HEATHER: Hello everyone. Here we are again for another Mavens Do It Better podcast where we interview extraordinary experts who light a spark in our world. And I am here with Antje Lamartine.
ANTJE: Perfect. Nicely done.
HEATHER: Thank you. We're actually sitting in Paris, France.
ANTJE: Beautiful city even with a big strike.
HEATHER: Yes, yes, yes. There's a big strike going on right now and we are actually at the, uh, modern workplace conference. Have you been to the conference before?
ANTJE: I have not.
HEATHER: I have not either. It's lovely.
ANTJE: I think there it's, it's a great audience. And people are, are speaking to each other, having great conversations and it's wonderfully organized. So, it's really been a big turnout. Great turnout.
HEATHER: Yeah, absolutely. So shout out to Gokan Ozcifci and uh, Patrick Guimonet and just thank you so much for having us. So you're a speaker here. What are you speaking about?
ANTJE: So, I was speaking about user adoption and change management and specifically how to start with your user adoption measures early to really make an impact and not wait until the last minute.
HEATHER: How about that?
ANTJE: Yeah, what an interesting concept isn't it? I know, I was like what, maybe we should think about the end user right from the beginning.
HEATHER: Wow. That's an interesting concept. Yeah.
ANTJE: I know. Yeah. I like to talk about it. I mean, I, my, my focus in the Microsoft 365 world is user adoption and change management. And um, I, I think the user is not addressed from the get go because it's dealing with human beings and it's really not that easy a topic, right? It's much easier to focus on technology and what are we going to roll out? What licenses do we need? What products are we going to turn on first? And at some point the question comes, oops. Should we tell anybody about it? What might they need?
HEATHER: We're going to surprise them. I think you're, you're talking about starting with the why.
ANTJE: Yeah. It's starting with the why. I very often like to ask clients, what's your, what are your company goals? Because once you have a clear understanding what company goals are, it's much easier to actually then find out, well, why would a company go to the cloud? Right. Okay. If we want to grow through acquisitions and we're going to have many more employees, how do we deal with processes? Is that a reason to go to the cloud? And, uh, but the question is really why are we doing that and what's in it for the end user? What, what's in it for every human being that works in a company?
HEATHER: Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, we want, well, we want everyone in every moment to be happy and productive and feel good about themselves. But I think also when we dip into, you know, into the workplace, it is about, yes, the tools that we have, but you know, we spend what a third of our lives at work. Shouldn't it be a good place?
ANTJE: It's a lot of time. And I kind of find it interesting because I find that I think human beings do fairly well with changes in their private world. Technology changes. I mean, when I asked folks do you have a smartphone? Yes, I do. How many apps do you have on it? Many. How often do they get updated? Oh, here in then. Well, how do you deal with the updates? Well, they just run. But when the change happens in our workplace with the tools we use there. For some reason I haven't figured that out yet. Why? Maybe it is because we spend so much time in the workplace. Um, it is usually a challenge.
HEATHER: Yeah. And people want to flip the table. Maybe I, I think that, I don't know, sometimes it's the, because work is a thing that you kind of in air quotes have to do, you have to go, you know, it's kind of a required thing that you try and get your work life set up so that it's kind of repetitive or routine or my, I have my processes and I have my, you know, ways that I do things. And then, and then when that gets, you know, messed up by somebody bringing in something new or a new idea, I think, um, it, it, it causes stress maybe, you know?
ANTJE: Yeah. And I think maybe if I think about this now, maybe, because if something changes at work and I'm having a hard time with the change it can have important sometimes negative consequences. Whereas if I don't deal with the change in my private life, well it's my private life. maybe my family suffers, right? Or my loved ones. But you have a different relationship with them? Right. Whereas in the workplace, if a change comes and you have a hard time with the change, well that might have consequences that you actually, that might even threaten your position in a way, right? Your status quo, your, the way you're looked at by other people. So, I think that's why it's hard in the workplace because we all want to, I would assume most of us want to do our best and if that doing our best gets disrupted. That's hard.
HEATHER: Yeah. Well and doing our best and I think sometimes maybe also it's, uh, doing our best in the most effective way possible. The easiest way possible or the way we know that's possible instead of, you know, doing, you know, doing something a little bit different that actually is going to save us some time. But it's not the way we've always done it. So you get a little like grrr.
