We are not millennials. We are what's up on collaboration as an art form delivered as value.
Hey, Steve.
Hey, Marijn I 73, 73. Yeah, we just checked. So how do I say, Hey Steve in German?
Now does
no. Of course not. So you're fresh back from
a, well, we can kind of fresh back. Yeah, exactly. I've been back for a few days already, but yes, it was collapsed summit. It was everything. A big conference needs to be lots of people, lots of vendors, a lot of soft speakers, lots of drunken banters, lots of scootering around the city,
but with a little hint of levelness because of Corona.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, no, I have to say that the guys at his expense really did an amazing job. Last, of course, a bunch of people that were not coming because all the, the, the, the, the numbers were going up. No. So we, we only had around 1800 people, which is still a massive number. Wow. But it didn't feel cramped because we had lots of space. Everyone was wearing their face mask all the time. Yeah, exactly. Their chin diapers all the time. And it actually felt, it felt really.
Right. So I'm, I'm really happy that I went. Yup.
I was saying, I said to the last one, I wish I had organized myself, but but there will definitely do the scotchy summit. Exactly. Just talking about that. So that's a definite Dewar. And before that, I think we'll go and do some podcast recording in
bars set long. Nah, the, yes, I'm looking forward to a few days in the, well, hopefully relative sunshine should be last time we were there. We had pretty nice sweater breakfast on the roof. Exactly. That was brilliant. So we will do a few days at the end of February, a few days of Barcelona, some formula, one testing. Yes. Some whiskey tasting or recording some podcasts, talking about business and then we will fly to Blasko for the Scottish summit. Where I will do a session.
Yep. And we will do a lot of whiskey tasting as one does when they are in Scotland.
I think so. And we'll bunch on a few planes and that sounds like fun. So that's sorted out. We've got Christmas before then. Of course we have got, we have episode 73 before that. Exactly. Cool. Cool. Cool. Thank you for the very, very big welcome. I, for those of you that listened to episode 72, I had to mix it down at the weekend or last weekend, and I thought it was hilarious with moraines little woodsy start and now he's powerful. It was brilliant. I really enjoyed that. Yeah.
Yeah. I was not feeling 100% last time. I still have like a little bit of a cold today. It's not Corona promises, not Corona but I I'm really, really, really, really, really into it today. And I'm so freaking excited to talk about this
topic. Alright. So let's just touch on what we're trying to do and where this came from. So effectively we are so experienced with office 365. We are superheros. Exactly. We
know what we do,
and we don't mean, secondly, you said that on purpose, didn't you. So you're going to use it. It phoned you up and says I've lost my one drive files and you go, no, you haven't. That's so, okay. It's not, they're not lost. Go to your recycle bin. Well, Maureen, I lost my one drive files.
Okay. And there were in the recycle bin. They weren't in my
recycle bin. What did you do? Well, actually I lost the last nine episodes. Of office it's five distilled all of the master files, all of the mixdown files all of the music files for the introduction music, all of it had gone. All right. But it was all synchronized. It was actually in my synchronization folder on my fileshare, but I think I made an assumption, oh, I made an ass out of you and me because I assumed that everything was being synchronized to one drive.
So you know, where you synchronize your folders down and you get a section which says SharePoint sites, and it puts your domain name in and you get all the sites in there and everything's listed. So I had all the sites and there's everything listed. And every time I mix a new episode, I do a save as into the same folder. That's been synchronized into office 365 and it's in the place against the synchronized section. So it's all good to go. But do you know that you can create folders?
You didn't know that. Did you, you know, if you go to your one drive and you can, you can go to your one drive and you create a new folder and then it gets synchronized to one drive. If you do that in the SharePoint side, do you know? You can, you can go to the fileshare, create folders in there that don't get synchronized back. I did not know that. Well, think about the architecture. Your one drive is one folder already.
It's one document
zone. So your, your because you're doing it in that it's a folder with one folder, one site, one cyclist, and you got to go. Yeah. But your SharePoint libraries are actually, it's a list of furries, one folder per library. So you can create folders in there at the windows 10 level. Oh boy. So I found that out because I had to use it a few weeks ago that created a bunch of folders and I'm sitting there.
Yeah. He says, but they're not on my SharePoint site and I'm going, but they must be a SharePoint site. No, not on my SharePoint site. And I worked out the, what he had done was he created them at the root level of the of the share, which wasn't actually in the folder that was being synchronized was not on a document library. So he was actually on the machine and apparently it looks like what had happened is at some point, this driver had got disconnected from the drive.
And so I kind of some point created it and everything else and it wasn't being synchronized. So I deleted it because what I, what actually, and even asked me if I wanted to delete it. And I said, yes, of course,
I know what I'm doing. I'm a professional.
So when it was, I got a document library and inside the document library, I had a bunch of folders. And then I had general yes, because it was obviously teams. And then I noticed that on my windows 10 I'd actually got general. As well as a separate feed on, on my synchronized file exploring, it's all very complicated. You can see why it went wrong. So I went well. That's okay. I will synchronize down from the higher level upon the library, which I did.
So I now knew that I was synchronizing that, and then I'll delete the drive, the folders from the sub folders below it. And it turns out that it, that I was saving files in there locally on my machine that were not getting synchronized back to the library. It was just a folder. So just be warned that even though it may look in internet Explorer, SRE, windows, Explorer, this stuff's being synchronized. It's not.
