With the growth of remote working, be it due to COVID-19 or the growth of our organizations, now more than ever, we are all providing more presentations. Sometimes technical challenges can arise while giving these presentations, for example: Microsoft Teams, PowerPoint, and other technologies sometimes don't work the way we want them to. Non-technical issues can also provide a challenge: How can you give a great presentation when you are not in the same room your audience, or maybe we have a fear of public speaking?

I recently had the pleasure and opportunity to present to members of the Chief Operating Officers (COO) Business Forum based in Michigan, organized by Crown Talent Assets. The COO Forum is a great resource for business executives to explore and learn about new and emerging ideas, solutions, processes, and tools.

Entrepreneurism in the workplace is not about starting a business. It is about acting like an entrepreneur in your current job. This means you are an internal entrepreneur, or “intrapreneur".

Critical thinking means questioning the norm. Just because we have always done things a certain way, does not mean it is the most efficient or best way of doing those things. Critical thinking lets us look at processes as we work and think about better ways to do the job.

Collaboration in the Workplace is about coming together to achieve a common goal. Collaboration is about working together to be both innovative and productive without having to compromise yourself or others during the process.

A little background

Just in case you're new here: KnowledgeWave provides software training for end-users on popular business apps, like Microsoft Office, Teams and Adobe. 

Communication in the workplace is more than speaking. It is about the expression of ideas and feelings between you and the folks you work with and serve. Communication is the search to understand one another.

Even if your file management skills are on point and you’re an organizing master…I’m guessing you still like finding things quickly! Have you ever put an important file “somewhere safe” but can’t remember exactly where that safe place is? I definitely have. In my experience, searching for content instead of scrolling and navigating has saved me time and aggravation.

Networking in the Workplace is about what you can offer others, not just what you can personally gain from networking. It is about sharing thoughts and ideas with like-hearted people who share common interests with you.

Networking is about getting out of your comfort zone to see what is new in your profession, and how best you can serve organizations and people dedicated to your type of work. 

As its popularity continues to grow, businesses are using Microsoft Teams to present and (in many cases) are inviting external guests to meetings on the platform. The meeting experience is new for many users, especially the end-user consumer, and the businesses inviting them don’t always understand the attendees’ experience.

Adaptability means being flexible to your environment as your surroundings change. Adapting to your work environment is a much needed and notable skill. Work is in constant change and so is the world we live in. Services, products, and the people you serve change all the time. How your organization conducts business will also always be changing in order to keep up with the market that you serve.

I’m always going on and on about how cool I think Microsoft Teams is. All the stuff I need is in one place! For me, Teams provides little windowpanes that I can look through to navigate my projects and use Office 365 tools efficiently! In today's '5 Minute Teams Friday', I wanted to share how customizing channel tabs in Microsoft Teams allows me to accomplish more than you’d expect!

As part of our Adoption and Change Management (ACM) practice, we highlight the need to measure for success. It’s even a section on my Office 365 User Adoption Checklist. KnowledgeWave has had the opportunity to beta test Microsoft Productivity Score for the last several months and we are super excited that it’s now available in general release to all Office 365 Administrators. (If you don’t see it hang tight, it’s coming) The use of Productivity Score will help organizations power their digital transformation with metrics that can dive into how users are using modern technology like Microsoft Teams.

Collaborating with our work content is a behavioral change, and is also a new way to work, with tools that are new to many users. The explosive growth of Microsoft Teams, has enabled business users to communicate from their work offices or work from home locations, giving us to the capability to communicate with our co-workers across locations and an array of devices. Some managers and team members have even set up the virtual water cooler chats, to help keep colleagues stay connected in a virtual “social” setting.

In the simplest terms, the two key ingredients for a successful MSP are signing new clients and retaining them. New competitors are entering the MSP landscape every day as VAR's are attracted to the recurring revenue stream.

Don’t look now, but you can be sure those competitors are targeting your customers with offers to deliver more value for less cost. According to this Charted Institute of Marketing study, "it costs between 4 and 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one."