ANTJE: Yeah. I mean in the workplace it's also about achieving things, right? I mean I was, I was reading the mission statement yesterday again in one of the keynotes, we enable people, Microsoft wants to enable people to achieve more. So I think there is usually this drive in work that we want to achieve more. That should be the ultimate goal.
HEATHER: Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. And everything. Yeah, for sure. Um, so you and I got a chance to see each other, um, at Inspire. No, Ignite sorry. That was super fun. We were at the women in technology, uh, luncheon.
ANTJE: Diversity and inclusion.
HEATHER: diversity inclusion, luncheon there, uh, with Christine Bongard. And what was so fun about that is that we shot a little video and we realized that, uh, the WIT Network is putting on their international women's day event and it happens to be in Munich. And you are from Munich.
ANTJE: Correct. So we're going to see each other again in three months. Right. I think it's March eight. I want to say.
HEATHER: Yeah, it's the weekend of March 8th. I'm going to work on it. I have a, I have a prior commitment that I cannot not be at for before that, but we'll see. But I would love to be there. I've actually, I've never been to Munich.
ANTJE: Well, you know, you have a tour guide in me, so it's like I'd love to show you around. I keep rediscovering my own hometown by showing it to visitors about it.
HEATHER: I love playing tour guide too. I've done that in many cities that I've lived in and I'm starting to do it in Los Angeles though I don't know that city quite as well yet, but I'm getting there, that's for sure. Um, so growing up in, in Germany and in Munich, um, how did you get started in technology?
ANTJE: Yeah, that's kind of, uh, that's, that's a roundabout way. So I actually have a background in hotel business. Yeah. And then I worked in the tourism industry for a little while. I was born and raised in Munich, started out in the tourism industry. I moved to LA. Spent quite a few years in Los Angeles and worked in the tourism industry as well. Uh, 9/11, um, stopped that abruptly. We were focusing on bringing German and Italian tours to the West coast. And the moment that event happened, the market just stopped. You know we got those cancellations, so I had to reinvent myself. Um, worked a lot in the admin field as administrative assistant, executive assistant, and then made my way with our children to Minneapolis about, uh, 13, 14 years ago as it was 10 years in LA and then to Minneapolis. And we were free to move about the country. So we picked the twin cities because it's a, it's a very strong metropolitan area and there's lots of big companies that are headquartered there. And ended up working in the photography business. And somehow I made my way back into the tourism industry to a software company that was selling revenue optimization software. As office manager. And I onboarded all the new employees worldwide on all the different technologies and systems were using. And we had this project manager who heard that the parent company had something called SharePoint and he wanted a SharePoint site and he got his site collection. And he got two, three teams into the site collection and six months later he quit. Well, I, since I did all the technology onboarding, my manager said, Antje, why don't you just take on SharePoint? We debated for about two, three weeks that I didn't want to do this. I have no idea what it was. Right. And then when I finally looked at it, I thought, Oh, wait a second. As an office manager, I always have to say no to everything because if, if you can't do a blender to blend juices for the entire office, you can't do it for one person. And with SharePoint I all of a sudden noticed, well here I can actually move from a no world into a Yes world like, yeah, I can help you work smarter. Yes, I can build something for you that makes your life easier, that helps you collaborate. So, I had to do my office manager and SharePoint job two years at the same time because there was no easy moving from one to the other. And then we had a change in management and, and SharePoint become, became more prevalent. And then I just started doing that full time. So, kind of help building out the intranet there. I moved on to another company, um, as a business analyst doing the same, you know, finding out what are the needs of the business, what can we build. But I do come from the business side, so I've always been very close to executive teams and always had a good idea of the overall big picture in a company. And uh, that helped me very quickly move into the area of user adoption, change management. Because I've been so many times on the receiving end of, Oh, here's a new software go use it. So I could, I can really relate to that. But at the same time, I also understand, well, why does a company make a certain decision to change something? So this is where I'm connecting to two together.
HEATHER: Right. Oh, that's super cool. And we also figured out that you lived very, like very close to the street I live on. In Los Angeles as well. So you actually lived in Marina Del Ray.
ANTJE: I lived in the Marina.
