, Beirut, Ahmedabad, Singapore, consultants on client sites, or sitting in coffee shops while electronically staying in touch with employees and clients, which for some companies at the time may have seemed like black magic. Since SoHo had been working remotely for some time, we had figured out issues like Zoom fatigue and collaboration. Lack of physical meetings appeared very natural, but new hires and customers kept on asking questions like: “How does the company function?” “How do you have these growth rates year after year?” or “How do you maintain your corporate culture?” This book answers these questions.

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History of SoHo Dragon SoHo was started in 2010 in the spare room of my apartment in Long Island City, New York. In 2021, the headcount was 100+ and 3 offices. Of course, because of COVID a lot of people were working from home, all earning money in what we now call the Zoom economy. SoHo started with just SharePoint services, but as the team grew, the services expanded to data, quality assurance, Dynamics CRM, infrastructure, managed services, and financial applications such as Murex. Murex is a company that provides financial software for trading, treasury, risk, and post-trade operations for financial markets. It’s big-­ticket software and not for the fainthearted. Most of our clients are in the New York City area, which is why our slogan is SoHo Dragon is a Wall Street-based consulting and staffing firm that focuses on complex technology deployments when time is short, the budget is tight, and the cost of failure is high.

What Is Leadership? I really cannot put my finger on what leadership is and neither can most people. I do not have an MBA, nor do I play buzzword bingo with management terms. Everyone knows leadership when they see it. I’m also not going to claim that the leadership at SoHo should be written up in Harvard Business Review, but each chapter does focus on a leadership principle, discipline, or technique that has aided the growth of my company. I view many bad implementations of SharePoint, M365 cloud initiatives, and problems in companies today resulting from lousy leadership from both the implementing vendor and the customer. Thus this book!

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Leadership includes managing remote teams, and a lack of technical skills in using M365 can interfere with that process. Capable use of M365 alone doesn’t give someone the ability to see the big picture, connect with members of the organization, foster a meaningful and productive work environment, or steer the corporate mothership through various challenges to attain clarity. It takes a combination of technical and business skills to do that—skills that contribute to leadership. I sometimes think there is an assumption that leadership is a unique set of skills and experience, matured to give personal perspectives and it is, of course, these elements that set the natural leader apart from those who just “run” organizations from 9 to 5. The latter is a manager mindset, rather than a leader or owner mindset. I’m now 50 so perhaps I think maturity is essential in a leader’s efforts to develop and harvest a sound corporate vision, but really I think real leaders see things more rapidly than the typical executive. At least in part their insights are a reflection of “inner” clarity that allows for fuller concentration on the challenges at hand. I hope this book helps you understand what a leader really is in a Zoom economy with Microsoft Teams.

How to Use This Book I hope this book gives you a new way of looking at leadership and communication in the workplace, and provides you with solutions to the challenges of the Zoom economy. To get value from this book, my advice is very simple. Read the book from cover to cover and write up the workbooks. Bookmark the suggestions you want to implement. The key mantra is how to apply leadership: direction, culture, trust, and motivation with your distributed workforce. I really want you to read this book in the time it takes to fly from coast to coast so you can turn on your laptop or tablet and immediately start solving problems in your next MS Teams meeting. xxi

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In fact, mark up the book with a pen and think about how to apply each chapter to your role or department. I recommend discussing chapters, my observations, and theories with other co-workers and team members to share and exchange ideas.

This book is not a prescriptive “how to” book with every chapter stating something that should be implemented next week.

What This Book Covers Chapter 1 outlines the importance of tidying up not just at home, but also on your desktop. It isn’t just a guide to decluttering. It’s about having a clutter-free working environment so focus can be achieved. Chapter 2 throws out the traditional notions of what it takes to run a business with expensive technology and offers a collection of unorthodox advice, ranging from productivity to communication and automation. Chapter 3 offers a step-by-step guide to becoming a more productive and effective executive with your employees. Chapter 4 explains how a valuable tool called the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) works and how you can use it to build your business leveraging the M365 technology. This chapter really is a guide to running a robust, thriving business. Chapter 5 is all about overcoming procrastination and learning to manage your time with MS Teams functions such as the tasks list, OneNote, and Outlook integration. Chapter 6 gives you a playbook for successful team management. It teaches you how to change your language and mindset to improve decision-making, empower workers, and achieve better results. Chapter 7 addresses the problem of selling to customers over MS Teams. The goal of this chapter is to use “insight scenarios” so salespeople can not only solidify sales relationships, but also significantly increase sales volumes. xxii

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Chapter 8 explains how to put people in the right position in the company and to identify the roles people play in the company. Chapter 9 is the final chapter. Like all good leadership and technical books, it summarizes of the chapters of the book, the objectives of the book, and the next steps for you, the reader.

What You Need for This Book For this book to be of value, you will need an open mind to absorb and interpret the leadership insights and experiences stated in each chapter. This is key because the book’s emphasis is on leadership of remote teams with Microsoft Teams.

This book is not a step-by-step survival guide to MS Teams, and not every leadership insight and discipline should be applied if you don’t think it is a fit. Not everything should be taken literally. You will also need the ability to reapply the information stated in the chapter topics to M365 functionality. What you need to get value from this book is patience, interest in making behavioral changes, and the ability to let go. One reason why we are bad at learning is that we bring a lot of old ways of communicating to our job and our lives. We may be accustomed to communicating with our workforce face-to-face, by phone, and by email, but less familiar with a comprehensive communication solution that includes video conferencing, calls, chat, and more. If you can let go of assumptions from “the old days,” you can learn much more effectively from this book. One major piece of baggage we accrue is the belief that if we’re not visibly active, we’re not learning. Luckily this is incorrect when we work in the spare room five days a week.

Learning requires time to reflect and discuss what you have learned and let your mind wander. It will help if you let go of trying to look smart and focus instead on trying to be smart. xxiii

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Who This Book Is For This book is ideal for IT managers, business owners, project managers, and any line-of-business (LOB) executives who face challenges with a remote workforce and need to raise their leadership game.

This book is not designed for the developer and administrator, yet the content may be of interest in helping provide a common vocabulary and vision between them and their lines of management.

Final Word This book idea isn’t new to me. I thought about in 2019. (Of course, thinking and doing are completely different activities.) To quote a famous musician from Liverpool, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” In January 2020, I got married and then COVID hit. COVID caused an adjustment for SoHo in how we do business internally and externally with our customers. Still, this was an extension of what I was already doing: applying leadership in a Zoom economy with Microsoft Teams.

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Foreword by Matt Wade This book you hold in your hand or read on your screen is a welcome dive into the popular—if still not well-known—hub for collaboration from the makers of Windows, Office, and SharePoint: Microsoft Teams. You’ll find the book approaches the adoption and business value of MS Teams from a leadership lens, not the typical Microsoft 365 or SharePoint developer or administrator point of view. And it’s good to finally see books applying leadership and project models using real tools, not abstract theory. With the consistent growth of SharePoint over the past 20 years and the crazy explosion of MS Teams both pre- and post-pandemic, MS Teams is here to stay. One hundred forty-five million people use MS Teams daily and 500,000 organizations use it as their default messaging platform (source, Business of Apps). If your organization isn’t yet using it, it likely will, which is why this book is going to be valuable to you. (Source: Curry, David, Microsoft Teams Revenue and Usage Statistics (2022), BusinessofApps, January 11, 2022, https://www.businessofapps. com/data/microsoft-teams-statistics/) Its pages provide a broader and deeper approach to leveraging MS Teams functionality from a leadership standpoint compared to typical books on the subject. You’ll find fundamental principles of high-stakes communications, company structure, and day-to-day operations of a remote workforce from an author who manages such a workforce in his fast-growing company. The story is very much a personal account of how the author has implemented MS Teams and Microsoft 365 functionality into as many of his company’s business processes as possible. Peter Ward and SoHo Dragon provide a useful case study for improving and modernizing

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repeatable business processes that you can put to work in your organization today. Why reinvent the wheel when you can just apply what’s been successful elsewhere? You’ll find no sugarcoating of the process: this book doesn’t pretend that an MS Teams implementation will scale a remote company, make double-digit profits, or open offices around the world on its own. Rather, it journals communication styles over MS Teams, how to truly understand an organizational structure with Visio, and techniques to avoid meeting Zoom fatigue. It chronicles how to get stuff done with a remote workforce using the Microsoft 365 technologies you likely already have within your subscription. The path that Peter and his team have walked is a useful guide to follow given their success in expanding their workforce from one to more than 100 in this new remote world that is certainly here to stay. And this book gives management the “a-ha!” moments to help adapt, apply, and benefit from MS Teams, OneNote, Power BI, and other tools in the Microsoft quiver. I am delighted to endorse Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams as a challenging and inspirational invitation to go deeper with the MS Teams platform in a practical, repeatable way. —Matt Wade Microsoft MVP and author of Teach Yourself Visually Microsoft Teams & Office 365 All-in-One for Dummies https://linktr.ee/thatmattwade

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Personal Governance: The Art of Tidying Up Marie Kondo: Discard anything that doesn't spark joy. There is something about tidying up not just at home but on your computer’s desktop as well. Tidying and organizing your desktop content and M365 tools can make a massive difference to your leadership and productivity. I suspect you think this is bonkers—and this is the first chapter of the book—but trust me, you’ll get tasks done quicker and have your act together, and people will see this. My team has seen this in my work and organizational skills, and after a bit of coaching on tidying up their desktops, they have seen it in theirs as well. Marie Kondo, the Japanese organization consultant, has made a career of decluttering people’s lives from a philosophical side while apparently making it happier in the process. This chapter applies Marie’s principles not to make you happier (though it probably will) but as a guide to decluttering your work so you have a clutter-free working environment from a user experience (UX) of your desktop, browser, Outlook, and MS Teams. The goal of the chapter is not just to help you keep your workspace organized; it is to guide you to create a space that improves productivity and uses M365 tools less confusingly. You’re probably thinking that to unlock potential and productivity you need more technology with more features to make work bigger, better, and faster, which is the mantra of any technology product manager. © Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_1

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Microsoft is often criticized when it releases products that are bloated with features. Maybe this is how humans have evolved: we always want more. You should use this chapter as a trigger to pause and think about what you currently have and use, and question if it is of value. Given that most employees daily receive hundreds of emails, instant messages, and notifications, I think this “tidying up” discipline is more relevant than ever.

Why Do We Need To Focus? There is something to be said about deep uninterrupted focus, which is challenging in today’s Zoom economy. That’s why I get more done in an hour at 7 am than the entire rest of the day at work. We are surrounded by things that consistently zap our attention and get in the way of how we perform our job, and we have no idea what task is at hand or what we need to do. Worse, most of these attention-grabbing notifications are not notifications that require our immediate attention. Deleting applications, muting MS Teams channels, and simplifying our workday looks more straightforward than it is because when we get down to our tasks and applications, most people do not know where to start and what to delete and hide. This chapter’s title, “The Art of Tidying Up,” may sound like a simple task, but it is not. That’s because most people do not know where to start, how to complete the tidying up, or the value of being in control of their day, which is why they fail to stay tidy and organized. This is why this chapter has the word Art, rather than Science, as Art means something intuitive, imprecise, and subjective, a skill cultivated through practice and imagination. In contrast, Science means something researched, measured, and objective, a hard statistic backed by people wearing white coats. Sorry, this is not that discipline.

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In this chapter, I prescribe the art of tidying as a series of simple actions in which functionality and content that are not used or do not provide any value are deleted or hidden, yet accessible when needed. This involves having daily activities immediately accessible. In some ways, this goes against conventional thinking by removing functions and features rather than endlessly adding functions and features. This clean-up process may seem simple. Yet I often look at a co-­worker’s PC and (to put it mildly) I do not know where to begin on starting the task of tidying up their desktop to make their workday more productive. Even new employees have an amazing ability to create a disorganized mess in a very short period of time. For some reason, salespeople are the worst. Oddly enough, this is not due to a lack of technical skills, but rather a lack of awareness and a total inability to make tidying a regular habit. After all, there are certifications in Excel and MS Teams, but I am not aware of a course in tidying things up to make yourself more productive. To state it simply, the root of the problem lies in discipline. Success is 90 percent dependent on our discipline skills. This is true in many areas of our lives. The goal of this chapter is to create a system to get your work done as fast as possible.

Tidying Up Principles I have defined two main tidying-up principles that you can apply: dispose and recategorization. •

Dispose: This is deleting everything that provides no value to your day job.

•

Recategorization: This is the act of moving functions and features that are used daily to be more accessible, and making sure functions and features that aren’t used daily or weekly are stored in the background.

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The two principles stated above may seem obvious to the reader, and you may think about how these principles create productivity and make your workday more productive. Simply put, just like when your desk becomes cluttered, the cause is more than just physical objects. In other words, clutter distracts us from the source of the disorganization. Now I know some of you might be thinking there are geniuses like Albert Einstein who had a desk that looked like a bomb had hit it. His desk was famous for being cluttered with notebooks, journals, and tobacco tins, and behind the desk, a blackboard covered with equations and formulas that were, to the untrained eye, a complete mess. But these creative geniuses are not your typical worker in the office, and they are more exceptions than the rule. Also, creativity and productivity are not the same activity or outcome and should not be confused. The final point in this section is this: more functionality is not the answer. So three monitors rather than two and a larger hard drive will not cut it to get tasks done in the day. These are the quick fixes that may organize junk better but do not get to the source of the problem and do nothing to eliminate clutter. This is the classic behavior of going for comfort rather than for change itself. It’s another version of what you already have.

Where To Start: Dispose The disposing of items has to come first because if you do this first, there are fewer things to recategorize or think about where to put, so it means less work. I suppose there’s a productive win here! The secret is to dispose of as much as you can in one shot as quickly and thoroughly as possible. This can be done in a lunch hour, but this needs to be a session where you think you have not just tinkered with something but made a difference. And guess what? This is an ongoing activity. 4

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This chapter’s workbook is an excellent guide to disposing and recategorizing functionality and content. Do not even think about the other step until you have finished the disposal process. Failure to follow this sequence is why many people never make permanent progress in an organized mindset. If this sequence is not followed, people start thinking about where to save and hide applications and content, with these thoughts: “ I may use this stuff one day, even though I haven’t touched these bookmarks in two years.” Yes, I have seen it all with employees. You do not need to put things away when you have finished getting rid of everything you do not need.

Deciding What To Dispose Of “Taking a knife” to everything might seem obvious, but this is where people struggle, and I think it is because people focus on what to throw away rather than what to keep. There are several common techniques when it comes to disposing of files. 1. Discard things when they cease being functional, such as saved bookmarks that do not work. 2. Dispose of outdated things, such as old versions of application icons like OneNote (recently upgraded). It is easy to get rid of things when there is an apparent reason for doing so, such as when a project is finished. It is much more difficult when there is no compelling reason. The rule of thumb I use is to dispose of anything I haven’t used for a year. If you can’t decide, save that bookmark or file in a folder called

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OLD and look at the items again six months later. I think we both know what the outcome will be 😊. I suppose indecisiveness is the key to flexibility, but when you start focusing for long periods on choosing what to dispose of, you have veered significantly off course. A more thoughtful approach is to choose what you keep, not what you dispose of. Scarcity is one more thing to make this process more challenging. When scarcity is factored in, the difficulty in choosing what to dispose of causes experimental resistance, as people think that they could still use it since it provides functional or information value or it has sentimental or emotional value. When these things are hard to decide on, such as unused course material that costs money or an installed application that took three approvals, it becomes even harder to say goodbye and dispose of them. My suggestion is to only keep things that you use frequently and then take a knife to dispose of the rest. By doing this, the clutter clearing begins.

Recategorization Again, people struggle with recategorization because they are attached to files from a project that they have not used in years, perhaps because they bring back memories. So it is often hard to decide whether to keep or move them. My advice is to focus on these features: •

Function: Do I still use this application/file/bookmark?

•

Information: Is this still relevant or accurate?

•

Emotional attachment: That project from three years ago got me promoted; these files are a badge of honor.

Even though it’s just boring enterprise-business stuff, the three factors stated above add value to this tidying-up decision process.

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C  hapter Workbook D  isposing T eams 1. Identify all teams that you are a member of and ask yourself, “Do I need to be a member of this team?” If the answer is no, leave the team. This should be applied to MS Teams chats as well as MS Teams teams. 2. Identify all MS Teams chat groups (Figure 1-1) you are a member of and ask yourself, “Do I need to be in this chat?”

Figure 1-1.  MS Teams chat group 7

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If the answer is no, leave the chat group. ✓✓ Write down how many teams and chat groups you have left.

