Business-Driven 365

The most powerful, yet most underused SharePoint tool is the custom list. Custom lists have never gotten the spotlight because most organizations never look past the most obvious use of SharePoint, which is document storage and management.

So what is a custom list? It is a browser-based...

Most cities and counties use two sets of software/apps to run their business.

First, there are specialty programs used for specific processes, such as payroll, HR, maintenance tracking, etc. These are expensive, require training, and usually meet specific, important needs.

Secondly, most cities...

The Situation

A Regional VP voiced frustration about having a difficult time finding details of an action item she knew she had been assigned. She was on multiple committees and each committee tracked assignments differently, leading to a lot of confusion and waste for her and her peers.

One...

The Situation

The most inefficient time spent by one Senior Vice President each week – and his most dreaded – was spending up to four hours every Sunday afternoon building his weekly report for the COO. He had a face-to-face meeting with the COO each Monday morning at which he...

Civil War soldier Russell Conwell was asked to give a speech to the 10-year reunion of his unit. He gave the famous “Acres of Diamonds” speech, which he then turned into the well-known classic book by the same name.

Acres of Diamonds is a reference to the farm owned by Lamar, a young...

Left to their own devices, people naturally avoid practices that are high energy and low reward if there are better options available.

People ditched walking for horses. Then, they ditched horses for cars. After that, they even ditched cars if Uber made more sense for their specific...

I’ve written in theory for years about how managers should leverage SharePoint for streamlining collaboration. In case you’re still not convinced to act, I’ve got a shining example of a quick win you can try on your own.

I recently met with a client that had multiple document...

The Situation

Soon after the merger that doubled our company’s size in 2012, the Senior Vice President of Power Generation Operations informed his Regional Vice Presidents that he needed a “Weekly Report” by Sunday morning each week so that he could in turn, compile and present...

The Situation

The company had been hit with a couple of untimely negative news stories in national, state, and local news. One was the result of a serious environmental event due to a pipe failure. Executive management conducted a risk assessment to identify potential future disasters having low...

The Situation

While on a large conference call, a general manager asked several dozen employees to email their shirt sizes to his administrative assistant because the organization was going to buy polo shirts for employees on a special occasion.

Being one of the employees on the call I realized...