In an era defined by rapid technological advancement and evolving workforce expectations, the digital workplace has emerged as a cornerstone of organizational success.
A well-executed Digital Workplace strategy transcends mere technology adoption—it orchestrates a seamless integration of applications, processes, and human potential to drive unparalleled performance.
This book explores how organizations can strategically configure the ideal combination of digital tools to empower collaboration, enhance productivity, and foster innovation.
By blending practical frameworks, real-world case studies, and actionable insights, *Architecting the Future* equips leaders, IT professionals, and change-makers with the blueprint to transform their workplaces into dynamic, high-performance ecosystems.
Whether you’re navigating hybrid work models or aiming to unlock your organization’s full potential, this book will guide you in building a digital workplace that not only adapts to change but thrives in it.
High Performance Organization
While working together is a foundational element of any functional group, elite teams—those that consistently outperform expectations and deliver extraordinary results—go far beyond mere cooperation. They tap into a deeper set of principles, practices, and mindsets that elevate them from good to exceptional, defining ‘High Performance Organization‘.
In this article Microsoft explores “Redefining High Performance in the New Era of Work”, sharing key insights on what makes organizations high-performing (HPOs) in today’s hybrid work environment, shaped by the pandemic and AI advancements.
Based on Microsoft research, including a survey of 1,100 leaders across the US, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and feedback from over 3 million employees at 226 public companies, the article highlights that only 15% of organizations consistently meet at least six of ten performance indicators, qualifying them as HPOs.
The article emphasizes a broader definition of performance beyond financial metrics, including team collaboration (44%) and resilience (41%). It suggests that AI can enhance productivity, reduce tedious tasks, and foster engagement, creating a virtuous cycle for organizational success.
In this article MIT explores these challenges, identifying best practices that not only support remote team working but in a way where they outperform traditional office-based ones.
The authors identify that yes by default, teams that work in close proximity perform better than those that are remotely distributed due to the face to face human factors that improve communication and collaboration -but- when specific apps and tools are applied to systematize high performance behaviours, Virtual Teams perform better.
This is because by their nature distributed teams are inherently more diverse, calling upon members from nationalities and cultures from across the world, which when united via these high performance practices combine to achieve a much more powerful collective than with less diverse groups that rely on accidental improvements arising from close proximity only.
Building Your Virtual HQ
The centrepiece of your platform for Virtual Team collaboration and the Future of Work is a ‘Digital Workplace.
Digital Workplaces provide a platform for addressing these challenges by providing a ‘virtual HQ’, an online forum for employees to meet no matter where they are physically located, and then offering a spectrum of features and functionality that enables them to be united into a high performance team.
Workplaces provide virtual environments for teams to meet, collaborate and action projects, achieved through web communities, video meetings and integrated workflow applications.
The headline challenge for virtual teams is maintaining employee morale, as working remotely can easily lead to isolation and a sense of disconnectedness. Working together physically in the office brings many benefits, most notably this sense of social inclusion, and the knowledge sharing and collaboration that arises naturally from ‘water cooler networking’.
Tools like employee communities enable you to foster inclusiveness even while working remotely, with apps like surveys to help you check in with your team mates to understand how they are feeling, and enable you to address any inclusion motivation challenges.
Configuring Your Workplace Applications
Vendor solutions like Microsoft 365 offer these specific apps and tools, and is ideal for enabling these agile ways of working, as it provides the building blocks for global, remote team collaboration, and further integrated into this suite are apps that can define, implement and measure the high performance practices.
By fine-tuning the standard 365 services and also furthermore activating and integrating third-party plugins and applications you can select the combinations of functionality that best suits your needs. This can address specific workflows like the employee morale surveys, through project management, e-learning, training and others.
By doing so you can directly define the working practices that achieve high performance organization, mapping these to the workplace suite functionality that can implement them. As well as Microsoft 365 there are many other vendors who offer this same platform model so buyers are presented with a rich spectrum of solutions for implementing their ideal Digital Workplace strategy.
