It's not about the tool

It's about the team!

If I had to sum up my experience with Google Workspace and the challenges companies face adopting it - it would be this phrase: It's not about the tool, it is about the team. Read on to find out about

why apples-to-oranges comparisons with Microsoft Office don't matter
why the game has moved on from competing with bells and whistles
how the whole of Google Workspace is more important than its parts.

Really?

Word 5.1 - this will be the only time you'll hear me admit to having used a Mac.

But Word can ... insert stuff

I'll let you in on a secret: I used to be the biggest Microsoft fan. I read the 500 page manual for Word 5.1 for my Dad's 256-grayscale Mac. (I was about 10 back then - my issues manifested early.)

So before coming down hard on Word, it is a great tool! It is very versatile and can do sophisticated formatting. PowerPoint can do nifty animations. And people have been putting "Excel proficiency" on their resumes since the 90s.

There is a problem with that though: You are not getting paid for showing off formatting skills. Your required skills have moved from "Office suite" to "team player". That team is getting paid to deliver brilliant and fast results. It's high time you got the tools to support that.

The Old Tools tried to win with features, but the game is over. They can't compete on collaborative editing or drawing people into the review process, they can't compete on speed, brainstorming, drafting and "good enough". There are 30 years of baggage and a whole different way of looking at the world. You can't afford to kill Word Art without upsetting your base, you can only slap on or rebuild.

The ecosystem of tools

Why is was our productivity software called "G Suite"? A not-so-obvious strength of Google Workspace is that its applications are all very modular, yet play perfectly together. Gmail suddenly becomes your control tower when you start getting requests to share documents. When your boss locks down a reviewed presentation, you have a fool-proof versioning system. When you insert hyperlinks into meeting invitations, chat rooms and checklists, those instruments become an orchestra, and so does your team.

This is also why Google Workspace becomes more valuable the more you use it. Looking up somebody's Sametime contact, downloading an Excel file or even calling somebody's landline starts sticking out like a sore thumb, it breaks the flow. It's dropping the ball. At work, we see very clearly that teams on Google Workspace have higher output and more engagement. Google Workspace usage increases over time as people get sucked into the vortex - I have yet to see a team that has gone back (except when they got a new boss). Finding your way of tying these tools together is actually fun.

So where IS Word going?

I said Word was very sophisticated, but it is getting squeezed between simpler editors with expanding capabilities (e.g. Google Docs) and true expert systems (e.g. Adobe Indesign). What we see happening is those Office products not going away - they will stay in companies, but will be complemented ever more by simpler apps. Like Photoshop is used by experts, there are niches for Word and Excel.

You now know the answer to "When will Docs be like Word?": It will never be like Word, because it is not meant to. It is meant to be light and agile, to be whipped out via docs.new, put in a Chat room and cranking out instant results with your team. Ironically, Microsoft is now trying to make them more like Google Workspace.

It is not about the features. It is not about the tool. It is about the powerful effects of the entire suite. It is about the team. Welcome to the ecosystem! It's all that matters.

Thanks for reading my favourite post! If there is one post that sums up this whole blog and my experience with Google Workspace and modern collaboration, it would be this one. Onward to the future!

#docsPublished 2018-06-27 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2021-02-02 by Holger Matthies.

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