Aug 11, 2021

Today Lee and Dan chat to the Hybrid working and anywhere operations with the Team at FastTrack technologies.  What practices should we keep and what we have learned so far about anywhere operations.

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TRANSCRIPT For this episode of The AI in Education Podcast
Series: 4
Episode: 9

This transcript was auto-generated. If you spot any important errors, do feel free to email the podcast hosts for corrections.

Hi Lee, welcome to the podcast this week.
Hey Dan, how are you going?
I'm not too bad. There's been lots happening in it over the last since our last uh episode where we interviewed Tom from the US development team.
Ah yes, yes, that was really interesting to kind of talk because we don't always get the chance to talk to people in our engineering world who are building the products that we kind of, you know, talk about all the time. So, that was kind of awesome to talk about.
I know. He's lovely and and the Minecraft thing. We still need to get notes to self. We still need to get the the girl from Melbourne on around the Minecraft world.
And in fact, he did put me in contact with I think it's his niece. Uh so, yes, we should well commitment to to listeners. We'll get that done soon. Definitely. We'll get a call going with her.
So, what's been happening in your world, Lee? I've seen lots on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Yes, it's been a busy busy time. We should go through a few of the big big activities. this week. But look, obviously I'm I'm like you. I'm locked down in COVID. I'm uh I'm in Sydney, so I'm uh I've been sitting at home and and doing lots of virtual events. Um but which has been awesome actually. So there two things, two really big things I've been doing down that I've really enjoyed this last couple of weeks. Um and and I've and being virtual has actually given me the opportunity to do them. So the first one, I've managed to get connected to an organization called One Giant Leap and One Giant Leap Australia help organize students across Australia to get connected to the space programs in the in the US. Uh, which is awesome. You know, we're both nerds. We're both space nerds.
I know Jackie. Well, she's amazing.
Oh, you don't? Of course you know Jackie, don't you? Yes. So, Jackie Carpenter and and and I I met with her and and and through the virtue of that, I managed to get involved in something called this virtual space camp where they get a whole bunch of students from around Australia to get on these sort of uh learning engagements around uh how to build, construct, and then fly a space vessel out to a planet and then have built build a habitat there and I was involved in the land and lunar landing module and learning about thrust dynamics and and all these kinds of things. But the awesome part about it was I was on calls with and I was being mentored by a guy called Greg uh Chairmanov who's an actual space shuttle astronaut. He flew on the space shuttle times just in awe of this guy. You know how we all have our team's backgrounds or the Zoom backgrounds whatever he is. I've got my picture of space in the background appropriate for the session. Yes. He turns up and he's got this picture from the ISS and I said, "Oh, that's a great background." And I said, "Did you take it?" And he went, "Yes, I took that picture." I'm like,
"No way."
So, that was that was pretty awesome to be involved in. Yes, that was bit of a highlight for me the last couple weeks.
That's that's phenomenal, isn't it? And we've seen a lot of some of the events that I've been doing because there's a couple of things that I do around Edu um conferences and things. We've got the big day in the that the Australian Computer Society runs uh and Kerry and the team there. But that's that's been going really successfully around Austral But now we've had lockdown when it's come to New South Wales. So that's got to go virtual next week. And then we've got Edute Techch which is one of the big conferences which have which is going virtual as well. So we've we've had to record a lot of the IT tracks and the the the tracks around that. But I think people are used to switching modes between work and uh conferencing now these days, aren't they?
It's amazing how quickly things do flip to virtual when we need to. It's almost like now we've built this system where the minute a lockdown type scenario occurs, we can just flip it to virtual and it works quite easily. I was in a hackathon event this week actually just earlier this week uh and and actually related to education. It was on uh an AI for assessment. So how do we build AI tools to help do student marking and assessment which is probably quite a controversial topic for many educators.
Yeah.
Uh who did this hackathon and again it moved from what is typically you know physical building space run by McQuary University moved the whole thing to virtual and did all these virtual hackathons which is it's different. I get it. But it's amazing how quick we can go virtual on these things. Eh.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and you know there is there there is a element you know I know we put in inspire which is our partner conference um online uh this this week. So when people listen to this already happened um but but that's great you know I I still do miss that connection though and and meeting colleagues across the world and partners and things and you know it's yeah
you know that that experience I do kind of feel as if it's lacking in some of the online conferences these days. Well, it is and it's, you know, again, it kind of goes back to this topic that we've talked about many times in this podcast, which is, you know, artificial intelligence needs a human augmentation. It needs to be driven by the human experience of that AI. You know, we talk a lot about the fact that you've got to build AI and think about what a human's going to experience on the other side of that AI. And that, you know, at the end of the day, humans are we're experiential people. We need to have that physicality of connection. So, you're right, it's not the same, but it's great that we can still do these things despite the challenges that that the world we live in today gives us.
