If you know where you’re going, you can start from anywhere
When I rode my bicycle across the United States, Everett Washington to Washington DC, it was fascinating to talk with people as we got farther into the ride. I was the official journal keeper for the ride, so each morning I’d wake up and document what we had seen and done the day before.
One of my fondest memories is of talking with Beverly Bealer in Morrison, Illinois. We exchanged thoughts on what it takes to continue with a journal or diary on a day-to-day basis, and then she pulled out a book she had written with her 96 year old father-in-law. I was reminded of one of the passages this morning when Natasha and I were talking about my presentation at the Experts Conference in LA next week.
He was raised in a sod house on the Nebraska plains in the early 1900’s. The family moved every few years, as his father traded his current land for different farms around the southern United States. At that time, there were no maps of the roads. When they drove from Nebraska to Florida, they drove in the general direction of Florida and each night would stop to ask locals for suggestions for a route for the next day. He said it was surprising they ever reached Florida.
I like the approach of “How do I get to Florida from here?” The basic assumption is that I am in a location, any location, and there is some path I can follow to get to Florida. You can start from anywhere, and still get there as long as you know where the end point is.
Many times we see people approach SharePoint with the idea of “Tell me what SharePoint is, and I’ll let you know if I can use it or not.” This is a tough one to get around for two reasons. First, there’s no such thing as a 30 second overview of SharePoint. Second, talking about a technology does not show how it can be used to solve problems.
People who have worked with SharePoint for a while are probably tired of hearing it, but those who are just getting started and want to get a handle on its capabilities are better served by not asking “What is SharePoint?” but by starting with “What business problem am I trying to solve?”
This is stated all day, everyday all over the world, but it’s a difficult thing to wrap you’re head around when you’ve been told you will be using SharePoint for the first time: the discussion is NOT about SharePoint, it’s about a problem that needs to be solved. Period. Leave SharePoint out of the discussion.
I am going to take this approach during one of my session next week at the Experts Conference: If you know where you’re going, you can start from anywhere. There will be no Power Point slides, no presentation materials, no pre-written presentation. I’m going to stand up in front of a group of strangers and say, “What is a business problem you are trying to solve? Where are you trying to go?” From there, I’ll have a white board, some markers and about an hour and fifteen minutes to work through a basic discovery process, layout the business scenario, figure out what will be an acceptable outcome, and then diagram a solution that can be implemented as a takeaway from the session.
I do this all the time in my on-site workshops. It’s an exciting process because people really have to think about what they want before they even consider SharePoint. We want to expose a basic business problem that we can tackle within an hour and end up with a solution that will not only be feasible, but will be able to be implemented by someone with Site Manager, or Site Collection Administrator access.
If you’re in LA, I’d really appreciate your attending my session. Since I really don’t know what it’s going to be, you can actually help me develop the solution. I will try to record it or maybe even UStream it if there are enough people interested.
So that’s it… where do you want to go? Don’t ask me how to drive, walk, bicycle, fly or crawl there… that’s not the point. Where do you want to go? We’ll work out the details together.
Count me in for the UStream
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These thoughtful articles are some of my favorites. Perhaps it is just me, but I find that anything rewarding can be used as an analogy to Sharepoint. This spring as I cleaned out my garden I realized that Sharepoint mirrored the same process, I didn’t rip up my entire yard in one swoop and try to implement a massive garden structure all at once. I took my front door, my highest profile area and laid in a formal greeting area, that solution met the needs. The next project led me to the back where I built an entirely different area for entertaining. Years I’ve been working in developing the yard, some solutions are small, with big impact; some are invisible, like digging in 100 feet of drainage tile. Not always the most fun, but ultimately the reward of the end result is magnificient!
And I do it all exactly the way I implement Sharepoint – plan well (consider future maintenance), learn as you go, ask the experts questions, remember those lessons next time, and always keep an open mind!
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Hey cool little voting gadget! Glad someone agrees with me!
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Please also count me in for UStream.
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I like articles like this, too. Somehow I always know that they are going to head back around to SharePoint (on this site, how not?) sooner or later, but stopping along the way to hear about someone growing up in a sod house makes it more fun.
And, any chance that we can take to turn the question back around to “What [business] problem am I trying to solve?” is worth the trip.
M.
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Mark,
Great post.
Please contact me when it’s on UStream.
I’m a huge cyclist and I remember talking to you in L.V. last fall about your trip accross America.
Going out for a fifty miler right now.
Have a good one.
Errett
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Mark,
Love the idea. I get that question all the time; ‘what is that SharePoint you are tweeting a about?’ At work the hardest thing I find is to get people to think of SharePoint as a business process solver. I’ll here something come up and their solution doesn’t even consider SharePoint, even with all of the discussion and current use of the product we use on a daily basis. Though i must say, something came up there other day and someone suggest SharePoint as a solution and I finally felt that maybe all of this force feeding has finally taken hold a bit!
Count me in for watching a Ustream event.
Rick
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These thoughtful articles are some of my favorites. Perhaps it is just me, but I find that anything rewarding can be used as an analogy to Sharepoint. This spring as I cleaned out my garden I realized that Sharepoint mirrored the same process, I didn’t rip up my entire yard in one swoop and try to implement a massive garden structure all at once. I took my front door, my highest profile area and laid in a formal greeting area, that solution met the needs. The next project led me to the back where I built an entirely different area for entertaining. Years I’ve been working in developing the yard, some solutions are small, with big impact; some are invisible, like digging in 100 feet of drainage tile. Not always the most fun, but ultimately the reward of the end result is magnificient!
And I do it all exactly the way I implement Sharepoint – plan well (consider future maintenance), learn as you go, ask the experts questions, remember those lessons next time, and always keep an open mind!
Do you agree?
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Count me in for the UStream
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