I have just spent my holidays touring France. No, I did not think about work, Office 365, SharePoint, user adoption, governance or anything like that. But now that I am back, I do notice that often the principles that governed what we saw and did during our holidays are quite similar to the ones that govern my work.
Take advantage of what is availble, with tweaks where needed
In the Dordogne, people have been living under stone shelters since prehistoric times: natural rock overhangs, which protect you from the rain (if did still work for us, on our walk). The Cro-Magnon lived there, and may already made them more comfortable and practical by . Later, people built houses under such shelters, which already had a back wall and part of a roof.
Prehistoric abri de Cro-Magnon in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, with recontructed “tent walls”
Modern house built under the shelter near the Grotte de Combarelles
On the SharePoint platform and in Office 365 we do the same thing: we take advantage of what Microsoft (instead of mother nature) has already created for us, and we tweak a bit or develop more extensively to make it fit our needs better. We actually do that more and more. While a decade ago we started by building a new house from scratch, now we immediately head for the nearest standard feature and use that with as little customization as possible.
The environment changes and we have to go with the flow
As we went to the south of France, we assumed that the weather would be quite nice and that we would be just fine camping in our little tent. Well, not everywhere and not every day. It seems like that the climate change is acting up: there had been torrential rains, flooding many rivers and swamping the countryside in many areas. And there were frequent thunderstorms, with hail.
So we chose carefully where to pitch our tent and where to go hiking. We changed our plans to steer clear of the worst inundations. And when the weather forecast threatened with a hailstorm, we took shelter in a hotel room.
Le Parc naturel régional de la Brenne : better be careful where you walk
But the local wildlife, in particular the water birds and waders, where quite happy that there was water everywhere…
Ducks taking advantage of the rains in the Le Parc naturel régional de la Brenne : this was supposed to be dry land.
In Office 365 cloud burst are usually less destructive. But the environment does change all the time. As users and administrators, we have to go with the flow. Change our plans if they don’t mesh with the evolution of the environment, and take advantage of the new opportunities.
Old and broken? It is still useful for somebody
The statues outside the cathedral of Sens have all been broken: their heads were cut off during the revolution. But the statues (and art lovers’) loss is the birds (and nature lovers’) gain. A lot of swallows built their nests amongst the statues.
Swallows nesting in the west portal
In Sarlat-la-Canéda it weren’t the birds but people who recycled an old church; now they use it as a covered market.
Sarlat-la-Canéda: The second life of the church of Sainte-Marie
I recently saw the same thing with an old SharePoint environment. People had circumvented the old, dilapidated templates to create very useful solutions. Don’t underestimate the creativity of your fellow man – or bird – in reusing old sites.
You don’t always need an expensive, high tech solution
In the city centre of Cahors, the inhabitants of one of the main pedestrian streets wanted to have some flowers to go with the official garden festival. They did not have gardens, space or money. But they had some basic materials and a good idea. So they created some very funny and colourful flower pots from old plastic soap bottles and hung them on the drain pipes.
Flower pots made from old soap bottles in Cahors
This is often my approach in projects, especially small-scale projects for teams that don’t have much money. Do they really need some expensive product, or can we just tweak some standard stuff to meet their needs?
Blocking the main entry with fun stuff: Check the priorities and navigation
There is a main road running through Saint-Gilles (Gard). But not on the day of their festival. On that they, that main route is blocked, so you cannot enter the town or go through it to other villages and towns connected by that road. Fortunately, we were on the right side of the barriers, staying at the town camp site and enjoying the festivities.
For that day, the priorities of the people of Saint-Gilles were clearly with their fête. They did provide some sign posts to guide people around the town centre, but these did not suffice: we saw plenty of drivers who got stuck and lost. Maybe they tried regardless of the signs, but the barriers were quite solid…
Saint-Gilles, Fête de la Musique. The barriers went up plenty of time before the festival started.
I sometimes see something similar happen on the homepage of an intranet: the entire page or at least the visible part of the page, is taken over by ‘fun stuff’: a campaign, something interesting that Communication wants to tell the world. But what about the users who are looking for their tools, their collaboration sites, support, or other useful things? You have to be pretty sure that all of these users share your priorities and want to see your ‘fun stuff’, or you have to offer them sufficiently clear pointers to the place where they do want to go.
So no, I am not a workaholic: while I was on holiday, I did not think about work. But now that I am back at the office and looking at my holiday pictures over the weekend, I do see similarities. Maybe I am just trying to find my holiday in my work….