Bookmarks 1. Review the bookmarks in your browser. Do you need these links? When were they last used? If you keep them, check to see if they all work. ✓✓ Write down how many bookmarks you deleted.

Desktop Files 1. Review all the files saved on your desktop. Do you need these files? Are they saved elsewhere? ✓✓ Write down how many files you deleted.

Review your inbox and move emails to the Action Required folder with the newly created Quick Step (see below).

OneDrive 1. Review all the OneDrive libraries synced with SharePoint and MS Teams. Do these files need to be saved on your OneDrive?

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FYI: Unsyncing a OneDrive library does not delete the file. ✓✓ Write down how many OneDrive libraries you unsynced.

Application Icons on Start Menu and Taskbar 1. Review all applications on the Start Menu and Taskbar. Do these applications need to be pinned or even saved at all? ✓✓ Write down how many applications you unpinned or deleted.

Email: Inbox and Folders 1. This will take time but delete all unwanted, old emails in your Inbox. If you have not replied to them after three months, you probably never will. 2. Delete emails in folders. ✓✓ Approximately how many emails do you think you deleted?

Set up an automated rule.

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O  neNote Pages 1. It will take time to delete all unwanted, unused, or incorrect OneNote pages. 2. Delete unused pages. ✓✓ Approximately how many pages do you think you deleted?

Recategorization With the technology areas stated in this chapter’s workbook, start to focus on the areas in the following sections.

R  ecategorize Folders Create folders for files and bookmarks that relate to business functions or projects and move the items to these folders. They can be labeled as Sales, Marketing, Project Name 1, Project Name2, or HR. ✓✓ How many folders did you create, and how many items did you put in them?

Create a Quick Step in Outlook ✓✓ Create a folder called Action Required. ✓✓ Create a Quick Step to move emails that do not require immediate attention. See Figures 1-2 through 1-4 for the steps.

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Figure 1-2.  Creating a Quick Step

Figure 1-3.  Choosing an action

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Figure 1-4.  Choosing a shortcut

Move •

Move files off your desktop to SharePoint or OneDrive.

•

Move emails from the Inbox to folders in Outlook. ✓✓ How many files did you move?

ďŽǀĞϱϬ͍

Mute •

Mute all notifications, sounds, and pop-ups on your PC and phone. •

MS Teams: Channels, instant messages

•

New emails

✓✓ Tally up. How many notifications did you mute?

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NOW repeat the exercises in the workbook two more times and dispose and recategorize 5% more each time. Yes, 5%.

Pitfalls of This Art Stop overthinking. Remember that a lot of the stuff you delete will be in the recycle bin for some time. You may start thinking, “I might need it for an unforeseen project” or “It’s a waste to get rid of it.” Do not let these thoughts stop you. Let go. When you do get stuck, ask yourself, “Why is this file is on my desktop? Why is this application on my Taskbar? When was it last used?” Not all content or applications add value to your day. Maybe they once did. It is the same with friends or co-workers: you move on, and not every co-worker you meet helps your career or helps you do your job. But this does teach you the precious lesson of who you like so that you appreciate those special people even more. Remember the trick mentioned earlier in the chapter: If you can’t decide, save that bookmark or file in a folder called OLD. Did you find this chapter meditative? If not, this art of tidying up will not be mastered. Through this tidying up process, you will truly cherish the essential things for your day-to-day tasks. The key takeaways of this chapter are •

Identify the features and files that you need first.

•

Be aware that this is an ongoing process. You should review the chapter’s exercises every six months. (When you are on a boring conference call, time is well spent.) It gets easier after the initial tidying up.

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•

Be decisive in your actions. Staying in the middle ground will not produce the desired results of this chapter.

•

Review and delete the items moved into the OLD folder. This will confirm that you do or do not need these items or files.

•

Always keep improving. Take advantage of a clutter-free workspace and look for other areas where this skill can be applied, such as your work desk or home office.

One thing that does occur in this tidying up process is that you are so focused on what to dispose of that you can overdo it. Yes, you may delete files or links that you need. There is always a recycle bin. When you overdo the disposition and recategorization, you may not be genuinely thinking about what to keep to be productive. This is a bit like the train company boasting that the trains now run on time and reach the destination faster when all that has happened is that the train is not stopping at all stations. Through this observation, I concluded that the best way to choose what to keep and what to dispose of is to take each item and ask, “Is this something that I will use this week or this month?” If the answer is yes, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is the simplest and the most accurate yardstick by which to judge. I could argue that by keeping so much functionality and content, you are not valuing what you have or use, but adding more functionality and content to functionality and content that is not being used. This approach has limited success. It is more productive to remove something you already have and just let go.

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References Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, Netflix. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo (Ten Speed Press, 2014).

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Creating a Growth Culture with a Truly Remote Team James Cash Penney, founder, JCPenney: Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together.

The Only Way Is Up, Ideally As the founder and CTO/CEO of a company, there is an expectation from employees and potential new hires that their employer is expanding—and with this expansion, their careers will progress. This employee expectation puts additional pressure on a founder because you want to attract new talent but also keep talented individuals around as much as possible, with challenging projects and technologies, so they don’t outgrow the company. BS job titles and fake job promotions will not cut it. Any talented individual will see through these. This chapter throws out the traditional notions of what it takes to run and grow a small business with a remote team and offers some unorthodox

© Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_2

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time-saving advice that will free any founder’s time, which will allow you to focus on one thing: growth. Time is the currency that any founder, including myself, just doesn't have enough of. These approaches, from productivity to communication and culture building, have been applied to the SoHo organization to create growth of a remote team with an internal focus. Yes, internal focus to create growth!!!

SoHo’s Growth Mantras The following are SoHo’s growth mantras: •

Email is the graveyard of messaging. Most information stored in employee inboxes is often lost or unsearchable. If it’s a task, generate it as a task, not as an email.

•

Forms should be electronic, like in a PowerApp, not a Word or PDF file to be downloaded.

•

Do not assume that people read emails.

•

Tasks ideally should be able to be performed on the go, on a phone.

Chapter and Book Disclaimer Let me state here, early in the book, that SoHo is not a 100% remote company—not in the United States, India, or Lithuania offices. Yes, yes, I know this book is about the Zoom economy. You hear this all the time. A wildly successful tech company with 100+ staff working remotely, with no staff morale, productivity, communication, or team-building problems. Like Basecamp and Automattic (the folks behind WordPress), these successful companies are 100% remote, so how do they do it and do it successfully? 18

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Let’s not confuse things. First, most of these companies are somewhat newish and have not been around for 30+ years and they are technology product companies rather than service companies. At product companies, there is a tendency to leave developers alone to do their jobs in isolation and come up for air on sprint calls. SoHo is a services company, not a product company. This is a crucial point of difference when reading articles on remote workers, as traditional companies that service the customer are located close to their customers. This isn’t a new concept. If you look at the history of economic growth, service industries are typically located where wealth is located. SoHo’s office is off Wall Street, and our client base is finance. I’m aware this goes against the advice offered in best-selling books like The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas L. Friedman. A book that describes geographical distance from the market is not important anymore. Informal, face-to-face conversations are priceless. A person working for a service company always needs to be servicing the customer, while a person working for a product company can be alone, in a different time zone, coding away. The statements above are not hard and fast rules. They are based on observing SoHo’s clients and community. Despite extensive use of MS Teams with our clients, 95% of our client base is located within three miles of our New York City-based Wall Street office. Older companies may have a legacy of an office workplace culture. For example, if a company is over 100 years old, has always been located in the same building, has a workforce over 40 years old, then the “Let’s go 100% remote next month” routine will probably not work because of culture (the way we work), equipment, and people’s resistance to change. Going remote can be done, but it will be a cultural shift that will be resisted. For a traditional company, I suggest starting with one or two days a week of remote work and evaluating the benefits after three months.

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Another important point is that startups tend to have all the latest gadgets, are more tech-savvy, and have a younger workforce than older companies. I think they prefer to be on the leading/bleeding edge of technology with webcams and Apple watch pings with every notification. In contrast, older companies do not always have all the gadgets or the tech-savvy workforce so new home equipment may need to be purchased. So going remote is not for everyone.

How Does SoHo Dragon Go Remote? As of the end of 2020, we are not a fully remote company. Yes, even during COVID. And we probably never will be entirely remote because we have found it too difficult to properly manage people that way and get people into the groove of the company. I’m aware that other successful companies have managed this feat, but we haven’t, so I have to be careful with some of my statements in this book because in business, there are no hard-andfast, solid rules. The approaches and principles mentioned are from my experience over the past 10 years. This is my disclaimer.

The SoHo Dragon Story When I started SoHo Dragon in May 2010, I was a single contractor, working from my apartment in Long Island City, the most western part of Queens in New York City. This setup was fine when it was just me visiting client sites and cranking out code for clients. Not much teamwork at all, as it was just me. In 2013, I brought on a partner, Jim Blottman, to the company. The SoHo Dragon brand was firmly established, and we started operating as a “loose” company with both of us working from our homes. He was in New Jersey and I was in New York City. This worked fine with Skype, Office 365 Mail, Dropbox, and a now-defunct task tracker called

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Wedoist. Everyone in the company hated this tool, but I loved it because it was so simple and it was $5 per month with unlimited users. I considered it a total bargain. There is something about simplicity that product managers often do not understand. SoHo is an IT consulting firm that is a service company. I joke that “our business is just like lawyers; we provide a service in billable hours, but we are friendly people to do business with and we always tell the truth.” So employee utilization is vital, along with solid communication, both internally and externally within the company. Then in 2014, the big project hit. Yes, every small company gets a big project that takes them to the next level. You could even say this big project was an act of God 😊, as in 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated the East Coast of the United States, particularly New York City and the surrounding areas. Thousands of homes and vehicles were destroyed during the storm. The economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly 19 billion dollars. The State of New Jersey received billions of dollars of federal recovery money to rebuild damaged homes and awarded construction companies the job of managing the rebuilding program. In February 2014, a former co-worker who worked for the construction firm MBP called me up and said, “We need a technology platform that handles a lot of construction forms and documents and is very customizable, and we don’t know what we want. Does that SharePoint platform sound like it can do the job?” SoHo went from two to six full-time team members within a week, and real team activity was required. Microsoft Teams had not been invented, yet Office 365 was great for email, instant messaging, and document management. Meetings, tasks, and document management was not as integrated into a single platform as I would have liked, but that is why MS Teams was invented. Even if MS Teams had been developed, the client and team communication challenges would still exist. Technology only goes so far. 21

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The best communication tool then and still today is face-to-face meetings, so we set aside two days per week to work on the project site in Wall Township, NJ. This required us to be on-site two days a week to capture formal and informal requirements of the project, both internally within SoHo and externally with the client. In 2015, SoHo moved into MBP’s New York office at 30 Broad Street. This was because it proved to be just too tricky Skyping, emailing, and holding daily standing calls without speaking face-to-face. There is something about the power of an informal conversation, a chat over a coffee, and a side conversation. Technology hasn’t achieved this yet. Also, if you ever want to get close to a client, move into their office. I also discovered that there is always going to be a factor where people want to be in the room where it happens, rather than being in an MS Teams meeting. I know this is a phrase from Hamilton, “Everyone wants to be in the room.” I think it gives people bragging rights. In 2021, even during COVID, SoHo still has an office that is a 30-minute bicycle ride from my house. I work at least two days a week remotely. These days are usually Monday and Friday as I deliberately line up my status and team calls on these days, so there’s not much point in coming into the office to be on conference calls (more about this later in the book). Although most of our employees live in the New York metro area, we do have some that are just outside daily commuting distances, and we insist they come into the office at least once every other month and have coffee with at least one person not on their team. On a high level, this is how the SoHo team members work remotely. It is not ideal, but like life, it is never perfect, but it works. Like everything, it can be improved.

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SoHo Dragon’s Non-Microsoft Tools Even though the book’s title is Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams and I am a Microsoft MVP and SoHo is a Microsoft Gold partner, the company relies heavily on non-Microsoft products for its business success and growth. I thought I would outline them now for transparency purposes. Scaling SoHo with a remote workforce requires tools that provide structure and process to day-to-day functions. At SoHo, we have several non-Microsoft tools that surprise new employees when they see all the branding on the website that we are a Microsoft partner. I often hear comments like, “We are a Microsoft reseller; we must do everything Microsoft.” These responses typically get my witty response of “You use an iPhone. Where’s your Windows phone?” But in all seriousness, we use what we feel is the right tool for the right task. So the primary purchasing criteria are as follows: •

Ease of use: At home, employees install and use complicated enterprise applications like Google, Amazon, Gmail, and Facebook, which do not require training hours. These same employees have the same attitude with applications in the workplace. A two-day training session does not work in today’s workplace.

•

Cost of ownership: As the owner of a consulting firm, I am obsessed with employee utilization, so I want people to work as many billable hours as possible, rather than building out homegrown systems that need maintenance and take up time that could be billed to clients. This is a challenge when there is a technology

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problem, as there’s no resource availability because people are performing billable work. Licensing costs are only part of the true cost of software. •

Mobile friendly: So InfoPath or PDF-type forms just won’t cut it.

One of our mantras is: Useful technology should be easy to learn, simplify tasks, provide more accurate and better outcomes, or/and make the company more money. This is a list of our non-Microsoft tools that help the company scale. They meet the purchasing criteria stated above. BambooHR: This is our HR platform and it’s great for onboarding, managing, and offboarding employees and contractors globally. When an employee or contractor joins, all the paperwork is captured electronically with approvals, workflow, and tasks. The application captures the entire life cycle of human resource management from onboarding to performance reviews, and offboarding. This can be done with no coding and no need for a highly skilled developer (so processes can be implemented quickly). All you need is someone who knows what they want for the company’s HR business processes. SoHo Dragon has integrated BambooHR into MS Teams. Well, of course 😊. Like most software as a service (SAAS) software, BambooHR has an application program interface (API) for employee announcements such as birthdays and out-of-office notices. Freshdesk: This is SoHo’s helpdesk system. We looked at using SharePoint for this with an email-enabled library and Flow and Power App forms, but we decided it would be a science project and did not meet SoHo’s purchasing criteria. We came to this decision after about three minutes of business analysis of reviewing our helpdesk system. The emailing of tickets in a repository is easy, but it is all the edge cases,

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that make a third-party tool desirable and a better fit for our purchasing criteria. The edge cases included: •

Merging of tickets

•

Splitting tickets

•

Customers working side by side with the SoHo support team, so teams need to be assigned

•

Automatic escalation

•

Mobile application

The list goes on. But it was in the edge cases we realized an out-of-the-­box solution was the quickest way for a solution to work. This tool took two hours to implement and work. We could use Dynamics CRM as a ticket case management tool; user onboarding and configuration were complicated. However, it would take a lot more than two hours to get working. Understanding edge cases are important as they are often initially overlooked yet are critical to the product being useful. Monday.com: A task tracker application. As mentioned, Wedoist was our first task tracker. The second was Trello, with a UX of boards and cards. When we first started using Trello, it was visibly appealing, but the data got too confusing with too many tasks and projects as the company grew. The interface looked like a set of jigsaw pieces. In a nutshell, it was the reporting of statuses that became problematic. The last sentence above is an important point. As the company grew, we needed a tool for assigning and completing tasks and for managing and reporting purposes (a.k.a. company structure and management). Monday.com has the look of an online spreadsheet so this has an ease-of-use appeal. I suppose Excel is the world's number one task tracker application and perhaps the world’s most popular CRM tool as well.

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This tool was chosen because of our purchasing criteria, but it had two key features that Office 365 Planner (Microsoft’s task tracker) did not have. 1. Different team players: I was going to say the word teams, but this might get confusing. SoHo often works with people who are not SoHo employees, such as the customer and contractors, and these team members do not want another ID and password to remember. Again, ease of use. This feature is now in Planner, but I am not a big fan of creating O365 accounts for non-employees; even though they have restricted access, there’s an ID in our O365 tenant that is active. This is more an emotional decision rather than a practical one. 2. We love email. Hang on, aren’t MS Teams and SharePoint supposed to reduce all these overwhelming email messages? Yes, but we all look at email all the time. What email is becoming is a notification tool when the information is stored in another application. Monday.com key feature is the ability to notify/assign a task to an individual via email. The person can reply with a message from Outlook and the communication of the task is captured. This feature is not unique to Monday.com; Freshdesk has this feature. This email thread capture feature is critical because people know and love email, so there is less resistance to logging into another application to track notes. Planner can assign tasks where a notification is assigned, but you have to click on a link to open the Planner application to log the comments. This requires the user to be online, which is a problem when you are on the New York subway. Know your user base.

