Motivating Your Team for Success: Strategies for driving performance in your MSP business

Hi everyone, thank you for joining us for another MSPs in Conversation. Today we're going to be talking about motivating your team for success, and strategies around driving performance within your business. We've touched on this topic lightly before, but what we wanted to do is do a bit more of a deep dive today. So we will work through the topic, and as always this is recorded, so you can always refer back to it. It's a podcast, it's cut up into snippets on social, so make sure you check that out. But as always, please ask questions. If there's something that you're interested in, that you want to ask our panelists, please drop it into the chat.

So very quickly, a little housekeeping and a little bit about Hosted Network. If you don't already know, we are a wholesale cloud and telco provider for Aussie MSPs. We started as an MSP ourselves back in 2003 and shifted to channel only in 2013, so we're celebrating 10 years of being channel only, which has been a really fun journey. But as I always say, we're not here to talk about us. We're here to hear from our wonderful panelists: Ryan, James and Jordan, thank you so much for joining us today. Can I get you guys to do a brief introduction about yourselves? Ryan, starting with you.

Yeah, certainly, no problems. Look, for those that don't know me on here, which should be kind of rare, but yes, I'm the CEO of 360 Consulting. I was in the MSP space for 25 years. I do a lot of mergers and acquisitions, help other MSPs and CSPs increase profitability, and a lot of consulting in and around the industry, a lot of public speaking and whatnot. So yeah, if you don't know me, that's kind of funny. It's good, I'd love to speak to you at some point.

Wonderful, thank you. James, welcome.

Thanks, Ben. Hey everyone, James Bergl with Pax8. I've joined them about 15, 18 months ago now as their VP of community and ecosystem for APAC, and what that really means is helping to build an MSP community, helping to enable our partners to go out there and achieve growth and profitability. I've been in the MSP space in Europe, in the UK, since 2010, so this is my 14th year working with MSPs. I absolutely love it and I'm excited to be here today to share some of the findings and videos.

Wonderful, thank you. And Jordan.

Hey Ben, thanks for having me. Jordan from Otto IT, and I've been with Otto and formerly Milnsbridge for five years now. My focus is really on our growth and driving growth, whether it be new clients or existing clients, and leading our sales and marketing team to be the best we can and disrupt the market and empower our staff to really have the skills and tools to have some good quality conversations and get the solutions our clients want.

Wonderful, well thank you guys for joining us. We've invited you all today because in the industry you run really successful teams. You know, it doesn't go without notice how your success is, and I'd love you to provide some of those light bulb moments for the audience today.

What Great MSP Team Culture Looks Like

To start us off, let's get rid of this screen share so I can find the right button, which I never can. There we go. All right, so first of all let's start off with what good looks like in a good company culture. Now we've touched on this briefly in other series, but let's do, you know, high level, what does good look like in your words? James, let's start with you.

Yeah, it's an interesting question, and it's probably evolved a little bit since we've been through COVID. My former role was leading and running the data team down under, and we had an exceptional team and a lot of fun with that. For me, what does good look like? I guess if we say what does great look like as well, with regards to a team, you know, I want to personally feel like I love getting up in the morning and going to the office and meeting the team, and driving towards a mission with my teammates is incredibly important. But I would always say to my team, if you're not happy, you don't enjoy coming to work and you're not enjoying being part of this, give it another three months just to make sure it's not something that you can overcome, and then consider elsewhere. You need to be really passionate about coming in. And do you have a passionate team around you? Then there's the concept of culture eating strategy for breakfast. Experience is less important than having a highly unified team that are all fighting for each other to be successful. So that's one of the things that I love being a part of and love about helping to create as well.

I'd say I'm very apt. We often talk about EOS, and EOS has a model that sort of says GWC: gets it, wants it, has capacity to do it. And that's very much the, you know, gets it, but wants it. Right, people need to want to come to work. Jordan, what do you guys do to, I mean, I like that James corrected that and sort of said what does great look like, so what do you guys do to say a great performing team within Otto IT?