So it said, are you sure you want to delete these because they're too big to go into the recycle bin. And I went, yeah. It's okay. Look, I'm being synchronized here. No.
Oh, what a mistake at the Mecca?
It was, I was.
Yeah, good shit. Yeah, I know. I know.
Ah, I need to go sit down now. Oh, reminding me. Yeah. So I screwed up. So that was.
So then you did what every normal human being would do and go to the black net to the dark web, buy some Jacker software to actually rebuild your disc drive and get back all those disconnected
files. Yeah. I to restore them all back. So yes, I had to kind of pay out 70 euros or something for a piece of software, but of course, then it just brings back all the pointers. It doesn't bring back the logical folder structure and everything else. So dump it all onto a hard drive. So one day when I've got nothing else to do, I'll try and rebuild it.
But for the time being, and of course the other problem was it wouldn't resynchronize the library back either because he thinks there's already a synchronization on the, on the machines. So no, it was a learning experience. Wow.
There you
go. Okay. So be warned everybody. All right. We spend so many years and trust this stuff you, because you fall into the trap of Microsoft. Won't let me down. What'd your, t-shirt say the best way to predict the future is to create it. Exactly.
Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Fucking, you know what Maxim will say about that?
I don't, I don't even know what I want you to answer this, but tell me what would Microsoft say about this
that's valuable feedback. Ooh,
did Jeff that's nice. Anyway. Yes, everybody. So I had fun with that, but there you go. So what do we got planned? We're going to, we're going to talk about. Where we're at with with our rollouts and our builds and our migrations and the businesses we deal with. And then we're going to taste a rather special whiskey because we always do that on this podcast, but this woman,
oh, oh, I've been actually been looking forward to this moment to drinking this whiskey for a number of weeks. Ever since I knew you got one of these, I know who do we need to say? Thank you to thank yous for.
Oh, okay. So most people will remember that a while ago we went on a tour of the UK. We went, we did the Southern, we did the team's event comes first. And then we did a bit of a whiskey tour. We did Cotswolds and we did towed the Oxford artist and distillery. Yeah. Rye whiskey with heritage.
Yes, medieval re
barley and wheat and rice in a sequence. And one of you went to look at the website because it's just so cool. Well, we actually gave a
few bottles of that away at at the collapsed tasters. Yeah. Some days just because there was some people that I know love whiskey. So yeah. This is, it's
very, very unusual. So we tasted the number three and we went overboard about it. Yeah. And today he goes, is that good? It is amazing. And today we're going to do a number four. Exactly. So we're going to do number four because bought a bottle and he said, Hey, if you guys want to taste it, go ahead and taste it. Yeah.
You know how we, how well, well, every time I do a presentation, every time I do a session, I talk about this podcast. I always make that same joke. Yeah. We try to do whiskey before we were talking about technology, but that doesn't work very well, but maybe in this case we should actually, but I can't. No, no, no. Okay. I can wait for just another half an hour
to really try and stop myself talking about whiskey, because I certainly listened to my comms verse recording of the day, the first four minutes. We're talking about whiskey whiskey because you know, in a silly way. Okay guys, let's stop and move on and talk about Ms. Teams. Okay. So what I want to go with this today, I actually want to look at how we.
Can move forward in a very, very efficient way, by looking at something that I have labeled as plan to evolve, how you plan to evolve, how you constantly move on. And two podcasts ago, we did teacher sizes and agile and all that. And of course that's exactly about that iterative delivery and then iterative improvement and iterative improvement improvement proven. So I was working
out how to do this kind of, we kind of got customers that are both on the same or at the same level or on the same
space. Yeah. We kind of go through the same thought process. So
we, we both have a customer that has rolled out themes just for meetings and chat. Yep. And what we're, we both have a task right now, each for our own customers to kind of map out. How we go from this, where we
go next, equally, I've also got a customer that took a different approach. So they decided intranet first. Okay. So before we did collaborations because they wanted to do something quick. So, and, and that I think is a reasonable decision to take so short. The first thing is, you know, what is the most logical thing to do work first? And this is not about going to the business. Although most people do, okay. They say to the business, what will add you most value?
And they go for all the things that they meetings, chat, messaging, sharing documents with external people, that kind of stuff. And that's fine. If you want to do the quick wins, you can go deliver that. And that's where you start the, this other client. They decided that they wanted to, rather than go down the long process of sorting out their content architecture and their SharePoint sites and libraries, content types, and all that kind of stuff wanted to go and hit something.
So we did intranet. Sure. So we put pictures inside the route they took and that then gave the business something to look at and work on because they did not have an intranet in place let's say at work. So we have let's start off by imagine cross this top of the page. You have all of the applications.
Then you've started off with something, whether it's exchange one, drive teams, whatever you do, whatever you've started, you've started off with something and you'll have done some kind of baseline governance. Hey, episode X, X, whatever the number is, go and read about baseline governance. But it's about starting off quickly with a rough idea, a rough outline, and then developing both the governance as well as the developing the apps. And then you have the really, really big question.
And the really big question is right in the middle of our board, the one that gets us going everywhere. And that question is.
What color of shower curtains do I need to get right? Yes. What's next what's now. Oh, yes, yes, yes. What's next. Yes,
because then we, because when we talked about what's next, you said, yes, you go to the business.
Yeah, exactly. That was, that was my idea. So we've got so many things that we can roll out. So what do we need to roll out? Oh, but we're it we're in, we, we have to help the business. So let's ask the business, what do you want next?