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Harvest: Harvest is a cloud-based time tracking-tool designed for small and medium businesses. It is the only time sheet system we have found that employees and contractors love to use. And it is easy to set up. DocuSign: Electronic document signing tool. It’s the quickest way to get an employee, contractor, or customer to sign something. HubSpot: The best CRM and marketing tool for small businesses. Similar to Monday and Freshdesk. It’s easy to set up and map business processes to functionality, with coding. For the reader, it is worth noting a trend here. For internal applications that we cannot implement in less than two hours, we do not consider implementing them. The evaluation process doesn’t happen, which of course saves more time and creates more time to focus on billable work, the customer, and growth. This is the non-science project approach and the unofficial rule of the company. The common theme with the BambooHR, Freshdesk, Monday.com, and Harvest applications is that they map to SoHo’s business processes and are simple to manage by SoHo key personnel. Without this, management is a full-time job. With less non-billable work, employees focus on client billable work, which results in growth. FYI, SoHo Dragon is not a reseller of any of the tools stated above. With all of these platforms, there is a considerable amount of automation built in so the never-ending internal projects that require an army of resources to maintain are freed up to focus on growth.

The Expansion Over the years, we opened offices in Ahmedabad in India and Kaunas in Lithuania, with other team members working from home in New Jersey, California, Beirut, London, and the Philippines, and we have learned how to work and how not to work with ideas and projects. As of December 26th, 2021, SoHo has 140 employees and contractors working in 9 time zones across the globe. 27

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Unorthodox Advice for a Culture of Growth This section is the meat of the chapter. The first part of this chapter set the stage of the technology that SoHo currently uses and why we picked it, how SoHo has expanded, and how we do business.

Create a Culture of Shipping It’s not just client deliveries that are treated as proper projects with defined milestones, dates, and signoffs, but internal projects and initiatives as well. Treat internal projects as if they are as necessary as client deliverables. Anyone working for a consulting firm knows this is problematic because resources usually get reallocated to billable projects. You must be customer-focused, even when the customer is internal. Internal projects are critical to keeping processes in line with a growing company. You cannot scale and streamline at the same time (phrases you do not often hear simultaneously) without internal processes and projects aligned with growth processes. When processes go manual or just don’t fully work, there is not just a loss of time but a perception that the company is somewhat amateur. Have at least one dedicated resource be accountable for completion and delivery of each internal task, including the completion date. This is discussed later in the book in the chapter on entrepreneurship. These resources must be entirely focused on internal projects and be accountable for their deliveries and milestones. With this responsibility, they are accountable for the success of their deliveries. Earlier, I stated that purchased software shouldn’t be a science project to implement and maintain. I’m aware that a full-time internal resource can be expensive since it isn’t billable, but things just need to work internally for consultants to get their jobs done.

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Create a Culture of Accountability With people working remotely, I am often asked, “How do you know if employees are actually working?” Of course, an easy way to know is with milestones, ship dates, and internal sign offs. Soon people realize that they can’t be “the employee who’s too busy” to get tasks done.

Automate Anything That Can Be Automated The Microsoft Power Automate platform offers the ability to implement workflows, approvals, and integration with other SAAS application APIs to push and pull data from one application to another without a serious amount of coding. There are a couple of reasons why we automate as much as possible. First, it keeps the team size small since we do not need staff to perform repetitious, mundane, and tedious tasks. Two, it lets team members focus on the projects they have been hired to do, rather than on cut-and-paste exercises, which are expensive tasks for U.S. employees. If you are going to do something two or more times, automate as much as you can to eliminate busywork. One of SoHo’s mantras is “Don’t be a robot. Build the robot.”

Do Not Do Tasks Below Your Pay Grade In New York, everyone is busy. In fact, people compete in the busy Olympics, always trying to outdo each other on how busy they are. As a founder, I often feel I win a gold medal in each race. With the above point of automating everything, I try to delegate every task below my pay grade.

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Turn Emails into Tasks Emails get lost, so convert emails into tasks for follow-up actions. Outlook even has this feature on smartphones (Figure 2-1).

Figure 2-1.  Email-to-task feature

Stay Out of Meetings We are supposed to work an eight- to ten-hour workday, but it can be a lot less in reality. When COVID hit, I, like most people, noticed I only actually worked two hours a day. The rest of the time I was in meetings. This observation was eye-opening as we all know this is nonproductive time. Yet we continue to schedule appointments and take other people's time because it is easy to do this with a remote workforce because there are no conference room booking issues. When everyone is remote, there are no questions such as “Are you in this building today?” or distance issues between meeting rooms. And with the Outlook scheduling assistant and 30

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bookings features, it has never been as easy to schedule a meeting. So guess what? We have more of them. Some organizations have implemented a no-meeting Friday. We couldn’t get this working because we do need to speak to employees and did not get to the source of why people need to communicate so much. For decisions and discussions to be made outside meetings, throw questions or thoughts on an MS Teams chat and mention people’s names. Also, set a date of when you need this information. You will be surprised how quickly you get answers. When explaining complicated situations, record the message of the problem using M365 Stream to clarify your message and put it in an MS Teams chat. This approach works well with employees in different time zones. This video messaging technique is very effective as it explains the challenge and what is needed. It's a lot quicker than writing emails. If you can master this decision-making and discussion approach or at least start it, the Zoom fatigue issue does go away.

Delay Your Responses. Be Patient (Yeah, Right). Another good approach to reducing meetings is to think of when the expected response is required. If you don’t require an immediate response, don’t let this “the request” distract you. Founders of companies tend not to be patient, but this needs to be learned. This isn’t just for you, it’s for the team as well. If someone doesn’t get back to you quickly, it’s because they are working and perhaps doing something more important than responding to your MS Teams chat. If someone gets back to me in three hours or tomorrow or the next day, that’s how long it takes. If it’s an emergency, that’s a different story, but there shouldn’t be many emergencies. And if I’m waiting on something from somebody, maybe I’ll ask them one more time and then I’ll just back 31

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off, and that’s fine. There are other things to do in the meantime; there is always a To Do list to attack. If an employee is always waiting and needs information right now and can’t do anything else, something else is wrong with the task, such as documentation or clarification. I call this delayed response approach “eventual response” (versus immediate response). An eventual response has the added benefit of forcing the employee to go figure it out themselves. “Well, if they’re not getting back to me, I’ve just got to figure it out on my own.” And that’s a better outcome ultimately, I think. Another way to stay out of meetings is to block hours off on your calendar. For example, I have 12 pm to 2 pm blocked off every day. This is the time for deep thought and getting real work done. By reducing constant interruptions, the flow of people's work improves because people can focus. Everyone’s day is their own, and if someone wants some of your time, it is on your schedule. Some companies I know have stopped sharing calendars, which I think is crazy, as this is a tool that needs discipline.

How MS Teams Meetings Should Be Run If you are going to have meetings, use these MS Teams features to maximize the effectiveness of the meeting:

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•

Allow guests to bypass the lobby. This will also help meetings to start on time, a big pet peeve of mine.

•

Video cameras on. Make this request.

•

Use the notes and whiteboard features of the meeting.

•

If you are the host, start the meeting on time. This respects other people’s time.

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•

Wrap on time, if not early. I always state, “There are 10 minutes left,” 10 minutes before the end of the meeting.

•

Start the meeting off with the purpose of the meeting, so everyone is clear.

Measure What Needs To Be Measured We’ve all heard the phrase, “what gets seen gets measured.” With Power BI, there is the very simple ability to produce dashboards and reports, which often provide business insight, but they do not necessarily drive business decisions to grow the company. We are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. So ask yourself, are the Power BI reports providing signals or just noise? Turn off the ones that are just noise.

Build to Spec As mentioned, you need a culture of shipping, which is essential. But you also need a culture of building solutions to spec. This section relates to the quality of internal projects, which developers often think do not need to be fully up to spec, tested, or thought through because the project is an internal project. This is the wrong approach as users will soon lose confidence with internal IT and start to complain. When it comes to spec and quality, these concepts need to be understood. Quality is not luxury or something expensive or something you love. I view quality as just one thing: it meets the defined spec. It works to the spec, the cost of ownership is low, and it is reliable. If the criteria of these points are met, there is not only quality, but it is good enough. Good enough is not a slur. Good enough is a definition. It met the spec. Once it’s good enough, it should be shipped to the user base. 33

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Products are never going to be perfect; they are supposed to meet the spec. Hiding behind perfection prevents growth in your company and zaps a lot of time. Everything has bugs in it: Apple, Microsoft, and everything else. But people have been brainwashed into thinking that everything needs to be perfect. Here’s a story I always tell developers. Miles Davis was the American trumpeter who surrounded himself with the right people to record one of the best-selling jazz albums in the world. The people who joined him in the studio for four days were the best in the industry. So you need to ask yourself, if they had spent four more days in the studio, what would have happened?

Chapter Workbook Now it’s time for you to respond and take the actions in this workbook.

Shipping ✓✓ Write down all the internal projects that you witnessed in the past 12 months. ✓✓ How many went live very late? ✓✓ How many had a lot of complaints or only kind of worked?

✓✓ Write down all the internal projects that you witnessed in the past 12 months that did not go live.

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Accountability ✓✓ For internal projects, write down who was accountable for the delivery/success of the project.

✓✓ Are internal projects this person’s key accountability? This includes go live, documentation, support, and improvements.

On the Go ✓✓ List every form that has to be printed out, faxed, or emailed to be downloaded and put an X next to it if this form can be completed digitally.

Automate ✓✓ List all the manual tasks that you perform. Break this down daily, weekly, and monthly.

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✓✓ List all the manual tasks that you witness with team members. Break this down daily, weekly, and monthly.

Delegate ✓✓ List all the tasks that you perform each week that are below your pay grade and reallocate them to someone else. ✓✓ How many of them did you hold on to?

Meetings ✓✓ Look at your calendar and identify every weekly meeting that can become biweekly.

✓✓ Look at your calendar for the past 30 days and identify how many meetings did not require your presence or could have someone else host them.

✓✓ Look at your calendar for the past 30 days and identify how many meetings could have been done via MS Teams Chat.

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Notice your calendar becoming free.

Measure ✓✓ How many reports do you look at a week that drive your business decisions?

✓✓ How many reports do you look at a week that DO NOT drive your business decisions?

Overruns ✓✓ How many internal projects were you involved with in the past 12 months that were overrun because of perfection?

Share these questions with other employees.

Chapter Summary This chapter is about creating real growth with better use of your employees’ time. Notice there is no mention of accelerator models or sales quotes. The chapter is focused on internal processes, projects, and your time. Well, yes, sales are essential for growth, and new client acquisition,

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hiring, and productivity is covered later in this book. The real takeaway of this chapter is that for a company to scale, it needs internal processes. •

When a project is declared, it is delivered to the organization.

•

Decision making is made easy.

•

People are doing their job and not in meetings but staying connected.

•

Manual, repetitive work is a lose-lose game.

•

Internal projects that are built to spec, work satisfactorily, but may not be perfect are, in fact, good enough.

•

Make things simple.

•

Do not create science projects.

•

Free up time with the techniques stated in the chapter.

•

With this free time, focus on growth.

R  eferences Matt Wade with Sven Seidenberg and Chris Webb, “Everyday Etiquette with Microsoft Teams,” www.avepoint.com/ebook/microsoft-­teams-­ best-­practices. Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Room Where It Happens, Hamilton. Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat, (Gardners Books, 2005).

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Using M365 To Be an Effective Executive with Remote Workers Peter F. Drucker: Working on the right things is what makes knowledge work effective. The last chapter touched on this subject and this chapter puts this subject into fifth gear. The number one thing I or any IT folk will tell you is that we do not have enough time–not money or resources. Even with working from home and no commuting time, I’m super busy. This chapter offers a step-by-step guide to becoming a more productive and effective executive with remote workers, not by becoming further entrenched in M365 technology or by performing more tasks in the same amount of time, but rather by how effectively your time is spent on decision making. There is M365 functionality that complements the principles mentioned in this chapter. Some of these principles were implemented at SoHo prior to COVID and before the staff went fully remote. The principles are still relevant. This chapter is properly the most low-tech chapter in the book. © Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_3

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To summarize this chapter, it’s all about using your time more effectively. There are many principles, theories, and disciplines outlined in this chapter that could be in a book focused on the following: •

Responsibility and accountability

•

Understanding results and how to get them

•

Good decision making

•

Underperformance

•

Time killers

•

Hiring talent

•

Delegation

Responsibility and Accountability In upcoming chapters, I discuss how assigning employees responsibility and accountability does put ownership to projects and processes, as it should. This approach did not work for us at first. In 2016, after hiring a few employees at the start of the year, I quickly realized that I needed to focus on the outcome of accountability and define it correctly because in a few cases, people were not getting the results they were accountable for and it is easy to blame the new employee as the buck stops with them. After some internal discussion with team leads, we cross-referenced notes on the quality of the outcomes with the quality of the process that led to the person’s accountability, responsibility, and ultimately work. Though not very obvious at first, I soon realized I needed to stop rewarding good outcomes that resulted from flawed processes because those good outcomes were a matter of luck. There was a counterargument

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that you create your own chance, but the evidence of employees’ accountabilities and outcomes was not stacked in this favor. Instead, I started to either celebrate or at least normalize good processes with bad outcomes. This may sound odd, but the company began to achieve better and more predictable results with hiring and goalsetting for roles and responsibilities over a short period. I identified an employee’s accountability with thoughtful decision processes as opposed to ones that were driven purely by whim or intuition and thus often ended up with results that were average at best. Every job hire and accountability had to be written down in a Word document and signed by the hiring manager and the employee. This can be done with the Request sign-off feature in MS Teams, shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1.  Request sign-off feature in MS Teams Do not use email. This was an interesting observation: job specifications written in an email were generally not defined or agreed upon and got lost over time. This confirmed my theory that email is the graveyard of information. Goals need to be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). Goals should be established using a specific set of criteria that ensure that the employee’s objectives are attainable within a particular time frame. 41

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I won’t approve a document peppered with vague statements, sound bites, and clichés, such as the following: •

This will achieve alignment with Microsoft.

•

Take the company to the next level.

•

We need a total quality control methodology.

For this principle, we use MS Planner board for hires and it has assigned accountabilities with set goals that must be SMART. This provides referenceable documentation for introspective thoughts on why accountabilities are working or not.

 nderstanding Results and How U To Get Them In the early years of SoHo Dragon, when I wanted to improve a process, whether project management, estimating, or hiring, I would often implement dramatic changes, which ended in little success. I replaced the large swing ideas with small, incremental improvements that added up over time. This took me some time to realize since it goes against what is written about company growth. (“You need to pivot” or “Go big or go home.”)

Tiny Improvements Add Up To Massive Differences The lathe analogy is that 5% yearly improvement is just a way to remind yourself that every little bit helps. And just as importantly, if the company doesn’t achieve a set goal or forgets something, it’s not the end of the world. All the company needs is

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5% improvement a year to become noticeably better. It’s not much, but it adds up. The truth was that whatever flawed processes SoHo had or whatever things it was struggling to learn, there was probably a good reason. This could be the company’s structure: employees’ experiences to date had been set in stone to a certain extent, and the more used a process is, the more likely the habit becomes too ingrained to be broken. If the process or task is small, the cost to the company is manageable. Entrepreneur blogs and autobiographies of tech titans may convince you that it’s easy to make significant changes and the rewards are consistently solid. But it honestly isn’t. It’s hard work: risky, expensive, and exhausting. Little, sensible changes don’t make the headlines, probably because they are boring. Yet anything I’m reading on LinkedIn from great individuals is all about change management, pivoting, and being the disrupter. Departments should have defined monthly, quarterly, and yearly goals that are ideally reviewed weekly. The review cycle of the goals should be identified. If it’s too long, the momentum of the process improvement becomes difficult to sustain. Again, Planner should be the tool of choice. Managers on the team should celebrate the completed tasks and acknowledge the team members for task completion. Use the MS Teams Praise feature for the celebration.

Good Decision Making This section of the chapter is a primer for decision making. The words “decision making” can often be replaced with “strategy,” but I hate this word as it is so overused and often full of business jargon. I’ve worked for too many companies that used the word strategy in their slogans and announcements of high-sounding goals.

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I often speak to employees who are frustrated by the state of a project’s decision-making process or SoHo’s strategy on a topic. So what are some good and bad characteristics of decision making?

The Three Elements of Decision Making The kernel of decision making contains three elements: •

Diagnosis: What is the core challenge?