I wouldn't expect anything else from Bergl than to say great, so it's good we're on the same page. I think there's a few things that we do, and I'm sure a lot of other businesses do, but I mean it starts from the top, but the structure, we're an EOS business as well, and the structure, that's really important, to have the foundations to drive that. One of the things that I promote within my team, for example, is really just understanding that we've got each other's backs and we're there to support each other no matter how tough something is. If they can't do something, just have the confidence to be open and honest with each other, and I think that's the start of developing that really good team bond. And having fun is the other thing that we want to do. We know we get some good results and we know we sometimes don't get good results, but that's going to happen, and it's really important to reflect and consider some of the great things we do.

So we'll do our typical L10 every week on a Monday, but at the end of the week it's even things just around, you know, sharing what people are grateful for for the week and also how they've made a positive impact on someone, whether it be in the business or outside of the business. So it's not just about numbers, it's really focusing on other purpose-driven discussions, and then calling out success across the business. So we use Bonusly here, and that recognition is aligned to our values, so if somebody's done something that's really helped them or they've identified something, call it out, recognize them. So they do it through the platform, but then we also call it out in our headlines and share that across the business as a company headline as well. So that's a couple of the things that we do, and really just making sure that everyone understands the direction we're going in and just keep on reinforcing the cultures and values and talking about it.

Why Values Drive Performance and Accountability

I was waiting for someone to mention the word values. In your organization, how important do you think values are? I ask that because when I first started my business 20 years ago, we didn't put a lot of importance on it. That's obviously changed, and I wish I had done that sooner. But in Otto IT, how important are your values?

One of the most important things. Like every EOS business, you look at them every 12 months and review them. We just had our annual planning day about two weeks ago and we didn't change them, and that was the first time we haven't changed them since we started EOS. So we've landed on some really good values that align to our people, and I think that's a reflection of who we have in our team as well. Everyone's aligned, we've got some amazing people, which is great. The values come back down to, that's what drives everything, and that's what helps build your culture. So if we're looking to achieve and do something and perhaps it doesn't sit right, it's, how does that align to our values? And making sure that we're talking about our values often. It's easy to come up with some really cool values that sound good and look good, but unless you're having those conversations and reinforcing that through discussions, whether you're calling people out for success or perhaps even having a different type of conversation around how do certain actions align to our values, and taking the time for people to consider and think about that, it's the most important thing to drive performance and the team culture, in my opinion.

Yeah, I'd agree. I think values are one of those things that do change. I think organizations, on a fixed structure like that, they're a living organism and they do grow and change over time. And I think that's a good piece of advice for our audiences, that over time things do change and your values can adapt with you.

Brian, you know, we talk about, look, I'm calling you Ryan again, I'm going all formal. We only had this conversation the other day, oh not again, fuzzy. We were talking about EOS only last week, and a lot of our partners run it, over 50% of Hosted Network partners run EOS. In terms of your approach back when you were running CRT, how did you go about finding your values?

So we came through, we had, I think across my time and tenure at CRT, which is about 17 years, I think we had probably four sets of values over that time. So as you said a few minutes ago, the values do change, they evolve, they improve, and that's a key part of it. So from that perspective, yes. It was funny because we actually implemented EOS, we did Traction, Rocket Fuel and then EOS before we sold, and we were actually really quite happy with the values we had used, and then we actually basically threw them out and started again. So it's quite funny, but it was interesting because the values tie everything back. It gives you a common grounding point, a common North Star, like, okay, you've got a vision on all of those types of things, and the mission and why you do certain things, they're all critical components as well, to be clear, but the values, you can really hold people accountable to: does your action, does whatever you're doing right now hold a line to our value, or to that particular value, or any of the values?

We added it in all of our recruitment and interviews. We would actually go through our values, and then we'd ask them very specifically which one of those values aligns best with you and why, and we just shut up. We would actually wait and give them time to actually think about it. It was in all of our paperwork, they would have seen it, it was on our website, it was up everywhere around the office, there were big A0 versions of this in the boardroom and whatnot. But we actually took it seriously, and you can say it, like when we roll off, and it's not easy now, but I still remember the old CRT values. If we rolled those off, you can actually understand, because we're passionate about it, how we talk about them still to this day.