And so I said, that's okay. But then I asked you what color your bathroom was going to be.
And I said, di don't know, we need to take a look at some. Oh, I said instant. Imagine that
your mother's things. Yes. And then I said, imagine your mother just giving you some shower, curtains that are blue and pink. Now, what color bathroom you're going to have. And then you can think about it because you have some context. Exactly. And so the whole point about what's next is yes, value is incredibly important. So is strategy. So is vision. So is adoption. So is all those other kinds of things. And the only way you can do that is if you plan to evolve.
So you work out where your starting point is and where your ending point. So that's what we really want to try and talk about here is how we actually build an, identify those starting and end points in small tissue sizes or big tissue sizes so that we can evolve our office receives five in a positive way, align to the business,
love that, that phrase plan to evolve. I think it's really cool. But do you plan to evolve all the way to the end or is that an iterative process? Will that be something that. Every 30 days or every 90 days or something, if you're
doing it agile, I think you'll do a sprinty kind of stuff. But yeah based upon two or three episodes ago, when we talked about epics and a t-shirt sizes, I think, you know, Hey, I've got a year plan. So that's where that vision strategy comes in and actually baseline vision strategy, because strategy really is three to five, but so I'm dealing quarter. So in this quarter, what am I going to move? Okay. What am I going to add to the business? All right.
And do I wait to finish one before I start the next store, do I have to have some kind of layered approach? And that's where you talk to the business? I believe to try and identify the way forward, but. I am going to say something that w that you will jump at and probably a few others. When I say that, it kind of knows best.
That is ridiculous. That is utterly ridiculous. No, it's true. It might. Well, it might be true. It depends. It's my favorite dancer. Yes, it depends. It depends,
especially for honor. All right. So on his LinkedIn pages, he can sit there and goes that's. Exactly. Thanks for the shout out, my friend. Thanks for the shout-out. That's cool. But yes, we do kind of know best, but we don't actually want to put the lid on it. We actually want to just sit there and say, in my opinion, with a Pinterest page,
yes, we can show you 50 examples and you might like five of them. And we might go with one of those five. Yeah, I get that. But then again, I don't want to say, I D knows best. I kind of want to say the experience consultant that you're going to hire might know best because we, as consultants are getting projects with a customer because there, it doesn't know all the possibilities that you can do in office 365. Yeah. And that's why they're bringing us on board,
the experience that we have to show and play. Yeah, exactly. Yep. I get all of that. And I think there's, I think a lot of it, people also want to turn around and say, you know, I don't know, you know, I have no idea. I have a number of service providers. But that didn't do a great job with managing it service, but they've got no real idea where to start when it comes to, to this.
And that's okay. I mean, if I had to do an exchange migration, I'll get a professional onboard. If I have to roll out an ERP system, I will get a team of professionals on board. I don't know anything about.
Yeah, last week I had to do some workflows. I had to go at it for a week and then I gave in and I bought professional in exactly, exactly. It was done in two hours.
Exactly. So I've been doing a really big PowerApps project for the last few months. And I've also said to that customer, because I said from the beginning, I don't know Jack shit about power apps. And we just started working and it's a nice low code platform. So we now have around. 2000 lines of code.
So at that moment I said, okay, now it's time that we bring in a professional that does review of everything that we've done, that we've been doing, because I'm pretty sure that all these things could be heavily optimized. Yeah,
that's true. So let's we plan, we plan to evolve and the important thing is an ident. And the simple thing by the way is what's my starting point. And what do I want to get to before I then say your definition of dumb? Yep. So that
starting point, would that be something like the maturity model that we've
talked about? It would, that's a really good reference. Yes. When we, when we talked about the the maturity model and I can't remember what else we talked about, let's go. So I'm getting older. My memory is going, but we talked about the maturity model along with one or two other things on a previous episode. So maturity model, definitely, but also, you know, what is the sensible application to start. Based upon what the business is telling you, they need. I mean, you can't ignore the business.
I know we joked about the business, but you know, the we talked earlier a lot of businesses and now saying better meetings, better chat, better messaging, because all of a sudden we really haven't gone back to the office. We're still working from home and it felt like this was a kind of wartime emergency that we had to deal with. And, you know, we don't mind the inconvenience because we know we're doing, we have to do safe, but actually it's now been going on for a while.
And so can we now make this
efficient action? Really a really cool narrative going on. I've seen that a few times already where companies are now talking to their employees and not saying, let's go back to the old ways or let's go back to work. But actually they're saying, okay, let's embrace the new way of working hybrid. Yeah, instead of let's go back to how it was before. No, let's go to the new way of work. I think that's for your adoption and your communication purposes. I think that is super brilliant.
It's a really good narrative staff.
It is. It's kind of about 10 years old. Yes, no. And I actually created a new SharePoint site with the title new way of working. Oh yeah. Yeah.
I, I found a folder from 2015 or something on my one drive that hadn't been did that I was thinking about seeing that, but I was going to be civil about it, but yes, with, with some presentations from Microsoft with their stra strategy around N w O w the new way of work,
let's just say we have a logical order here. I mean, I can pull one off the top of my head. One drive because it's easy and simple and it has got personal drives exchange. Let's take her
own, let's take her own examples. The one where our organizations just have a messaging, chatter messaging and, and meetings. Yes.
So, so would you do that? Would you agree with them doing that?
