Organisation within a family office (Software + Work Dynamics)

Good morning everyone,

I was just hired to set up a new family office project with a structure of 6 employees in the investment division: 1 director or operations (or coordinator) and 5 analysts / portfolio managers of individual portfolios (3 in equities, 1 in forex/criptocurrencies, 1 in futures over commodities).

After a few weeks in the office, I realise that we have several issues that are/will affect our performance, some are software and some are more conceptual.

Software

• Microsoft Outlook. Not every analyst uses (or know how to use) Microsoft Outlook for simple things as the calendar. At the moment it is not a huge issue but we are expected to grow in employees quickly and I believe this should be adopted by all.
• Microsoft Teams. We have this software in the office that nobody uses. Do you think we could use Teams in any meaningful way other than the chat functionality? I am thinking about To Do / Planner but I have no previous experience with the software. Do you use it in your daily work as an analyst?

Dynamics

Part of the team is inexperienced and they have the bad habit of talking a lot (20% productive conversation / 60% things they could solve by themselves or need for reassurance / 20% non-work related) and as a result, it is very difficult to concentrate more than 10 minutes on anything before being interrupted.

A part of the problem is that we (particularly equity analysts) do not have a structure plan to approach sectors or companies so the work is pretty chaotic and they are used to having bosses telling them what to do and some have no previous experience on equity analysis at a professional level.

Do you guys have any suggestions about how to improve the efficiency of the office in this sense in a way that all the below are met?

• We can talk and have a nice office environment but constant unnecessary interruptions are avoided.
• Beginners can learn from the more experienced one BUT not by constantly interrupting their work.
• Collaboration between analysts is encouraged.
• The office is quiet enough to concentrate most of the time.
• IMPORTANT: there is a structure to approach ideas generation that is flexible (can be slightly changed depending on each particular case) but serves as guidance to avoid wasting time and improve the quality of the ideas we find.

I know the message is a bit abstract and touches many problems but I would like to know your suggestions and methods of work in this respect.