Yeah, totally. And and I suppose uh going on from that nicely nice segue there. But what what what I've done this week, I've kind of moonlighted and and and I looked out and and I spoke to the FastTrack team. They are Microsoft partner and they're also partner of other technology companies as well and they've been doing a lot with hybrid work and implementing a lot during all these lockdowns. So I'm going to cross have a listen to them and and join their their kind of video/podcast to kind of chat today team about what they're doing and talk about some of the AI technologies that they've been using as well.
That's awesome, Dan. You know why? Because you're the star of the show and I get a week off. So, I'm going to be enjoying my time. I look forward to hearing about your conversation. Dan, let's uh let's play the uh play the audio.
Cool.
Welcome everyone to the first ever anywhere operations podcast. Today uh we are talking uh anywhere operations in the context of uh hybrid working. Joining me today I have two very special guests. I'll start with Dan Bowen who is uh the from Microsoft account uh technology strategist I believe is your title. I got that right?
Yeah.
Fantastic. Um it might be worth just sharing to listeners uh what your role is.
Yes. It's a it's a very bizarre title, isn't it? It's about really looking at strategy for all the customers that I work with in Australia and they're mainly enterprise customers but just making sure that they are using all the technology that they've already purchased from my Microsoft in the right way to get the most out of it.
That's right. No, very important. And thanks so much for joining us. Really excited to have you here. We've got some really good topics um that I'm particularly keen to hear your opinion on. And we have uh Michael Herbert who's our general manager of operations, which I believe is a relatively new title, adjusted
slight twist on previous themes, but uh yeah, general manager operations still carrying the responsibilities and fast track for looking after our operational teams. making sure that um we're delivering the the the outcomes for our customers that the lights stay on
and um yeah, that's kind of the gig.
Pretty important role keeping the lights on.
It is. It is.
And uh look, something it's been I can't believe I had a little look before the podcast how long I've been with Fast Track. It's It's sneaking up to 5 years now.
It's It's flown by. Yeah,
it's absolutely flown by. Well, it's great. It's been great to have you for this time and um this is your second podcast, I believe, as well.
It is and looking forward to it. It's Um, this is a a pretty uh interesting topic. Uh, there's plenty of uh content for us to have a look through. Definitely interested to hear what uh what Dan's got to say in some of his spaces and uh and keen to to to leverage his skill sets in this space.
Yeah. No, very good.
Uh well um just to cover off some of the topics um we're going to possibly cover if we've got time. Um so I want to get everyone's feelings about um any learnings we got from uh from after lockdown. any work practices that we might have kept and um anything that we learn about the nature of work. Um I really want to deep dive into there's a bit of a case study about um how fast tracks actually personally um or how our team has changed the way we've worked the way we managed projects using M365 um and some of and I feel like we've got a really interesting story to tell and I'm really keen to get your thoughts on that um Herby and um also um want to talk about um well-being um which is a topic that um I think uh in the Microsoft 365 stack there's a lot in there that I've been playing with and and Dan in particular knows a lot about um that really complement um the new way of working but
it opened my eyes up and I know when I had a little look around we had a chat beforehand I I I knew there was some bits and pieces sneaking into the the Microsoft vernacular and and the way they operate but um
yeah peeled the lid back a little bit and peeled inside And there's plenty of good content well-being wise.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll get to that. I'm excited. This is that's the that's the topic I'm most excited to talk about to be honest. Um but we'll we'll hold fire and we'll start um with um I might direct this question to you to start. Um Dan, so um did what did you learn anything after coming out of lockdown? You know, we've we've spent a lot of time in fully remote working. Um a lot of organizations had you know had remote working as part of their um as their work. working style for a while and certainly I know Microsoft has, but um did we learn anything about how you work um and how and what methods of working work best for you um off the back of spending um many many months in lockdown.