Yeah, and that's what I've found when we got ours right. You know, when you get them right as well, and as with many things, you've got to put a stake in the ground, you've got to start somewhere, right. And often, our values changed when we rolled out EOS. The leadership team turned around and they said it in different ways, and I said in my head, all right, and I was amazed at how they took them deeper than I ever think I could. Because I didn't think as a business owner that my team would actually buy in that deeply, and how wrong I was. And that really changed for us with values, and in terms of motivating people and holding people accountable, but not just from a management perspective, also from an individual employee holding themselves accountable, right.

Go on, John.

So I was going to say, yeah, that resonates. So our values are people first, authentic, no-nonsense, committed, and when we changed them to that 12 months ago, we did our town hall or whatever, you know, different types of businesses, the annual update. We've got people all around the country and overseas, and so it was on Teams, and I could hear people in the room sort of being happy. You could hear the happiness around some of the values. We've got things like mouse pads and all different things with the values on them. At the end of the call one of the guys had crossed out certain values and updated it, like they'd wrapped it, it really resonated. So that was a good feeling, that we were all aligned, and I guess the last 12 months have demonstrated that the values have helped us deliver what we've delivered.

Communicating Vision and Aligning the Team

Yeah, you've touched on a really important word there, alignment, right. And I think one of the things with EOS that I learned is vision as well. I realized when we rolled it out that I, as the CEO, didn't necessarily communicate that as well as what I thought I did, right. In my head I thought I did, but everyone had a different idea. James, in the Pax8 organizations that you've worked with, and the successful MSPs that you work with, how did they drive and ensure everyone is aligning to a successful vision?

So just to talk on the values, they do this really, really well, and I'll show that, and then I'll also just share some anecdotal thoughts on how to continually implement that. The Pax8 values are the global ones, they're on the website that you can go off and see. They're all Innovate, Elevate, Advocate and Celebrate, so they've all got that "ate" in there as well, so that works out quite well. But those are the values that we live by, and it's interesting because they're not just the ones that are set and forget. When we've got our half-yearly reviews and annual reviews, we have to measure ourselves and our team and our colleagues against those values and say how did they perform against that value as well. So that is, I think, one way of continually instilling that, that is important. So in the 18 months or so I've been there, they haven't changed for quite a while, and I agree that I think that evolution and direction transitions, your values do need to transition a little bit, but they are critical because your values are your personality, and they're also your DNA. And just because someone's not aligned to them doesn't mean they're a bad person, but they may be a bad cultural fit for your business to drive forward.

So like fuzzy, I love what you're saying in terms of you show them up front and just watch people's behavior and their body language as they read them, and you see them respond, and you go, you're out. You know, just because you can see that their body language is not aligned. So that's how we do it at Pax8. And in all of the shout-outs that we do, it'll always be, you know, we want to celebrate someone, or we want to advocate for this particular person or this team, etc. So there is a combined effort to keep that vocabulary going and anchor back to what we're here to do.

With regards to how do you ensure that it is delivered upon, that's tricky. It can be tricky, particularly if you're a remote-based business, you've got work-from-home staff, like I work in Sydney, my team are in Brisbane, we've got about 150 people in the region now, and we're beginning to scatter all over the place. But one thing that I've learned is really critical is communication, and communication from the top down, and authentic communication as well. And again, if you get people on the bus that are aligned with your value system, then the benefit of that is that everyone can be authentically themselves. But having frequent catch-ups, I'm a big-picture sort of person, I think it's important to get people bought into where you're going, is take that bigger picture and create something more meaningful than the job that they're just in today, that they're working for, and that mission that they're a part of. And then communicate, and then celebrate.

