Author: Michael S. De Lio

A Management Consultant with over 35 years experience in the CRM, CX and MDM space. Working across multiple disciplines, domains and industries. Currently leveraging the advantages, and disadvantages of artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday life.

Collaboration Tools in The Spotlight…

Now that most of us have been asked / forced to work from home, collaboration tools are getting a lot of use and hopefully your organization was ahead of the move and not scrambling to deploy and adopt during a crisis.

Over the years that I’ve spent in consulting, I’ve been exposed to numerous tools, some good, some bad, but they all seemed to meet the immediate need at the moment. I witnessed the progression from messaging to full fledge collaboration (sharing, editing of files live) and with each iteration there were always hurdles and learning curves that needed to be overcome. Messaging always seemed to be fairly straightforward…type a comment or response, click send and repeat.

Then came the Calendar and Scheduling functions…a bit trickier as you need to filter between public and private entries, have access to others calendars and even the more complex ability to schedule conference rooms. However, if this capability is functioning as expected it becomes very efficient in scheduling meetings / calls and ensuring that participants are available and not double-booked. I found folks that would “block” certain hours out during the day so they weren’t swamped with back-to-back meetings, or requested for attendance during their lunch hour. This practice is highly effective when working in a global culture and when individuals forget about timezones.

Then came the more exotic and truly collaborative functionality of live / in-line editing of files (documents, spreadsheets, project plans…etc.). This often requires a lot of education and more important governance around who, what and when documents should be manipulated. There have been too many times when someone forgets they are actively updating, or worse, deleting a document. When you are working as a team on a file, you have to remember that someone else can be in that file at the same time. I’ve found that the old SharePoint method of checking-out and checking-in documents was a bit safer. However, new tools will show you when a person is in the document and what they may be updating at the moment. This often works well when your network, WiFi and connectivity are top-notch.

Here are some Pros and Cons of collaboration tools: (per my colleagues)

  • Pro:
  • Higher productivity in a team environment
  • Accountability across the team versus individual
  • Greater visibility within the team to workload and availability
  • Intuitive collaboration – Sharing of ideas with immediate feedback
  • Standardization of applications
  • Fairly easy deployment of tool(s)
  • Con:
  • Managing individual calendar more difficult (being invited to everything)
  • Collaboration governance not adhered to – Too much access is granted to files (files deleted, modified or moved)
  • Tool adoption is more complicated when someone has used another tool they are more comfortable with – Bring Your own Tool (BYOT)
  • Fear of Big Brother – Opening my calendar, or current status allows management to see what I’m doing every minute of the day

Finally, while there are numerous offerings out there with a lot of options for small to large corporations and even families or groups, you should spend some time defining your problem statement – what is it that you want to address and make more efficient. Perhaps starting small and then rolling-in more complexity will make your team adopt the tool more effectively. Either way, this is the ideal time to do your research and see how a collaboration application can help keep your team’s communication optimal.

In no particular order, here are some tools that I’ve used and / or deployed:

Communication –

General Collaboration –

In future posts I will explore the content management systems (on-premise / cloud), repositories and digital asset management systems that have linkage to the products listed above that I’ve been exposed to.

Keep Your Assets Fresh…

No, I’m not talking about daily hygiene, however there are some that should heed this recommendation. You know who you are.

What I am hoping to explain is that during a mandated “Stay at Home Advisory” via our local, state or federal government, there will never been a better time to retool, or at a bare minimum keep yourself fresh with the latest technology and professional offerings being provided (often at zero “temporary” membership fees) by many vendors. Companies are providing professional skills training and also high tech, pre-certification courses to the population in response to our current situation and we need to accept their offerings as required.

Some of the current offerings can be found at: (many more are available)

I would hope that after this period, you don’t look back and wish you spent a few hours a week, developing a new skill or polishing a skill that you may use daily, but haven’t explored the outer reaches of. There was a lot of buzz prior to the start of the year (2020) around, Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, Cloud Computing, Predictive Analytics and numerous other cutting-edge technologies. Now that the world is taking a short pause, there is no better time to get a jumpstart on some of these concepts. Once we re-emerge from scenarios taken out of our control, why not be ahead of the competition and ready to lead the resurgence that most of us are anticipating going into 2021.

In just a matter of weeks, we will be back to long work weeks, short weekends and the limited bandwidth that never allows us to fill in the gaps within our skill set repertoire arsenal. Motivation may be waning at this point, but it’s your decision to execute or look for another excuse.