Yeah. Well, thanks for that. You know, you know, at the end of the day, I think we've all been working in a hybrid uh view in Microsoft for quite a while. You know, the the mantra's been uh work is a thing you do or a place you go, which is great. But so so I've been kind of used to it. But but having the full onness of actually being fixed at home has been very kind of interesting and the dynamics has changed across our teams and across the customers that we're working with quite a lot as well. So so I think for me I think what's come out of this is the fact that the productivity and the way we working it's all about connection and people and people have found as we always do in adversity found really good ways to kind of connect do things like, you know, virtual wine tastings on a Friday night and things like that to try to drive that productivity. Uh, but also to drive that um connection with with our friends and colleagues because there's lots of people in our team. There's what seven of us that that haven't even met face to face across Australia because it's a it's an Australiawide team and a global team. So, you know, I think the things that we've learned about is a that we had to value that connection of people um because we've been doing hybrid work, but it's almost taking away a lot of that connection. So, it's trying to put that back into the tools and technology and and through just generally as a as a person and like we've talked as well previously, it's not just about the way that we've interacted at at work. You know, lots of colleagues, you know, have struggled at home with kids with dogs barking during meetings with, you know, stresses of relationships and and people struggling to be at home and working in same environments is very very hard. So, so there's be I suppose toler and and people are the two learnings that I think we've we've been able to take out out of a lot of it.
I think that's a really good point. Um, one of the things I've noticed is is that um and I I was doing some reading as well is is that there's statistics to show that pe a lot more people have um better one-on-one relationships with their managers now. So, like I think um all my team members have met my dog or actually my my my mother-in-law's dog who who we puppy. I think everyone has uh Most people now have met my my long-term partner um on uh on on VC now and I and and and had conversations like in the middle of the day and I just don't think that was the norm. I think the norms have changed and what's acceptable as part of the workday has changed for me definitely. Um and I think that's been really really valuable because for me you know there's been some negative things which we get to in a second but the positive things are those are those connections that we've made and and uh the the the hybrid nature of work has really I think become become the norm. What what's been your experience?
I was just reflecting when Dan was talking about interrupting dogs and and uh and your your your pooch in the background tearing around the house and shut up dog.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, you're right. It's it's um it's far more um there's a greater deal of insight into individuals now. Like I know what your house looks like and there's been people have been moving around their living rooms on different locations to Yeah.
To to keep some variety in the place and uh
yeah, there's partners walking in the background and all that kind of stuff that plays out.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, it's been good. And
the other thing, sorry to interrupt you, things just jumped in my mind as you're talking then was was also there's been a refocus on it, right? So, um it's been really interesting. There's been the IT people that I mainly work with, the CIOS and and partners like like you guys do in FastTrack and really try to implement that technology. There's been a big focus on it and getting things right and those uh companies and organizations and schools that say were using teams or insert any other platform in there by using those well you know managed to adapt really rapidly to to hybrid work because they already for example manage their devices via in tune so that you know if an employee was remote out in whoop whoop in Australia then you can send them a device and they can hydrate and do that and and you know the IT managers some were scrabbling around trying to implement things really quickly. Uh some would drop bring your partners in and you guys were probably working your bums off trying to get people up and running as quickly as they could in a secure way. But then some some who kind of had already got their strategies in place were kind of, you know, they they were kind of loving it because they were going, "Wow, I've been trying to get get my teachers or my my employees to adopt teams and I was kind of forcing them to do it and it's going really well."
It it plays to being from an organiz ational perspective. Being ready to um adapt and agile enough to deal with something and being somewhere near the leading edge of technology certainly set FastTrack ahead of some of our competitors. And even in um in a in a school context, my daughter was um at a school that was very well prepared for doing teaching by Zoom. They'd already done some they've done that. And so when they weren't in school, they were off and running and them working. So um
yeah, it It really plays to being agile and and ready and and using that the tech the technology well.
Totally. And I' I've seen that too. Some of my friends who are teachers um have kids enrolled in schools that weren't as prepared and so they're trying to teach classes and um you know look help their kids with their own um learning and they actually really you'd think a teacher would be kind of well prepared for a situation like that but they really inhibited a lot of time by the technology and by the way that the school had set it up. whereas you know as you say there's there's the opposite experience as well. Um and you know I think uh one of the things that we noticed was there was a real really big gap in different organizations. So some of our organizations that had fully embraced M365 that the learnings um they shortcircuited the learnings to go to fully remote and I think um you know some of the barriers that they faced were more around like laptop shortages or webcam shortages um and and having that technology. I think one of the one of the the the barriers for those organizations were that that everyone kind of experienced was being at um supporting the fully remote experience. And you might have the applications and the um and the practices down, but if you don't have a good work from home setup, if you don't if you're not in if your organization isn't investing in, you know, good screens for the home or good docking systems or um whatever or good webcam, it can really detract from it. And I think that That's probably where the big gaps for me that I noticed um um was around having that the correct home setup. And I think the value of that technology is actually has gone up because people see okay a really good webcam at home makes a difference. You know, a really good video conferencing
system in the office to enable that hybrid work actually really makes a big difference. Right.