Like, I'm a big fan of celebrating. For those that know me, we've maybe had a couple of celebrations over the years. But yeah, it doesn't have to be going out drinking, but find a team activity. And if you guys achieve some great results on the help desk or you hit some annual revenue targets, maybe you take everyone to the city for a night with them and their plus one, or something like that. But just find ways to communicate realistic stretch goals, and then celebrate as a team when you achieve that. So that's, I guess, the balancing act, a recipe that I've seen be successful.

I think that's something we did wrong. So, oh sorry, not wrong, we could have done a lot better, let's say it that way. We probably didn't celebrate the wins as much, and that's the hard thing from being an entrepreneur and a business owner, is as soon as you achieve something you're already on to the next thing. And that's something we identified in the last couple of years and we started to get better at it. And I know even in my life in general I need to get a lot better at celebrating those wins and celebrating what we did well. So yes, that's a big one, and something I'd openly say to everyone, that I think most business owners wouldn't do it anywhere near as well as they could or should do. And that's something I've got to say.

Do Salespeople Need to Align to Values?

Even in your previous roles you did very well, James, staying with you. In terms of sales and getting someone to buy in, you've really developed some great sales culture in the organizations. I've said this to you before, I see you as one of the leaders in our industry for that. Do salespeople need to align to values as much?

Yeah, absolutely. We would work with an unofficial policy of a no-dickheads policy, just because, someone's capable, if they do it in the wrong way that isn't aligned with the value of who we are and what we stand for, then there's a short-term gain and a long-term pain. So getting salespeople bought into your vision, and I would say, you know, the customer comes first, the business comes second, and you come third. And if the integrity of that chain breaks and someone starts putting themselves ahead at the demise of either the business or the customer, then they shouldn't be there. So, but again, that comes back to a value system and a value chain. But yeah, I think it's critical, and it's got to be, it can't be overlooked. And if you see behavior that isn't acting with your values in mind or your integrity, then you're right to question it and stamp it out.

Okay, sorry, I'm smiling because exactly what you said, Bergs, was one of our old values, which was to do the right thing: do the right thing for the customer, do the right thing for the company, and do the right thing for yourself. So you said exactly the same thing. And the reason I ask that around sales is that I still remember hiring my first few salespeople and going through that interview process, and you get sold to. If you don't have a lot of experience hiring salespeople, I think that values is that foundational element to set that benchmark, right. It doesn't, yes they can sell, but that could potentially cause you more pain down the line.

Yeah, I mean I've heard a lot of, sorry, okay, I'll just finish. I've had a lot of sales reps over the years, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and there's a framework that I'm happy to share which has helped me, which is, don't listen to the words but look for the characteristics. So the things I look for are going to be your IQ, EQ, drive, coachability and culture fit. And you can look for those, not just what they say necessarily, but how they respond, and the energy of how they actually engage with those questions. And those are the characteristics, if you get them, you're onto a winner. I learned, because people told me they love cold calling and coming in early, and you know what, once they had the job they didn't. So you've got to look for that, you know, the characteristic DNA. We spoke previously about hiring for attitude over all else, right.

Yeah. But what were you saying? Do you have anything else you want to add?

I was just going to agree. I think if you've hired based on values like we have, we've brought on people with the same thing, you can get sold to, but you need to weed that out pretty quickly. And I think having some trusted people in the business, that when someone comes on board, even just getting them to observe, you can't see everything, and just getting some feedback on that alignment can really help. But when you've hired on values, where you've got a high performer and they're not performing, it's not necessarily because they can't do the job or they're no good, there might be other things going on in the background, and they can help understand if they've got other challenges or perhaps there's other things that are happening. So if they're the right value alignment, it can definitely help in so many ways.

Leaders Inspire People, Managers Manage Metrics

Okay, all right, let's move on a little bit in terms of leadership. So we talked about values, and leadership is, you know, demonstrating those values from the top down. First of all, for a little definition, kind of like what I asked before about what does good look like, fuzzy, what do you think, or what do you feel, the difference is between a leader and a manager?

