An obvious first question we get. Or rather, people usually are fully aware of the problem with not knowing how to do work in Microsoft 365.
There doesn’t seem to be one way for the team, but each team member is working in the mode they believe is the best.
By aligning the team for Microsoft 365, the team members have a higher chance to find each other in the communication, not spend so much time and energy on looking for information, be able to help each other in working towards achieving the team’s goals. So, how to go about it? Each team is different and its synchronicities need to be consider. Sure.
But there are established best practices for a team on how to collaborate and communicate in Microsoft 365. Let me give you the most basic example.
Each team needs to communicate internally. The best practice way to do this is to agree on a structure in the Team (channels in MS Teams) and agree to create threads in there for the communication on specific topics. The benefits are huge from this way of working, and getting everyone to follow along will certainly pay off in the long run. But it can require quite an effort to get the team members to adopt this new way of working (it is often easier to stay with the old way of doing things).
Agreeing on starting to communicate in channels is a good start. But it won’t probably be enough (by far). You also need to make sure that the new work way actually works for each team member and that they start to see the advantages of working like this.
What are the risks of switching to communicating in channels?
- That the communication doesn’t reach the receiver in time. For making sure that the intended receiver(s) see your communication you will need to take action in the form of @ mentioning either each individually separately, a tag where they are part of (you as the team manager can make sure to create such a tag), or the channel where they post in (you as the team manager can make sure that the people working in that channel have their notifications switched on for that particular channel).
First, Microsoft has designed the applications to be used in a certain way. Then organizations are using it in a certain way and in this way best practices are formed.
So you don’t have to invent the wheel. You use what is available.
Actually, that is the easy part.
Getting your people to work in the new ways is the real challenge.