If we would have limited resources and COVID came knocking on our door, everybody had to work from home. We would no, no, no. Bear with me. Bear with me. I'll try it. We've got all our employees sitting in the office. We've got fall shares. Okay. They're not optimal, but they work. Everybody knows how they work and suddenly everyone needs to start working from home. What is the solution that they need most urgently is something to have meet. So we're all out, but give
second, I need to stop you a second because you know, you're right. You're spot. And I agreed with it.
I'm a professional. You are a professional. Don't delete my files on one drive.
You said you would go to say that. No, no, no, no, no. But you said everybody's in the office. That's where you started the journey. But if everybody was in the office, you would take a different approach. You talk about, of course I want to do files or we'd want to do collaborations that we want to do it, but this situation today is yeah. Now it can make that call. Yes. Because it can do have a very, very brief conversation with the business. So what is it you need in this case?
I think the feedback, a lot of people are getting. Meetings and chats and messages, which is all well and good. So that's the logical. And maybe then you think about whether your exchange is there or not. Then maybe you think about SharePoint online because then you actually do teams collaboration because you can't do teams collaboration before you do SharePoint governance. And that again is IT-based decisions.
So you have a kind of order and you do this and this and this, you might throw voice in at them point power apps first or voice first. I don't know which or power automate, you know, those. So you've got a kind of logical baseline strategy for moving towards Microsoft 365. Yes. And here's the thing, notice that pause then just to build the anticipation. Awesome,
brilliant. Very professional.
It was, yeah, I thought so too. If only had mentioned it because I've now forgotten the thing. So here's the thing about that is that it's all, could we change. So the point about this plan to evolve is that you have a rough order of where you're going, but it's not fixed in stone.
That's why the dinosaurs died because they were They couldn't, they couldn't evolve fast enough or
fair dues. Yeah. But you need to stay at flexible, but you say you have an outline strategy that says, Hey, this is where, where we kind of need to go. We know where we starting from. We know where the value is. Let's work that through the only time that you have to fix that is when you start the adoption program and your communications plan. So there's a certain window that says I can't change that part. And that's where your quarterly planning comes in. So you've got your plan.
Planning says, this is what we're going to do this quarter. And we don't change your mind. It doesn't matter what comes forward. If we have to stop and replan, that's fine. It's a kind of disaster, but. The idea, the opportunity to say this is where we're going to start from. And this is where we're going to evolve to is relatively easy.
And it's all based upon that baseline strategy, baseline governance, this doing things like these are the devices I'm going to work with this quarter and set up my organization on these are the environments we work in, in where does Citrix or virtual desktops fit into this? Where does laptops fit into this? Where do mobile phones fit into this endpoint security access or conditional stuff? They're all big conversations to have, but you don't want to delay everything to get those decisions made.
First. You want to be able to give the business a taste of what's about to come so they can decide whether they like it or not, whether it needs to be changed, whether it needs to be updated, which
also allows your baseline governance to be. Start it with high level and then drill deeper as the business figures out, how they want to use it and how you want to control
it. Exactly. And so that's kind of where we're where we're at with this. So how do you identify then where your starting point is in terms of, what do you want to plant is off that's that's really one of the key questions to have.
I think that could be pretty easily talked about. I think that's, that's kind of an easy conversation to have, like,
but is it not the conversation? Like what color bathroom do you want? So, Hey, let's build a house. No, it's
kind of like, okay. Yeah. Well we, so we just build a house and now we need to decide what's the next room that we're going to fix?
it? No, no, not big a house.
Do you want? Yeah, exactly. But let's say the lease in our old house is done. We have to move all our stuff to new house, but none of the rooms are done. What would be the room that we need to do first? Maybe it's the toilet. no, do we, do we need to do the kitchen first because maybe my parents were living next door and I can always go take a shower there or do we need to do the bathroom first? Because there's a really good restaurant that delivers cheap food. So we don't have to cook.
Do you have. Maybe your baby depends on my persona. Your
persona. Yes. You have babies.
Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of, do you need soundproofing on the, on the walls? Exactly. When you have a baby,
but you are able to make those decisions and you don't have to make all the decisions immediately.
No, but it's, it's a pretty easy conversation to have like, okay, where are we? And what are our biggest drivers for change? And where do we want to go to,
I think you're right. You and I. Because of the way we work, the way we think the businesses we deal with, it's a relatively easy decision. Yeah. If you were Garten KPMG and you said, Hey, how do you want to roll out your Microsoft 365? Then they would not say, oh, that's relatively easy. They wouldn't have such a huge run-up and roll up to get to the point where, you know, they're able to do the first thing.
Yeah. But how I would tackle something like a 200,000 people organization is to really cut that big elephant into smaller pieces.
I was actually more thinking that they would want to do so much analysis before they
started. They would get
exactly to bear, to make, take the risk away from making the wrong decision. That's the point about this is that none of this is ever going to be the longest.
No, but it's, it's, it's kinda the same. Like we did that one customer to get her where they had different business areas and every business area had their own team where they could just kind of do whatever they want, as long as it was kind of coherent with the overarching governance. So, and even within those business areas, you've got different divisions that all want different things. So you're all running different projects on different speeds for different people.
Yep. All right. So we we've talked enough about, I think the order and stuff and understanding where we're at and now setting up. And I think I've got some sessions on this, so I'm really trying to work out how to present this and, and kind of make it, make it interesting to easily identify the key learning points. So but then identifying your starting point to evolve. We're back to that question again. So the third time I've asked the question. So your starting point is very easy.
