Importance of Communicating the Results

If you don’t communicate the results, how are you growing / learning / improving?

Personal story

For years my wife and / or I have enjoyed hosting various events (ex. friends Thanksgiving meal, board game night, camping trip, etc.)  During the pandemic we stopped hosting many of those events.  Fast-forward to the past year and separate friends made comments about feeling left out at not being invited to these types of events (thinking we had continued to host but not invited them).  Our lack of communication led to misunderstandings.

Applications to work

Recently I completed the Growth Series program from Reforge.  One of the modules covers experimentation.  The idea presented is that our growth system has a cycle of:

  • Growth model – Growing engagement, retention, etc.
  • User Psychology – Understand our users and how they make decisions
  • Experimentation – Tweaking variables to improve our product and reinforce growth model

Through the process of running experiments, we need to communicate out the results, otherwise it breaks the cycle and leads to a useless process.  This can apply to experiments run, feedback gathered, or status on OKRs (objectives and key results), and more.

Methods for communication

How and what you communicate will depend on a number of factors.

  • Asynchronous or synchronous?
  • Targeted or broad audience?
  • Narrative story or metrics?
  • Etc.

For example, my Microsoft Graph CPx team has used a number of mechanisms including monthly newsletters, stakeholder briefing meetings, Power BI dashboards, customer story emails, and more.

Systems for success

Taking ideas from the book Atomic Habits, how can you set up systems for success, or what I like to affectionately call “fall into the pit of success”?  Make your communication mechanisms visible, easy to complete, and easily motivated.  This might include:

  • Setting a recurring team-level calendar reminder X days before due date
  • Create a template for how / what you want filled out
  • Use workflows / dashboards to collate information

Conclusion

Doing the work is important, but we must remember to complete the cycle by communicating out the results.  This will help inform how we iterate and improve the next cycle.  Personally, I’m keeping this in mind to improve on each project and effort I’m leading or participating in.

Please share in comments what techniques or approaches are helping you be more effective at communicating results?

-Frog Out

Reflections on sharing and requesting feedback

This week is “Perspectives Week” (time to request or provide feedback to peers across the org / company) so I’ll share out some of my tips on how I approach this:

  • Where
    • I use our internal MSConnect tool for majority of feedback requests, but also Yammer Praise for sending kudos / feedback to people who may not have requested feedback from me.
  • Who
    • Identify a mix of people inside your group (M2, aka manager’s manager, level and below) as well as outside.
    • Target individuals in varying roles (ex. marketing, engineering, sales, etc.) 
  • When
    • I like to request feedback 2x times per calendar year, ~2 months before my next semesterly review cycle (called a “Connect”).
      • This usually lands Feb-Mar and Sept-Oct.  This also avoids semester planning timeframes when many teams are heads down on writing / reviewing papers.
    • Do not request feedback from someone more than 1x per year.
      • This is not a hard requirement, but I find my own feedback for someone doesn’t change drastically within a given year.
  • How
    • Customize your request for feedback.
      • Include specific projects / teams / work efforts that you have collaborated on to focus the person’s feedback on.
      • Ex. “As we have been working together on <Project X>, I would appreciate any feedback you can share on my work or areas for improvement. Thank you for your time and attention.”
    • Provide constructive / usable feedback.
      • When filling out feedback for others, take the time to share actionable or thought-provoking feedback.
      • Avoid “you’re doing a great job” type bland feedback.

Two final notes.

  • Use the feedback system that makes sense
    • Not everyone is comfortable with sharing feedback is an official tool.  Others may prefer 1:1 chat / email / face to face.
  • Don’t worry if you don’t get a response
    • People are busy.  I know a number of peers who are overwhelmed by the number of feedback requests they receive (in addition to normal work).  You can “nudge” someone 1:1 if they haven’t responded on your feedback request, but also be respectful of their time.

How do you approach sharing and requesting feedback? Share your thoughts in the comments.