•

Guiding policy: The approach to dealing with the challenge with a direction forward, but not defining the details of the decision

•

Coherent action: How feasible are the coordinated policies, resource commitments, and actions of the guiding policy?

I have found that the results from good decision making don’t just draw on the existing strength of individual team members, but on how the team can work together. This should be realized as soon as possible; otherwise, a team will pursue multiple unconnected objectives or, worse, the team members or the objectives. Crazy, I know, but this is often the case. Alignment is key. Another problem with implementing decisions is that coordination can become costly because people have to focus. Hence, people have to be left alone to do just that thing and not be bothered with other tasks, interruptions, and other co-workers’ agendas. It also means saying no to individuals, groups, and even your line manager. This needs to be drilled into employees. Often the challenge I have in managing decision making is to see what everyone is doing at a high level. My most important responsibility is to identify the most significant challenges to forward progress and devise a workable approach to overcoming them. 44

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Most decision making is nothing more than statements of desire, but when you accumulate the company’s goals and look at them closely, they often contradict one another. This is where time management is key. You can’t get into the weeds of each goal, only to realize there’s a problem. The clarity of a goal must be in the summary of the information. This is why I often butt heads with new hires after reading their status reports or sitting in on their presentations because their information is too vague or undefined. The other extreme of this is making a task unnecessarily complex and lacking in substance. Bad goals and tasks, which often lead to bad decisions, often contain words and phrases that are long-winded on a specific goal and lack policy or action. The assumption is that goals are all you need for strategic objectives that are incoherent and, sometimes, totally impracticable with high-sounding words and phrases to hide these failings. This is a huge red flag in deciding to pursue a goal. The three elements of decision making I define in this section should always be thought through with any project involving team members that will take significant effort.

Underperformance When people characterize a certain key performance indicator (KPI) as an underperforming team, this is incorrect. A low key performance indicator is a statement about results, not people. The result of underperformance is not just a problem in the “what” you are trying to do. It’s also a problem in the “why” and the “how” you are doing it. It’s often a result of people not being willing and able to say no to a wide variety of actions and interests. Decision making is as much about what an organization does not do as it is about what it does. Focus and commitment are critical.

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I found so much insight in not just looking at the Power BI reports, but in really understanding the details behind the KPIs. For example, were the team members the right people, was this a priority project for them, was the goal realistic, and what were the true stoppers? Decision making is always the same: identifying the critical factors of the challenge and figuring out a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors. Simple as that.

Time Killers We have all been there: the meetings, endless email threads, and neverending conference calls. If you have all the information, make a decision, make it quickly, and focus on what matters. Yet to my knowledge, there’s no class on LinkedIn Learning on the topic of decision making. It isn’t a single skill, but a series of skills and disciplines. This lack of easily accessible training is odd, given the importance of quick, good decision making, and often a time-zapping process to figure out how to make the decision is a not-needed step. Allocating the time to make critical decisions is something that can be a challenge because we are all busy. Remember, not all decisions need the same time or focus, so trying to templatize the same time on all decisions can lead to difficulty in identifying which ones are the most important and which ones are bogging us down and stressing us out. If a decision requires multiple meetings, emails, and conference calls, and there’s still no clarity, then the task is too complicated for the people involved or hasn’t been defined correctly.

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Hiring Talent We all know that better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. Still, I’ve found some significant limitations and pitfalls in the traditional job interview. I’ve had this suspicion for many years now that this routine takes up time and resources without actually helping to select the best people to hire. This has been costly at SoHo and for other companies, I suspect. Traditional interview approaches just don't work. We have all done this. Every adult goes through the job interview ritual at least once. I’ve gone through it many times in my career. The routine goes like this: For the person being interviewed, the night before, they frantically research the company, reading every last news article from Google, blog posts from the CEO, and reviews by disgruntled former employees on Glassdoor. On the interview day, they travel to the office, flick through the coffee table book in the lobby, and make awkward small talk. There’s a set of predictable questions like “What’s your biggest weakness?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?” and the most predictable is “Why do you want this job?” Of course, the candidate has these answers scripted. Now let’s see it from the employer’s side of the table. Prior to the interview, the interviewer has reviewed a bunch of resumes. Even though the interviewer has pressing deadlines, they take time and select a list of promising candidates and invite them for an interview with a set of improvised standard questions that are thought up on the spot or the flow of the conversation. The result is all gut judgment about the interviewee. It’s not uncommon for the interviewer to connect with the person they liked the most rather than the most qualified person (a.k.a. subjective feelings) and this is why interviews rarely work.

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These types of interviews tend to focus on a candidate’s behavior, like if they arrive on time for the interview or if they researched the company in advance. While questions may ostensibly predict job performance, they tend to better select charisma rather than actual competence. This might be important for a salesperson, who needs to give an excellent first impression and be charming, but not all roles need charm, and just because you don’t want to have drinks with the person doesn’t mean that person won’t be a fantastic .Net developer. So think about the role. Also, think about the company culture and about the team that person will be joining. Our New York office is smallish with a handful of employees, so a good personality fit is essential because close-knit friendships are a strong motivator when work is hard. But that group mentality may be less critical in a larger company. Hiring the wrong person will cause more harm, so it makes sense for companies to study and understand the most effective interview methods. Every bad employee I've hired has caused 10 times more problems than I thought. Not so much at SoHo, but in my career, I’ve seen interviews expose discrimination biases against someone’s age, appearance, or social class, which has nothing to do with their competence for the job. My theory is:

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•

Attractive people are seen as more competent, intelligent, and qualified.

•

We think tall people are better leaders.

•

People with deep voices are more convincing than those with higher voices. I made this mistake with an employee who sounded like Morgan Freeman.

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This implicit bias is pernicious because it challenges us to spot the ways it influences interviews. Once an interviewer judges someone, they often ask questions that nudge the interviewee towards fitting that perception.

At SoHo, we defined two types of interviews: •

Structured: Developer technical types. There needs to be an agreement on how this interview is conducted.

•

Unstructured: Sales, customer-focused types. Improv style.

For structured interviews, I suggest asking the candidates the same questions with exactly the same wording. So there must be a list of questions specific to the skills of the job. No improv. This removes unconscious judgments about candidates. Structured interviews help measure competency, not “I like this person” factors. Competency tests should come after the interview, so judgment is reduced. I have also found that a bad interview can override a good competency test because it’s the skills for the job don’t come out in the interview. For an unstructured interview, it’s the likeability factor that can tip the balance of the hiring decision. For the competency tests, MS Forms is ideal and straightforward Word documents can be used for structured questions. All of this should be saved on an MS Teams site. For every job specification, SoHo has a designated MS Teams site.

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Delegate This is another skill that they don’t teach in college. This is a genuine mental hurdle for people at SoHo, and in most companies, as there is the perception that I don’t want to make someone else do this or if I delegate my skill or inner knowledge, I will be lost. I’ve found a lot of times people need the opportunities or they need the growth experience, so delegation is perfect, and it doesn’t need to be expensive. Just let go of the anxiety and the belief system that no one else can do it as well as you can. We all know MS Planner and ToDo coming into play, but this is half of the ingredients (Ingredients of a task?). Delegation to others is the others.

How To Delegate More Effectively First, let go of the thought process that no one can do as well as you. I suspect this will concern a lot of tasks. Look at all the tasks that you can delegate and to whom. With the tasks that you think only you can do, really think if this is the case. If you can’t find a good person to delegate to, then you need to hire the right people. See the earlier section in the chapter on accountability and hiring. Only fully delegate when someone is better at a task than you are. So mentoring is required. This is obviously an investment of your time, so really think about if is it worth your time with this person or if you need a different person. Mentorship and a review process are key for delegation to work, so have weekly one-on-one meetings with the person. Use MS Teams to track tasks, notes, instructions, and chat.

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Chapter Workbook Accountabilities ✓✓ List the accountabilities and responsibilities of the people on your team. Are they clear? Have you asked the people on your team if they understand them?

✓✓ If there are frequent questions about tasks, then there is no clarity in accountability.

Hires ✓✓ List the good and bad hires on your team in the past 12 months. Can you relate to the structured and unstructured interview approach and the problems of the unstructured approach?

KPIs ✓✓ Which reports are essential for business decisions? ✓✓ With the KPIs that relate to a team, when was the last time you spoke to the team members about the KPIs, their actions, and the source of the results?

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Time Killers ✓✓ How many time-killer activities were you involved with in the past 12 months? How many hours do you think they wasted for you and your team?

✓✓ Which was the biggest time killer? And how much time did it zap for team members?

✓✓ Could this have been avoided?

Delegate ✓✓ Who is the one person you can start delegating to tomorrow? How much time do you think this will save in three months? What’s the investment of your time?

Chapter Summary This chapter is about making better decisions for your team and perhaps your company through initiatives, hires, and delegation. Fill out the workbook to put the principles into action.

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When making a decision, ask yourself where the information you are using to make the decision comes from. In other words, if you ask a subprime mortgage salesman for investment advice, you may encounter some bias. Understand who’s written the report and what makes them qualified to give you information for this decision. It’s not smart people, but balanced viewpoint that count. We often operate like a carpenter with only a hammer. Every problem looks like a nail, so no matter the job, that hammer is always used. The hammer may get the job done eventually, but it comes with a cost. For me, a poor decision could cost jobs, pay raises, and customers. I often want more tools. Avoid the following: •

A pros and cons list has a lot of blind spots because people weigh them differently.

•

Stay away from so-called experts. You know your business better than they do.

•

Stay in your wheelhouse.

•

If anyone says, “This time it’s different,” ask why.

R  eference Jim Ebert, “How Well Do Microsoft 365 Task And Planning Tools Integrate?”, https://threewill.com/how-well-do-microsoft-365tasks-and-planning-tools-integrate/.

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Entrepreneurship “Clarify your vision and you will make better decisions about people, processes, finances, strategies, and customers,” Gino Wickman, Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business When you think of using MS Teams to help your entrepreneurial skills, you may think this is a bit farfetched, as MS Teams and its ecosystem of products like OneNote and Planner will not make you act like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. This chapter doesn’t pretend it will make you lead like these people. What this chapter does is outline an entrepreneurial framework that SoHo implemented to grow the company, with MS Teams to hold this framework together. I don’t like the word “entrepreneur.” It sounds like a members club. Anyone can define themselves as an entrepreneur. If you don’t have a boss, I suppose you are an entrepreneur. Business books and entrepreneurs who are part-time public speakers often glorify their rule-breaking behavior and boast how they ignore conventional advice and still manage to create profitable enterprises while taking excessive risks on ill-advised gambles. Many misfit billionaires who write popular business books that become New York Times bestsellers often ignore their luck, timing, socio-economic background, and connections. An entrepreneur from a prosperous family with valuable contacts who starts a business at a perfect time, such as Gates in the ‘90s and Zuckerberg in the ‘20s, has a greater chance of success, even if they quit college.

© Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_4

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This is not entrepreneurship, but rather timing, social structure, and a good Rolodex. Hard work also helps. In 2016, I concluded that there was a problem with SoHo’s critical decision-making process. The key decisions never seemed to get made or, once completed, failed to be correctly implemented without meeting after meeting and endless clarification on who was supposed to be doing what. Someone told me about a business methodology called Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). (By the way, the words “operating system” here have nothing to do with technology.) If implemented, EOS would solve some of the decision-making issues that Soho was experiencing. It almost sounded too good to be true. But three months later, we hired an EOS implementer, flew the leadership personnel to the New York office from India, California, and Florida for a long and busy weekend, and implemented the EOS methodology in the company. In 2021, the company’s decision making still uses the EOS methodology, which has resulted in quicker decision making, with people being accountable and responsible for these decisions. There is a book on this topic called Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman, which describes this methodology in detail. But in my opinion, it’s almost impossible to implement EOS without a trained EOS implementer because the book has a lot of codified traditional management methods and business jargon that needs to be interpreted. If I explained the EOS process to my team, they would think I’m on a different planet. This chapter does explain the EOS methodology and how MS Teams helps keep the components together with a remote team.

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What Is EOS? The EOS pitch is it’s “a blueprint for first-time entrepreneurs and those who’ve hit the ceiling in their business where hard work and determination are no longer enough for it to survive and grow.” The six principles of EOS are •

Vision

•

People

•

Data

•

Issues

•

Process

•

Traction

Some of the advice is old-fashioned management with the execution of the implementation, something like a Tarantino film, with departments rebadged and objectives and values all synthesized together, just like Michael Porter’s generic focus strategy wedded to Frederick Taylor’s Scientific Management—weird at first. There’s a lot more to implementing EOS in your organization, but it also covers the following: •

What are your core values?

•

What is your core focus?

•

Why does your organization exist? What is its purpose, cause, or passion?

•

What is your organization’s niche?

•

What is your 10-year target? What is your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)?

•

What is your marketing strategy?

•

What is your three-year picture? 57

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What is your one-year plan?

•

What are your quarterly Rocks?

•

What are your issues?

 sing MS Teams To Implement U the EOS Methodology This section of the chapter outlines how SoHo used MS Teams to implement EOS. This chapter will not explain the EOS methodology in depth. I recommend you create a Team site and add key personnel to be members of the team. All of the content, forms, and jargon should be stored on this MS Teams site.

Vision The first part of the EOS implementation process is to create a vision of where the company wants to be. It’s not that we didn’t have a picture; it’s just no one could agree on one. I’m not sure which was worse. Sound familiar? The first step is obtaining answers to these eight questions: 1. What are your core values? 2. What is your core focus? 3. What is your 10-year target? 4. What is your three-year picture? 5. What is your one-year plan? 6. What are your quarterly priorities? 7. What is your marketing strategy? 8. What are your issues? 58

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As a first step, I put these questions on Microsoft Forms as a questionnaire and distributed it to key personnel in the company. Of course, the responses were all but consistent; you would think people were working for a different company. Once everyone answered all of the above questions, their responses were added to a new conversation thread where all of the team members could respond to the questions and responses. At first, this creates more noise than signal, but it provides visibility to the answers and people’s thoughts. To bring closure to the visioning process, the EOS implementer did require some workshops to get everyone aligned. At the end of this exercise, Figures 4-1 and 4-2 were filled out.

Figure 4-1.  EOS implementation model, Vision

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Figure 4-2.  EOS implementation model, Traction At the end of this exercise, SoHo’s company core values were defined as Integrity

Doing what we say we’re going to do

Leadership

Making the people around us better

Commitment

Helping and taking care of customers, partners, and team members

Realistic

With our timelines and expectations, our approach, and the delivered technology

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This should be worked on collaboratively in a Word document that is collaboratively worked on by the leadership team.

People We all know this, but we can’t do it without great people, and the age-old cliché of “surround yourself with great people, top to bottom, because you can’t achieve a great vision without a great team” is so true. There is more to the statement in EOS methodology, which states that every employee must get it, want it, and be able to perform the job. Get-it people: They either “get it” or don’t when it comes to their role, the company culture, and the systems in place. While there are plenty of people who do get it, we found not everyone does. Want-it people: When someone genuinely likes their job, it shows. They take the time to understand the role and do it based on fair compensation and responsibility. If you find yourself having to beg someone to take a role, you’re going to end up with someone who doesn’t genuinely want it. Capacity to do it: Capacity isn’t just about knowing how to do the job, but also the time and the physical and emotional capacity to do the job well. Some roles may require more hours than a person is willing to work each week, or may require skills that a person doesn’t have. Make sure that the role suits their capacity before making a hire. Each person must be a Yes! to the above three questions. This is defined further with what EOS calls an Accountability Chart and a People Analyzer.

Accountability Chart Before the EOS implementation, like most companies, our organizational chart was timid, to say the least, as we didn’t want to upset employee egos. The Accountability Chart is a tool that helps you take a big step back to 61

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define the structure that will take your organization to the next level. The chart in Figure 4-3 also clarifies everyone’s roles and responsibilities.

Figure 4-3.  Accountability Chart The chart is different from an organization chart, as the figure above focuses on who reports to whom. Still, an organizational chart doesn’t address one of the significant issues SoHo struggled with: a lack of clarity around the company’s primary functions and who is accountable for what. The Accountability Chart clarified who owns the significant functions of SoHo and identified the primary roles and responsibilities for which they are accountable. PowerPoint is the best tool to use to create the Accountability Chart.

P  eople Analyzer With this EOS tool, you will be able to cut through the complexity and identify if someone is aligned with the company’s core values, gets and wants their role, and has the capability for the role. Figure 4-4 illustrates

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this. The left-most column shows company employees and the top row is the core values, with the traction process.