HEATHER: That's so funny. You know, it's hilarious when you have these wonderful conversations like we all do in our community and we start sort of peeling back the onion and you're like, what? You're from where and what happened? You know, it's just, it's so amazing how we're all connected in such a fun way.
ANTJE: It's such a small world in a way, and sometimes it takes a while to find out where you are, how you have been connected when you didn't even know it.
HEATHER: Yeah. Or the mutual friends that you share or whatever, you know, like it happens all the time. We were, I was talking about that this morning in our session, we were talking about how, um, Dux was relating a story about being in Sri Lanka and having a car breakdown, but then he tweeted about it and then, you know, somebody was like, I was just at your SharePoint Saturday, come have tea at my house, or, you know, and that thing happens all the time where I'll, you know, some people are like, Oh, you know, social media, you're on there all the time and all this. And I'm like, yeah, but I will tweet something or I'll post something and then all of a sudden I'm sitting in somebody's, you know, beautiful home somewhere having goulash, you know? And you know, and it's because not only is it that they live there, but it's like, Oh my parents, you should come hang out with us and do this and that. You know? And I think that's one of the grateful, thankful things about this community. I mean, I don't know. You feel that too. Yeah?
ANTJE: Yeah. I mean, I've been speaking since 2015 and I was lucky enough to have my first big speaking engagement at the first SharePoint Saturday in Munich. I was still living in the U S at the time. But I also find that no matter where I go to, I mean, it's like, it's like family. And the great part about it is that it's a family we all chose. Yes. Not the family that we end up with. I mean, like sometimes it's, no matter where you go and you know someone, if you need help and reach out, people willingly give the help and in turn we give help to others. Right? And it doesn't really matter if I'm at an event as a speaker or as an attendee, I always take something with me. And I also go to sessions that are about my own topic, user adoption change because I find it always very interesting to hear perspectives of another person in that area. I always take something with me. I love it.
HEATHER: I agree with you and I feel like, I don't know, I feel like that particular subject, um, has gotten such a sort of a lift in the last, maybe it's with the dawn of Office 365?
ANTJE: Two, three years, I would say.
HEATHER: Yeah, two, three years, you know? Yeah. I mean, I just, I like even looking at the schedule here, I was like, wow, there's lots of options about this topic. Um, what I like about that, I think it's like looking at it, we all kind of have similar pillars, if you will. Right? There's like, there's sort of a natural curve to the whole process, but that we all have a different take on it because we have different industries we've worked with and different sizes of companies. And like for you, you were, you know, a person who was actually, you know, a user getting that information. And I like that, that we're kind of encompassing all of us and all of our different sort of brain think like in one sort of way. Right?
ANTJE: Yeah. It's um, it's, it's really, um, it's really about the experience we bring to a topic and all the experiences we've, we've made in life different ones from different places, working with different people coming from different backgrounds. That I think gives everyone a unique perspective. And that's where we can learn from each other and this is to me, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm super curious and I, I love just listening to what people have to say. And then I think, well, how does this actually apply to my situation? Can I relate to it, can I not? But the whole thing with user adoption. I personally think that it's such a big topic because changes are happening just so much faster nowadays. I mean, the realities, I mean, it's hard to keep up, right? Because the technology keeps developing and I think this is why companies are more and more realizing why this is something we really need to start doing from the get go. And not just when we switched the switch on some software or platform.
HEATHER: It's, it's about like this morning, just a few minutes ago, I was posting something on teams, on my Content Panda teams and I was looking, I was, I had uploaded a new file and I went to go back to the conversation well it's not called a conversation anymore, it's called a post, you know? And I was like, am I missing? Oh no. It just changed in my tenant and now and then to other people sitting next to me, I was like, is it, is it post in yours or is it still conversation? So things are changing at the speed of light.
ANTJE: I just noticed the other day I was in a teams meeting, and I clicked on a file and instead of getting the preview, the file open was in the frame in teams, I was like, Oh, Oh, I didn't know this is cool. Right before you had to click, you want to start working on. And I was like, Oh, this is pretty interesting.
HEATHER: Um, so tell me a little bit about growing up in Germany and sort of the, the, your origin story from there, from being a kid and stuff.
ANTJE: Yeah. So I, I was born in Munich and I actually grew up right in the heart of Munich. So maybe I'm one of the few ones that is again, lives in Munich and is locally from Munich. I know Munich, like my own pocket. I actually went to school in the pedestrian zone in Munich.