It's where are we at now? And what do we need to add next? Exactly. So, and that will fall into two layers. One is logically from an it architect to perspective. What is it we do next and are there any dependencies to get there
the second? So that would, that would be something like a D migration, like get, get that base working in a good order.
Yes, I guess there's those dependencies you're right. So if some people actually say I want to do meetings and chats and stuff, then there's a limitation on what you can do in Ms. Teams. So I can set up chat groups. I can call people. I can share jewel meetings. No, that's about it. Yeah, because unless I do my content architect, Discretion to define the governance of my SharePoint sites. I can't really roll out teams and channels without having made some decisions around there.
So my plan to evolve in that case is that I want to be at my plan to evolve is I want to be able to collaborate on content in my Ms teams and I have a quarter to do it. Yep. So what is in that plan to evolve? What do I actually need to have done so that I can create my first team at the end of this quarter and know that I'm not making them. And it's relatively simple to do. Okay. Depending again, how complicated you want to get to. So it's about content architecture.
So it's, so all the usual baseline decisions are users going to be a to create teams? Yes or no. All right. When they create a group, do we need to do any customization in terms of content type or architecture? What kind of content is the organization working on? Is there any corporate metadata or, or taxonomies that need to be implied? They can all be knows.
Of course we can actually say, you know, just for the team sites for Ms. Teams, the basic standard document library, no content types, as it is job dub, any additional libraries have to be built in this kind of certain way. So doesn't stop you putting Ms. Teams using the default library, but that's all it's for it's really, for that interactive.
Collaborative environment based on that subject, if I want to do, you know libraries that are storing research material for a number of chemical processes, then in that library, I would want to do metadata and I would want to use some kind of content type process, but I can build those on top. That's my next plan to evolve.
So my scope for my t-shirt size in this case, because that's the decision based upon, Hey yeah, we need a better way of managing our documents and collaborating on particular subjects is I evolve from just meetings and messages and chats into adding documents, meeting messages and chats because that's all I've added. I've just added a space where I can store some content and some lists on top of. S a specific sets of messages and conversations around a particular subject.
That's my scope of evolving sounds legit. And don't know when I finished when I, I finished. So I've got my start point and my end point, and I'm evolving. So now I look like a rockstar. I do. I look like a rock star. Hey, brilliant. Because you've given us the, what you want, what we wanted. All right. And may not be perfect, but we understand that more will come round the corner. You've scoped what you're going to do, deliver you've delivered what you're going to deliver.
You've got a very simple baseline governance. That's controlling it. So you've, you've got all of that stuff considered, and you've not broke the bank.
No, you can make a rock song singing out of your lungs.
We will rock you. There you go. Karaoke night is a celebration. Yes. And I think the, the reason that this works is because you've not given somebody a blank sheet of paper and said, Hey, tell me what you want this house to look like. All right. Without being able to give them some reference points and some information, because they know that information a
true, true. Yeah.
okay. Okay. And I, and I think that you did a graph, which I thought was really quite cool where you kind of said, Hey, this is how we work out. What that evolution is, where you plotted time against value. Yeah,
exactly. So time or, or cost versus value. And you kind of need to see where you are right now and where you want to go to. Do you want to in your journey, start with providing lots of extra value while not going hard on costs, or do you want to put all the right layers, all the right bottom layers in place so that afterwards you can scale up really fast.
And the thing about the thing about this process, I think is that the, the first one is very much like the waterfall thing that says build a solid foundation and build from that
foundation. Yeah. I know a few companies that do that, like, okay. Let's first think about our backup solution. Let's first think about how we want a D to look like let's first move the outlook file, stew exchange, maybe something that the user doesn't get that much value of. Once you couple that with giving people the new outlook, for example, and giving people the new office apps and giving people one drive.
So that would be something that is not very time and cost consuming, but it, it delivers tremendous
value. I think that's the point from my perspective is always to do the arch that looks like it's a, you know, a curve rather than a, I suppose there's a posh word for, there are some
verted curves, nice mathematical words to describe that. Yes.
I like nice curves.
Yes. On the, only on the right places
that's drafts the right graphs. So, but going back to this thing here, so value to me is about giving people something to do. Yeah. If they've got a tool or something, they can click, then we're evolving from nothing to. Being able to create meetings or groups and share documents. And then I find though that the curve upwards is always greater when you've got something started, cause you building from it.
So if we take that bathroom idea, put my curtain up in front of my shower, I can start showering. All right. And, but of course, if I'm still trying to work out what color everything needs to be and where the position of this is going to be and all that kind of stuff, I can't actually start showering. And I think once you start sharing your work out, you know, the showers in the wrong place or that curtain really, isn't doing very good. Thank you mama. But I really needed a glass door, you know?
And so you giving something
to start talking about what you'll get otherwise,
a debtor had done over that. I want to ask, what are you going to get? Otherwise,
Stevie, we know
steamy. Wow.
Okay. Okay. Okay. Where did that come from? I don't know.
Now I'm not going to be singing red, red, raw. You're going to be singing steamy windows, Tina Turner in your car at home.
Anyway. I mean, okay. Let's go back to evolve plan to evolve.
So anyway, basically I feel honestly think we should bring us together. Looks like it's going to be short podcast today, which is fine by me. Okay. So we have this order, we know where we're ordering and what we need to identify then is those small areas that I know I can deliver in time on budget and we'll evolve my users and the business and bring value. Yep.
