Even if you love being a people manager, it has its challenges.  Staying on top of your own to-do list, coaching and guiding your team and reporting up all while trying to preserve time to think and strategize can feel impossible some days.  For many, the sudden move to everyone working from home is exacerbating those challenges.

As someone who has long embraced the consultant, work from anywhere lifestyle, I have learned a lot on what works and what doesn’t.  Consulting has a global workforce baked in; one of my most favorite architects ever packed up his family and moved to Mexico.  He’s successful because he understands the importance of communication, transparency, trust and technology.

If you have an Office 365 deployment coming up soon or you have already deployed but adoption is lagging, here are some activities to drive interaction.

​1.  Start a friendly competition

• See who can build the best SharePoint page for their department.  Modern SharePoint is incredibly easy to edit and has app parts that many are unaware of: call to action buttons, count down timers, Forms, Stream, personalized content, and more.  Royalty-free images and icons can be added via web searches from within the SharePoint editing experience.  If you need to spread some inspiration, check out the SharePoint Look Book.

​Microsoft Ignite has ended and that means some great new functionality and innovation are on the way!  As we scoured through the Ignite conference announcements and scheduled upcoming feature updates there were a couple of items we thought warranted being highlighted for a closer look.