HEATHER: Okay. I don't know what that means.
ANTJE: Meaning right in around Marienplatz. Right in the heart. So when I, when I now, go to the, into the city, I live on, uh, on, on the outskirts of Munich, still the city of Munich, but right on the border. And, uh, when I go into city, it's like, all right, I'm really home because I used to take this walk daily to go to school. That's kind of interesting. But, um, I don't know. I, I, I always knew that I would not end up at a university studying. Studying was hard for me. I wasn't the greatest student. Um, I always, from early on, I, I really loved being with people and I ended up starting an apprenticeship in the hotel business. But I have to say that I never really had any specific path or plans in my mind. I mean, I never really dreamt of a white wedding and I somehow did get a white wedding. I never dreamt of having kids and that somehow worked out. We have two beautiful daughters. But I was always kind of looking for, okay, where can I grow myself and what is it that I really like doing? So I'm also the type of that if I'm not happy in my work and as long as I can keep learning, I'm good. Once the learning stops, then I get antsy. Okay. What's the next thing? But it's interesting because I've always been curious about technology, but the opportunity was just not there. So it was really, it was, it was just one of those things, well, okay, here, take on SharePoint. Well, I'll take a look. Oh, I really like it and I see value in there. What can I do? So I'm very fortunate in that respect. I consider myself very lucky. And, but I also do believe that somehow things will fall into place. So when I have an objective or a goal, I really do my utmost to get there. And then at some point I'm able to say, all right, I did everything I could. Maybe the stars are just not lining up now I can move on and then maybe see if it comes back later.
HEATHER: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great attitude to have.
ANTJE: It makes life easier, right? I mean, I don't, of course I stress over things like everybody else as well. I think that's just normal, but I've just noticed that usually in life when I needed something, it somehow came to me, even when I didn't see it coming. It's like an inherent trust that things will somehow work out.
HEATHER: Yeah. I think the universe provides us things. We manifest things, you know, like if we, words are powerful and the things we say out loud, manifest both good and bad. You know? So, you got to be careful with what you say. But yeah, I believe in that too. You know, it's, some people call it faith or some people call it destiny or, and, and, or happenstance or coincidence and, yeah. But also I think there's a lot of deliberateness in the world that things are supposed to come to us when they're supposed to.
ANTJE: Yeah. And, and I, I, I, I very much think along the way I, I will worry about the things that I can control and kind of recognize what are the things that I cannot control. And you've manage those, but you have to kind of stop worrying about them. Right. Because in the end you never know how things kind of line up. I mean, the fact that we actually ended up in the twin cities, I've thought about this often because there are lots of large companies in the twin cities. That was one of the reasons, a strong job market that we moved there. Oh, little did I know that most of these companies were using SharePoint. I mean I had no idea. So it kind of turned out this way and then on top of it the twin cities has an incredibly strong SharePoint community. It's one of the biggest SharePoint Saturdays. Right. But it's also again, this community idea that they were open to take someone in like me who didn't have much previous experience. They gave me a chance. So yeah, there are a lot of people there that said, absolutely you can do that. Which is kind of interesting. It's again this, you go for it and then you see where it takes you.
HEATHER: Yeah. And I think that's the I that is this community, but I don't know. It's the certain times and moments in your life you feel that, you know, and, but there's something special about, um, this community for sure. And it's not just us as speakers I think, or even like MVPs or whatever. I find that its customers too, you know. You know, it's, it's not necessarily a closed off kind of thing. It's that, you know, we all use technology and we all have difficulties in different things. And I find that it is, it is everybody can be a part of it. You know, and there's certain ways, I mean, I think Twitter is a very big sort of funny way that we all participate together and connect together. But you don't have to do that either.
ANTJE: Yeah, it's, I think the, the, what I find so interesting nowadays is that you can really learn a lot and connect a lot, even if you're not yourself constantly on Twitter. So I am on Twitter, but I'm having a hard time constantly tweeting. That's just not me. I kind of feel like, okay, if I don't really have anything meaningful to say, I mean does the world really care? Do I want to spend those two minutes typing it up?
HEATHER: Do you need to see my bowl of oatmeal, maybe?