Leadership During Uncertainty…

During times of uncertainty and the resulting anxiety it brings, most people are looking to leaders, or voices of reason for words to continue move forward with. Keeping conversations clear and concise is critical to communication. Trying to project alternative messaging, make a statement, taking a stance is not going to be helpful and should be avoided. Sure, leaders do not possess a crystal ball to give us what we really desire (answers to the complex questions) but they do have an engaged audience and the attention that others may not have. They are not the voices that need to publish to be heard, they are typically a voice that is subscribed too. Therefore, an element of positivity and total clarity is key to the communication.

For example, if someone was to ask…When is this all going to end, when do we get back to normal? (use a checklist)

  • Be Positive: Simple statements – We will get back to normal, this is not status quo
  • Be Factual: Over the last “x” days, or weeks we have seen the curve flattening in “x” countries – This has happened because of “x” actions
  • Be Clear: Don’t make your audience guess what you mean, or interpret it differently than stated
  • Provide Perspective: Prior to this situation, here is where we were with regards to the economy, opportunities and technological advancement
  • Be Open-Minded: Answer with – That’s a valid point and lets address this offline and get back to everyone as a whole on our finding
  • Provide Guidance: In “x” days, we will reassess where we are and make the next set of decisions – This will be based on the following criteria and here is where you can find that information
  • Assign Accountability / Ownership: Each item that was not answered, needs to have an individual assigned and estimate on delivery provided – The audience will know who to go to for resolution of “x” issue

Remember – Facts, ultimately speak louder than emotion in the end. Of course, people will tend to gravitate towards emotional, loud, salacious and wild commentary versus a dialog surrounded by facts and figures. Facts don’t get the pageviews and clicks that controversy will. But at the end of the day, people will remember who “lead” them in times of uncertainty and if or when these times happen again (and you know they will) hopefully they will call upon the voices of reason to provide guidance they desperately need.

Staying Positive…

There are currently two channels of communication out there…folks trying to be positive (via any method) and others that will claim the world is burning and it’s just a matter of time before we see the end-of-days.

However, it’s interesting to see where the source of this information is coming from. The positivity will often come from individuals that would typically see positive themes during a time of negativity. They comment about the righteousness of religion, friends, family and even health. While being positive, they are hoping for the best, keeping their heads-up, reaching out to friends and family…soul-searching. I respect these individuals more than you can imagine. They have built a foundation of trust, belief and confidence that I can not imagine building during a time of ambiguity. I’m truly impressed by their resilience and ambition.

Then there are the negative folks, those that thrive on spewing the worst of a situation. Things like…this pandemic, quarantine, shelter in place situation we are in will last forever…our government let us down, Gen-Z are screwing the progression of flattening the curve, the Baby Boomers are making this worse because they didn’t prepare. We have politicians / mass-media battling about calling things racist or incompetent, yet people are still getting sick, or infected. Do these folks go home at night and check the box…yep, I’m happy I satisfied my objectives for today.

I may be asking for too much, maybe a balance between the negative and the positive, but the extremes are continually unproductive. At this point I would be satisfied with just a target/goal…by “x” date, we hope to be able to have “x” available to the population. This way I can measure if we are ahead, or behind our goals.

Some thoughts about latest commentary on and off mass-media…

What Could Have Been…

Did you ever have that idea that was so outstanding you were bursting with energy to let the world know all about? You were so confident that this was life-changing, it’s even unbelievable that no one else has even thought of this?

However, did you also know that your personality, or for that matter the members of your “Idea Team” were less than aggressive executioners (odd phrase) and risk-takers, meaning that the idea will never get off the runway, let alone the blueprint phase of putting it down in writing?

I live among individuals that are creative and ambitious, but not necessarily risk-takers. The ideas are often flowing at a rate that will make your head-spin, but a week later none of us can remember what that world changing concept was the previous week. Even worse, the ideas that needed “effort” beyond a concept, are left to die unceremoniously because someone needed to do “something” beyond ideation.

What makes a person pursue their idea, concept, or thoughts? I’m guessing it’s Passion…yes, you’re the one willing to go above-and-beyond the thought process to see your idea come to life. Does this mean sacrifice and heavens no, failure? Sure, that is what passion means…you’re willing to embody failure and feel the pain of embarrassment, if your cherished idea is not accepted with open arms by the unwashed of your audience. Do you give-up, no new iterations of the idea…back to brainstorming? – I’ve seen this too often to count.

But let’s say it is embraced, now what? I have witnessed colleagues that say “Excellent, let’s hire people to deliver this idea”without taking ownership in the growth and maturation of the concept. This is when the critical nature of “Passion” is called upon and all to often left to flounder. My colleagues had a great idea, but did not have the vision to develop the full roadmap that would bring it to fruition. The phrase “Passion” resonates once again in this scenario, while it may be easy to think of a concept, it’s much harder to foster its growth into a tangible deliverable.

