I had a conversation this week that I've had dozens of times before. But it never gets old — because the reaction is always the same.

A client had just finished reading their Microsoft Teams assessment report. The first thing they said was: "No surprises in here.

But it's really reassuring to see it all written down."

That's the thing about most businesses I work with. The problems aren't a mystery. Everyone already knows what's broken. What they don't have is a clear picture of what "good" looks like — and a realistic path to get there.

After working with hundreds of organisations — from five-person teams to departments within Fortune 500 companies — I can tell you the fix is almost always the same. And it's simpler than you think.

The short version: One main team. Open to everyone. Channels based on how people actually collaborate — not what the org chart says. Private stuff stays private. But the default is visible.

​Here's exactly how to do it — and why it works.

This particular organisation had Microsoft Teams set up the way most businesses do: organically. Teams created on the fly. Channels that made sense at the time but now sit empty. Nobody sure where to put things. New starters spending half a day trying to figure out what's going on.

Sound familiar? You're not alone. Microsoft's own research shows that employees spend an average of 57 minutes per day just searching for information across their digital tools. In businesses with a messy Teams structure, that number is almost certainly higher.

The result is always the same. People stop trusting the tools. They revert to email — which Microsoft 365 was supposed to reduce. They message someone directly instead of posting where others could benefit. And then meetings get created purely because nobody knows what's happening, so you have to physically gather everyone to find out.

The root cause isn't that people are doing it wrong. It's that nobody set up the structure properly in the first place. Microsoft Teams is incredibly flexible — but flexibility without a framework leads to chaos.

If you're seeing this in your business, you're not alone — and it doesn't take a massive transformation to fix it. I'm putting together a step-by-step playbook called the Chaos Cure. It's not out yet, but you can get first access when it drops.

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Here's what I recommended — and it's the same approach I recommend to almost every business I work with.

One main team. Open to everyone.

Think of it like a digital open-plan office. The team is the office floor. Channels are banks of desks. Most day-to-day work happens out in the open, visible to anyone who needs to see it.

If someone spots a conversation that's relevant to them — brilliant. That's the whole point. It's the digital equivalent of overhearing something useful across the desks and chipping in with "actually, I'm working on something similar."

Here's a fact that surprises most people: every time you create a new Team in Microsoft 365, the platform silently creates a SharePoint site, a document library, a Group inbox, a Planner board, and a OneNote notebook behind the scenes. Multiply that by twenty Teams and you've got twenty parallel document libraries, twenty inboxes, twenty sets of permissions — all silently ticking away in the background whether anyone uses them or not. That's why fewer Teams, used well, beats many Teams every time.

This is how modern collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Planner are designed to work. The default should be visible. The exception should be private. Most businesses have it the other way around.

Most businesses don't need new tools. They need a better structure around the tools they already pay for.
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Start With One Main Team

Create a single team where everyone in the organisation is a member. This is the central hub where the vast majority of day-to-day collaboration happens — cross-functional questions, project updates, company announcements, shared conversations.

Then add separate Teams only where there's a genuine privacy need. The most common examples are Finance (salary discussions, board papers, cash flow), HR (disciplinary matters, performance reviews, recruitment) and Leadership or Board (strategic discussions, commercially sensitive planning).

The key decision rule: when deciding where something should live, default to the most open place first. Then work your thinking down the hierarchy only if there's a true privacy need. "We've always done it separately" isn't a privacy need. "This contains individual salary data" is.


Set Up Channels by Following the Collaboration, Not the Org Chart

This is where most people get it wrong, and it's the bit that matters most.

The instinct is to create channels that mirror the org chart — one for Sales, one for Marketing, one for Operations, one for Finance. That can work, but it's not always the right answer. Not every business collaborates neatly along departmental lines.
The question to ask is: who needs to see the same conversations and files? Those people belong in the same channel. Sometimes that's departments. But more often, collaboration happens around end-to-end processes that cut across departments, or around groups of departments that work closely together.

A channel for "Client Delivery" might make more sense than separate channels for Sales and Operations — if those teams are constantly collaborating on the same client work. A channel for "Product" might serve better than separate channels for Development, Design, and QA — if those people are always in the same conversations anyway.