ANTJE: Or the wonderful dinner that I have in front of me. Right. The food pictures. But I mean that's, I think also, I mean how we, how we deal with social media is also, um, I guess a talent that some people have an easier time with, and some people don't. But still if you on it, I mean I initially went, came and came on Twitter because a lot of the MVPs are, a lot of folks in our community when they want to announce something, right? Something new comes out. They write the blog posts. Well they actually send them out through different places and some on Twitter, some on Facebook, some LinkedIn. And this is one of the reasons why I really got into that whole social media thing. I'm not one of the, I wouldn't consider myself a pro there. I just kind of go along and that's good. You know, it might change in the future. You never know. Right. It's one of those things, well, let's see where it takes us.
HEATHER: It's kind of any level is whatever, you know, whatever you want to do. Um, so for you, what do you do? So we talked to, we've talked about work and community and I know you have a family and all of that, which, what do you, what do you do for fun and what do you, or how do you relax or you know, when you're not, when you're not typing away, talking about end user adoption?
ANTJE: Well, so in, in Minneapolis I actually spent a lot of time on the tiny little ski hill we have in twin cities. So I learned how to ski as a kid. When my older daughter ended up being finally old enough to take ski classes, I signed up for the classes and they said, well, why don't you come work for us because you know how to ski. It was like, okay, I've never worked as a ski instructor. You know, it's, it's still people personality that we need and the rest we teach you. So I actually spent those last years in Minneapolis, I think five or six years as a ski instructor. And you know, the winters in the twin cities are very cold and long. And we still were every single weekend on the ski Hill and it was just wonderful. So it was skiing there and my husband started to ski as well. Both kids did. Now of course we're in Germany, so we're closer to the Alps. We haven't been skiing as much as we would like to, but we're going to be getting there. But the other thing, which is my big passion is actually knitting. I always have knitting project was me and I learned, learned it as a kid. I picked it up again eight, nine years ago during a really cold Christmas in Minneapolis. I was like, okay, I need something.
HEATHER: What do you typically make?
ANTJE: Well I like to do scarves, mostly different type of scarves mainly because oftentimes I actually give them away. But when I start a project, I never have a certain person in mind. So I started a project based on what I like on the colors I like and the material and then somebody comes out of somewhere and then it turns into a gift and I love it. But do you know what it really is for me, it's my kind of therapy because I talk to people all day long and then I need to have time in the evening to just sit and go through all the conversations and compute what was said and oftentimes ideas on how to take the next step in a project actually come when I knit.
HEATHER: Yeah, that makes total sense. It's a Zen moment, right?
ANTJE: It's is, it's my own thing. Yeah. So my pattern are usually not super complicated. It's fairly easy to follow. Right. And, but I've also noticed that I've gotten much, much better at it. And I also learned through the knitting. I once took a class in Minneapolis and it was a lady who said, you can just bring your projects, and she showed me how to do this and that, and I've learned one thing from the knitting, and maybe it's true for work as well. Every one of my knitting projects has a mistake somewhere in there. I have never knitted something that is perfect. Right? But the important thing is I learned from this lady was that only I know what the mistake is and where it is, the others don't. They look at this whole thing. Oh, this is a beautiful scarf. And I would think, yeah, but there's a mistake. And she said, but people don't see the mistake, you're good. So, took something from knitting into my work life. So it's made me more relaxed about looking at things. You know, when something doesn't work as well. I mean, it's important that you learn a lesson from it. Try not to repeat it. But it's not the end of the world. It's from the mistakes that we really learn to do it better next time, came out of knitting.
HEATHER: Yeah, and I love that you found something for you that like takes you to a place where you can like decouple a little bit.
ANTJE: It came unexpected too. That's again, one of those things. It wasn't something planned, it was just, Oh, it's really freezing cold, you can't go out. What can we do? Let's pick that up again. That's what I meant by you never know where things take you.
HEATHER: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and it's something with absolutely. Thank you. No screen time.
ANTJE: Oh yeah, there's no screen. Actually we never, we didn't have a TV in Minneapolis. Yeah. So we were actually a radio family, so the radio was on a lot and I would listen to different radio shows. And so there was some media but not TV. No screen time. Definitely no screen time.
