Marie Kondoing with Microsoft Teams

Declutter your digital space to increase flow and personal productivity

The art of decluttering has extended to every nook and cranny of our homes thanks to lifestyle maven Marie Kondo. Though credos like “spark joy” have quickly become a cultural idiom for our physical surroundings, there are learnings that can extend to our digital lives.

It’s well understood that distractions are the enemy of productivity. Experts and amateurs alike have touted the benefits of staying “in the flow” to get work done. Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently weighed in. But there’s a balancing act involved. In our daily work lives, we are asked to manage the following:

1.  Getting our work done
2.  Staying connected to people we need to work with
3.  Staying connected with people and work that impacts us
4. Staying connected to people our work impacts

We all have more work to do than ever and these increasing connections can create overwhelming waves of digital clutter. Depending on your role and discipline within an organization, the time (and urgency) you spend in each area varies. That’s why I always scoffed in the past at the broad-sweeping recommendations like “Read messages two times a day.” Sometimes you do need to respond immediately.

The good news is that tools like Microsoft Teams exist to bring communication and collaboration into a single context. Microsoft has the decade plus of learnings from the communications space, built on a best-in-class collaboration platform, with 1st and 3rd party application integrations. That in and of itself makes Teams a powerful tool by which to simplify our lives and increase our flow.

But like any tool, its helpfulness is only as powerful as what you do with it…and how you organize it. A little KonMari properly applied can give you the time and space to be productive and creative.

I’m not going to espouse all the benefits and features of Teams in this article. I will assume you are already a believer and an active user. (Like the 500,000 organizations Microsoft recently announced at Enterprise Connect.) But to be completely fair, some of these organizational tips can apply to similar tools like Slack, WebEx Teams or any workstream collaboration application.

Therefore, this is my unscientific (and unsanctioned) guidance on staying organized as an end user in Teams. I hope it’s useful for you.

Step 1: Memberships that spark joy

 The first step on this journey is to make sure you are only part of conversations that are critical for your work.

When to join a Team

I always define teams as “groups of people coming together to get work done.” Microsoft Teams helps my groups stay organized because now there is a single place for conversations, files and meetings. But how do you know when to join the right teams? Since a group is loosely understood as 3 or more people, I try to be a bit more specific when I talk about whether my participation in a team is needed in Microsoft Teams.

I only join and stay in teams where one of these criteria has been met:

• I am engaged in an active organization, project or process. I use these teams to stay connected with work and people that impact me or to stay connected with folks whom my work impacts. I will talk a lot about RACI in this article. I try to limit my team membership to teams where I am Responsible, Accountable or need to be Consulted. If I just need to be Informed, I don’t always need to be in the working team. In those cases, I ask to be on the project readout or sent the published links to final deliverables.
• The team is not active, but has information valuable to me   As a best practice, final project deliverables should be published to a portal, website or report. But there are cases where working documents are valuable on an ongoing basis. Those can drive continued use of an inactive team, as can any channel conversations that drove key decisions. But I try to be judicious in keeping inactive teams around. They can grow faster than populations of throw pillows.

If the team doesn’t meet those criteria, I leave. And if it’s a team I own, I will delete it (assuming my IT department doesn’t already have expiration policies.) There are already plenty of articles abound on how to prevent Teams sprawl and the robust management capabilities of Microsoft Teams for IT professionals.

When to create a Team

 Teams themselves can fulfill many functions. The three use cases I always talk about as an end user are the following:

• Organizational Teams: A place you rally your organization or “tribe” as the Teams Product Group likes to say.
•  Project Teams: A workplace where you manage a project.
• Process Teams: A single location where workflow and processes can be managed, rather than being stuck in 3rd party applications or email.

Organizational teams by their very nature are durable and straightforward to make. Simply invite the team members individually or with a dynamic distribution list.

But I only create project or process teams under the following combined criteria:

1. The team doesn’t already exist. Duplication happens, but a quick search for public and private teams can ensure the team is needed. You can add yourself or request membership easily to existing teams through this same interface.
2. In the RACI model, there are >3 Responsible and Accountable folks. Why does this matter? Well, engagement in a team is best when there are at least 3 folks actively contributing content. And contribution doesn’t include GIFYs or folks supplying reactions. Consulting team members are typically just reviewers. Said differently: If there’s not at least 3 folks actively working together and collaborating, a team may not be needed.
3. The project, tribe or decision will take longer than 2 weeks.  The value of Teams and tools like it is persistence. If you are just driving transactional decisions, group chat is probably better.

Does a potential team not meet these criteria? Don’t make it! A team doesn’t have to be spun up for every microproject.

Once membership is organized, I create corresponding channels. Channels represent disciplines, workstreams or sub-processes depending on the team charter.  For channel management within your active team, it’s important to keep an eye on stale channels. Checking the last active date is a quick way to see if a channel should be deleted.

Note: I will write future articles on how to best use channel conversations, meetings, applications and LOB integrations.

When to use a private chat or group chat

 It would be simplistic to say I use private chat “for everything else.” But in reality, it is a great way to directly connect with individuals and groups in a more transactional way while still keeping conversations, files and applications organized in a single place.