I think one of the things I noticed with some of our customers organizationally were held back by where they were on their uh application journey. And so those that were still tied to client server type applications that needed you to be in the office to interact with your application w were able to provide you know video conferencing but they couldn't do their day-to-day work because they couldn't get to their system. They had to you know load this VPN and connect to it on their internet service and then fire up this Citrix application that allowed them to serve up the application and then the perform performance was terrible and so their application landscape held them back from being able to really embrace the technology.
So, so that kind of takes us nicely into kind of this hybrid model, right? So, for us, which this is an anywhere operations podcast and anywhere operations is very much um about having a and we've covered this in p in in previous um uh podcast. So, go go go and watch the our last podcast explained anywhere operations, but essentially it's about ling customers uh staff um and users to all have um a really great experience wherever and anywhere they are. Um and so today we're very much talking about hybrid work. So that's very much focused on providing your your c your sorry your users and your staff a really good experience when they're connecting to collaboration applications. What are the key things we should be thinking about when we're designing our um workplaces for hybrid working? Do we think One of the things we've seen that have provide the most impact, we kind of touched on this a little bit.
It's interesting, isn't it? Because I think it's it's a mixture of a lot of things now. Um, when I started thinking about this, you know, couple of months ago generally and, you know, we we we've tried to spin it, you know, you talked about school there, we tried to spin hybrid learning quite a bit to kind of support staff into thinking how teaching might change. But when we look at the workplace, there's a couple of things, isn't it? Because you got you've got first of all, you know, Microsoft, we move into North Sydney and and that was quite interesting because you know that that's been um uh in the process for years now and and it's it's happening next month. So there's all of the kind of normal things that you'd expect to be happening in a move you know where you're talking about different zones and things like that and different rooms. Um whereas I think you know if it was if if we'd set all that up a year later it might be different. So they've had to try to adapt around hybrid working. So it talks to you I think when I'm looking in now I'm thinking about the the environment we're at at at work and and the variety of spaces and places and communities that we can connect with because I think people going back to my first point about people and connections. I think that's really important. So, we got to design human connection into buildings and into places and into rooms and and also have the facility to be able to like we doing today um virtually connect and physically connect simultaneously. in in that environment. Then the second part is also your online collaboration environment. So you've got your physical environment work. Then your online environment and the way you managing your you know teams and dashboards and tools and dynamics and whatever you might be doing so that you can maintain and orchestrate your projects and I know you guys done some amazing work in that and I can't wait to hear about that later. And then the third bit for me is about managing your home where I am now you know because what goes out to the window window through COVID uh and working from home is ergonomics, health and safety, you know, lots of people just doing their work, you know, on on a kitchen table and whatnot and and then your health being detrimentally affected because you're sitting on a on a any old chair or even on the set it might be comfortable, but you know, after eight hours it gets on your nerves. So, I think there's those three aspects that I call out.
One of the things that stuck out to that is around creating that I think we actually I think we spoke about this in the in the premeating was around accessibility. And one of the things actually we were we were doing um before lockdown and all that was we used to do a lot of inerson meetings uh inerson um uh workshops and events um and we actually did them at Microsoft and we did them at our own office and and we did them everywhere and one of the things that we did was um leverage Microsoft uh 365 particularly PowerPoint um for accessibility which sounds a bit you know PowerPoint's a bit you know You might think ah it's you know it's a presentation platform but we we were using the audio capture and so we turned on um in P we had a PowerPoint presentation to present and so we just turned that on turned on connected our microphone to PowerPoint and got the live transcription happening
and
being able to just a simple thing like that integrating that into your platform means that we're thinking beyond just how do we it's inclus how do we make our office more inclusive um or and or an event more excl inclusive and I think that accessibility element is is probably where we're moving towards with this hybrid working right it's it's in it's inclusive to the people working remotely the people who work in the office and then people who might have needs that are slightly different to everyone else
I agree I think when we we had a me mantra with Xbox around that which is when we all play we all win and you know I love love your points and and the cognitive services It's got this parody now where cognitive services like visual um uh artificial intelligence and textbased artificial intelligence and facial recognition can really support you when you're doing those things like real time captioning or even automatic translation. You know where if you're speaking to somebody and they want to listen to you in a different language built into the tools. Now
for me Fastrackk has gone through a pretty big transformation um in the last I would say uh 12 months. Pebby keen just to get your view on this. I
I think for me the way to best describe this is kind of looking at a couple of things. The first is the the approach we've taken.
Yeah.
