I recently wrote an article entitled, Get ready to view Microsoft as the 'kings of collaboration' . It explained how Microsoft had correctly identified the need for businesses to progressively collaborate in better, more potent, ways.

This article explains some of the ways that the workplace will change for everyone - including you. In fact, in the future, it will not be called the workplace at all.

In no way is this an advertisement for Microsoft. I don't work for the company. I use them as my example as they are by far the most accomplished standard-bearers for collaboration in the workplace. They get it better than anyone else. They get how important collaboration is to any company that wants to lead the way in its field. Do other companies have great pieces of collaboration software? Of course they do. But no one else ties all of their offerings together like Microsoft has done.

In fact, despite moving before the competition, I strongly believe that Microsoft - until recently - greatly underestimated the actual thirst for improved collaboration platforms and equipment. This becomes most apparent when you discover the incessant requirement for its Surface Hub product since its release. Here are a few news articles about it - Microsoft says it can't make its $22,000 mega-tablet fast enough to meet demand — so it's at work on a new version , Microsoft to unveil new Surface Hub 2 displays in coming months and Microsoft’s Surface Hub Is a Hit, Demand Outstrips Supply .

The times, they are a changin'

The workplace is changing - not because we want to collaborate better. We need to collaborate better because the workplace is changing. There is a big difference!

How is the workplace changing?

The following points are just some of the changes happening now, and if they are not directly happening to you today, it will not be long before they do.

People want to work in a more flexible environment

You may have read many things about increasingly more employees wanting flexible working arrangements - and you may have read many different reasons and theories why this is the case. The reasons, in fact, are very simple to digest.

As technology has improved so that the average home computer/laptop is as good, if not much better than the computer given to someone at work - and as much crucial software has become web-based - it makes very little sense to many that they need to be sitting in an office for much of their work. Home internet speeds are indistinguishable from work connections. Indeed, it makes even less sense to spend an hour or more in traffic each morning and evening, knowing that they have everything they need to perform at home.

Even video meeting technology is now so good that it doesn't warrant travelling to the office, or indeed a partner, supplier or even customer.

Microsoft and flexible working environments. Almost everything that Microsoft (non-consumer-focused) has been working on since Satya Nadella became CEO has been geared towards collaboration, with flexibility of working being a huge byproduct. Gone are the days where Microsoft wanted "A PC on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software". The mindset is now, "To empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more".

Microsoft is much more open-minded since Nadella became CEO and this ahead-of-the-curve move to adopt such a stance on collaboration and build its software and hardware around it will mean that flexible working happens for many millions of people much sooner than it would have without it.

People want to use their own devices - including mobile phones

As explained in the previous point, home/work computer/laptop differences are negligible. As security has been improved for external devices by IT teams, once again, it makes little sense for people to have both a work and a home laptop - or indeed mobile phone. Adoption of new software or processes has much higher success rates when people continue to use the device they are used to and happy with. People also have got past the stage of thinking that having two mobile phones was cool (apart from 'those' people - you know who you are). Add to this the advent of excellent app versions of 'desktop' software - and mobile-first design for web-based apps, and you have further reasons to not have two devices.

Microsoft and own devices. Almost everything that Microsoft offers is now web/cloud-based which marries with how people now want to work. This is, of course, the same for other companies that offer such products. Microsoft's difference in this area, I believe, is the ever-increasing ties that each product in its suite has to each other. Not perfect yet, but given time, experiences will be excellent.

'Day-to-day' is becoming 'projects' and projects are becoming increasingly 'cross-team'. Virtual departments are commonplace

I remember my younger days of working in an office environment being very department-based. The IT department would do its own thing, as would finance, as would credit control, as would sales. It was a very territorial time - and much of this was down to technology, which dictated the way that we worked.

In the past few years, I'd say that the majority of my interactions in the workplace have been with people from other departments - and multiple virtual teams operate in most businesses. Who remembers when the IT team was responsible for the website and anyone that went near received a growl from several geeks, heads poking above their screen? Now, the remodelling of a website involves most departments of a company. The same is true for so many parts of how we work with others - much work is project-based these days, which requires multiple skill sets.

Microsoft and virtual teams. What Microsoft's collaboration enablement does for departments, it equally does for those who need to collaborate from various parts within (or indeed from outside) the company. Now it is almost as equally easy to work with the colleague across an office as it is a supplier two thousand miles away. In the future, the 'almost' will be gone.

Departments like IT and finance want/are required to be a part of a business' thinking, not merely be a static function of the business

Because of the visibility that collaboration platforms give to a business, fewer silos are created. This allows previously untapped or unknown skills of members of IT, finance and other departments to come to the fore on subjects and projects that they previously would have never seen the detail of.