This is where I will end for this post. I honestly believe people have great ideas, but too often lack the motivation to bring them to life. I think if you truly possess the passion to see you concept come to life, you need to ignore the inherent roadblocks (time, money, resources) the best you can, or forever regret what could have been.

As a side note, there are individuals/organizations willing to listen to fully vetted ideas, that may fund your pursuit if they feel you are passionate and have done the due-diligence. I would highly suggest the following sources to mature your idea, while fleshing out objections:

I will dive deeper into Design Thinking and Customer Journey Mapping in future blogs (that’s what I do for a living).

Isolation (Let's See How This Goes)

Winter to Spring – During this time of mandated self / social distancing, when you are formally asked to not “physically” interact with individuals, unfortunately many alternatives will lead to social media…fortunately, this is where you can choose to be the consumer, or the publisher of the messaging.

During these undetermined and apprehensive times ahead, I’m choosing to be the publisher.

But Mike, why so optimistic, things seem to be going from bad-to-worse? Well, the following are items that I hope to accomplish, or at a bare minimum attempt during this period: (keeping focused, keeps me calm)

  • Self instruction via e-learning and audio books
  • Develop a deeper understanding of technology (AI, RPA, DevOps, SaaS)
  • Healthier Habits
  • Organize my environment
  • Better my photography skills
  • More creativity on Instagram and YouTube

We are going to take this one day at a time and see how things shake-out. But in the meantime, here’s hoping for a quick start to Spring, more blogging ahead and a quick end to COVID-19.

Daily Image Seen on TV – March 2020

Guys Being Guys…

Thought I’d share a funny call I had today:

We have been working together for a few weeks to deploy a new “tool” for the Practice that helps to identify people within the practice that can ultimately work on projects, or answer questions related to a specific technology or skills. The team is worldwide, one fella is in Amsterdam, one in India, one in the Philippines and me in the US…the guys were awesome with English (always sad that I have no other language).

As we started to wrap up the meetings today, we were talking about size and weight of “men” across the world (something I assume women would be sensitive about, but guys can care less). The guy in India says he is 5’10” and 200 in India and is considered pretty large for out there, then the other from the Philippines says “I’m 5’8″ and 150 and considered overweight and pretty tall, the guy in Amsterdam says he is 5’7” 150 and feels pretty average (my gut says he is small based on guys I met in the Nordic region of the world).

They now ask me for measurements…do I go low, or do I produce actual measurements and get a response that I either expect, or feel a bit out-of-place? I decide to go actual and tell them I’m 6’5″ and about 280…they start mentioning wrestlers, actors and other large individuals that they have seen over time that were about the same size and can’t imagine what it would be like to be my size. In my mind, I’m laughing thinking that Tre, Coltrane and Miles are all bigger than them and what would they think about this group of big-guys meeting them in a dark alley. Ultimately, I remember they live in their own little worlds and get used to seeing what they see each day. Just guys talking about guys.

At the end of the call we wish we could all meet each other someday and more importantly, I wish they could meet my huge family!! The whole reason I write this is I could never imagine four women talking about their size and weight of each other (including family members) and at the end of the call laughing at the differences we all have!!

Why WiFi is so Frustrating…

Something to consider as we increase our Alexa, Google, Siri, Bixby and other digital assistants at home – Especially my parents with their new Hotwire setup.

As my family knows, I have a ton of devices (about 50) on my home’s wifi and I was trying to figure out the best way to allocate the speed and coverage within my house. I decided to experiment with assigning the devices best suited for 2.4GHz to that SSID and the others to the 5GHz band. I noticed that all of my Wyze cameras, Ring doorbell, Nest smoke detectors, Printers, Vector robot and wifi outlets could only use 2.4GHz…so that was easy, I just gave that band a new SSID and password and forced them all to log into that address. The others, like laptops, desktops, Xbox, Phones, Google Chromecast, were better suited for faster speeds on 5GHz, so I left them as-is and they seem to be a lot happier with the extra bandwidth. What I don’t know yet is the Alexa / Google devices seem to prefer 5GHz, but not sure why they would need the faster speeds (expect for Amazon FireTV since it’s pushing my TV content), so I may force them to 2.4GHz also at some point.

Items to keep in mind:
2.4GHz is slower but has a longer range
5GHz is faster but has a shorter range
Your router must support sending out two bands (2.4GHz / 5GHz) simultaneously

Bottomline for me was that I appeared to be overfeeding some devices with 5GHz, when they didn’t really need it and underfeeding the guys with 2.4GHz who could use the faster speeds.

Oh yeah, you may say “But Mike, what about all the Sonos speakers?” – They actually create their own network and the “hub” is wired to the router. This is also true with the Phillips Hue lights – Hub is wired and they are on their own network.

Good luck getting you wifi under control and please seek guidance from the numerous sites out there providing support: