In a recent FusionTalk episode with Steve Dalby, we tried something different.
Instead of dissecting another product update, roadmap slide, or “top 10 features you should use,” we challenged each other with five open questions about Microsoft 365 and the reality of working with it in organisations.
No demos.
No shiny announcements.
Just honest questions about how Microsoft 365 actually behaves once it leaves PowerPoint and lands in real environments with real users.
What surprised me most is how quickly these questions cut through the noise. They exposed gaps between theory and practice, between what we design and what people actually do, and between what organisations think they need and what they are ready to adopt.
This post captures the core reflections from that conversation – and why these questions are more useful than yet another feature checklist.
Listen to the full episode FusionTalk | Five Questions
When Best Practices Meet Real People
One of the first questions we touched on was: when did we realise that best practices don’t survive contact with real users?
If you’ve been in this field for more than five minutes, you’ve seen this play out.
Architectures look clean on whiteboards. Governance frameworks look solid in documents. Naming conventions, site structures, and content models make perfect sense… until the first wave of users arrives.
Users don’t wake up thinking:
“Today I will carefully follow the content architecture designed by IT.”
They wake up thinking:
“I need to get my work done, fast.”
This is not a failure of users. It’s a failure of us, as architects and consultants, to design systems that respect human behaviour. When best practices are designed in isolation, they become fragile. When they are tested against daily work, deadlines, and habits, they either adapt or break.
The uncomfortable truth: best practices are only best if they work in practice.
The Tools We Love vs The Work We Do
Another question was more personal: which Microsoft 365 tool do you actually love?
Not which one pays the bills. Not which one is trending. But the one you care about.
This matters more than it seems. The tools we care about shape the solutions we design. If you are passionate about SharePoint, you see structure, content models, and information architecture. If you love Power Platform, you see processes, automation, and user flows. If you live in Teams, you think in conversations and collaboration spaces.
None of these perspectives are wrong.
But each of them is incomplete on its own.
Organisations don’t need “a SharePoint solution” or “a Power Platform solution.”
They need a way of working that connects information, collaboration, and processes into something coherent.
The danger is when our personal preferences silently become architectural decisions.
Building the Right Thing That Nobody Uses
We’ve all been there.
You build something that looks right. It ticks all the boxes. It follows the guidance. It even gets approved by governance. And then… nobody uses it.
In the podcast, we reflected on solutions that were technically correct but failed in adoption. Not because they were bad solutions, but because they didn’t align with how people actually work.
This is where many Microsoft 365 projects quietly fail:
- Not at go-live
- Not in technical quality
- But in relevance to daily work
Adoption is not about training people to use your solution.
It’s about designing solutions people would choose to use even if no one forced them.
If your solution requires constant reminders, enforcement, or escalation to stay alive, that’s not adoption. That’s maintenance of a bad fit.
Governance vs Culture: The False Choice
One of the more interesting tensions in the episode was governance versus culture. Which comes first?
This is often framed as an either/or question. In reality, it’s a dependency.
You can’t change culture without providing safe boundaries.
And you can’t enforce governance without addressing how people actually work.
If you introduce Microsoft 365 without governance, you create risk, sprawl, and confusion.
If you introduce governance without cultural change, you create rules that people work around.
The mistake organisations make is treating governance as a document and culture as a workshop. Both are ongoing practices. Both require iteration. Both require feedback loops.
The goal isn’t control.
The goal is enabling people to work in a way that is both effective and safe.
Where AI Helps (And Where It Doesn’t)
AI came up naturally, because of course it did. It always does.
What stood out in the conversation is how easily we overestimate what AI will fix. AI can help summarise, suggest, classify, and accelerate. But it does not solve unclear processes, bad structures, or missing ownership.
If your information architecture is broken, AI will help you find broken things faster.
If your governance is unclear, AI will automate confusion.
If your culture avoids ownership, AI will generate content no one feels responsible for.
AI amplifies what is already there.
It does not replace thinking, design, or responsibility.
What Would Actually Break Without Microsoft 365?
The final reflection was simple but revealing: what would break first if Microsoft 365 disappeared tomorrow?
Calendars.
Coordination.
Shared context.
Not the tools themselves, but the invisible glue that holds modern work together.
This highlights something we rarely talk about: Microsoft 365 is not “just tools.”
It has become part of the operational fabric of organisations. When we design solutions on top of it, we are not adding features. We are shaping how work flows.
That deserves more thought than we usually give it.
Why These Questions Matter
These five questions don’t give neat answers. That’s the point.
They force you to step back from features, licenses, and technical designs, and ask:
- Are we designing for humans or for diagrams?
- Are we building things people want, or things we can justify?
- Are we governing systems, or enabling work?
If you work with Microsoft 365, these are the questions worth revisiting regularly. Not because the platform changes, but because organisations, people, and ways of working constantly do.
Sometimes the most valuable progress doesn’t come from adding another feature.
It comes from asking better questions.