Microsoft and inclusivity of departments. This is where Microsoft's foresight really comes in to play, in my humble opinion. Because of Microsoft's continuously-getting-tighter suite of collaboration platforms and hardware, this can create a democratised, egalitarian view of the business to many different sets of eyes and ears. Having studied and worked in the field of innovation for some time, it is my opinion (and organisations such as NASA) that this kind of egalitarianism is fundamental to successful and powerful innovation. Collaboration, when democratised, leads to wonderful things.

Businesses are increasingly bringing in external mindsets, (including partners, freelancers and consultants) to help with projects

This, once again, is where collaboration platforms and hardware allow for collaborative potency with 3rd parties that was simply never available before.

Microsoft and 3rd parties. By the very nature of the various parts of Microsoft's offering, from Skype for Business to Teams to Office365, people across the world will be able to become so much more productive than ever possible before, because they can collaborate so much easier.

Feedback loops

In my own, humble opinion, utilising technology to create feedback loops is key to a successful business. Currently used mainly in A++ businesses, they are becoming more popular with others. With how fast the business world moves nowadays, an annual, quarterly, even monthly review of an employee is a terribly outdated example of a feedback loop.

Speed of information - back and forth - is so important for a business' success. This way issues can be found and dealt with in record time. With the software at our disposal, employee feedback should be an ongoing thing - perhaps even daily.

But feedback loops of employee happiness is just one thing that can be measured and acted upon so much faster than in days gone by. Managers should be using feedback loops on all manner of issues, building important data to allow them to manage their staff in optimum ways.

Microsoft and feedback loops. Although not the best software I have ever used, Office Forms is just one way within the Microsoft collaboration platform family that key feedback loops could be created. It is probably - at this point in time - better to be using a specific software made for such purposes, and I'm sure Mr Nadella would agree.

Feeling valued

Modern workers, in the main, want to work in companies that allow them a great work-life balance, with flexibility and plenty of perks. But this is not all, the company must offer various visible avenues of progression (as into other departments) to keep employees interested in staying with them. This helps to eradicate issues where people leave because of a manager, or a lack of perceived progression because of their manager - which is very high on the list of reasons why someone will want to leave a company.

Take a look at this excellent infographic on the future of work by someone I consider to be the most influential person in this area, Jacob Morgan.

As I said...things are changing...

Facilitating these changes in how we work...

To ensure that companies are successful in facilitating these changes of human and business behaviour, it is essential that the following things are tackled.

A new type of management - structures and style

The archetypal aggressive boss, screaming, with steam coming out of their ears, will simply not mix well with the workplace changes that are happening and will continue to happen. This type of personality is an anachronism in the modern workplace and in more advanced companies, it is being found out and put out to pasture.

It's not only management style that has to change to meet the demands of younger people and greater employee demands coming to the workplace, management structure will need to change too. As I have already mentioned above, much of what people are doing in greater doses is project-based, with parts of a project managed by several people from different departments. Add to this the increase of flexible working, and you see just how traditional management structures will not suffice.

Managers will have to become much better at project management - in terms of understanding the principles of project management and actually doing it themselves. Reporting should also be something that good managers improve on, giving visibility of progress and results further up the chain.

Fully integrated collaboration suite

If management style and structure need to greatly improve in the modern work environment (which they do), so does the software that allows users to collaborate. As I mentioned in my previous post about Microsoft and collaboration, yes, they are ahead of the pack - by some distance - but individual elements of their offering must improve for these workplace changes to become a reality for more people.

Never in the history of Microsoft Word has the importance of how seemingly small menu options function been so critical. Why? Because a person working from home who is writing a document with their colleagues cannot simply lean over and say "what do I do here?". For example, opening a shared Word document on one computer can (currently) change various items within the document, just by the act of opening. This then makes editing of the document on the previous device an arduous, messy task. However, I'm sure this will improve in time.

You can replace 'Microsoft Word' in the paragraph above with every single Microsoft software offering that aids collaboration. The same rules apply. They all have to be perfect in terms of collaboration events for workplace changes to accelerate.

The reliance on people working remotely must be matched with the reliance on the software that powers collaboration. There are some holes in various parts of Office 365 in a shared, disparate environment that simply must work better for an organisation to truly become collaborative.

For a company to allow its employees the freedom that the aforementioned workplace changes will bring, a software glitch that means an employee has to come into the office to remedy will ruin any such efforts.

However, improvements to Office 365, Teams and related software are happening all the time. As I said in my previous article, The mindset of Microsoft to make collaboration the heart of their future was staggeringly forward thinking - and most definitely the correct approach, leaving others in their wake. The application of acting upon this mindset, rapidly building collaboration platforms and equipment to meet demand, could yet be seen as one of the best business moves in history. The improvement of individual issues, features and options within Microsoft collaboration platforms - that directly relate to someone collaborating with others - must be high on their agenda.

Summary

The future of how we work is exciting. Microsoft decided to go 'all in' on collaboration and help millions of employees around the world to make those changes sooner. I believe that the next 5-10 years will be unlike anything we have seen in the workplace - not since computers became commonplace on office desks.

Are you excited for these changes?