Figure 4-4.  The People Analyzer With the People Analyzer, every employee is then ranked by the leadership team. The People Analyzer should be reviewed each quarter with the employee. Our People Analyzer table was done on a OneNote page as a notebook in the EOS MS Teams Site we created.

Data This means cutting through all the feelings, personalities, opinions, and egos to boil SoHo down to a handful of objective numbers that give SoHo an absolute pulse on where things stand.

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The KPIs were defined quarterly and split into 10 core and non-core goals. The company couldn’t cope with more than 10 core goals each quarter.

Note Read the previous chapter on KPIs. The KPIs were done on pages with Planner. With the Vision, People, and Data Components defined within SoHo, I noticed lucid, transparent, open, and honest conversations among team members where everything became more visible, and people could “smoke out all the issues” that stopped them from meeting their goals.

Issues With goals and accountabilities now visible in the company, issues started to arise, which were tracked and addressed with a weekly meeting. These issues weren’t new; they had always been there. But now the company was present to these KPIs. We added a KPI to log when the issue arose, and no point was to linger for more than four weeks. We tracked issues in OneNote and then Planner. At the time of writing this book, Excel Online was being discussed as the task tool.

Process We all know this is the secret ingredient in any organization. To scale, we needed to standardize and systemize processes. Everything is now written up, shared, and approved with the MS Teams approval process.

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Getting everyone on the same page with the essential procedural steps and then getting everyone to follow them to create consistency and scalability was a challenge.

Traction Traction means bringing discipline and accountability into the organization, becoming great at execution, and taking the vision down to the ground and making it real.

The Weekly Level 10 Meeting A weekly MS Teams meeting with SoHo’s leadership team is used to keep discipline in place; follow up on issues, KPIs, and Accountability Charts; and confirm that people are in the proper position. All of the content is easily accessed because it’s on a single MS Teams site.

Chapter Workbook The objective of this chapter’s workbook is to get you to think if it makes sense to implement EOS methodology in your organization.

Roles ✓✓ Are roles clearly defined in the company? Is the sales department only making sales, operations only performing operations, and is there one person in charge of this role? Y/N

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Your Time ✓✓ Are you utterly unplugged on vacations? Y/N

Free Time ✓✓ Do you schedule at least 30 minutes a day to do nothing (gym, meditation, walks)? Y/N

What Gets Seen Will Get Measured ✓✓ Do departments have targets and KPIs where output can be measured? Y/N

Chapter Summary Implementing EOS put my small business, SoHo, on a road map to a better destination and helped the entire team understand their role, purpose, and unique contributions. Although SoHo has used MS Teams functionality to track and communicate the traction components, a successful EOS implementation is not about technology. And there are no easy solutions to improve the results of your business. Complete the workbook if you think the EOS methodology is something worth implementing. If you answered No to any of the questions, I recommend reading Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business and considering implementing EOS. 66

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If you are an entrepreneur and doing it all yourself or with a couple of contractors that help out, you don’t have an entrepreneurial venture; you have a job with all the business risks. This chapter or this book won’t help too much. I had to be very honest with what I witnessed in decision making and people’s accountability and realized something had to change and people had to go. Any company is only as good as its worst day, and before implementing EOS, some days were terrible.

R  eferences Gino Wickman, Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman (BenBella Books, 2012). Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters, Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business (BenBella Books, 2012). Gino Wickman, What the Heck Is EOS?: A Complete Guide for Employees in Companies Running on EOS (BenBella Books, 2017). EOS website, https://eosworldwide.com.

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Being Productive with Your Productivity Mark Twain: The secret of getting ahead is getting started. This chapter is all about overcoming procrastination and other insights to manage your time further. I’ve touched on this topic in previous chapters with tips on staying out of meetings and delegation to team members. This chapter is ideal for typical procrastinators, which we all are to some degree. I have been a charter member of this group in the past. This chapter is for you if you feel drowned or overwhelmed by all the work and interruptions. I got the idea for this chapter by journaling my time. I noticed patterns of my task activity where I was either superproductive or as slow as a snail.

What You Will Learn •

The Eisenhower matrix, a simple decision-making tool for organizing your tasks

•

It is essential to tackle the most significant, most challenging task first, which is supercritical to productivity and happiness. This helps you be more disciplined and focused.

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•

How you can be in charge of your To Do lists and discover a more efficient you

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Which of your tasks you should focus on before other tasks

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How a chef shift is the essence of high-productivity preparation

Eisenhower Matrix: Where To Start The former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower gets credit for this simple decision tool, rather than myself. However, I can take the credit for putting the structure into OneNote. I suspect Eisenhower, as President of the United States, had more critical decision-making moments than me 😊.

“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” Eisenhower The Eisenhower matrix is a simple decision-making tool for organizing your tasks. You can use it to find the task you should act on first. The way it works is by creating a two by two matrix and dividing your tasks into four quadrants.

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Urgent and important: Tasks you need to do today

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Important but not urgent: Tasks you will schedule to do later

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Urgent but not important: Tasks you will delegate to someone else

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Neither urgent nor important: Tasks you will eliminate

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Figure 5-1 is an example Eisenhower matrix.

Figure 5-1.  Eisenhower matrix This is the structure of how I plan my day using OneNote. OneNote is explained further in the chapter.

Start with a Good Plan Being swamped during the workday is not unknown, so planning is vital at the very beginning of the day. Using the Eisenhower approach, I first write down a list of tasks that I need to do today. I don’t prioritize; I write them in a list and then I find out what I need to do today, what I can do later, what I can delegate, and what I can delete. This two-step process helps me focus on the right stuff for today. 71

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Defining my goals each day is one of the first things I do on a OneNote page. For the tech nerds, OneNote sources are referenced at the end of this chapter. The Eisenhower matrix works for me in that it helps me distinguish between important, not important, urgent, and not urgent tasks. There have been days when I wanted to learn a new topic to solve the customer's problem but I was focused on other tasks. I scheduled time on the weekend to learn about the new topic and focused on the work issues during the week. The primary win about this matrix’s approach to tasks is that it asks the question “Do I really need to work on this now?” so I’m not working on something that is not urgent, I should have delegated, or I shouldn’t have been doing anyway. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the delegation part is a huge win in freeing up your time. Another win with the task management process is OneNote’s ability to share notebooks so that co-workers can understand my workload better. They know when everything they ask me to do is less important and urgent than other tasks. I start the day with an immediate skim and response of emails and MS Teams messages that only require my attention. I try to delegate to the team as much as possible and only address those who need my attention. Then I review and define my tasks for the day in the matrix in OneNote. An essential part of productivity is limpidity: you can’t work unless you know what you must do. So figure out what tasks are the most pressing. This is the first step in overcoming procrastination. Write the goals down, instead of trying to sort them out in your head. This is essential. I notice that when my plans are written down, I can accomplish a lot more. I mean a lot more. After I outline my goals, I plan my time and use checklists written in the matrix. I usually split the lists into AM (morning) and PM (afternoon), as shown in Figure 5-2. This helps me visualize my goals.

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Figure 5-2.  Daily goals and checklists using the matrix In the Do square, I added an AM and PM section to provide a sense of accomplishment sooner and keep me motivated to plow on with the tasks at lunchtime, not at the end of the day. I actually feel proud of the day.

Pareto Principle Someone told me about the Pareto Principle on an airplane flight from Ahmedabad, India. The passenger I was sitting next to spent the entire flight completing work. He was clearly on a deadline, but he said that he works more efficiently by using an 80/20 rule, also called the Pareto Principle, which states that in a list, every 10 tasks should include two that are much more important, and these should be tackled first. This approach creates a sense of accomplishment.

The Pareto Principle states that roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”) for many outcomes. Other names for this principle are the 80/20 rule and the law of the vital few.

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Management consultant Joseph M. Juran developed the concept in the context of quality control and improvement, naming it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted the 80/20 connection at the University of Lausanne in 1896. In his first work, Cours d'économie politique, Pareto showed that approximately 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. The Pareto Principle is only tangentially related to Pareto efficiency. Mathematically, the 80/20 rule is roughly described by a power-law distribution (also known as a Pareto distribution) for a particular set of parameters. Many natural phenomena have been shown to exhibit such a distribution. It is an adage of business management that “80% of sales come from 20% of clients.” He said if you start on the easy stuff first (the 80%) you’ll begin to procrastinate on the 20% that probably really matters. I took his advice.

Establish Priorities and Focus on Them After I know what I want to do, I immediately focus on doing them efficiently by setting priorities, by thinking about the consequences of my actions on the tasks and what I want to achieve. This is particularly important if team members need to be billable and require input from you. So tasks do need to be moved around the matrix. It was odd that long-lingering tasks were suddenly complete; the day felt like more of an achievement. I could even feel a bit high. To help stick to my priorities, there are a few methods I use to prioritize tasks. I find the ABCDE method a helpful labeling method. In the ABCDE method of task labels, I assign each task a letter. The highest priority items are A items, while the Es can be skipped if I don’t have time. After all, they can wait and are not as pressing.

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An E task might be to make sure my Windows machine has the latest updates. An A task could be editing a SOW for a client. When I review my To Do list, the A tasks (which in most cases are the most challenging) are the 20% that can be tackled first. When I accomplish my A tasks first, the days feel productive. When tackling the A task, it’s essential that you’re not interrupted, so close MS Teams and ignore the incoming emails. If people are calling, just tell them you are in a meeting. Interruptions and noise prevent deep thought and concentration. Think of it as if you are driving and you get lost; the first thing you need to do is turn the radio off and concentrate until you find your bearings. If the radio is still on, it’ll take twice as long to get to your destination. As with everything, focus on the task at hand.

T he Path to Progress Is All About Self-­Exploration Being productive isn’t just about good planning. It’s a constant learning process. I mentioned earlier in the chapter that I keep adapting every tip for productivity with minor adjustments. This is where reflection is required. •

What time of the day do you work better?

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Where can you perform deep thought and focus?

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Notice where you get stopped and why.

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Notice when your time estimates are correct and entirely off, and ask yourself why.

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Understand the tasks that you were doing that caused problems and the ones that you breezed through.

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A few years ago, I had dinner at The Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare in midtown Manhattan. It’s a small, much-in-demand restaurant where you need to book a table four weeks in advance (something I don’t usually do unless it’s a date night with my wife). Throughout the evening, I watched the chefs plate each dish and prepare the food for the guests. It was a very organized kitchen crew, but I noticed that everything was laid out on the countertop before they started chopping any food. Food, knives, bowels, boards, and plates were all in a set position, and there appeared to be a routine of military precision of performing the tasks. The chef's focus was intense, as if they were under a spell; they just could not be distracted from the task at hand. This is precisely how tasks get completed efficiently. There’s a deadline, prep, and the doing of the job in a set number of steps. My other observation was that none of the chefs appeared to answer their cell phones during the evening. The chefs were the essence of a task-completing machine.

Sleep Hygiene Some days I would exhaust myself, which is when my productivity would start to decline. I was just too ambitious on the task list so I ended up trying to do an all-nighter. Don’t overdo it and do get a good night's sleep. This is so important, and I’m not just talking about a comfortable mattress. Don’t drink coffee or alcohol (if possible) in the evening. Alcohol may help speed the onset of sleep, but it begins to take its toll during the second half of the night. As the body breaks down the liquid, the alcohol in the bloodstream often increases the number of times a person briefly wakes up. This continues until the blood alcohol level returns to zero, preventing the body from getting a full, deep, and restorative sleep.

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Time Management I found that breaking my day into periods was useful, particular with email. As a leader, you don’t need to respond to every email immediately. If you do, you are the team, not the group leader. My email routine is in cycles of 2-3 hours when I’m in task-completing mode. Often when looking in my Inbox, emails from clients have already been answered by my team. Remember, in the beginning, it’s okay to feel a bit burnt out with the tasks because you can reflect on and identify your effort to complete tasks. You’ll progress more steadily this way. Do not start creative procrastination, where you postpone or skip tasks because timelines weren’t set. I used to postpone the most important tasks and watch TV shows or do a bit of Facebook. If you can’t split up every task, break them up into bite sizes of AM and PM. Do not have tasks that take more than three hours to complete. This will give you wins sooner.

Final Point To tackle procrastination, the key is to figure out what you want to achieve in the day, the week, the month, and to look at your limitations, the patterns, and how you complete tasks. This does require a bit of training and self-reflection. Actionable advice: •

Keep To Do lists written down.

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People who work from lists are more efficient than those who don’t.

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•

Prioritize the lists.

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Have the AM and PM lists.

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Reflect on the day and the week.

Finally, never stop reflecting. You can never reach the summit of the mountain of productivity.

Chapter Workbook This chapter's workbook aims to get you to reflect on how to be more productive and kill the procrastination habit in your daily life.

Create an AM and PM Task List in One ✓✓ Remember the 80/20 rule. Complete? Y/N

Prioritize These Tasks with Letters ✓✓ Complete? Y/N

At the End of the Day, How Did It Go? ✓✓ Time estimates correct? Less interruptions?

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 ow Many Emails During the Day Did You Resist H Responding to Immediately? ✓✓ Write the number here.

 fter One Week, Did You Notice A Any Improvements? ✓✓ Task complete rate quicker?

Chapter Summary In this chapter, I’ve highlighted some disciplines for planning your day, prioritizing your tasks, and completing them with the aid of President Eisenhower and OneNote. OneNote isn’t the secret sauce; it’s your discipline in using the management tips described in this key chapter. Review your progress weekly and with others. Understand your limitations, like Excel or complicated expenses, and identify where to put this task in your AM or PM list. After a bit of practice, I hope the days of “I’ll do it tomorrow” are gone, that you are more in control of your day, and that you use your time well since you have combated procrastination in your work life. I certainly have.

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R  eferences Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (Random House, 2012). The Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, www.brooklynfare.com/ chefs-­table/. Pareto Principle, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_ principle. Eisenhower matrix Leila Gharani, OneNote, ­www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poepoh1b_ 3k&t=285s.

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Decisive Communication Over MS Teams Peter Drucker: Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. Every time I walk by a bookstore in New York, there are always new books in the window on the topic of business communication. I always hear, “We need good communicators.” This topic appears to be forever changing as there’s always a new management theory book on display in the window. Just as you can’t be an actual celebrity without having a signature charity (the definition of a celebrity, I think), you can’t be a true leader without writing a book on business communications or performing a Ted Talk on the subject where the audience intently listens to every vignette you mention and how you triumphed over the past. Most people have taken standard management courses that focus on communication and leadership. However, effective listening, speaking, and leadership in a remote workforce environment are different skills and artforms because you can’t often read the room, understand the office vibe, or witness side conversations, or even have these conversations

© Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_6

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with employees. Yes, the unspoken word is mighty, and with the communication mechanism of MS Teams, it isn't easy to show empathy, gather accurate feedback, gain employee trust, or listen to persuasion. This chapter is not about comparing Industrial and Information Age workplace communications but a first-hand informative guide to communicating in a remote workplace and why this is a challenge.

What You Will Learn Remote communication style, in many ways, is not just different but more complex and often doesn’t work in the Zoom economy. In this chapter, you will learn the following: •

How to understand at what level in the organization you need to communicate

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How to extract the correct information from the team

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The need for different communication styles for different types of projects

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How to become an effective leader by changing the way you communicate with a remote workforce

F igure Out Who You Are and How You Must Speak and Lead I’m not the first (or the last) person to say that over the last 50 years, the company has shifted from a command control workplace with a formal reporting structure, with assigned duties and structure, to a fluid, often undefined with dotted-line management entity that has a reorg every two years.

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In more traditional organizations, a manager has strong knowledge of the day-to-day tasks of the other team members because they performed these tasks earlier in their career. With IT, because technology, processes, and skillsets change so often, the traditional management knowledge doesn’t apply. I learned this when I was a Lotus Notes developer back in the ‘90s, when trying to explain things to my manager, who had a mainframe mindset. When it came to the details of the rollout plan, it was like talking to someone from a different planet. There is probably a defined name for the following knowledge levels, but at a base level, there are three types of employee knowledge levels in an organization: •

Define: The Leader. This person puts a structure in place and sets the teams and the projects up for success.

•

Design: The Manager. In the past, this person knew the information necessary for the tasks he or she was managing. Today, this knowledge barely enough, requiring a shift in communication methods.

•

Doing: The Technician. The doer of the organization. A coder, QA, BA, or PM. The person in the trenches who is performing the actual work.

As SoHo started hiring project managers and developers and QAs, I found myself as the owner trying to operate on all knowledge levels. Yes, complaints of micromanagement started to occur. My communication style couldn’t work at all levels, and the moment I started going deeper into the Design level, I realized I was disempowering any newly hired project manager.