If you find that two channels are constantly referencing each other's conversations, they should probably be one channel.

For project-based businesses, the question of how to handle projects in the channel structure is important. If your projects are short or low-complexity, use one "Projects" channel with a thread per project. If your projects are large and complex enough to need their own dedicated space, create a separate channel — but only when it's genuinely earned. Don't create a channel for every piece of work.


Archive Everything Else

Go through your existing teams and archive anything that's no longer active. Archiving doesn't delete anything — the content is still searchable. But it removes clutter from everyone's sidebar.

This is the single biggest quick win for most businesses. In my experience, the average SME has 3–5 times more teams than they actually need, and 60–70% can be archived without anyone noticing.


Solve the "What Goes Where" Problem

Here's the thing that comes up in literally every business I work with. Someone knows a document exists. They spend thirty minutes searching across multiple platforms — Teams, SharePoint, email, maybe Confluence or a shared drive. They find it eventually. They don't complain. They just add thirty minutes to their working day and move on.

Multiply that by every person, every day, every week. The accumulated cost is staggering.
The fix is almost embarrassingly simple. One page. One table. Every tool your business uses, with a clear agreed statement of exactly what that tool is for:
- Teams channels — Day-to-day work conversations. Everything that used to be internal email. Questions, updates, decisions, file sharing. Always use a thread for each topic.
- Email — External communication only. Clients, suppliers, partners. Never for internal conversations.
- SharePoint — Permanent information. Policies, SOPs, onboarding materials, company news. Things that don't change daily.
- Planner — Actions and tasks. Everything agreed in a meeting. Every commitment with a name, a due date, and a status.
- OneDrive — Personal drafts only. Never for finished work. If it needs to be seen by anyone else, it belongs in a Teams channel or SharePoint.

Your version will look different from every other business. The point isn't the specific content — it's the shared agreement. Write it down. Put it somewhere everyone can find it. Refer to it. That one page will save more time than any training course.


Establish Simple Communication Rules

The structure only works if people use it consistently. Here are five rules I recommend for every business:

Always use threads. Every new topic in a Teams channel gets its own thread. Never reply to the main channel body. This single rule alone transforms the usefulness of a Teams channel — it turns a stream of consciousness into a searchable, organised set of conversations.

@mention with intention. Tag specific people when you need their input. Tag the channel when everyone needs to see something. Never tag everyone unless it genuinely requires everyone's attention.

Use subject lines on channel posts. It takes three seconds and makes every conversation scannable. A channel full of posts without subjects is a wall of text that nobody reads.

Urgent means synchronous. If something genuinely needs a response within the hour, pick up the phone or start a Teams call. Don't post in a channel and hope. Teams is asynchronous by design — and that's a feature, not a bug.

Close the loop. When a question is answered or a decision is made, say so in the thread. Don't leave conversations hanging. A thread that ends with a question and no visible answer teaches people that channels aren't reliable.
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This is always the first question. And it's a fair one.

Here's the reality: in most organisations, maybe 10–20% of work genuinely needs to stay private. HR matters, sensitive financial data, specific personnel issues.

So why are we structuring 100% of our workspace as if everything is confidential?

Get the 80% out in the open. Use private channels or separate teams for the genuine exceptions. But make "open" the default, not "locked down."

When deciding whether something should be private, default to the most open place first. Then work your thinking down the hierarchy only if there's a true or perceived privacy need. Most businesses have it the other way around — everything locked down by default, with openness as the exception. That's backwards.
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The client I mentioned at the start? They took every single recommendation to their senior leadership team. No pushback on any of it.

Not because the ideas were groundbreaking. Because the timing was right, the problems were already felt across the organisation, and someone had finally laid it all out in plain language with a clear path forward.

That almost never happens. And it happened because the issues weren't new — everyone already knew. They just needed someone to put it all in one place and say "here's the fix."