There's just one little, but, but I, I don't, I don't want to mess with your whole idea because I think it's a super valid idea. The only problem is if today I'm going to say, okay, in three months, I'm going to do lots of automation and business process optimization. I will not get any professionals in treatments because the market is so demanding these days that all the workflow professionals are all booked for at least six months. Did
you listen to anything that I've been talking about?
I kind of did, did it
sink in?
I hope it did. Apparently not. Oh Jesus. This one of those, like my girlfriend does, like, we need to talk shit. What did I do wrong?
Absolutely. Right. You're absolutely right. There are some resources that are difficult to plan and new and get scheduled. Yeah. We're not just deciding that we're going to stop after four weeks or five weeks or eight weeks or a quarter. And we have our strategy. Remember we have our baseline strategy, which is saying that this quarter, we're going to try and deliver this this quarter. We're going to deliver that. But if I need to change the order I can do. Of course.
So you should be able to identify, you know, at this point here, we really need to pencil in a bunch of power automate consultants to set up professionals. So you have that strategy in place because we talked about having, you know, these are my devices. I'm going to deal with, these are my applications and all that kind of stuff. So I'm afraid you will get stuck. Yes. Unless you actually think about, you know, that long-term planning and that's the whole point of this, but I'm not committed to.
Okay. I'm not committed to it. If, if somebody needs to have a workflow and I need to bring somebody in for one particular workflow, I should be flexible enough to do it. Oh yeah. And obviously, if I can't get the right resources, I can't get the resources. So planning to evolve. It's about what I can deliver with the resources I've had the times, but you're right. We need to consider those things.
Now where I wanted to go to on this is that these, these evolutions are not just about delivering something to the business. It's also around the stakeholders in the board and being able to put the resources and costs and prices and budgets in place for all of this kind of stuff. So when they say, Hey, yeah, I need this money. They know what they're going to pay for and what they're going to get.
So you're also showing that you've got this stuff, which is cool, but also means that your adoption is to be aligned to all of this kind of stuff. So your adoption is going to take place all the time. It's part of that evolution. Oh, yeah. Okay. My users at the end of this process, we'll be able to do these things now just because it says, yeah, if you click here and do this, you can see you got it there it's finished and done. I can walk away now.
No it's part of that plan to evolve is that you're also evolving in parallel your business and workforce and the people that really going to get most value out of it. And you must not ever, ever forget that.
And it actually, this plan actually makes your adoption easier. It does because you've already given them documents. Correct. But what if you've got documents that need to be approved? You know what we'll do next? We'll do some approval workflows, making it even easier for you to work with your documents and building on top of that previous thing that they get, that they had
thinking about this. Sorry, I don't know why my voice stopped working then, but the other thing about the plan to evolve. Different people will evolve in different places to others. So not everybody will need to do approvals. So, but other people may well need to do lists and data.
Yes. May other people may need to do some calendaring exercises and because you're doing things in that iterative small way, and because you can decide whether you have enough resources to do things in parallel, then you're going to. And you're going to evolve in a way within costs and you can work in smaller areas. So that's what you're talking about. Breaking the business down. Yup.
Yeah. Yeah. Cutting up that elephant. This small piece is absolutely. Absolutely. All
right. Cool. Well, I think it's worth Trisha on this. I still think there's some stuff to deal with with the, the baseline governance we've covered a while ago, but I think there's some work to do on baseline strategy and baseline visioning. All right. You know, cause he needs to be flexible, but also needs to be planned in some way and the adoption, but it's really all about knowing where we can grow, where we can develop, where we can add value. All right.
And obviously planning for that with a vision of improvement and continual improvement. Yep. And then if you add improvement on top of improvement on top of improvement, Hey rockstar. Rockstar
status. That's how you conquer Mount Everest, go from base camp to base camp until you reached once. It's all downhill from there
afterwards. Plenty cold.
Yeah. Apparently,
apparently having never been there either. Apparently. So it's a bit like when I did my virtual walk-up Fuji. Oh yeah. You know, I actually got the live camera shots and I turned round cause I could move the phone around and there was a pile of people behind me and I'm thinking there's my am at the top of Fuji on my own, you know? But no there's 400 people all cued up on the path. Yup. So one way in one way out, this is Fuji for goodness sake.
Anyway. Anyway. Yeah. Let's not talk about Fuji. Let's talk about tote, toads, tote to Oxford, artisan distillery. It's a strange place. It's a strange place full of strange people, but you know, what's strange people do best, make beautiful things. If you look at artists, I mean, how many fuck damn crazy people are artists. Oh my God. But they make wonderful things.
The distilleries do we think we've visited between us over the last five or 10 years? 60, 70,
yes. At least
alleged not one of them is anywhere near as
weird as this one. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. But none of them are bringing forth such.
Interesting. Interesting,
valuable connections. Exactly. No, no. I mean, don't get me wrong. I mean, we I've, I've visited every distillery on Aila and they're all bringing out amazing stuff,
but they're all doing it the same way. It
kind of, yes. With a very exaggeration of, so Oxford thousand distilleries, they just decided to do things in a very different way. So they said let's take some medieval grain, but bring it back to life and let's make some whiskey of it in a column still mean. Okay. So
sure. We we've we've we have drank this product before this deal. This is the first time we've gone back to the same distillery. Potentially.
