As the old saying goes, “water dripping day by day wears the hardest rock away”. For those of you who grew up in Brazil like me, what that means is “água mole em pedra dura, tanto bate até que fura”. This post is about Microsoft 365 adoption and change, and how things will be painful for at least a year (more on it soon) until you get your tenant where you want it to be.

So look, I get it, change is hard. Changing old habits is not easy and changing from an on-premises IT environment to the cloud is even harder. It could also be a lot harder for some, particularly management and long-term users. There will also be a small group who will embrace technology at the same speed it is thrown at them. Those are the early adopters and the ones you should be best friends with. But even for those early adopters that speed can also be a lot faster than expected

Change sometimes can happen too fast. Adoption may not.

Here is an example: for the past couple of years I’ve been tasked with introducing end users to the cloud. Even though I myself was also switching gears and learning about it too, I had to always teach others while still learning things myself. In the most perfect Microsoft 365 analogy I could come up with, I always say that “we are all learning how to pilot a plane mid-flight while the engineers are still designing it”. This is Microsoft 365 in a nutshell.

If you haven’t realized yet, that M365 plane will not be landing anytime soon, and I just learned it the hard way. I’ll explain: Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance just got rebranded to Microsoft Purview. That was the component I was looking forward to learning the most about at the the Microsoft 365 Conference. Just yesterday. Less than two weeks after I attended a day long workshop and took all these great notes that would be so helpful with its adoption. So I guess that means now I have a whole lot more learning to do. Did I waste my time though? Not one bit!

But hey, this is not about Microsoft Purview, this is about Microsoft 365 adoption and change. It is about building community and getting users to embrace change, which can be met with some resistance. However, when you teach users instead of doing the work for them, eventually they get it. Maybe because they are sick of asking you the same thing every time. Or perhaps because they are sick of you giving them the same old lecture you always do. But they eventually get it. And as the saying goes, water can wear the hardest rock out.

Remember where we were 10 years ago? Well, guess what? Change did happen!

I know this blog is supposed to be about making Microsoft 365 unsuck. Let me tell you a secret though – it doesn’t suck. Have you looked at where we were 10 years ago? If not, let me just give you a quick reminder:

See? Change did happen and SharePoint looks so pretty now. However, even back then I remember meeting resistance. Comments like “why move to this ugly website when our network drivers work just fine?”, or “can you make this site not look like SharePoint?” were part of my day-to-day life. I learned how to address every concern and to be always reassuring. That way users knew change would be good for them, even though adoption was slow and never immediate.

So when should I expect change to happen?

Which brings me to my final point: time after time, I noticed that the change I strived for happened about a year or so after the efforts began. While your mileage may vary in your project or organization, I feel like a year is a good milestone, as it has happened more than once to me. And it keeps on happening. I am still unsure if adoption was finally successful because I wore users out or because I just never gave up. The truth is, once people get it, they will embrace change. Early adopters, old users, senior management, you name it. Once they see there is true value in the change and realize what’s in it for them, they are with you for the long haul.

So my lesson for today is simple: don’t give up. This is key to achieving Microsoft 365 adoption and change success. I never get tired repeating it when trying to convince someone to move from their old on-prem servers to SharePoint Online. Microsoft 365 adoption can be slow at first while the platform changes are not. So lead by example, teach users all you can and as much as you can because eventually they will get it. Celebrate every drop of water as an accomplishment. In the end, what may seem small to you may well be the deciding droplet that will make the first crack in that rock.

If you have any questions or crazy adoption stories leave them in the comments, I would love to read them!