And then looking at the methodology we've used and then have a look at some of the the tool sets and process that we've kind of leveraged.
We wanted to make transformational change, continually improve and make FastTrack better.
And um the way we were trying to make that happen and manifest it was by leveraging our operational teams Everybody had goals, short-term objectives to get things done.
Yeah.
But operations kept getting in the way.
And so we were always coming up short, being disappointed with the progress we made against particular initiatives. And um so the approach had to change for us to get better success. So strategically, instead of relying on our operational teams, we took the initiative to say, "No, we're going to fund this. This time around, we're going to stand up a team that is entirely focused on transformation." And so So that was a big change game changer for us is was investing in that.
Yep.
And so there we had people that were entirely focused on transformation. The the other change that we used was the the methodology change. So moving away from your typical waterfall methodology for project ma management into a more agile approach. So having a two twoe sprint having very clear um objectives to achieve in that particular time implement those quickly, quick win, quick fail, quick redirection, stand up your new sprint. And that's been pretty pretty successful for us to to actually get some progress and land incremental improvement in services. So happy at with that as the approach. Like that's the outcome is that I've now got something tangible that's working, it's customerf facing, it's adding value in a twoe cycle.
Yeah. Yeah. So just just fundamentally without talking technology yet, there's a critical process change that need to happen.
Yeah. And then and then we kind of said, "Okay, how do we support this with the um with the technology we have readily available? Do we need to invest in something? Can we use what we've already got?" And we thought, "Okay, well, we're pretty heavily invested in Planner and PowerBI and all that sort of stuff. What can we do?" So, what did we how did we make it all work?
So, the tool sets were fundamental for us and it was fabulous having at our in our arsenal already our our Microsoft suite of services.
We're already heavily invested in it. It works for us. We're already using teams and so it was bending teams to allow us to um better operate and manage our projects. So pretty simple process one um team per project and then standing up in that particular team a planner board for all of the tasks that were associated with that particular um project. Um project related chat was in that particular channel. Project related meetings were booked out of there. So one-stop shop for everything that was going on in there. Obviously the SharePoint library that lives behind that. So all of the collateral that was associated with that project could be stored somewhere. The cross reference stuff. So here's my planner task. My deliverable is to create a um a scoping document. Link that scoping document straight out of the task so you could work and and work through that particular process. So those particular that tool set enabled that practice nice and simply. Where it fell down for us was at the program level. So you can imagine if we've got of transformational projects going on at a at a program level. Then at the a steering committee perspective or a program level, we wanted visibility across that entire program. What tasks were um on track, what tasks were late, what tasks were stuck
and so we needed some way a vehicle to give us that that visibility.
And unfortunately out of teams out of in its native way didn't work particularly well, but we put a a Microsoft PowerBI layer over at the top that allowed us to get that visibility in a single dashboard with the, you know, the red light that says, "Here's the three stuck cards that as a steering committee we need to have a look at this week. How do we unstick these ones and make and and and make the action, keep the momentum going?"
And the cool thing was that we using the same, it didn't matter what the the project was, whether it was kind of a more marketing and sales or more of an operations or more of a e-commerce or whatever the platform was. the the task kind of uh type was. We used the same uh project management methodology so that we could roll up all of those insights into the same in the same way and we could use the same the our senior leadership team or the or the program team could unblock those um and keep the momentum and and and achieve what we wanted to achieve in those two blocks. And it was really powerful to see how we had created a a method of managing tasks to such a precise, you know, small bite-sized chunk level, but within the same with just planner, which realistically is a fairly simple platform. Um, communicate planning level and have everyone on the same page in the same platform and we and we didn't have to buy any other um software. Right. One of the things that you're focused on, Dan, is is AI. just wondering whether there's something from an AI perspective that we should be thinking about um when we're pulling out these insights like what that's kind of we feel like we've done a pretty good job of getting of maxing out the built-in capabilities um of you know PowerBI planner and teams um is there something future-wise or or right now that we should be thinking about leveraging AI
you just you just explained like a fantastic way to use tools to manage like an agile project environment, you know, using things you've already got, which is fantastic and and I think that's like a massive, you know, tip my hat to you all there because that's that's a great way to use it and it's exactly what we do at Microsoft, you know, I think um before I answer the question directly was it's it's kind of layered and layered approach and that's exactly what we do to get onto the data so that