Mm. Yeah, it's difficult. I don't think, I don't think so. I think we did four art bake. We did the Oop doll and we did the, a little,
he did a little left, couple of free. We've been to a few times. You're right. You're right. You're right. So we welcome him back here, but we've covered it before, so I'm not really, really going to get into it, but I just point everybody to the Oxford artists and distillery website, read their section on farming and and all that kind of stuff. But we're going to drink there. Oh, oh four. So the graduate is a great name. Isn't it? Yes.
Mrs. Robinson.
So it's the Oxford rye whiskey batch number four. Yeah.
And every time they bring out a batch that is just matured on different kinds of Oak. Number tree was matured on a mosquito. Cask I'll trust you. Yes. If I'm not mistaken
and this is a multiple, this is actually quite a nice blend of different barrels. So this the release is a blend of six casks and they are originally named 27, 25, 28, 31 33 and 36. But of course they were different casts, different, different makes a woods and stuff like this. And it was double distilled in Nautilus and Nimo, which is the name of their yes, they are. And they do call it like they're alive. I'm looking at the picture now on the website, so it's pretty cool. It's 51% 51.3%.
So Yeah. Do you know, why don't you just pour it into a glass and I'll kind of just let people know what we're expecting to see. We've had a little nose of it beforehand and it was winter warm. That was the first thing that came to mind with this drink. And we're talking about the nose here of Ana seeds, peppers mint, black and benign or Brownlee apple.
The problem is I find with all these, these tasting notes is they go, well, the more flavors we can get in the list, the more chances you have of getting something right. Can you see, do you need to ring the bottle out there, Marie? So, yes. Thank you very much in deed color. Wow. Right. Orangy
brown, right. It, I think if we turn off the lights, it would still give yeah. It will flow. Yeah. It's such a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful glow.
Yes. It almost has a nose of a cocktail. Doesn't it?
Well, I was, I was just smelling it while I was sporting it and it kind of, it kind of has vaguely the same nose as the number tree, but this one is a little bit warmer. It's got that lemonade kind of smell. He had that as well. Yes. This
is a grown up a little bit. Yes.
But this is a bit warmer, so it's not warm funder, but I mean, it's, it's like Fanta took a walk in the forest in autumn sunny day. Okay.
It is nice. It certainly has that hint of sort of sweetness around it. But no, it's not overly sweet. No, no, no. It's not over. Sorry. I brought the microphone there now instead of the glass in front of my mouth. So it's not overly sweet on the nose. And as you say it is smells red. If you had to, if you had a color to this is kind of, you know, has that depth to it. It's beautiful.
It is. So what? Oh, you already went the head. I call it. It's got nice stairs as well. If you swirl it around, it's got some nice steers on the glass.
Oh, the finish is amazing. I know that. I know that I'm ahead of you already.
That's okay. That's okay. I just like to see you enjoy
it's it's quite, it's got a bite, so trust me, you got to buy, but it's, and it's only three years and one day, you know what I mean? It is very, very young. But then all of a sudden, your math explodes in this. Roses kind of florally for a
but
not in a warm kind of way. Yeah. What does it actually say? It
really reminds me of the number tree, but in a warmer scent. Yeah. You just
said that. Yeah. It's coming from the same, still with the same delivery. It's it's,
you know, I would think that the maturation in different costs would have much more of difference because if we compare the record. Oxford a ride with the number tree. That's a big difference.
Well, this is if we call this number four, which is what they say is of course, then they're going to improve from one to another. They're going to try and work out what they need. And I think they've done a good job with that. Oh yeah,
no, absolutely. Yeah. It's kind of like comparing the art big 10 with the art deck. UDL UDL doll is kind of the same as the 10, but it brings much more depth and warmth and smokey bacon into it. And this has the same thing. It's like number trees, more of a summer and spring whiskey. And number four is more of a autumn style whiskey, right?
Yeah. I'm just letting you drink. I'm listening and tasting. I was just thinking that we were talking about going to the UK Bletchley event and I was just trying to work out how far away it was from Oxford. I love this. The finishes got such a variety as it. Well, let me tell you what the finish is supposed to be creamy. Definitely silky, peppery and minty. I'm not sure about that. Hints of espresso and laundry. Sorry. Linger, linger in toast of sourdough. Smokiness.
I get the smokiness. Yeah. Yeah. I get the minty. I get the peppery. Yeah, but the toast of soar Dow Brett, not really, but that's okay. That's okay.
It's different. And we can keep talking about it forever. Oh, to be honest, it'd be good. But it is spent, honestly, it really is appreciated me and I know you're looking forward to tasting it. Because I can't, man, the man's got so much patience. You won't get the bottle until January. He's got to go through Christmas because I won't get to see him. And, you know, I think he's savoring the taste and making it is 20, 22
or people making it so incredibly difficult from themselves. We know people that are running long distance marathon thing is like, why would you do that?
I mean, this is still happening for me. I'm sorry. This finish
is it's whiskey.
It is. It's very cool. It's a, yeah, it's just an interesting place. Full-stop and they've certainly graduated. Yes. There's no doubt about that. Yep. Yes. Alrighty, cool. Down to get to work. It is. Yeah. I wonder what happens when you put a drop of water on it? Ooh, good call.
That's a good call. Let's see what that does. it definitely brings out more of those floral notes. Do not. Yes.
I agree with that. It makes it a bit easier on the nose. Actually. It's more subtle now takes away that it's kind of that harshness, that new age peppery.
Yeah. That'd be rough fetch. Yeah. Yeah. okay. Yeah, definitely smoother on the nose.