-Frog Out

Reference:
Header image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/architecture-modern-building-facade-1048092

Slides from M365 Twin Cities 2023

A huge thank you to the attendees, organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and anyone else involved with M365 Twin Cities. This was my first community conference in 3+ years but it was amazing to share more about Microsoft Graph in my two sessions. I appreciate all of the attendees who joined and had great questions and engagement.

Below are PDF copies of the slides I presented. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments here or reach out to me. Look forward to presenting at more events later this year as opportunities arise.

Getting Up to Speed with Microsoft Graph Development

How to Use Power Automate and Microsoft Graph in Daily Work

-Frog Out

Resources (see more in Resources on this blog)

Microsoft Graph developer center
https://aka.ms/Graph

Microsoft Graph Explorer
https://aka.ms/ge

Microsoft Graph Postman collection
https://aka.ms/GraphPostman

Microsoft Graph extension for Polyglot Notebooks
https://github.com/microsoftgraph/msgraph-dotnet-interactive-extension

Microsoft 365 platform community call (series invite)
https://aka.ms/m365-dev-call

Retrospective for 2022

Continuing my tradition of writing a retrospective (2021, 2020201620152013201220112010) or look ahead (201920142013201220112010), in this post I’ll recap 2022 and share goals for what is ahead in 2023.

Retrospective

A few years ago, my wife and I bought a digital picture frame as a Christmas gift for our family (one of the best gifts as our kids love seeing older pictures of our family). This morning I saw down to review photos my wife and I took over the last year to load onto our picture frame. Turns out 2022 was an interesting year for a number of reasons:

  • The first half of the year (almost) everyone in our photos was masking / social distancing (compared to now when it is much less common)
  • My wife and I are reminded of the sweet times when our kids are hugging, helping each other, etc. instead of the other times when they are “not as sweet”
  • Family traditions are starting to develop (special photo poses during summer vacation, birthday celebration activities, etc.)

Overall, 2022 was a good year, so here is a look back at some of the bigger things for me personally.

Reading books

Building on my 2021 book challenge to read more (finished 10 with a goal of 4 that year), in 2022 I set a goal of reading 6 books. I received great book recommendations from friends / co-workers and I ended the year reading 18 books. You can view my list of books read in 2022. I most recommend the following:

Going into 2023 I’m targeting 8 books for the year. I could target higher, but I’m also getting more involved in a number of school / church / family commitments this year, so I want to leave room for those as well.

Fitness

At the start of 2022 I purchased a Treadly 2 treadmill. This came highly recommended from a former teammate of mine. (Ignore all of the wires under my desk, project for another day…)

My goal was to get 15-20 mins of walking in my home office (I have an adjustable desk) a few days a week. Over the course of the year, I slowly increased the speed and duration of my walks. By the end of the 2022 I was walking 60-75 mins 3-5x times a week.

As an added bonus, I found out through my tracking app that I walked 120+ days of the year (literally 1 in every 3 days) and also walked more than 1,000,000 steps total.

Separately I’ve also been using a “core body” workout app to do a short morning workout for 10-20 mins about 3-4x times a week. I started halfway through 2022 and made good progress. I’ve lost 10 pounds and kept it off as well as shrunk my waist size a bit. Nice to have pants fitting more comfortably again.

I’m continuing my treadmill walking and exercise into the new year. I completed 2x 4-mile races at the end of last year. I don’t have goals to complete more races this year though as I hadn’t trained for those (treadmill walking doesn’t really compare to outdoor running).

Conferences

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most in-person conferences were cancelled or went virtual over the past 2+ years. The Stir Trek Conference that I help organize came as a hybrid event last May. We were not certain how attendance all-up would be, let alone in-person attendance. We had a lower target for all-up attendance (1,500 total, ~1,000 in-person) but were pleasantly surprised that we sold out of tickets and did end up having more than 1,000 attend in person last May.

Our board of organizers is very thankful to everyone who supported us through the pandemic. Especially from a good number of attendees and sponsors agreeing to keep their registration money with us (we had a big financial hit from cancelling our 2020 event). We’ve already begun planning for 2023 and are looking to open up tickets to our previous max (~2,100 total).