HEATHER: Wow. Okay, cool. I like it. So last question, um, what would be, uh, that spark or that moment, a person, place, thing, time that really kind of seats you in where you are today in your life, if you would share with everybody?
ANTJE: Yeah. Um, there, there was, I've worked, I had the incredible fortune a few times in my life to work with a few people that I really consider leaders in the way they, they worked with people, they interacted with people. They were true leaders. But there was this, this one person in that company in Minneapolis and I had the conversation with him and I said, well, you're new here, you're my new manager. I want to do SharePoint full time. And he knew SharePoint from his previous company and even though he had just met me a few days before or week before when he joined the company and he was an executive. So it was easy for him to maybe make the decision. He saw something in me and an opportunity and he gave me the opportunity to do that. So he created that position for me against objectives of other executives. And this is how I made the change from my administrative roles into the technology part. Not everybody supported it at the time, which was in the end was one of the reasons why I actually then had to move on to another company because I could tell, you know, the switch from being an admin person to dealing with technology for some, for some folks it was hard to wrap their mind around it and I didn't quite, they weren't able to see it that it's possible. But I think he, I mean on one hand he's really the one that said, okay, let's do it. I think you can do it. Here we go. So that was really the one defining moment as one person saying, yeah, I see this opportunity, but I have to say that I have met so many different people after getting into SharePoint in this community and I have taken little bits of things from many different folks and that has really shaped me. Yeah. So that's like if I, yeah, if I think a little bit longer about it and really think through all the people that, that have touched me in my life and I have interacted with, I'm sure there are more points, but I mean, if this man at that point would not have given me the opportunity.
HEATHER: Be very different conversation. Right.
ANTJE: I probably would have switched companies. Right. But then the question is how would I have started and in what role, would I've started at another company, right? So that was a defining moment really. And of course the other defining moment was just packing up and moving to the US. But Hey.
HEATHER: My leaving the Midwest for me was a defining moment for sure. You know, like everyone else in my life from there and going far, I mean, not quite Germany to Minneapolis, but definitely Chicago to Seattle. I get it. Yeah. Those are big moves.
ANTJE: Yeah. And I, and then I do think now, I think one thing that living in LA certainly has taught me, and I took that with me, is that when you meet people in LA, the folks that look really shiny are not necessarily that shiny. And sometimes, you can relate, right? And sometimes you meet people that come in ripped jeans and an old tee shirt and you start talking to them and you have the most interesting person in front of you. So one thing I learned living in LA is that you can never ever judge a person by the way they look you, even if you have a first inclination to think a certain thing, you've got to have a conversation, find out a little bit more and then it opens up a whole different world. And that's one thing I definitely learned in LA and I, I, I, I think it was an important lesson because I, I mean nowadays there's topics of diversity inclusion. I love going to these sessions because it is really true. I mean, we all carrying our little package and it's very easy to be upset about people to complain about things. But in the end, it's, I think always important to be empathetic and really ask yourself, well, who knows where that person was coming from? They might have some things they go through and maybe that's why they're reacting like this and might not have been personally something about me. So yeah, that's what LA talked me actually. Yeah, I liked LA. I like Minneapolis too. Yeah. Loved living there and now I'm happy I'm in Munich.
HEATHER: Yeah, I know. You kind of did a big old circle. That's awesome. And what a delight to talk to you. I know we've talked a few times, but I always get to learn so much about people when I do these, I'm like, you're amazing. So that really,
ANTJE: Thank you, this was really fun. Thanks for giving me the opportunity. I always love talking to you. It's always great to hear what you're up to and where you're out and about, so thank you.
HEATHER: You're very welcome.
ANTJE: And I'll see you in March in Munich, right?
HEATHER: Yes. I'm going to say yes. So yes, yes. Hopefully, yes, for sure.
ANTJE: Well, you know, if March doesn't work out, there's always going to be another time when you can stop by.
HEATHER: I would love to. I, it's definitely on my list of places to go, uh, for sure. And, uh, yeah, so, um, we will put in the show notes how folks can get ahold of you and, uh, connect with you on Twitter and all the other fun things. And again, thank you so much.
ANTJE: Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks Heather.
HEATHER: You're welcome. So everybody that has been another episode of the Mavens Do It Better podcast and here is to another bright, beautiful big day on this big blue spinning Sphere.