managers can can look at it look at what we are doing and what our pipelines are, our sales cycles are and our project to go in using PowerBI as a lens on the back of our tools that we use in like dynamics to monitor our our kind of projects and sales stages and then internally orchestrating that in planner. So, you know, it's it's yours is a better approach than than what we use in Microsoft. I'll tell you that right now. Um but you know, you're using our tools in a far better way than we are. Um but I think there's a lot of tools out there and that's where people struggle when you're talking about the AI part of it. You're absolutely right. You know, it's about being able to predict once you've got the data, you've got those PowerBI dashboards, it's about predicting what's coming next as well. So, not only viewing what's happening with those projects, but it's about kind of u bringing that data together and using machine learning to to then extrapolate that and say, well, based on what we know in in the past projects, we know that these things are flagged, you know, going to come up in the next couple of weeks. And I think the the AI that that's in there, which is my favorite part of the AI journey, I suppose, is the thing we don't see. So the things that you know you're probably using now the the you just take for granted you know the fact that when you doing an email and you insert an attachment it knows the last emails you're doing when you click on an email or a meeting bringing up the context of what files you might need around there. You know the things that are inside you know when you're doing a PowerPoint for your customers that you've got your design ideas in there and you've got your accessibility features in there. It's the AI throughout everything which we could which we take for granted these days you know across multiple platforms whether it's the Microsoft stack you know um Spotify Netflix picking up our kind of suggestions and things I think hopefully getting to the position you're at you're hitting AI at multiple points um before you even get there but when you're thinking about where you you're looking for the future then then it would be looking at the community I suppose and bringing people together around that and looking the insights around you know how people are working together in your project team using AI like the the um my analytics tools to for people to analyze who they're working with who they're connecting with but then also predicting if you've got that data underlying there which is gold then um well not gold and not even the new oil data is water these days isn't it so you know on top of that putting that lens of machine learning and thinking about well what data is in there that we can predict some data is just a visualization but capturing data that can be predicted around say sales targets whatever it may be and then extrapolating that along that's where that's where AI sits in that data and AI space but I'm interested in that fun stuff that's that that we use daytoday as well you know the appears like the noise cancelling in in teams meetings you know for example where your dog barking in the back if you turn it on you're done you're the dog unless your dog's really loud but um yeah uh yeah so so I think it's per pervasive AI this this started around as well.
Yeah, I'm not complaining with the journey where we've gone in terms of what I'm seeing is you know our monthly reports were originally PowerPoint now being PowerBI so you can actually drill in and have a look at to understand what's under the AI the next layer over top of that in our journey from a fast perspective.
Totally. Yeah. Being able to get those insights and and predict the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's I'm looking forward to having that. Get the get the PowerBI team on that.
Yeah. We could probably do a whole podcast on PowerBI and how we're using it and how well we're doing.
I tell you that would be amazing because so many people asking about PowerBI, isn't it? As you know from because I think data is is a big trend and I I was quite surprised during hybrid work and things how much uh organizations are still transforming you know my my prediction I suppose just as somebody working in IT was people who are going to gravitate towards into mobile device management, security and teams and then leave cloud for a bit, you know, the infrastructure stuff because they're a bit busy. But there's been a lot of stuff in cloud and data and analytics and a lot of interest around PowerBI. So, you know, a PowerBI episode isn't a bad idea.
Yeah. All right, we'll book you in for two weeks. Um, this is an interesting com because I think um the AI piece for me that is pretty exciting is around well beinging. And that's I think when we're talking about the stuff that we can get access to now, the things that you can turn on quickly and get value out of from an AI perspective for me is well
and one of the trends that I'm noticing um certainly in my teams um that I'm working with uh the project teams and my direct reports um but also you know some of the research I've been doing for this podcast is that you know the people that are bene benefiting from this most are leaders senior leaders, people who are managing teams because they're they're getting more visibility on what their um teams are working on because they're having more meetings. Um they're having more one-on-one chats. Um uh and uh there's a bit more micromanage happening. So what happens is for me definitely I'm feeling like I'm much more across now what my teams are working on than ever before because it's all digitized. So I can I don't need to talk to them to find out that information. I can just log in at any time. The people that I think are struggling the most are the people on the front line or people who are the workh horses of the organization and because that's because and the data backs this up. They're in 150% more meetings. They're sending way more emails. They're sending 50% the amount of chat more chats than they were before and they're working on more documents. Um and what we're seeing is using these platforms people uh in some organization and I think it's true faster actually more productive now than they were before the lockdowns because um they've had to be more efficient in the way they work and more collaborative and deliberately collaborative rather than just kind of yelling across the partition. And the cost to that is that underneath um this productivity is this burnout. There's a underlying um you know the the blurred lines between work day and when to finish gone. Now there's no commute to separate it and people are uh they might be eating into the time that they'd be commuting to keep working and so the end the the people who are suffering silently and hidden by these good productivity numbers that we're seeing are the people that are pushing themselves. Um and so this is where for me we've had these awesome conversations about and and technologies that we've adopted to keep everyone working together and collaborating more and being more productive, but what's the cost of that? And Um so what just interested to hear your opinions on this you know how do the teams that you're working with haven't they what's your experience with how they cooked over lockdowns and postlockdowns as well in where the hybrid work environment has been kind of for the h our hands have been a bit more forced than they were perhaps later
I I think as a as a people manager
the what doesn't change in fast track is that we have a a steadfast duty making sure that our our team and our our people are are healthy and and and functioning and their mental health is good
and that hasn't changed pre-post after lockdown.