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The Design and Doing levels must also be deciders and doers. The Definers make the decisions for the doers, which works great in predictable and repeatable processes. With IT deliveries, there may be custom application development where there are several unknowns and a gray area for repeatable standard operating procedures to work successfully. I found operating at the Define level a challenge because my ability to delegate to other team members couldn’t extract enough information from the team to give me a complete picture to be comfortable that the project would be successful. This communication challenge was amplified further when working with a remote workforce because I couldn’t get a read on the data points of the individuals. A technique I found helpful was to ask open-ended questions, which would lead to other questions, a peeling-of-an onion exercise where each question removes a layer to get to the core. Instead of asking binary (yes/no) questions such as “Are you sure?,” I started asking questions such as “How sure are you?” Binary questions invite only two possible responses: yes or no. “How sure are you?” is more open-ended and can lead to follow-up (unpeeling) questions. I found this approach allowed the team to ask other team members questions and let people think. This approach will make status meetings longer but less “weather report” style, where people can’t wait to get off the team meeting and engage. To have deeper conversations in remote meetings, I insist that people have their cameras on to focus on the meetings. Call out the no-camera participants and ask them why they always have their cameras off. People soon get present to how they are on status calls. Peeling the onion at the Define level to obtain information was an expensive lesson for me to learn. Overrun projects and upset clients are very unforgiving.

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F or Projects To Thrive, the Doers Must Also Be Deciders In Chapter 3, I discussed decision-making delegation. When you get it right, it isn't like heaven, but it can be like hell when you get it wrong. An approach I found helpful was not to ask the usual talkers about the project but the quiet ones and to ask the nonbinary questions so they would not only feel included but would not gloss over assumptions. I would often ask the team's talkers to talk less so that others could talk more consciously. I have discovered this approach is problematic with salespeople, as often they don’t know when to shut up or speak up. When I see a project not going to plan, I give the command, “Tell me if you need me.” Using the words “tell me” is a direct request that if there’s a problem, they must ask for help. It also puts the onus on the project leaders to admit they need help.

Numbers Give Me Good Comfort Often team members would say, “The project is going fine” or “I feel good about the project,” and my response would usually be, “On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you that the project will go live successfully?” If the team member gives a number of perhaps seven, my response would be, “What would make this a nine or a ten?” Suddenly risks and concerns are raised and discussed.

B  e Vulnerable I learned from an former manager that showing some vulnerability makes it easier for people to speak up without fear. I ask genuine questions like “What am I missing?” rather than “Does that make sense?” This approach 85

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also helps get people to commit to their actions by having them figure out the problem or steps, rather than comply with my directives.

Identify the Muscling We have all pulled all-nighters or been weekend keyboard warriors. I always want hard-working team members who are committed, but when there is a “prove” mindset, of course it can be done at any cost. I learned to listen to when work is being done. If it’s been muscled, then timelines and workload efforts aren’t correct.

The Type of Project When a project is assigned, it is essential to understand the type of project that the team is working on since this will affect your communication style. There are perhaps three types of projects, which are defined as follows: •

Plan: We stay the same; no surprises. An activity that has been practiced and performed multiple times. A patch release or an upgrade.

•

Exploratory: Looking around. An assessment of an environment where actual changes are not performed.

•

Adventure: Have an outcome. No committed plan for the future. A proof of concept (POC) is a good example, where there are many unknowns and a result may not be favorable.

I found understanding the type of project guided me on the questions to ask. With a Plan project, there shouldn’t be any delays or serious problems. If there are problems, then questions need to be asked, as the outcome of this type of project should typically be successful. 86

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An Exploratory project is structured, like gap analysis, where the output is usually a punch list of action points. This form of project should be predictable in terms of effort and duration. An Adventure project can be expensive with no results, so it is essential to set the expectation. This type of project requires me to dig deeper with probing questions since the projects are unstructured. Also, this type of project may need to be stopped much earlier than expected, so it is essential to obtain a reading before considerable work effort is performed. Remember, developers will try to be as creative as possible to succeed.

A Meeting Is an Alternative to Work This is an old joke I heard, even before Al Gore invented the Internet, which is also a joke. I know that developers hate meetings, so they should be limited and of as much value as possible. The concept of “improve and learn” is nothing new; it’s when we are constantly analyzing processes to tweak, streamline, or perfect them. Given that the team members are operating at the Design and Doing level, it's also their job to observe and judge processes and decide how they could improve them. After all, they are doing the work. It’s up to everyone on the team to evaluate a project or a task. At the end of meetings, I often ask for suggestions on process improvements or what learning the team should be doing for the future. When people are empowered to learn, committed to acting, and included in decisions about their own work, there’s no limit to what they can achieve.

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List the Projects/Initiatives That Report to You ✓✓ List them all. Look at your calendar.

 ith the List Above, Ask Yourself Which Level W You Operate From ✓✓ Define, Design, or Doing

 ith the List, What Actions Do You Need W To Implement To Operate at the Define Level? ✓✓ Speak to the team. Explain to the team members the three levels of operation.

 ith Each Status Team Meeting, Reflectively W Look at Your Communication Style and List How Many Binary Questions You Ask ✓✓ Write down the number here. Is the peeling of the onion beginning?

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 fter One Month, Are You Operating at A the Define Level? ✓✓ Ask your team if they think this true. Are you asking open-ended questions?

Chapter Summary In this chapter, I’ve shared how I changed my communication style with remote teams to be empowering and decisive with projects. They weren’t radical changes. They were subtle changes in my language. I asked open-­ ended questions. Next time you want to move from one phase of a project to the next, don’t ask your team to sign off on a decision you’ve already made. Avoid questions like “Everyone OK with this?” or “This looks fine, right?” Instead, ask “How could the process be improved?” or “On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you feeling about moving ahead?” That way, you’ll get better and more diverse input–and a more motivated team to work with. Sometimes small things are the most difficult habits to change. Acting as a leader and operating on the Define level was a challenge to truly master, but once I could see the value of only operating at that level, it was like the scene at the end of the Lord of the Rings movie when Frodo Baggins is leaving Middle Earth. There’s a moment where he looks back at his time and thinks, “I’ve now moved on to the next stage in my life's journey.” Be Frodo Baggins.

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R  eferences Brian Clark Howard, “Could Malcolm Gladwell's Theory of Cockpit Culture Apply to Asiana Crash?”, (National Geographic, July 11, 2013). David Mikkelson, “Did Al Gore Say ‘I Invented the Internet’?”, ­www.snopes.com/fact-­check/internet-­of-­lies/.

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Selling Over MS Teams Confucius: Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation, there is sure to be failure. We all remember the good old days of selling where you would meet face-to-face in the conference room, and before the actual presentation or software demo, there would be small talk, which would break the ice for the next hour. The small talk would help when the host asked the guests if they wanted coffee, as there would be five minutes of entirely nonbusiness conversation before the actual meeting. This warm-up routine is identical to a comedy club performance, where at the start of the evening, the master of ceremonies (MC) warms up the audience before the acts start their jokes. In some shows, this goes one step further, with a warm-up act before the headliner. In the world of remote selling, the warm-up, chit chat, and breaking-­the-­ice moments need to be done differently, and if anything, friends need to be made quickly. You enter the meeting as strangers and leave as friends. The other difference with remotely selling your services is that there is no two-drink minimum 😊.

© Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_7

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What You Will Learn This chapter focuses on the human element of selling your services or products remotely rather than the technical functionality of MS Teams. I’m a firm believer that 90% of selling is listening, as in you listening to the prospect, which may seem odd before they have scheduled a meeting to listen to you. In this chapter, you will learn •

How to become fast friends

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How to get the attention of meeting attendees

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The power of handwriting with digital ink

•

How to create insights for emotional buying behavior

•

How to ask the right questions

A key takeaway from this chapter is that customer sales are an interaction. The customer experience is continuous, and this is a lot more than the 60 minutes of the meeting.

Become Fast Friends Before any technical demonstration, send a pre-demonstration questionnaire to the prospects, which he or she should complete or be assisted to complete via a quick pre-demo call. This questionnaire is super important. I insist that the sales lead do this before a sales call, as this provides an agenda for the sales/demo/discovery call. If the prospect can’t answer these questions, then 99% of sales opportunities won’t be closed as a win because they are not in the buying phase; they’re in the envisioning (kicking tires) phase of information gathering. If so, the demo ends up being a total waste of everyone’s time.

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We use MS Forms for the pre-demonstration questionnaire. This is an example of this questionnaire.

 roject Technical Requirement P Questions Template This playbook outlines sales questions that must be asked in the early stages of a sales conversation. With this information, the technical team can focus on key talking points for the technical demonstration. This questionnaire is a classic what, why, when, how, and who set of questions. The key in these discussions is to have the client open up about the project, challenges, and needs. This should be conversational, not mechanical.

What 1. What is this the core challenge? 2. What does the future platform need to be? 3. What is the current platform and version, app, process? For example SharePoint 2010 on Prem | WordPress 4.43 | App | Process 1. Include number of users, department, and enterprise For example Employees | Outside users | Customers 1. What is the immediate delivery of the project?. Date or is it milestone?? 2. What do you want from SoHo? Advice | Technical | Support 3. Why are you speaking to SoHo? 4. Do you have the skill set to perform the job yourself? 93

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Who 1. Who will be on the call? Technical? Stakeholder? Name | Job Title | Email | . If not technical, is this a bit odd? 1. Who is requesting this project? Stakeholder | Compliance | IT If it’s a business unit, then they should be in this meeting, right?

When 1. When does this project need to be done?

Digging Deeper 1. What are the three most important things you are looking for from this project, and why? This question will open the conversation and help you truly understand not only what they want but their priorities. 2. Next steps? By completing this pre-questionnaire, the warm-up process with the prospect has begun, and you are becoming friends with the prospect team. Before the demo, I share the questionnaire results with all attendees so they start to understand who I am and the purpose of the demo. At the start of the demo, I review the findings of the questionnaire, so everyone agrees with the answers and requirements and everyone has had their views heard.

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When question 12 is answered and is specific and measurable, I find agreement with the key points of my demonstrations. Also, referencing answers in the section with insights (more about this later in the chapter) makes it harder for people to say no to the solutions SoHo is selling. Question 13: Next steps. This is a critical sales activity, as you are always closing.

The Sales Pitch/Demo This section will explain some essential tips to engage the prospect and focus on the content of the MS Teams meeting.

Focus on the Why I know this sounds like Simon Sinek but getting the attendees to focus on what you are saying and showing them is a considerable challenge with remote meetings. The productivity win of the day is to multitask as much as possible. This, of course, makes the presenters’ job challenging because they need to obtain 100% of the focus of the attendees. This section will provide pointers to keep the attendees’ attention. Now you have the prospect’s requirements, your demo should state at least one common theme and mention it repeatedly, even with some variation, so by the end of the demo, the audience will understand why your services are something they need. I often send out the identified common theme to attendees in a pre-­demo email with the questionnaire’s answers. This technique creates a listening for the audience to understand your pitch rather than disagree with the requirements. This reduces the chance of an attendee derailing the demo with a surprising different opinion.

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If the last step is not done, the audience may lose interest, and everyone will go back to thinking and evaluating your statements rather than looking at your solution.

Respect People and Their Time In a conference room, people are usually focused on the large screen at the front of the room, and you can see that they are focused. In an MS Teams meeting, it is more difficult to gauge the audience’s attention, so remember, the camera’s on if possible, and no demo should be more than one hour. Always finish a demo 10 minutes early, so there is time for questions and answers. On this note, people often attend meetings late as they are coming off another call. So you only have 45 minutes of demo time. I have a theory that the brain officially stops consuming new information after 30 minutes over MS Teams. I have no scientific proof of this, however. Condense slides and remember this is technology, so don’t expect it will be super interesting to everyone.

Be the Greeter As attendees enter an MS Teams meeting, greet them and comment on them, such as their virtual background or these ice breaker questions:

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If it’s a Monday morning: What does a typical weekend look like for you?

•

If it’s a Friday afternoon: What does a typical weekend look like for you?

•

Did anyone watch this ABC or Netflix show?

•

Where are you located?

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Notice these greetings are all personal and have nothing to do with the demo or work-related activity. This also confirms that everyone’s mic and speakers are working. If you know the attendees’ names, look them up on LinkedIn and try to find a connection to them, such as where they worked or their education. And if you can weave this into your demo, even better. People love to feel valued and know that you have made something personal to them. I suppose this is reciprocation where if you are nice to people, they will be nice to you, but the key is to do it first, so they are more likely to cooperate with you during the pitch. When everyone is in the meeting, I perform a roll call, asking people to state their names and roll in the organization. This makes everyone feel like they are welcome.

Give Them a Takeaway A touch of class is to make it personal. After every demo or pitch, I write a short email to all the attendees thanking them for attending, with the bullet points of items discussed and the next steps. If there was an off-­ topic conversation about an industry statistic or a book that someone mentioned, I reference it with a link to an article with my thoughts or observations.

Record the Presentation In addition to the above tip, I email a meeting recording with my notes and the post-meeting email follow-up. Now, no one will sit through a 45-minute recording, but if you highlight the start times of some critical points that were brought up, the post-demo discussions of the prospect are made more accessible for them to follow.

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If people haven’t understood the value of your pitch while you are doing it, they aren’t going to revisit it later and understand it.

Use Digital Ink To use digital ink, you will need to use the Surface pen. Other devices have a pen, but I’m more familiar with the Surface. We all use PowerPoint for presentations, and I’m not saying to stop using it. This section of the chapter says to use PowerPoint to aid critical thinking, problem-solving, and engagement with the use of a stylus. Statistics: People are 36% more productive when brainstorming with pen and paper than with a keyboard. This information is referenced at the end of this chapter. Why is a stylus more effective with the brain than the Calibri font? I think the brain is more wired to handwriting after over 2,000 years of figuring out calligraphy. Also, everyone tells you they are a visual person (I’ve never met anyone who isn’t), and handwriting provides an opportunity to brainstorm and use your memory to interpret the text. What I found very effective in critical thinking with attendees and creating engagement was not to replace PowerPoint but to mark up slides during the demo. Traditional PowerPoint bullet points make it easy for the presenter, but I have found they do not help people remember the content. To summarize the value of digital ink in a demo, it is very effective for work-in-progress activities such as brainstorming and workshop activities. At the same time, the text is very effective for a finished product: an attendee’s semantic memory. Digital ink is not about art or beauty; it’s about sharing of ideas.

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Where to use the digital ink in a presentation: •

To relay handwritten questions

•

To highlight graphs or statistics

PowerPoint has a drawing mode. Top tip: the Surface pen can move a slide forward, and if you hold down the top of the pen, the slide progression moves backward.

Do the Same Demo Over and Over Again Yes, practice makes perfect. By all means, add fresh ideas from time to time. You mustn’t just go through the motions of the pitch but study it and improve on it. I do this all the time with demos and I practice with co-workers. This is the same technique that stand-up comedians do with their jokes and delivery. They shorten the joke setup and add a word to the punchline, constantly refining and improving. In 1998, the award-winning comedian Jerry Seinfeld even did a show called “I’m telling you for the last time,” where he performed his 20-year-old jokes for the very last time. Yes, 20 years of practice. Also, try to have the same technical resource demonstrating the software, as the person will start to build a response list of answers to the questions.

Don’t Worry About Small Mistakes People would rather see a live demo of the software than a recording or full-on PowerPoint. Everyone is human.

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Give Them Insight into Scenarios This was another technique I learned earlier in my career: when you give the prospect insight into your services, you provide them with the information they don’t know they need or weren’t aware they need to know. These are gold nuggets of information, and if presented right, they are priceless. And, of course, during a demo, you can provide these insights because you have their requirements from the questionnaire and the knowledge of the product/service that you are selling. So there’s the ability for a 2+2=5 scenario in the demo. With an out-of-box item such as shoes or a flat-screen television, the buyer typically knows what they want before speaking to anyone, as these items are easily researched. With custom developments and unique enterprise solutions, every demo is slightly different, and the customer needs to be guided through the buying process.

Insights Show the Client What They Don’t Yet See When I used to do most of the demos at SoHo, I often found a two-­way information exchange, with me showing them SoHo’s solutions for Microsoft SharePoint. The attendees told me about their needs and taught me how their industry works. I thought it was fascinating, and I miss the demo days. Looking back at demo days, a buyer did a fair amount of the talking with demos. It wasn’t unknown that I couldn’t shut them up 😊. Most buyers lack the time to figure out information themselves or know what questions to ask. That’s why they are speaking to an outside party like me, which can lead to a purchasing decision they weren’t expecting. Yes, this is an upsell opportunity, but first it needs to be an immediate sell opportunity.