The biggest lesson I've learned from hundreds of businesses is this: the problem is almost never the technology. The problem is always the structure — or the lack of it.
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1. Creating a new Team for every project — This is the most common structural error. A new client or project starts, someone creates a Team. The sidebar grows. Nobody can find anything. Use channels or Planner boards within your main team instead.

2. Creating channels that mirror the org chart without thinking — Don't automatically create one channel per department. Ask who actually collaborates together. Channels should follow the collaboration, not the org chart.

3. Making everything private by default — Some businesses make every channel private "for security." This defeats the entire purpose of working out in the open. Make channels public by default, and restrict only where there's a genuine privacy need.

4. Not archiving old teams — Dead teams clutter the sidebar and make people distrust the tool. Archive aggressively. The content is still searchable — it's just out of the way.

5. Creating channels to organise files — "We need a Finance Documents channel." That's backwards. Channels exist because people need to collaborate. Files follow the collaboration, not the other way around.

6. Treating Teams like email — People post in channels without threading, without subject lines, without context. The channel becomes a stream of consciousness nobody can follow. The fix is behavioural rules, not more channels.
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7. Trying to do it all at once — Start with the one main team. Get people using it. Then optimise. Don't try to restructure everything overnight — that's how you get change fatigue.
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How many teams should a small business have in Microsoft Teams?

For most businesses, one main team covers the majority of day-to-day work. You might add one or two additional teams for genuinely confidential work — HR, Finance, or Board. If you have more than 10 teams, you almost certainly have too many. Remember, every Team silently creates a SharePoint site, a document library, a Group inbox, a Planner board, and a OneNote notebook in the background.


How should I organise channels in Microsoft Teams?

Follow the collaboration, not the org chart. Ask "who needs to see the same conversations and files?" and group those people into channels. Sometimes that's departments, but more often it's cross-functional groups who collaborate on shared processes. The right structure depends on how your business actually works — not what the hierarchy looks like on paper.


Should I use public or private channels in Microsoft Teams?

Public by default. Private channels should only be used for genuinely confidential work — HR, sensitive finance, personnel issues. In most businesses, that's 10–20% of total work. Everything else benefits from being visible. Default to the most open place first, then restrict only where there's a true privacy need.


How do I stop my team reverting to email?

Give them somewhere better to go. When the Teams channel is where conversations happen, and the Planner board is where actions are tracked, email becomes what it should be — a tool for external communication. The businesses that have successfully reduced internal email didn't ban it. They made the alternative genuinely better.


What about all our old files — do we need to migrate everything?

No. Start fresh in your new Teams structure with the files you're actively using. Make the old location read-only so people can still search and reference old documents. Don't try to solve "where does fifteen years of history go" at the same time as "how do we work together going forward." Deal with the archive separately, later.


How do I get my team to actually use the new structure?

The answer isn't more training — it's agreement. Write a one-page guide explaining what each tool is for and where to post what. Get buy-in from leadership first. Start with yourself and three to five early adopters. Embed the behaviours over three months. The structure only works if people trust it — and trust comes from consistency.

If your Teams setup feels like a mess, you've got two options:

Option 1: Get the playbook. I'm putting together a detailed, step-by-step guide called the Chaos Cure — everything in this post and more, with a companion workbook that walks you through the complete process. It's not out yet, but you can get first access when it drops:
👉 Join the Chaos Cure waiting list

Option 2: Get someone to look at your specific setup. If you'd rather have an expert review your Microsoft 365 environment and tell you exactly where the quick wins are, book a free discovery call:
👉 Book a free discovery call
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Gavin Jones is the founder of MeeTime Ltd., a  consultancy that helps businesses save time by getting more from the tools they already pay for. A chartered management accountant by training, Gavin spent fifteen years inside businesses before leading a modern workplace transformation at a Fortune 500 company — where emails declined by 27%, people recovered 2.6 hours per person per week, and after-hours work fell by nearly 30%. He now helps SMEs achieve the same results through direct consulting and his YouTube channel.
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Blog: The Right Defaults: How to End Microsoft 365/Teams Chaos (Fast)
​Video: Microsoft Teams Best Practices
​Video: How To Organise Teams And Channels In Microsoft Teams