Yeah,
we have a um responsibility for our people and we will expect managers to be having a a regular conversation with their people not only about the task they've been t asked to do but how they're actually doing how they're actually feeling. Are they feeling overwhelmed and making that a safe place to be and having that relationship ship oneon one with your staff to make sure that happens. So there's the tools may help like being able to do that with face to face is best teams are pretty good seconds
but um that conversation needs to happen you know that's that regardless of the tool sets that you're using to do that.
That's a good point your thoughts.
Yeah well burnout's massive I think everybody's we've done some research around this and and a lot of people are suffering burnout people are working you know, but even before all COVID, you know, my one of my main bugs was people not using Outlook properly, people going in and you know, you start your day, you turn your laptop on straight into Outlook and your entire day is is driven by your email and your calendar. Um, and and you know, lots of people have different habits and I always used to do things like ask people when I was doing training and things, you know, what they do, like have they got rules in their mailboxes, how do we get to inbox zero and all this kind of stuff and since um uh COVID, you know, I think that's exacerbated. It's given us some flexibility where people picking up and dropping kids off feel guilty. We'll work later at night. I'm guilty of that and it's a nightmare. So, I think you're absolutely right and and one of the key things from Microsoft point of view, we put a lot of effort into that. So, the tools that you can use now, uh for example, inside M365, one is called my analytics, which is it's empowering employees. It's like Fitbit for your your productivity. So, my analytics is a tool you'll find in your office portal. Um, you know, if you go online to portal.office.com and log in, you can see um you how you're collaborating, what documents you've been working on, how many quiet days you've had. That means you haven't gone into anything, email, Word, you haven't been faffing in any of your work stuff. Um, you know, I had a shocking one when I looked a couple of days ago that I'd had one quiet day. So, one day I hadn't checked my email in a month. Um, it also tell tells you about habits during meetings, if people are multitasking, if you've got a meeting on and people are in their emails and mcking about. Um, so you know, there's lots of things like that in there which empowers you as an employee. And there's also a thing which is which is new called Viva Insights which I've been using a lot and that's revolutionized my work in the last couple of weeks which uses AI to go across my calendar for the following week coming up the week coming up and um puts uh focus time in. So it looks at my calendar and blocks time out and then it also connects in with teams obviously. So it tells me that I'm focusing and I become do not disturb essentially because people just keep booking appointments in and appointments in using assistant. So it blocks that out. It also gives me um a virtual commute. So there's breathing exercises you can do. And I was I was saying in the pre catchup or or in one of my podcasts what we did the other day um like it came on on my phone when I was driving to work. and it basically did did a breathing exercise for me. Um, so it was like breathe out, breathe, you know, a little circle on the screen and that was really good while I was driving, but then it told me to close my eyes and and visualize my day and I'm like, I'm driving. I may not shut my eyes yet. Um, so but it but that virtual commute and putting that in and it jumps up on the screen as well um at the end of the day to kind of pick that up and also fixes your meetings for 25 minutes and 55 minutes rather than an hour and 30. and things. So, you know, uses AI to really kind of uh help you to start your day, put focus time in and end the day, which is fantastic.
And did you do your homework, Herby? Did you give it a
I did a go. Yeah. What did you think?
Um it it was uh it was a fun toy to play with and I'm really will be curious to see where it goes.
I think there would be a fabulous benefit to an organization to get the metrics over the top to g to sort of gauge organization health.
I think that would be a very interesting thing to see and track that over time and adjust your strategy and the and the behaviors that you you run as an organization as a management team to process
on that because obviously it's quite you got to be quite careful the people you know it's that balance and there's lots of articles on it where we've kind of released things that we shouldn't have because we've we put system in insights in and then you know people were would not using the tools because they thought the you know boss was watching them and knowing how productive they are. So, we've anonymized that now, you know, learned from that because you're absolutely right, Herby. You know, if you if you can get that as a leader and you know your staff are are kind of working and if you're a teacher even, you know, we got this embedded in for schools as well. If your kids are doing all their homework at 12:00 at night, that you know, that's not good for them and they could be at risk.