The first question I always post on private chats is this: Should this group chat actually be in a channel? It’s a straight-forward answer.

Does the conversation need to be available to a) more people than the chat membership allows and b) meets the criteria I lay out above for a team? Then quickly move the conversation to a channel. The value of Teams is the transparency and openness of how work gets done.

To find active group chats, I will pin them so they appear at the top for easy reference. And if I need to refer back to a conversation I didn’t pin, I will either a) search by keyword in the command box (hint: always name your group chats!) or b) search by person. Group chats also show up in search results for individuals.

If I find myself in a group conversation that is not applicable to my work, I either mute or leave. Or conversely, if you find the group chat membership is sprawling you can trim. But do that with caution. People can be offended by heavy-handedness in managing memberships on their behalf. I know I have been.

Step 2: Using what’s visible to create energy

 Now that I’ve hopefully given you cause to critique your memberships, you have whittled away a few teams and conversations you didn’t need. But you may still be part of a lot of teams. That’s completely normal, and in fact, we know the average worker is on 5x the number of teams than just a few short years ago.

But now let’s discuss what is visible in your left-hand rail. As the saying goes, what is visible gets energy. So here comes the first taxonomy tip for Teams:

“Your Teams” = Visible

Teams in your left-hand rail are either “Your Teams” or “Hidden Teams.” I always try to keep “Hidden Teams” collapsed and “Your Teams” expanded. I try to limit the number of “Your teams” (selected using “Show”) that are visible at any one time between 10-15. And remember, just because they aren’t shown doesn’t mean I can’t go find them easily.

(Note: “Your Teams” used to be called “Favorites.” The change in taxonomy is being currently rolled out. But the same guidance applies.)

How do I choose the teams that appear under “Your Teams”? They usually are one of the following:

·      Teams where I am an owner

·      Teams with impending deadlines

·      Team where I need to stay up to date

I then drag and drop my teams by order of importance so my most critical memberships are right at the top. Channels can then also be favorited for easy viewing.

I call the organization of “Your Teams” one activity of “pulling” that you can configure in Microsoft Teams. Meaning, information that I want to proactively seek out. There are other ways of pulling information, including search and following. Within the favorites, I can deduce action needed in the channels visibly by noting:

• When a channel is bolded, there are posts that I haven’t read
• When a channel has a badge with a number, the channel was at mentioned for broad response
• When a channel is italicized, there is a lot of activity or trending posts

Organizing what is visible is your way of deciding where you are going to actively apply energy in your Teams experience.

Step 3: React Appropriately

 Notifications within Microsoft Teams manages the push and the pull of information. Configuring notifications is a balance of receiving a heads up with the need to get work done. It’s never a “one and done” activity because the dynamics of our work is also never finished.

Channel Notifications

Configuring channel notifications is the ultimate in “pulling” information. It means you can be notified on all activity, ranging from posts to replies. It can be incredibly noisy in active teams, so choose wisely. New features (currently rolling out) can help you get more specific on your notifications for important channels. In general, I try to configure notifications on a maximum of 2-5 channels at any one time. Why? These channels should only represent my most important workstreams or areas of special interest.

The exception? Process teams. If you own a process or have an SLA associated with reacting to requests (for example, like new bug notifications that drop in the channel) I will always configure notifications in those channels.

Notification Management

Notification management assists with alerting you to your push and pull activity. There are a few different types of notifications you can configure.

• Banner – This is a toast that will always pop in the lower right-hand corner the client, except when you are in DND. When you select Banner, it automatically also sends to your Feed.
•  Feed Only– Also known as “Activity Feed.” These notifications will be sent to your feed without a toast and is an aggregation of your latest activities that you should know about based on your requested actions and network (like trending posts.)
• Banner and Email – If you don’t read the notification in a specified time (or you miss the toast), Teams will send you a reminder in your email.
• None – No notifications will be sent.

A combination of these types of notifications can be set for a number of different types of activities (under "Settings" when you click your pictures.) This includes messages, mentions, team setting changes and meetings. These selections are a personal choice, however a few tips:

• I only select “Banner” on followed channels, personal chat or @mentions. Part of staying in the flow is removing distractions, and there is nothing more disruptive than a toast.
•   Email notifications is really only helpful if you need reminders to use Teams. If you are already living in the product on a daily basis, it’s not required.

Activity feed

Once you have your notifications set, it’s all about triaging what has hit your feed when you can. I personally need time to focus on creating deliverables, so I'll check my activity feed periodically throughout the day. Assuming I didn’t see a toast, I prioritize activities in the following order:

1. @mentions
2. Replies
3.  Activity on followed channels

Once required actions are complete, you can check in on what’s trending or suggested based on your network.

Final thoughts

I hope you have some new ideas for how to increase flow using Microsoft Teams. Of course the product group is constantly iterating to ensure that some of this decluttering is automatic, so stay alert for continued innovations.  Once you have the space and time, it’s amazing how Teams can help drive communication and collaboration with productivity and creativity. 

Go Teams!

 KonMari is a trademarked term. I’m using it in a general sense to convey a message of organization and peace. Namaste.