If you want to make work better, you also need to look at how you do meetings. Meetings is a big part of work and hybrid meetings is still a fairly new trade. How do we create a good experience for both physical and remote attendance?
There’s also the technical subtleties, like finding the mute button, being too loud, decent sound quality, turning the camera on/off, background photos are much more.
As always, I find it really interesting to learn from how practitioners are approaching it. Thomas Dugaro, heads up IT Collaboration at Hamburg-based publishing giant Gruner + Jahr and at a recent peer group meeting, he generously shared some of their initial thinking on hybrid meetings.
Read moreThe shift to digital teams is here to stay, whether we stay remote or return to the office in a hybrid/mixed mode of work. And whilst digital teamworking tools, such as Microsoft Teams, allow us to continue working, we can easily focus on meetings and chat - not the elements that drive high performing and collaborative teams.
In a recent member call, UK-based collaboration expert Andrew Pope showed how his approach to designing blended teams has been adopted by a UK Government client.
We looked at how they found opportunities and set goals, what techniques were selected using a 'choose your own adventure' approach via online workshops and game cards and how they helped their workforce learn new skills to embrace digital teamworking, to fully utilise Microsoft Teams.
Read moreJust last month, Dropbox announced their plans to go Virtual First. This means that remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work, also after COVID. It also means non-linear workdays and it’s Dropbox’s take on creating a sustainable, thriving workplace for the future.
In a recent member conference call, we heard from Marc Pazcian at Dropbox on what going virtual first means in practice and how this impacts creativity and collaboration. Marc is Solutions Architect and Cultural Ambassador at Dropbox DACH region. He's based in Hamburg, Germany.
Read moreUsing a wonderful example of the fictitious software firm Titanic Corp, experienced facilitator and agile coach Aino Corry made it clear in our recent member conference call, that the point of a retrospective is not to blame Peter, but rather to understand the circumstances that led to striking an iceberg and ultimately sinking.
Aino has recently written a book about antipatterns for retrospectives because she seemed to be making the same mistakes over and over. Antipatterns are like patterns, only more informative. With antipatterns you will first see what patterns re-occur in "bad" retrospectives and then you will see how to avoid, or remedy, the situation.
Read moreLast week we held a breakfast briefing in London on the topic of Driving Digital Transformation with Legacy Technical Debt and culture change was mentioned several times as the biggest challenge, but can you fix culture?
Focusing on the business, creating trust in the teams via transparency and empowering teams to actively participate seemed to be the winning recipe in the two customer stories from Sovereign Housing and Vodafone. Co-founder of MMT Digital James Cannings highlighted the changes required and recommended building out your agile processes from the bottom up, but with support from the top.
Read moreTo really embrace the change in how we work that Teams offers, IT needs to hand over responsibility, or at least share ownership with the business.
The concept and function of teams (in the traditional sense) are a business thing. They are the smallest unit of work and they are what power all workplaces. Microsoft Teams is simply a place for teams to work.
It’s like thinking that clever office space will solve all of our problems….
Read moreWe worked closely with one museum, who continuously chose their lowest performing type of exhibition to be set up again. I think they were perhaps too passionate and too close to the project. It’s not really surprising that we see this in the art and culture industry, but I know that this challenge goes beyond our industry.
Read moreThe challenge for O365 adoption, is that the overwhelming parts, tend to overshadow the value part. Hence the reason I believe we need to be transparent about the obstacles and leverage various resources including change management practices to guided us successfully through the transition.
Read moreThe good old team meeting. Somewhere for us to talk loudly and get our way, or perhaps the place for us to sit quietly at the back and respond to those urgent emails. Yet we still attend these, the expectation that it’s good for us to meet and discuss the issues of the day or the week.
Read moreHow often do standard change methods result in actual, deep rooted and lasting change?
According to the Gartner: 50% of change efforts are clear failures, 16% have mixed results and only the remainder are somewhat successful. If we want to create real, sustainable change, then top down classical methods for change may not work.
Read moreI didn’t know what to expect going into the Boye 18 conference. The fact that the conference was in the Danish town of Aarhus, not the most famous of conference towns, should have given me a hint as to the special nature of this festival, which in hindsight seems to be a more accurate word than conference.
Read moreThe workplace of tomorrow is long overdue. It sounds like an anomaly, but think about it. Today's workplace runs still largely according to Victorian values. We come to a workplace where we are managed in hierarchical structures, kept in one place for set hours every day, then go home to our 'other' lives.
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