It makes a big difference. Okay. He was 51.3. It wasn't it. So drop a water, bringing it down to probably less than 50. Makes a big difference. Oh, I can taste the banana now.
Oh yeah. Oh
wow. I can taste the banana on the finish.
Wow. It's got that grumpy, that grumpy middle section that yeah. It's like when you drive a really nice sports car and at some point, you know, the engine just goes like before it starts howling, and this is, this is what it is.
It's because it's softened that pepper. Yup. And that's kind of, as you said, brought out that growl of it's a great description of what it does, but it's happened honor. That's there it's that black and banana comes out with a touch of water in it. This has got so much data it's fan. You really are going to enjoy this immensely. I really hope you do. And if you don't, I'll take whatever's left in the bottle. Oh yeah, no, definitely.
You'd have to also check out with the people you give the drinks to from Germany and see what they thought. Oh, I will, I will
reach out. Thought about the number tree.
Yep. Yeah. That's cool. What I find is that this whiskey so interesting from a distillery that is effectively run like a student frats club. You know, it's a, the bar is there with, with the, doing their stuff in the summer, they had, oh, beautiful beaches on the outside. So highly to recommend a visit. Well, it's been an interesting mix of a podcast we're just approaching the hour. So we, within our. We're kind of full once in the last 50 episodes.
Yes. We don't want to change the habit of a lifetime. So what we're going to talk about next? No, no, no. Let's, let's round this down a bit. So basically what we were trying to get you to do, people was to understand that, yes, there's a process for rolling out Microsoft 365. This is going to be driven by the needs of the business. Yes. At the moment, working from home, et cetera, et cetera, is driving a lot of that improved communications, improved sharing of content, et cetera, et cetera.
But you need to identify what your plan for. Evolution is how you're going to evolve your product, give your business something new, something valuable, okay. In small iterative steps. And that is easier than trying to plan a whole governance plan for every single SharePoint site that you need to put into place. Use our products on baseline governance, identify your content types. If that's what you need to do, identify your hub site parents.
If that's what you need to do, get all of those done quickly and easily. You can change them and modify them, but then work out what the business needs and then plan to evolve. So plan for improvement, not just plan for delivery, plan for improvement. That's what we were trying to get you to do is to think through those kinds of things that will add value. Oh, man, I kind of set you up then for a
nice, I know, I know the only thing I have to say. Amen. Yeah. Preach my man preach.
We always do that. I always do that. Well anyway, so a habit or a bad habit, I don't know whether that's the case,
but you've definitely got a point. I mean, most because I'm, I'm just making an assumption here that at least 50% of people that are listening to us are consultants. Really? I think, I think so. We, we need to check our demographic, but I. To a customer to actually do something from start to finish. And then most of the time the company will second. Now it's time. We've given you a lot of enough money, walk away. We'll handle it from here.
We'll do the operations part, but they actually forget that evolving part. And with a platform like office 365, that's always evolving. That's evergreen. This plan to evolve is super important because you will know you will get new stuff. For example, now start thinking about how the loop components will be affecting the way you do collaborations. In three months or in six months time. That's
true. So from an operational perspective, they need to be thinking about the updates that might exactly. Yeah. That's evolution as
well. Yeah. So yeah, you, you need to, that that is something that you need from your consulting party. This
subject evolves, it
evolves just like the whiskey, how that evolves.
That was cool. Yeah. All right. Well, look, we hope we've given you some thoughts on this. I know it comes out of my strange brain and yeah, check out some of the presentations that we're going to do around this around how you kind of can identify that area of evolvement. And it's not just about the people that have to do stuff. It's your stakeholders, your governance boards, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, if everybody's aiming for evolution in growth and benefits and value, then everybody wins and everybody becomes rockstars.
Exactly. It's all about value.
Yeah. Neat. All right. Talking about value. You cannot beat value of the graduates from the Oxford RTT autism distillery.
So although it's not that cheap, but I think it's definitely worth.
There's cheap whiskey and there's good whiskey as true. All right. And this is definitely in the good whiskey range, but it's not overly expensive, but anyway, there you go. All right, well thank you for spending your time with us. We're just over an hour, so hope you've enjoyed this process. And I know you've learned something from it, even if it's only one thing you will have learned something for it. And of course, that's what we were trying to do. So, Hey, this is Steve Dolby.
Say Steve, anywhere on Google, anywhere on Twitter, anyone on Facebook, you will find me with size Steve and I will as always and over to the absolutely soup verbally voiced and iterative Moran.
Well, I was super excited about the start of this podcast and I'm still super excited at the end of the podcast. So. Yeah, every time we get together, my mind kind of gets blown with new concepts, with new ideas, with new ways to talk to my customers, new ways to handle tackle business problems. This has been one of them. I hope you enjoyed as well. That's it for me at Moran so much. Let me know what you thought about this episode.
Let me know what you, you know, what, what's the, what's the, what's the key thing that you learned from this? I know for some people like Kevin it's buying a Cotswold is still re whiskey because he heard it on the podcast or on Kevin, his wife said don't because we've got enough, but he's still ventured through
all the wives say that I, my wife says the same. You don't need another whiskey.
I know. But then you've got a whiskey loving girlfriend like me, and then she. It says, man,
I've got real football. I ought to make his mark today. Having tasted it on our . Okay. All right, let's go. All right. I should have.
Okay. Cheers guys. See you next time. Bye. Millennials, we are truly
Steve, maybe more than Madame during
the business, like whiskey
and about