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With the information exchange, I had to timely challenge a buyer’s preconceptions and decide on our services by providing insights into their needs and the industry. The insights I’m referring to are ideas that refine the way a buyer thinks. I used a technique to shine the light of an insight onto the unrecognized value of a SharePoint solution related to the questionnaire. This would be obtained from the Digging Deeper section of the questionnaire. It would differentiate our offering from others. This unknown value would often be an eye-opening experience to attendees and draw them in for more value points. The value points don’t just need to be SoHo’s solutions or expertise but also the cost of the current system and the benefits of the change. You can find insights from determining what you think the buyer doesn’t see or create insights by providing a dramatized version of how life might be with or without your product, somewhat like “before” and “after” the migration to M365. For example, you can share and experience about a prior engagement for a similar project. This further draws attendees to listen to the demo more intently. Insight scenarios are, in essence, short stories that allow a buyer to picture your value proposition and how it could function in their world. This is key: whatever you say needs to relate to them or else they think, “What’s in it for me?” A good scenario: •

Shouldn’t be longer than two minutes to deliver; otherwise, people may not understand the scenario that you are describing

•

Does not drown a buyer in facts, but plants the seed of doubt about their current system

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Should emotionally draw buyers in, giving them a personalized story to which they can relate instead of a list of dry facts and figures

•

Allows a buyers to picture themselves in the new world

•

Must challenge a buyer’s thinking with the ultimate goal of highlighting a value proposition

Don’t Flood, but Drip Information I strongly do not recommend displaying and discussing case studies on a demo because attendees do not understand large amounts of text in remote meetings. It’s just too much information to consume at once. And showing a case study in PowerPoint rarely works. Flooding your prospects with facts when they are not yet ready will work against you.

The Six Steps to Creating a Good Insight Insight creation is an art. Like the comedian writing a good joke, a setup, and a punchline, this needs to be thought out and continuously refined. Step 1. The Gap: Figure out how your prospects think and how they will need to think differently to agree to a purchase. The scenario you create should highlight the gap between these two points. For example, a company thinks employees aren’t engaged with industry news on their intranet and need to be made more aware of the content on the intranet. You want to show instead that employees are consuming content from other sources. Step 2. Relatable: Weave the buyer’s goals into your scenario so that they can relate personally to your story. Step 3. Really understand their problem: You must be very specific about the buyer’s particular problem or complication, so mention

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companies of a similar size or vertical or what other people in this role have experienced. Step 4. Create the “aha” moment: This is where there is a sudden realization of a need for change. This is where it is blindingly obvious that your services are required. Step 5. You are the future: This step steers the solution to your offering. Step 6. Getting buyers buy-in: This is where you ask the buyers questions to help them discover their problem and the right solution. This process helps buyers to connect the dots and realize how your scenario addresses their issues. The answers from the questionnaire are the foundation of penning a good insight together. I’ve found the crux of insight scenarios and questions is to steer a buyer’s vision into one that leads to the value of SoHo’s services, and to do so, the questionnaire is the best starting point.

Watch Your Language No, I don’t mean swearing, but obviously certain words shouldn’t be said in front of a client. If there is disagreement on the questionnaire review, instead of stepping over everyone’s opinions, review the questionnaire again. The opening phases I use are, “Do you mind if I ask some clarifying questions?” Notice I’m asking for permission. Reviewing the questionnaire again may result in insufficient time for a demo or pitch of your services and thus you may require another meeting. Still, the client will appreciate your professionalism and that something is wrong and that you aren’t trying to sell them something that isn’t right for them. This professionalism is also a good differentiator from your competitors.

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To get people to open up more, use this language in the question: “Tell me about the issues.” rather than “What are the issues?” People will open up much more. This is a helpful technique for parents when they ask their children about their day at school, and the answer is a one-word response. At the end of a demo, always ask, "What other questions do you have?" Never say "Do you have any other questions?" The word “other” is key as it opens the dialogue further.

Chapter Workbook This chapter’s workbook aids the sales process by getting you to look at your communication style on projects and see the operating level you work at. Also, you learn to ask questions to peel the onion and open communication with team members.

Add the Questions to Your Pre-­Demo Questionnaire ✓✓ Use the template in this chapter as a guide.

 ecord a Sales Demo and Ask Yourself R the Following Questions ✓✓ What were the questions? ✓✓ Was everyone greeted? ✓✓ Did the insights work well?

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✓✓ Was there alignment with the questionnaire responses?

 re You Noticing a Pattern with the Pain Points A of Customers? ✓✓ Core challenges ✓✓ Why the project is important ✓✓ Digging deeper

If you are noticing a trend, this information should be given to your marketing team.

Has the Win Rate with Demos Increased? ✓✓ Ask yourself this question after six months.

Chapter Summary Technical folks underappreciate sales; they think it’s cheap, sleazy, and a quick buck. In reality, it is anything but this. It is hard and often unrewarding work, and to perform this task remotely is so much more complex and requires a new set of people skills.

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You many have noticed very few MS Teams tips or described functionality in this chapter. This is because in sales, customers are people first and customers second, and the moment this stops, they aren’t your customers; they are someone else’s.

R  eferences Edward Capaldi, Toyota’s 5 WHYS. www.youtube.com/watch? v=HxqKy1HACmA. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (Pocket Books, 1998). Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Portfolio, 2011) Jerry Seinfeld, I’m telling you for the last time, www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HQGUHwBb4Bw. Travis Smith, Inking your Thinking: The Power of the Pen, www.youtube.com/watch?v=QB4ZABj1iIY Napkin Academy, www.napkinacademyschool.com/learn.

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Get Organized with  Your Organization “Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.” Colin Powell, Former U.S. Secretary of State Disclaimer: This is a difficult chapter to implement. This is the final chapter that applies real substance to leadership with a remote workforce. Yes, I know there’s a chapter after this one, but it is the conclusion chapter, which, as we all know, is the wrap-up of the book (spoiler alert). The theme of this book is how to use MS Teams to aid leadership principles for your organization, and this chapter focuses on a company’s organizational (org) chart. Yes, it’s the diagram that most companies don’t take seriously, don’t truly understand, or are terrified to use because of the problems it causes in the current corporate culture. Like any tool, if it is understood and used correctly, an org chart clarifies who is doing what and identifies the roles in an organization. Why is this important with a remote workforce? With a remote employee base, there are no office cubicles positioned to represent a department or manager’s hierarchy. There’s no corner office with potted plants and a window overlooking the parking lot. These are the unspoken rules that often contribute to the hierarchy of an organization.

© Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_8

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An org chart is more than just a reporting tool to show who’s above and below an employee; with a headshot and contact details, it offers the structure and roles of the organization. With remote employees, there’s no executive row symbolically showing essential people in an organization. This chapter explains how I used the org chart feature in MS Teams to aid communication and for people to understand who’s doing what. The whole org charting of the company came about when I realized that people had the wrong role in the company because goals and targets weren’t being met on many levels.

What You Will Learn In my opinion, the key takeaway from this chapter is that an org chart that is truly representative of the organization is a vital tool for strategic planning to scale a company. The way it is presented in MS Teams provides a hierarchy but is not a representation of who is doing what. Unfortunately, like many organizations, SoHo only used the org chart as a phone number contact sheet and had more of an afterthought relationship with it, because we didn’t see how it could help in decision making or the company’s growth. By bringing this clarity to the organization, life as a leader got a lot easier.

SoHo’s Org Chart When I first looked at SoHo’s org chart in MS Teams, I could see the reporting structure and contact list, but not much more value. Yes, I know you can video chat with an employee with one click of an icon on the org chart, but the chart didn’t show me people’s roles and responsibilities. Although job titles are good, people often perform multiple functions that 108

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create bottlenecks in their work and the company’s growth. Figure 8-1 is part of the India office’s org chart in MS Teams.

Figure 8-1.  Part of the India office’s org chart After 10 years of SoHo, I realized that an org chart affects all aspects of the business. I didn’t understand this until I started looking at and understanding what an org chart is supposed to represent and how it impacts growth, hiring decisions, and career development of employees. If the chart is up-to-date, shows the correct information, and is interpreted correctly, this tool can influence most management decisions and raise questions like •

How does SoHo organize and approve the work to be done?

•

With the changes in workload, how does SoHo hire for the future?

•

What positions should SoHo hire first?

•

How do I ensure people are accountable for the work that’s their responsibility?

•

How do I decide what work is whose responsibility?

This chapter explains the above points.

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Why So Late for Me To Be in the Know? Good question. Even when SoHo hit the nine million dollar mark in revenue and had over 100 employees and contractors, I still didn’t realize the need for an org chart. I and others on the leadership team spent a lot of time looking at sales and forecasting charts and listening to customers on insights on growing the company but failed to look internally at the company and the employees and roles people were performing. Like any tool, if it’s not being used or working correctly, it’s dysfunctional at best and will lead to expensive, bad decisions at worst. The dysfunctions that SoHo has had included salespeople involved in technical deliveries and vice versa or people performing 60% of their work on tasks that weren’t in their job description. Needless to say, these people left the company after a few months. A bad hire is 10 times worse than you think, and you realize this weeks or months after the person has left the company. I spent a week fixing or realigning roles (this depends on your viewpoint on who got moved), which was a challenging exercise because people were telling me incorrect information or being selective about the information they were telling me. Without a clearly defined org chart, I witnessed a truth issue with positions and roles because people were often trying to justify their jobs or wanted to be doing something they shouldn’t be doing. After reviewing people’s roles, in several cases it became very apparent to me that two people were often trying to share the same position, which created no accountability and twice the amount of effort to get anything done. This ultimately led to stumped growth and undermined the decision making of the company. Yes, all of this is a wrong-org-chart problem, not a technology Microsoft Teams problem. What made the task of understanding people’s roles and day-to-­day actions so tricky was that I could ask the same question of different people and get different answers. The truth was very subjective. 110

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Another reason why it took me over ten years to realize the value of the org chart is because I would schedule my time to speak to as many customers as possible, rather than as many employees as possible. Not good, I know.

Creating a Good Org Chart This is quite a topic, as no one thinks about creating a good org chart. People think about making good, accurate reports or a good pitch deck to customers, but not an org chart. When I first thought about the org chart, I outlined the company’s departments, functions, and roles, carving up the company into slices of pie to make them more understandable (you could even say digestible). Any large project needs to be broken down to be manageable to understand it and to see if there’s a problem. Using this tool, I realized that every aspect of SoHo’s business growth and delivery could be tied back to the org chart because as SoHo grew, people needed to be added to the correct positions in the org chart. When the company was not growing, I could see people in positions and roles not doing their job. In Chapter 4, I mentioned traction and quarterly goals. I found that this was an excellent way to ensure that SoHo stayed on track by reviewing the company’s plans and org chart and seeing which resources were required to perform the objectives. This should be the same as the org chart. It’s a powerful, entrepreneurial question to ask, “What can I do today to move me closer to this goal?” I used Visio to chart the company. First, I focused not on the current employees in the company but on the positions and roles in the hierarchy of positions and results. By doing this, I quickly realized what functions

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the company really needed. This was the beginning of what I could call a position/roles chart, rather than a traditional org chart. This was made more difficult by importing the company’s employees into Visio and figuring out where to put the employees in the organization. I made the mistake of trying to make the company fit the people rather than the people fit the company. Once I identified the required roles the company needed, I added an employee to that role. In many cases, an individual would have different roles in the organization; yes, they would be in multiple positions on the chart. Figure 8-2 shows individuals in multiple positions in the company.

Figure 8-2.  Individuals in multiple positions in the company Traditional org charts do not show people in multiple positions, but this is the reality of how a company functions and why a standard org chart isn’t of much value for employees.

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I even added roles that SoHo outsourced so people could see who was responsible for that activity, even though a resource in the company wasn’t performing this activity. After all, this is still a function of the company’s growth. This approach provided clarity to the SoHo organization by showing the following: •

Who was performing what roles

•

Who reported to whom

•

What activities were being performed internally and externally in the organization

An org chart shows who is in an organization and what is being performed by the organization. Note the “What” in this style of org chart. This is where the value of the org diagram becomes clear.

Org Chart Rules Here are some simple rules for the org chart: •

Each position must only be accountable to one other person and the buck stops with this person only.

•

Crossing organizational lines causes problems and confuses the person who is assigned the task as they have other work to perform. It also disempowers the person’s manager. Dotted-line organizations will make people dotty.

•

Unless there is an immediate or severe problem, there is no excuse for crossing organizational lines. Let people do their jobs.

•

The org chart is never complete.

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•

It’s not uncommon to find people in several positions. I think it is normal for founders who start a company to wear several hats. But 10 years into the company, this isn’t right.

•

As a rule of thumb, I insisted a manager should have at least two, preferably three reportees, to justify the title as manager, and they shouldn’t be overseeing more than five different roles. Managers solve problems and manage people.

Since SoHo is constantly adding and reducing its headcount, the org chart changes often. I add positions that I haven’t hire for yet but I know I need for the organization to grow.

Understanding an Org Chart It’s obvious, right? Well, no, it’s not. It can be viewed as a detailed map of the company. A tech lead isn’t always better at coding than the team he or she manage or a more important person than members of the group; this person has a higher-level responsibility, which includes duties of coding. Depending on the situation, it may not even be necessary for the tech lead to be more experienced or a better coder than his or her development team, as being a tech lead is a different skill than coding. I’ve seen this common mistake in previous companies I worked at, where a technical leadership position opens up and the company promotes the top-performing coder to the role. After all, they have earned this promotion by optimizing and debugging complex mountains of code. Why not reward your star performer with a promotion, as who’s better to lead the technical team than someone who knows how to code and can spend all night drinking quantitative amounts of black coffee to have a working prototype in the morning? 114

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Coder and Tech Lead Are Very Different Roles Yes, I know it seems obvious, yet leadership is a skill that is often overlooked. A tech lead involves stakeholder management, project plans, budgets, risk analysis, and vendor management. It could even go as far as managing HR matters. Coding involves deep thought, trial and error, testing, and looking at multiple screens for long periods.

Managing People Is Hard Like coding, anyone can code, but to do it well is something else. Good coders tend to be not the best responders to email questions, are not big fans of paperwork, or are not communicative in meetings—everything a tech lead needs to be. The differing skill set of coders and a tech lead is similar to a salesperson and a sales manager. Very, very different. I’ve even had salespeople tell me they want a commission on the deals and have no interest in awards, trophies, or team meetings. Real oddballs but brilliant at closing deals. After multiple revisions of the org chart, there were promotional issues, but I don’t think this is unique to SoHo. Perhaps it’s a common promotion mistake to turn skilled technicians into managers because the assumption is that if a person is good at their current job, they’ll be good at managing people in this job. The visual impact of the org chart allowed me to identify the new roles and the existing people performing the functions and the skills required for the role. This resulted in some people being in the wrong position and not on the org chart at all ☹. Once I finished the org chart in Visio (I know I said an org chart is never completed), I published the Visio chart and put a link in MS Teams. Figure 8-3 shows how to embed a chart as a URL link.

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Figure 8-3.  Embed a chart as a URL link

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I’m aware that this position chart is unconventional, but as I mentioned, traditional org charts don’t have the depth of employees’ roles. When everyone knows who is doing what and what a group or individual’s responsibilities and accountabilities should be, the SoHo org chart makes sense. And when it doesn’t make sense, it is self-evident that it doesn’t make sense. The org chart is the blueprint for hiring and performance assessments for individuals and groups.

The Discovery of Empty Suits As part of the org chart review exercise, I uncovered empty suits: executives, managers, or officials regarded as ineffectual, incompetent, or lacking leadership qualities such as creativity and empathy – a manager who is entirely out of touch with their team. The Dilbert cartoon strip is the perfect example of an empty suit. These people share these things in common: •

They are blind to the limits of their knowledge.

•

There’s always an oversimplification of the problem.

•

They never say, “I don’t know.”

•

They love best practices.

•

They read a lot of business books to give them jargon vocabulary.

•

They are not stupid individuals. They are perhaps incompetent and ignorant on some issues but not wholly stupid. They can be exceedingly intelligent and lead you into a false sense of security.

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•

They significantly overestimate their limits in skills and experience.

•

They spend a lot of time in meetings.

•

They prefer to tinker with things.

These employees are toxic and should be avoided at all costs. They are the fragilistas (see references).

SoHo Had Several Fragilistas During the charting process SoHo had these types of individuals who were also an expensive resources. People who would introduce a bureaucratic or technical solution to what is a people problem. I failed to spot several hires who were in empty suits. In the interview process, I missed the person who oversimplifies things, talks a lot, lacks logic, and whose ideas are spoken in stories or anecdotes. See Chapter 3’s “Hiring Talent” section for interview techniques.

