The secret language of how we work

I love a good glossary. Not because I am a word nerd, although that helps. I love it because shared language changes behavior. The moment a team moves from vague feelings to precise words, decisions speed up and culture lifts. Microsoft Viva Insights gives us that shared language for the modern workday. Once you name the invisible patterns, you can change them.

This is my practical, very human guide to using the Viva Insights glossary as a leadership toolkit. Less theory. More reality. A few smiles along the way. Ready.

Why a glossary matters more than slides

Most teams talk about workload with soft words. Busy. Swamped. No time. That language creates noise, not action. The glossary gives you precise lenses that point to measurable patterns. Calendar fragmentation. Uninterrupted focus hours. Multitasking hours. Long and large meetings. Influence. These terms act like x rays for your week. See the pattern. Design a better one.

Five terms I use every single week

Calendar fragmentation

The death of deep work by a thousand tiny cuts. Ten minutes here. Fifteen there. Enough time to open a document, not enough to think. Leading means protecting thinking time for yourself and your people. Treat it as real work. Because it is.

Uninterrupted focus hours

This is where value is created. Your personal runway. No meetings. No chat. No mail. Just making. Strategy needs silence. If your week has zero protected blocks, your organization is being led on autopilot. That never ends well.

Multitasking hours

We all do it. We should not do it. This metric counts moments where you sit in a meeting and still reply in chat or mail. When the number is high, two things might be true. The meeting does not need you. Or your inbox owns you. Both are fixable.

Long and large meetings

When a meeting is long and has many people, decision quality usually drops. I love people. I do not love thirty people in a two hour call with five decisions still floating at the end. Shrink the slot. Tighten the purpose. Decide. Move.

Influence

Not job title. Real reach. Who you activate. Who trusts you enough to move fast with you. Influence is a healthier mirror than hours worked. It rewards clarity and momentum.

From vocabulary to action

My Monday rhythm. Simple and effective.

Scan your week for fragmentation and remove tiny islands. Merge topics and create two or three real blocks of time.
Design your focus hours first. Treat them like meetings with Future You. Guard them with intent.
Choose one recurring meeting that became long and large. Reset purpose. Reduce the group. Try thirty minutes.
Watch your own multitasking. If you are typing mail during a call, ask why. Fix the root.
Map your influence for the week. Who needs your clarity. Who needs your courage. Who needs your energy. Reach them early.

Copilot prompts I actually use

Prompts are my love language. Steal this and make it yours.

Copilot Chat
“Summarize my last seven days of meetings. Highlight where I context switched and where decisions remained open. Recommend three meetings to shorten or cancel based on decision density.”

Lead the language

Terms only change culture when leaders model them.

Say focus out loud. Tell your team when you are in a protected block and will not respond. Celebrate others who do the same.
End permission theater. People do not need permission to decline a meeting with no purpose. They need air cover. Give it.
Replace hero hours with system hours. Praise outcomes achieved through design, not through midnight chaos.
Share your own metrics. Show your fragmentation trend and how you are fixing it. Normalize improvement.

A quick playbook you can copy today

Morning routine
Open your calendar. Move two small meetings to create one real block. Write the three outcomes for that block. Protect it.

Team rhythm
Start the weekly standup with one question. What is our highest value focus this week and what could fragment it. Remove one blocker together.

Meeting hygiene
Every invite carries purpose, decision, and preparation. No decision means no meeting. Keep the list small. End five minutes early. Send the decision log.

Energy guardrails
No back to back marathons. Insert ten minute breathers to reset attention. Your brain is not a machine. Treat it with respect and it will reward you with sharper thinking.

The fun part

Make it playful. On our board we place tiny markers for every hour of focus we protect. We cheer when a long and large meeting becomes short and sharp. We laugh when someone says I am double booked for multitasking. Humor keeps change human. Progress sticks when it also feels good.

Final word

The Viva Insights glossary is more than definitions. It is a leadership toolkit for a modern workplace. Use the words. See the patterns. Design better weeks. Your calendar becomes a strategy. Your meetings become decisions. Your people go home proud of the work they finished.

If you want help translating these terms into your dashboards and daily habits, I am in.