Mental Models, Not Features: The SharePoint Training Revolution

Traditional SharePoint training fails because it focuses on clicks, not concepts. After two decades of watching adoption stall, I developed something different — The Container Method™. In this episode, I share the story behind this new approach, why it works, and how it transforms SharePoint from a confusing tool into something intuitive and usable.

You’ll hear:

• Why traditional SharePoint training fails and what’s missing
• The origin story of The Container Method™, including the metaphors that didn’t work (yes, even sushi boxes)
• How containers, cabinets, drawers, and labels map directly to SharePoint’s sites, libraries, folders, and metadata
• Real-world examples showing how this model makes everyday SharePoint tasks faster and simpler
• Details of the new Container Method™ End User Course, designed to get people productive with SharePoint in just 60 minutes

If you’re tired of seeing your teams overwhelmed and under-trained, this episode is for you. Learn how to bridge the gap between abstract SharePoint terminology and the way our brains naturally organize information.

Special Launch Offer:
The Container Method™ End User Course is now live at simplysharepoint.com/sharepoint-essentials-container-method. Get it for just $67 during the launch period (regular price $97).

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Welcome to the Simply SharePoint Podcast. I'm Liza Tinker, and today we're talking about something I've been developing for years, but I'm finally ready to share with the world. It's a completely different approach to SharePoint training that actually works. The container method. But before I reveal what makes this approach so effective, let's talk about why traditional SharePoint training fails so consistently. Why traditional training fails. Have you ever sat through a SharePoint training session? The typical approach goes something like this. Click here to access your site. Click here to upload a document. Click here to share a file. It's a feature-by-feature walkthrough that might make sense in the moment, but as soon as you're back at your desk facing a real-world scenario, that clarity evaporates. There are three fundamental problems with traditional SharePoint training. First, it's feature-focused rather than concept-focused. Knowing where to click is useless if you don't understand why you're clicking there. It's like teaching someone to drive by only showing them which pedals to push without explaining the principles of driving. Second, traditional training doesn't account for how our brains naturally organize information. SharePoint's terminology, sites, libraries, lists, metadata, is abstract and technical. Our brains don't naturally think in these terms. We think in familiar, real-world concepts. And third, traditional training overwhelms users with too much information. SharePoint is incredibly powerful, which means it's also incredibly complex. Showing users every feature creates cognitive overload, and then they retain almost nothing. I've seen this pattern repeat for over two decades now. Organizations invest thousands in SharePoint, then thousands more in training, only to find that adoption rates hover around 20 to 30%. Users revert to old habits, storing documents on their desktops, sharing via email attachments, creating information silos, all because the training didn't give them a mental model that actually makes sense. After watching this pattern repeat across hundreds of organizations, I knew there had to be a better way. How had all started? Well, about five years ago, I had a breakthrough moment. I was conducting a SharePoint workshop for a group that was particularly struggling with all the concepts. I could tell because they had glazed eyes, looking confused, politely nodding, but I could tell they weren't just understanding any of it. So I put down my prepared materials and grabbed a marker. On the whiteboard, I drew a simple house. I said, let's think of SharePoint as a house. The house itself is your SharePoint site. These rooms are like your document libraries. So different spaces for different types of content. Then I drew windows and said, these windows are like your views, different ways of looking into the same room. I could see the confusion starting to lift. People were now nodding, but this time with comprehension, not just with politeness. One participant raised her hand and said, So my marketing materials would go in the marketing room and finance documents in the finance room. I said yes, because they were finally getting it. So over the next few years, I refined this approach. I experimented with metaphors. Some were better than others. At one point, I even tried a sushi box and restaurant metaphor. Yes. I used bento boxes as views, different restaurants were content types. It was funny. It worked in parts, but honestly, I started confusing myself as much as the participants. If you can't keep your own metaphor straight, it's probably time to retire it. So that trial and error is what eventually led me to the simpler, universal concept of containers. Everyone gets it. A container holds related things. Inside, you have filing cabinets, which are your libraries, drawers, which are your folders, and labels, which is metadata. The transformation was remarkable. Training sessions that once produced confusion now produced those wonderful aha moments where you can literally see understanding dawn on people's faces. So what makes this approach so effective is that it maps SharePoint's abstract concepts to mental models that we already have. We all understand containers, filing cabinets, drawers, and labels. We've been organizing physical information this way for centuries. The container method simply applies these familiar concepts to the digital world of SharePoint. How the methodology works. So how exactly does the container method work? First, we start with containers. In the physical world, containers are separate spaces that hold related items. Your kitchen contains cooking items, your garage