Why You Should Go All in On Teams - Part 1 (Episode 54 Transcript)

If you’re like most people, you have that one space in your house or apartment.
Maybe it’s the junk drawer in a kitchen cabinet. Maybe it’s that closet in the un-used spare bedroom. Or, maybe it’s your garden shed, garage, or even the attic.
Stuff is just piled into it. It looks like a hoarders episode.
When you think of digging through that dumping ground to retrieve something you know to be there, you cringe. It shouldn’t take so long to find something so necessary.
But, you must have it. You roll up your sleeves and commit however long it takes to find that necessary thing.
How does that relate to your business? I'm going to tell you. But first.
Welcome to the 1,001 Business Problems Solved with Microsoft Teams podcast. I’m your hostess, Annie Rynd, and today I’m deviating a bit from our podcast theme.
I usually help you solve a specific business problem each week, but today I am going to motivate you. I’m going to convince you – that is, if you’re not already convinced – that Microsoft Teams will be transformational to your business.
So, back to that overflowing, unorganized, and depressing dumping ground of stuff you dread digging through.
How does that situation relate to your business?
I think I’m probably speaking to many of you when I say the following is your morning routine at the office.
You sit down to your computer with another cup of coffee. You have a lot of important work to do today, but first you need to take care of the usual things. When I say the usual things, I mean email of course.
How many emails did you get last night and this morning already? Two dozen-or more? Ok. Those emails aren’t going to answer themselves, let alone drag themselves into email folders if they’re important enough. So, you dig in.
Some of them don’t need replies, but they’re important enough to leave them in the inbox until you have time to file them. Some you reply to and then drag into one of your several dozen folders.
You notice you now have a couple thousand emails stuffed into your folders, maybe even your inbox.
There are a couple business text messages on your phone so you look those over. You answer the urgent ones and leave the others for when you have time, which of course, clutters your phone more every day.
If this is your morning routine and you’ve been doing it for months or years, you certainly don’t enjoy opening your inbox or text messages in the mornings. And what's worse, when you finally get around to doing that important work that's waiting, your mojo is gone.
Now isn’t that situation and the resulting feelings similar to sorting through your piled-up garage for your hedge trimmers?
You must retrieve whatever it is you need, but the clutter of everything depresses you. Because you have to dig through so much, retrieving anything at all takes ten times as long as it should take.
OK. Now you’re done with email. You’re two hours into your day and you’re just now getting to other work you need to be doing.
Most likely, the work you need to be doing is working with files and any of a number of varied apps and programs.
So…once again, you get that kitchen junk drawer feeling. To get to the files you need, you have to click through folder after folder after folder. Then, since there are fourteen drafts of each document, you have to determine which is the latest version.
You get the file open and then begin opening the apps and web pages you need.
Even if you do it daily, the stuff is all over the place and you expend a lot of energy and mental bandwidth navigating to things.
Once you open everything you need, you notice that you have twelve different windows open. You then hunt for the right minimized window every time you move to your next task.
No wonder you need a nap at lunch! No wonder you have a calendar on your wall for marking through the days remaining until vacation.
Sound familiar?
Did you know the average office worker makes 35,000 decisions daily? Why so many?
Well, in addition to the obvious bigger decisions, every time you click another folder, you must decide which folder to click on. Almost every click on the computer is a decision. And, each click requires hand-eye coordination. Every click is a tiny drain on your finite mental energy reserves.
Every click costs you a decision, some hand eye coordination, and however much time it takes to find the icon to click on.
I think you probably get the picture. It’s no wonder business owners and managers feel tired, overwhelmed, and overworked.
Now, if you have employees, multiply your frustration and wasted time by however many employees you manage. That's the total cost of non-optimized computing to your business and your workforce as a whole.
Here’s a couple statistics.
Mckinsey Global found that the average office employee spends more than two hours every workday managing email. They also found that employees spend an hour and a half searching and retrieving information, as well as another hour attending meetings and collaborating otherwise.
That’s almost five hours every day doing collaboration and information management.
Here’s the really shocking part.
If five hours per day is spent doing that kind of work, there are only three hours per day left to do the work you’d prefer get done. When employees are managing email, searching for information, and sitting in internal meetings, they aren’t selling, marketing, serving, or producing things that your customers are willing to pay for.
It kills your bottom line!
Your customers don’t care how long it takes your office to juggle their stuff on the computer. They don’t want to pay for that. All they care about – and all they’re willing to pay for – must be accomplished in the three hours employees aren’t juggling information.
So…all of that to say I bet if you could reduce those five hours of non-profitable time by half, you’d jump on the opportunity. If you could do that, every employee using technology could have two and a half more productive hours per day without costing you more.
Well, that’s why you must leverage Microsoft Teams and do it yesterday. Not in the way most businesses do, but in a strategic manner that super duper streamlines and standardizes your business processes.
This podcast is dedicated to solving business problems and helping listeners deploy teams in a strategic manner that eliminates waste and improves the bottom line.
If you’re motivated to do so, and this episode got you fired up, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app so you get a new business solution every Monday.
Yes I know. I’m a bit over my allotted six minutes, but I wanted to light a fire under business leaders who wonder why they should go all in on Teams.
Next week, I’ll tell you the benefits of deploying Teams strategically in your business and how to make it happen.
Until then, this is Annie, signing off!