Separate from Stir Trek, in 2022 I did present at a number of virtual events and conferences, most of them internal or Microsoft-run events though. Starting off 2023, I’m Presenting at M365 Twin Cities 2023 which is my first presentation at a community conference in over 3 years. Looking forward to other opportunities over the coming year.

2022 goals progress

Recapping my goals for 2022, I can confidently say I hit all of them.

  • Read 6 books (read 18)
  • Walk 5 miles per week (6-9 miles most weeks)
  • Compete in a dance competition (March 2022, and no I’m not sharing pictures 😉)

Looking ahead

My wife and I are kicking off 2023 with some family planning activities as well as home organization projects. We’re also celebrating our 10 year wedding anniversary later this year, so looking forward to a special trip near the end of the year.

Aside from those things, we’re actively encouraging our kids to find activities or clubs that spark their interest. This also means getting to know more families at our school and other places. Overall, I think 2023 will be a year focused on family growth / evolution, but without specific goals in mind at the moment.

Conclusion

As the world continues to experience many ups-and-downs, what are you focusing on for 2023? What things do you want leave behind or continue doing from 2022? Feel free to share any ideas or answers in the comments.

-Frog Out

Sources

Header Image by Ludo-Photos from Pixabay: link

Presenting at M365 Twin Cities 2023

After a few years off from community speaking engagements I’m excited to return to speak at M365 Twin Cities (formerly SharePoint Saturday Twin Cities, now with expanded scope and topics) on Jan 21, 2023. I’ve spoken at this conference twice before and have been very impressed with the level of organization, attendee engagement, and content all-up. I’ll be presenting the following 2 sessions. Registration is still open. If you are in the area, please sign up and look forward to seeing you there.

M365 Twin Cities
https://www.m365tc.com/

Registration
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/m365-twin-cities-winter-2023-tickets-471566266397

Title: Getting Up to Speed with Microsoft Graph Development

Description: “I hear that I need to use Microsoft Graph for developing against Microsoft 365 but I have no clue where to start.” “I want to grant access to company data without throwing in the entire kitchen sink.” Fear not fellow developers and admins. This session we will ramp you up to a 200 level knowledge on the pertinent parts of Microsoft Graph including endpoints available, syntax, authentication flows, and more. We will also cover useful examples of what can be accomplished using these APIs. Prior experience with Microsoft Graph is not required but can be helpful.

Title: How to Use Power Automate and Microsoft Graph in Daily Work

Description: Do you need to automate parts of your daily work routine? What Microsoft Cloud data is available through Microsoft Graph for automating? In this session we’ll walk through multiple real world examples of using Power Automate for daily tasks such as assigning round robin tasks to team members, sending weekly reminders, processing survey results, and more. Prior experience with Power Automate is useful but not required. Target audience is open to all (productivity workers, developers, admins, etc.)

-Frog Out

Expressing Gratitude When Others Help You

Who has helped you recently? When did you last send them a praise / kudos / etc.?

On a monthly basis I lead a team retrospective for our Microsoft Graph CPx team. I generally adjust the questions each month so that we don’t keep repeating the same questions / responses each month.

This month, as part of our retrospective I posed the questions at top of this post.

  • Who has helped you recently?
  • When did you last send them a praise / kudos / etc.?

While everyone was able to identify people or teams that have helped them, responses to the second question varied from “I send perspectives feedback / praise regularly to X, Y, and Z” to “I haven’t sent anything to those people in awhile, thanks for the reminder”.

Personally, in addition to my monthly personal retrospective I also schedule time (~15 mins) on my calendar each month to send out praise to people that have helped me recently. Case in point, as we’re wrapping up this calendar year I just filled out 3 perspectives feedback requests before writing this post.

I encourage everyone to make a habit (schedule recurring time on your calendar, set a repeating ToDo reminder, etc.) of:

  1. identifying people that have helped you in the last week / month
  2. send those people a thank you / praise / kudos

How are you expressing your gratitude to others that have helped you?

-Frog Out