contains tools and vehicles, and your bedroom contains personal items. In SharePoint, containers equals sites. A marketing container holds marketing content. A projects container holds project content. And a department container holds departmental content. This simple mental shift from thinking about sites to thinking about containers immediately makes SharePoint more intuitive. When someone asks, where should I put this document? the answer becomes obvious. Which container does it belong in? Next we have filing cabinets, which are document libraries. The marketing container might have filing cabinets for campaigns, brand assets, and market research. Then we have drawers, which are the folders. The campaign's filing cabinet might have drawers for 2025 campaigns, 2024 campaigns, and so on. Finally, we have labels, which is metadata. A campaign document might be labeled with campaign name, target audience, and launch date. Here's the really powerful part. You learn these concepts first using the container method, and then by the end of the course, you know both the intuitive model and the actual SharePoint terminology. So when IT says site or library, you know what they mean, but you also have the everyday mental model to guide you. That bridging of intuition and technical knowledge is what makes this stick. The first example is for HR onboarding. Imagine an HR container. In SharePoint, that's an HR site. Inside, you set up filing cabinets, or in SharePoint language, document libraries for policies, training, and employee records. Within those cabinets, you might have drawers. That's SharePoint folders for things like new hires, contractors, and compliance. And of course, you then need to add labels, which is SharePoint metadata. And those labels might be employee type, start date, or region. So HR can filter and instantly find what they need. The next example is a marketing campaign. A marketing container in SharePoint, which is a marketing site. This holds cabinets, document libraries for campaigns, brand assets, and market research. Inside the campaigns cabinet, the drawers or folders could separate 2025 campaigns from 2024 months. Then every file gets labeled with metadata with a campaign name, product line, and launch date. That way, someone can filter show me your campaigns for product X in 2024. Then another example is of project workflows. You would use a project container, which is a dedicated project site in SharePoint. In the cabinets or document libraries, we would hold contracts, design files, and progress reports. The drawers or folders separate each project phase, such as initiative, design, construction. And then our labels or metadata track things like milestone, approval status, or risk level. And when the project wraps up, the entire container or site is archived as a package so nothing gets lost. This is the real strength of the container method. You learn it first with simple intuitive terms like containers, cabinets, drawers, and labels. And by the end of the training, you not only know those concepts, but also their SharePoint names, sites, libraries, folders, and metadata. So when IT says we need to set up a new library in this site, you know exactly what they're talking about. And more importantly, you know how to use it. And now for the announcement. After years of refining this methodology and seeing its impact across organizations, I'm excited to announce that I finally packaged the container method into a comprehensive training course that's available starting today. I'm beginning with the container method end user course, designed specifically for the everyday SharePoint user who just needs to navigate, find, store, and share information effectively. In just 60 minutes, this course will transform how you think about SharePoint. You'll learn how to visualize SharePoint structure using the container method, how to navigate around your site, how to find any document in seconds, not minutes, how to add, edit, and manage your documents, and all about collaboration and how to use the different SharePoint features to collaborate with your team. Just the basics and the methodology to get you started with working with SharePoint quickly and to understand SharePoint. And this is just the beginning. Next week, I'll be releasing the container method foundations course for those who manage document libraries and build SharePoint sites. This course includes the different types of containers and how to plan and build them. You'll be able to choose between project, resource, and team containers and pick the right one every time. You'll learn what libraries you need and designing metadata that actually works. You'll have step-by-step guidance on building governance into your structure. And then in the advanced modules, you'll actually create those containers. You'll set up structures that scale, add metadata that saves hours of searching, and apply governance without drowning in red tape. You'll also learn when to use different components such as content types, document sets, and workflows, and how to create them. Think of it like this: the end user course helps everyone be productive tomorrow, and the foundation and advanced courses teach you to architect properly, fixing the mess before it happens. So it wouldn't be a launch without a special offer. So if you're tired of SharePoint confusion and ready to embrace a methodology that works the way your brain already thinks, check out the container method and use a course at simplysharepoint.com. For the launch period, I'm offering the course at a reduced price of$67 instead of the regular$97. Thank you for listening to the Simply SharePoint podcast. I'm Liza Tinker and I look forward to helping you make SharePoint simple, intuitive, and actually enjoyable to use. Make sure you join me next week when we're staging an intervention for a SharePoint document library, which is buried under final underscore version seven underscore really underscore final dot doc few documents and transforming it into a clean, simple container your team will actually love. Bye for now.