J ob Descriptions As I said earlier, traditional org charts and job descriptions are rarely accurate about the actual job the person is performing. They don’t have results associated with them, so there are no intentions or goal settings. A salesperson’s job description does have results related to it (their sales quota), but this is one of the few job descriptions that has associated results. SoHo’s org chart didn’t just have the position, job title, and person. It had a description of the role with a result statement. The job description locks in an agreement of the role and the position the person is performing, and there is clarification across the organization on this role because it aligns with the org chart.

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I defined the formula for this job role: the high-level result statement and a list of activities. Someone with a formal HR background may better define this.

The Result •

To acquire customers

•

To satisfy and retain customers

•

To support the smooth and efficient operation of either or both of the above

•

To acquire long-term qualified customers for the company

•

To satisfy and retain long-term qualified customers for the company

•

To support the smooth and efficient operation of the company

SoHo’s Job Descriptions Every employee SoHo hires has a job description with these sections: •

Position Title

•

Result Statement

•

Managerial Work

•

Technical Work

•

Code of Behavior

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Position Title: Operations Manager Result Statement: To ensure that SoHo’s operational systems and processes operate efficiently to meet SoHo employee and customer expectations. Responsibilities include maintaining the integrity of all the company compliance, legal, HR, and sales documentation. Managerial Work: This person is ultimately responsible for the smooth running of operations to ensure that all resources have the correct tools to perform their job successfully. You will be managing a small team of three employees. Other responsibilities include maintaining vendor and client relations and staff augmentation delivery. Must be proactive with company processes and client requests. Technical Work: Good working knowledge of the following systems: HubSpot, Harvest, BambooHR, M365. Code of Behavior: Outgoing, ability to implement requests or fix issues. Must have an outgoing and likable personality. Position Title: Chief Technology Officer Result Statement: Is responsible for overseeing SoHo’s current technology from an IT manager standpoint. This will include creating and maintaining relevant documentation, upgrades, and policies around this stack to be user-friendly and secure, providing a return on investment, in addition to maintaining and fixing IT-related issues. This role is responsible for internal technical support for Operations. Managerial Work: Responsibilities include client project delivery, presales technical support, and evaluating third-party vendor software products that SoHo can use internally or as part of its client deliveries. Technical Work: Good technical knowledge of the following systems: HubSpot, Harvest, BambooHR, M365. Code of Behavior: Outgoing, commercial thought leadership with SoHo’s M365 offerings. Must have an approachable and confident personality. Every employee signs their position statement, so there is a signed agreement to what they are doing and what they are hired to be doing. 120

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When it comes to the annual review, the result statement is the acid test of how well they are doing. Notice in each job description there is nothing open to interpretation, no stock language, and no buzzwords.

The Butterfly Effect of the Org Chart At this stage of the chapter, you probably think this org chart tool seems like a lot of work, and it doesn’t even bring in new clients, reduce email, or get you out of back-to-back meetings. Immediately this is true, but by defining the org chart and outlining the job descriptions, a butterfly effect will begin to take place. Understanding the butterfly effect will give you a new lens through which to view your organization, employees, and customers. The butterfly effect is that a small thing can have nonlinear impacts on a complex system like your organization. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon. Of course, a single act like the butterfly flapping its wings cannot force a typhoon, but it can cause small events that can serve as catalysts that act on starting conditions.

What the Butterfly Effect Is Not In popular culture, the term “butterfly effect” is almost always misused. It has become associated with “leverage,” the idea of a small thing that has a significant impact, with the implication that, like a lever, it can be manipulated to the desired end. The reality is that a small thing in a complex system may have no effect or a massive one, and it is virtually impossible to know which will turn out to be the case. The outlined changes in the org chart have the butterfly effect to potentially create tiny changes that, while not creating hockey sticks sales, could alter the sales trajectory. 121

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Chapter Workbook This chapter’s workbook is challenging and will require weeks of thought, discussion, and action, but if done right, the rewards are exponential. The exercises in this workbook will show you how to build an org chart that is truly representative of your organization, staff positions, and their roles.

 hen Was the Last Time You or Anyone Looked W At or Studied Your Company Org Chart? ✓✓ Never / More than six months ago / Recently

List All Departments in Your Company ✓✓ List all the departments. ✓✓ List all the roles in each department.

 dd Your Current Employees to the Org Chart A in the Roles They Perform ✓✓ Remember, people can be in multiple positions.

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Is Anyone in More Positions Than They Should Be? ✓✓ How many dotted lines do you see? ✓✓ Which departments are not performing as well as you expect? Why? Is it the wrong person or a role not defined correctly? ✓✓ Is there a relationship between the dotted lines and nonperforming departments?

Are People in the Wrong Positions? ✓✓ Please list them. ✓✓ Are there any empty suits? ✓✓ Were people hired for different roles?

For Each Role, Define the Position Agreement ✓✓ This should be discussed with the employee. ✓✓ Can this position agreement be agreed upon with the employee?

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C  hapter Summary Changing or creating an org chart, that is really a position chart, requires a lot of thought and strategic planning, which involves caution and uncertainty. It is always said that employees are our best asset, but in reality, they are only the best asset when they are in the right position and know what to do. So why is this topic at the end of the book? Because the other chapters of the book build up to the org chart changes. I don’t like the phrase “strategic planning” as it gives the impression that SoHo is some form of massive multinational with thousands of employees, which it is not. With the org charting of the company, the impact is broader than who is doing what; it influences the whole company’s decision-making process. Its value will not happen by itself by simply adding and removing personnel in the company; it’s a constant review and evaluation process to understand company goals, targets, and who is responsible for what. The workbook and the exercise of rethinking the org chart is a difficult process, as I found. Implementing change that changes people’s job roles, identity, and position will be met with resistance. People don’t want to hear that they don’t have the skill set to be in their current role. As I mentioned, this is a difficult chapter to implement.

R  eferences John Gribbin, Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity (Random House, 2005). Vergil Den, The Simple Man’s Burden (Aventine Press, 2011). Denis The Bear, “Antifragile - What is a Fragilista...No Punches Held,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjSEgrS5f1ci.

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CHAPTER 9

The Wrap-Up Chapter This is the wrap-up chapter of the book where I reflect on the book’s objective and summarize the chapters. This book has been a personal account of the leadership processes and principles I implemented at SoHo Dragon over the past 10 years with MS Teams functionality. Each chapter focuses on a leadership topic that worked. There were plenty of leadership principles that didn’t work that didn’t make it into this book. I suppose I could have added a chapter on processes and principles that didn’t work and reflected on why they didn’t work, which would be helpful, as everyone talks about the winning activity rather than everything in second or third place. If you want to apply the leadership principles stated in the book’s chapters, it’ll be a daunting task to implement the knowledge and the chapter workbooks into your day-to-day activities and how the company operates. It’s the last point in the above sentence that is particularly important: getting everyone on the same page of the organization. That leads to the next section, of where to start.

How to Start the Actual Implementation I’ve witnessed leaders in companies who don’t seem to have a problem creating broad objectives (which isn’t an implementation plan) and call these objectives “mission statements” or simply “corporate goals,” which look good on PowerPoint in a large font. Still, there’s very little thought of how they will implement these grand goals. © Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9_9

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Developing a plan and implementing it are often viewed as two distinct activities. First, you come up with the perfect plan, and then you worry about how to make it happen. This approach, familiar though it is, often creates a disconnect between what you are trying to accomplish and what your employees do on a day-to-day basis. Ineffectiveness is the result. To bridge this gap between the knowledge from this book and your actual implementation plan, I recommend focusing on: •

What will move the needle?

•

Where is there gridlock?

•

Creating your next day.

What Will Move the Needle? What issues are burning and can be solved quickly, which will have the fastest noticeable win with minimal resistance (a.k.a. move the needle in the right direction)? Is it profits, communications, or your time management? Review the workbooks from the chapters. This should be a collective decision with colleagues.

Gridlock To move the needle, I suggest you figure out what’s holding back the actions to move the needle. Is people’s knowledge of technology, people, or skill sets? When it comes to the implementation process, pinpointing the precise decision or activity where rules will have the most impact is half the battle. I use the word “gridlock” to describe a specific action or decision that hinders a company from moving the needle.

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Make a List of Gridlocks You may be surprised at the number of gridlocks you come across. Once you’ve established the bottlenecks, it’s time to craft the rules that will provide you with a framework to remove them.

Create Your Next Day Creating your day from the top down is very difficult because you are working as a team, and the team needs to understand the new communication methods and channels and what’s expected from them. When I rely on gut instincts, which aren’t always wholly understood events, I have found that I misjudge the frequency and magnitude of the occurrence or remember things better when they come as a vivid narrative. I recommend discussing each chapter’s subject as a team to obtain buy-in. is problematic as people start to point fingers. I would suggest

Chapter Summaries The chapters are summarized in this section.

Introduction This is an introduction to the book, and there are no lessons or workbook exercises to think about or implement. This chapter sets the stage of what this book is about.

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C  hapter 1 This chapter explains the art of how to be very organized by endlessly tidying up information on your PC to be productive. This chapter is all about you. The only thing stopping you from implementing the principles in this chapter is yourself. Of course, I don’t know your motivation level or the state of your desktop, but the chapter’s workbook should be easy to implement.

C  hapter 2 Whether you have assigned tasks or you are shipping code, this chapter is all about getting stuff done. The chapter’s focus is all about results and how to achieve these results to create growth in the company. To implement the principles in this chapter, you will need to speak to team members and identify manual processes, delegate tasks, and create a culture of delivery. Everyone in a company wants automation and projects that aren’t science projects, so there shouldn’t be too much resistance from employees, but more identifying and implementing processes that need to be automated. I suggest focusing on the ones that move the needle.

C  hapter 3 This chapter is all about becoming an effective executive with M365, hiring employees, delegating, and identifying time killers. The following chapters in the book are difficult to implement because they require you to truly understand what is going on in the company with your employees and the decision-making process. This will take time and require reflection on past hiring decisions, understanding people’s responsibilities, and defining KPIs.

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C  hapter 4 This chapter will take time to fully execute as it discusses the implementation of the Traction methodology and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). I recommend hiring a traction coach to assist with the implementation. This is because your company will probably have many blind spots about the business processes and decision making, and people may be welded to the existing operations of the company. An independent facilitator can guide the changes without ruffling too many feathers. If an EOS can be implemented correctly in the company, it’s a game-­ changer. There are many EOS tools out there to aid the process. Forget them. Planner, MS Teams, and OneNote are ideal for EOS.

C  hapter 5 This chapter is all about overcoming procrastination and other insights to manage your time further. I touched on this topic in previous chapters, with tips on staying out of meetings and delegation to team members. This chapter can be implemented without too much interaction between team members. I suppose you do need to stop procrastinating first. 😊

C  hapter 6 This is a reflective chapter on people’s communication styles, from the speaker to the listener. These are the levels of communication styles: Define, Design, and Doing. The latter is a skill that will take time to master as there are You can immediately start the communication style in the chapter, but it will take time to master.

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C  hapter 7 If this chapter is implemented first, then the needle of sales will move, which is always a good thing. The advice and skills outlined in this chapter are muscles that need to be worked on. You also deal with salespeople who rarely like to follow processes. Given that this chapter can have a measurable impact on sales, it’s a critical topic.

C  hapter 8 This chapter could be implemented with Chapter 4 because the org chart exercise identifies the roles employees perform in the company. Like Chapter 4, a complete implementation of the principles discussed will take time to implement successfully and results won’t be immediate.

F inal Words Yes, the final words of the chapter and the book. Woo-hoo! Although this is the end of the book, like all processes, you are never done and there is no natural finish line to cross. You must keep learning and reflecting and iterating as you progress. Keep tracking what was agreed upon and stick to the agreement. When new processes or specifics come up, write them down (but not in an email). There’s nothing wrong with continuously tweaking. If you don’t, it’s hard to figure out what to do. This will guide your actions as an organization. Assuming you’re in a leadership position, reflecting on yourself and witnessing is not enough. This needs to be done at the employee level because your co-workers are witnessing the organization at a task level and probably know more about the issues than management and yourself.

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Clarity with job roles, communication channels, and processes are the organization’s most important activities. This will allow employees to make on-the-spot decisions and seize unexpected opportunities without losing sight of the big picture. The process you use to implement the principles of these chapters matters as much as the principles themselves. So involve a broad cross-­ section of employees to inject more points of view into the discussion, so everyone has a shared understanding of what matters for achieving growth, client acquisition, and productivity gains. Investing the time upfront in the chapters will move the needle dramatically and increase the odds that the principals have the most significant impact. I wish you success on your leadership journey in a Zoom economy with Microsoft Teams. I hope this book makes a difference in the journey. Peter Ward Founder and CTO of SoHo Dragon www.linkedin.com/in/peterwardnyc/

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Index A ABCDE method, 74 Adventure project, 87 Art of tidying up disposing bookmarks, 8 desktop files, 8 email, 9 items, 4 OneDrive libraries, 8 OneNote pages, 10 Start Menu and Taskbar, 9 teams, 7 pitfalls, 13, 14 principles, 3, 4 recategorization, 6, 10, 12 techniques, 5 Automation and projects, 128

B Butterfly effect, 121

C Communication channels, 131, 133 Communication styles, 82, 129, 133, 135

Corporate goals, 125 Custom application development, 84

D Decision-making issues, 56 Digital ink, 92, 98, 99

E, F Eisenhower matrix, 70–72 goals, 73 priorities, 74 Electronic document signing tool, 27 Empty suits, 117 job descriptions, 118 SoHo job description, 119, 120 Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), 56 data, 63 implement organization, 57 issues, 64 people, 61 accountability chart, 61, 62 analyzer, 63

© Peter Ward 2022 P. Ward, Leadership in a Zoom Economy with Microsoft Teams, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-7993-9

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INDEX

Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) (cont.) principle, 57 process, 64 traction, 60, 65 vision, 58, 59 Exploratory project, 86, 87

K

G

M, N

Gridlock, 126, 127 Growth culture accountability, 29, 35 automation, 29, 35 build to spec, 33, 34 culture of shipping, 28 delay responses, 31 email-to-task, 30 measure, 33 meetings, 36 overrun, 37 stay out of meeting, 30, 31 team meeting, 32

Master of Ceremonies (MC), 91 M365 functionality decision-making, 43–45 delegate, 50, 52 hiring leads, 47–49 KPIS, 51 responsibility and accountability, 40, 41, 51 timekillers, 46, 52 underperformance team, 45 Microsoft’s Power Automate platform, 29 Microsoft Teams, see Teams Mission statements, 125 Motivation level, 128 MS Teams meeting, 22 focus on why, 95 greet, 96, 97 people and time, 96 presentation, 97

H Hard-working team, 86 Harvest, 27, 120

I, J Insight creation, 102–104 Insight engagement approach, 101 134

Knowledge levels, 83

L Leadership principles, 125 LinkedIn, 43, 46, 97

O Org charting, 108, 124

INDEX

P, Q Pareto Principle, 73, 74 Personal governance consistently zap, 2 notifications, 2 Plan project, 86, 87 PowerPoint, 62, 98, 99, 102, 125 Pre-demonstration questionnaire, 92, 93 Proof of concept (POC), 86

R Remote communication style, 82 Remote team Basecamp/Automatic, 18 challenging projects and technologies, 17 expansion, 27 non-Microsoft tools, SoHo, 23–27 office workplace culture, 19 SoHo remote, 20 SoHo’s growth mantras, 18 SoHo story, 20–22

S Science, 2, 24, 28 Self-reflection, 77 SharePoint solution, 100, 101 SoHo, 18–20 SoHo Dragon, 20, 42

SoHo’s org chart, 108, 109, 111 code and tech lead, 115 create, 111–113 manage people, 115 rules, 113, 114 URL link, 116 visual impact, 115 SoHo’s SharePoint solutions, 100

T Task-completing mode, 77 Teams chat group, 7, 31 communication, 108 mentorship, 50 meeting (see MS Teams meeting) request sign-off feature, 41 Sharepoint, 26 Visio chart, 115 Technical demonstration, 92, 93 digging deeper, 94 what, 93 when, 94 who, 94 Technical resource, 99 Traction methodology, 65, 129 Traditional org charts, 112, 117, 118

U User experience (UX), 1 135

INDEX

V, W, X, Y

Z

Visio chart, 115 Vulnerability, 85

Zoom economy, 1, 2, 18, 23, 131

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