Um, so yes, it's a really good insight there.
So, so on that uh because I I've I did my homework as well, but I I'm not aware of of the full capability. Are you able to get that like top level anonymous data about how about mood for example like because I've been filling out my um reflect my feelings um uh what's it called reflection history and I I I was keen to know I can see the trend that I've got going and it's it's been actually really useful but just wondering it'd be really is it possible to get at that data to see it at a company level
that for employee only the reflection one because it was a mental uh you know it's about you reflecting on it. So where possible we've trying to keep a lots of that data just personal to you to help you as in your habit rather than it feel like you know your your manager knowing how well you're feeling today. Um but lots of the data can be can be extrapolated from there using graph API and things like that but not from a you know not not uh you know anonymously. Um
yeah in that particular way.
Yeah. Okay. That that sounds like a good idea. Anyway, I think we Yeah, we want to slow release these things. Um, for me, just personally on on I've been playing with VB sites as well. For me, the biggest value was um the protect time as well. Being able to
be able to lock away that time so I don't get messages popping up and distracted. Um, and also just building in those extra um 5 minutes or 10 minutes between meetings. There's so many times where I will um go from a meeting finish and then get notification say, "Oh, you're late. You're running late for the next meeting." And just having extra 5 minutes to collect my thoughts and become go to a meeting to be valuable has been immeasurably helpful. So
either to close out the last meeting by these are the things that I need to do having them into a planner board or something before you go into the next one or having time to prepare for the next one.
How often do we wind down? There's a windown activity and it says in there, I suppose it's based on psychology research, but it says, "Are there any things before you off from your your your productivity. Are there things you need to jot down for tomorrow so you can type in, you know, oh, you know, whatever it is, email, customer, do whatever, and then it reminds you in the morning.
Yeah.
How often do you how often do people complain about how useless that meeting was? So, if you can build extra structure things into actually capturing outcomes and then maybe if there were no outcomes, you can think, okay, maybe next time we don't have a meeting on that.
One one thing we've got, one thing we've just done which might be interesting, I know it goes on to the final part today. I know we come up to the end, but the um uh what we've done in the public sector team in Microsoft, we've we've uh created a thing called a 4hour challenge to gain four hours back in our week. And the four things that we supposed to do with that and I'm just trying to remember them all now. One is meeting duration that we just mentioned. So standardize 25 minutes or 45 minute meetings. So we've got to do that to get that time back, you know, to have at least 10 minutes each hour to breathe and and have a cup of coffee or a drink of water. Um and then uh adopting better meeting etiquette. So I don't know how you guys feel, but I know we get lots of meetings in and and what we mean by that is that you've got to have agendas and meeting objectives because sometimes you end up meeting I had a meeting yesterday with a customer and we weren't clear about the objective. You know, it was it's a recurring meeting and then we were sitting there and there was 10 of us on the call and we were like, well, we should have got an object objective for this. Um we worked it out in the end, but you know, you're doing meetings for meeting take on everybody's part. So that was adoption. Then it was committing to focus days. So blocking out the focus hours using Viv insights or even focus days and then creating time for learning. So putting space in we have we lucky for one day a month to learn.
Yeah. Feel like you've got some good
Yeah. Some some good collateral there for some internal initiatives for for health. It's good. I like it.
Have to wrap up unfortunately, but it's been great conversation gent. I really appreciate it. I think a really good way to end um is uh get everyone to provide their one thing that they recommend our listeners do to make their hybrid workplaces a better place to be. Might start with you Dan.
Um I suppose I' I'd definitely adopt the the AI tools inside the collaboration platform if you're using Microsoft tools. So the ones I mentioned like Viva Insights and my analytics just to start to get control of your own um hybrid working environment and and your own kind of collaboration. Um, so I'm going to recommend that uh before if you especially if you've got a really busy day, I would suggest doing the breathing exercises on Viva Insights. So go into your teams um click on the three dot menu, search for insights. It should already pop up at pin it to your sidebar in teams and then before each if you got a busy day of meetings before each meeting go and do the breathing exercises. It takes a minute and for me it's really helped center me before a key meeting. I did it before this podcast. past found it really really helpful. Um so that's mine.
Have you got one?
Yeah. It's not toolbased though. Like I think um um if you're a manager then ask your staff how they're doing.
And if you're a staff member, ask your boss how he's doing.
Yeah.