I recently came across a great video called “The Importance of Fun in the Workplace”, by Holly Cummins, and was totally pleased (I had fun) to realize this is what we need as a statement also for working with Office 365!
We need to have fun to work with tools in the cloud!
The idea of allowing yourself, your team and your organization does not stop with enjoying the company around you and the time at the coffee corner. As nicely pointed out in Holly her talk, having fun is also about what tools you use and how.
So what is important is that we allow ourselves and the people we interact with to experience working with Office 365 as a fun adventure.
My idea how to support yourself on having more fun…
Find out “what’s in it for me“.
I can not say this enough.
Do see a new application or the complete platform as an opportunity and find out what needs you have that can be improved with using some of the available apps and features. Be happy with these improvements, even if they are small and notice how this improves your daily work.
And if it does not, look for better apps and features. Let go of the idea “I always have been doing it like this, so I should keep doing it in this way”, especially when you are switching from file management on a file server and your local device to working with files in the cloud and on a local synced OneDrive. Embrace the freedom of auto-discovery and search with Delve, your SharePoint personal dashboard, the News features and the Search option where ever you are!
Microsoft Graph is doing a great job presenting you your work on a lot of locations.
Also the recent section in your desktop apps and the ability to pin your important files. Build your favorites dashboard in Delve (documents) or the SharePoint app (Sites).
So allow yourself the time to discover and look around and feel free to use what you need.
Start step by step.
There is no need to start working with all the apps and features at once. As is pointed out on several other blogs already, Office 365 is like a Swiss army knife. A lot of features to solve a lot of problems.
Focus first on where can you gain most out of using new tools.
Get some etiquette- aka rules of the game
Having a lot of apps and features can also mean the things get chaotic. So instead of panicking, we best start deploying some rules of the game on how we work best within our organization with certain apps.
A great example is a recently released post “Everyday Etiquette in Microsoft Teams” by Matt Wade (AtBot / AvePoint). These etiquette rules of engagement will make working with Teams much more fun because they will avoid irritation moments by aligning everyone’s interaction where anyone gets what is expected.
Matt’s etiquette for Teams I would surely recommend as a starting point and template for other applications too. Adapt to your business needs if required for your fun!
Adapt, do not get desperate
If things are not going as you like, open your mouth and talk about it. Ask around for solutions and changes. Look around within Office 365 for better apps/solutions for your situation. The time you will invest will pay itself back by all the productivity improvements you encounter after your change.
Getting back your fun will improve your life and directly reflect the quality of your work in a positive way.
Be honest with yourself
A great friend, also a consultant, told me that he will only accept a job if he believes he will have fun doing it. And when it turns out the fun, for whatever reason, is being blocked by external factors, he steps out of the game.
Not everyone might be in the position to directly do it this way, anyhow we should strive to make our daily work, including working with Office 365 and all or some of it’s wonderful apps, a joyful – aka FUN – experience
Migration and Training
See for instance my posts Is it difficult to keep up with Office 365 continuous changes? , How to train internal users on Microsoft Teams and make them love it and Migration to Office365, to mention a few, and realize this is where the fun begins!
Fun should be part of the process and users should experience fun from the very beginning!
Have fun!
Martinus Consulting 