This article is a report on Microsoft Modern Workplace Webinar which was broadcast live on May 10th, 2016, 8:00 AM PDT / 3:00 PM GMT. The webinar was hosted by charismatic Alex Bradley. We are going to share some valuable lessons from the webinar, some takeaways from the speeches delivered by the guests, and some highlights of new ways to share, organize, and discover information better than ever before with SharePoint. In the first half of the webinar, Sydney Finkelstein, author of the popular book
Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, explained how focusing talents over tasks can lead to higher productivity and happy employees. Superbosses seek untapped talent. They do not follow the thinking pattern of an average office boss and they do not hesitate even once to go to the extreme lengths to get the talent which will add great value to the company. Superbosses take risks and embrace failure, they create opportunities, and they are always willing to take a chance. Do an experiment, try being a superboss for 24 hours to understand how being a superboss can totally change the internal working environment and the future prospects of a company. In the second half of the webinar, David Marquet, leadership expert, retired U.S. Navy Captain, and Author of
Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders, explained to the viewers why it is necessary at a modern workplace to involve the employees in a dynamic way and empower them to take a decision without any pressure from the superiors. He shared an incident from his personal life. During his days in the navies, he was selected to captain the USS Olympia. He prepared for more than a year, to develop the understanding required to captain the submarine. Surprisingly, he was sent to take the command of the USS Santa Fe, which was the worst performing submarine in the fleet. He was also not prepared for commanding the USS Santa Fe, as the submarine was different from the USS Olympia. While on command of the submarine, he gave an order which was not correct but his subordinates followed that without any question. David understood that the leader-follower culture could lead to dangerous outcomes as the crew would follow any order he gave, even an incorrect one. He completely changed the working model, he started treating the crew as leaders. He empowered them. He gave them more control. The new management style started giving results. Santa Fe became the best submarine in many areas, although it was the worst when David took control. The takeaway is most organizations are permission-based organizations, people need to feel their value, and in order to achieve that environment, they must be given more control. The people who have the information should make decisions. It's time for intent-based leadership. After a short break, Alex came back with Mark Kashman, Senior Product Manager, SharePoint, Microsoft, who demonstrated all the new excellent features of
SharePoint to us. It has two main components: SharePoint Server & SharePoint Online. SharePoint mobile apps put the intranet in your pocket. It comes with optimized viewing experience on mobile devices. It can be said without any doubt that, it's going to create waves in the
modern workplaces in the coming days.