I was hoping you weren't coming to me first. I'm torn, look, I'll be honest, I'm openly torn with that. So you see the stuff on LinkedIn, like what a good manager is and what a good leader is, and I think there's a little bit of both. Like sometimes you've got to be a hard person. Yes, a leader is again helping everyone, pushing everyone forward, isn't telling them what to do, is asking them, and whatnot, I agree with a lot of those things. A leader really, people want to follow them, like a manager, again, people are a little bit scared of or whatnot. I'm not certain on some of that, again, it looked at good managers, bad managers, good leaders, bad leaders, in everything we do. But yeah, what I think a leader should be is someone that should inspire the team and everyone around them to want to do better. And it's not just the people that report to them, it's anyone in this industry or anything around in other parts of the company and other businesses and your clients, all of those things. If you're a good leader, in my mind, you're inspiring those people to do better, or to strive, and to try and deliver something that's a bit different to everyone else.

Okay. And Wayne, Wayne Small has just added a little comment there that says, people go above and beyond when they're inspired by a good leader. Very true, Wayne, I can't agree more. A little bit on that topic, how do you balance between being someone's friend, being their manager, and being a leader? What does that balance look like, Jordan? How have you tackled that over the years? I know, a tricky one, right?

Yeah, well, you need to have some ground rules, right, around, at the end of the day, there's a common goal that you're trying to achieve, right. And if there needs to be a difficult conversation, or it doesn't even have to be, it just can be a conversation that is going to be uncomfortable, and that's okay, as long as everyone's on the same page around where you are today and where you need to get to. And if there's a challenge or a roadblock, having the confidence to be open and talk through that, whatever it might be, then that shouldn't be an issue, if you're on the same bus and you're heading in that same direction. It comes back to, if you've got the right values aligned between the two of you, then that should be fine. Like having a difficult conversation, and even having an argument at times, is okay provided you get to an outcome of, all right, we've sorted the issue out, what do we need to do, let's get there, right. Because you both, you all need to be focused on that one outcome and that one goal.

And fuzzy mentioned it earlier, around, you know, one of the most important things, right, the client's one of the most important things, that people are another most important thing, and then the business succeeding and being profitable is the third, and doing it in a sustainable and risk-free way. So if you're all focused on that same vision and goal, you can just tie it back to, what's the common objective we're looking to achieve? And if you need to have a difficult conversation, just bring it back to that. So you can be a friend and a manager, I'd hope so, I've experienced that. Oh look, I've still got friends that I wasn't friends with when I worked with even 10, 12 years ago, that we still communicate regularly, right. And we developed some really tight friendships, and you know, there'll be the odd message they send me, or even seeking advice as a friend or as a peer. And I absolutely think you can do that, but that really comes down to the person. If you're a good person or a good human being, then people will want to be a friend of yours, and you can still be a leader and have a positive conversation or a constructive conversation.

All right, James, any thoughts?

Yeah, I do, and I agree with Jordan, I actually think you can. I had four managers reporting to me in my former role and I'm still good friends with them now, so it definitely can happen. So it's an interesting question, because management and leadership get intertwined, and what is the difference? The way my brain works is I try to compartmentalize them, and I say that you manage metrics and you lead people. So management is about process and data and systems, and those are like kind of binary numbers, one, zero, sales targets, service desk metrics. The leadership piece is like what fuzzy mentioned, it's around motivating and inspiring and creating a vision that people can get in behind and follow you. And I would almost say that one is a bit more of an art and one is more of a science. So you can scientifically measure it, be a really good manager at understanding the metrics really well, and then you work someone to that, but is that person going to be super excited to come in and do that every single day? No, if they're probably not inspired and motivated to do so.

So, and the question I was thinking, because I've had some of those questions, I was friends with most of my team, and I still am today, but there's times where certain people don't perform, and it's a hard conversation. And I remember the first times I had to have that "this isn't working out" conversation, I didn't sleep the night before, literally stayed up rolling it over all night, because I was just petrified of having to let someone go. And it's a battle scar that you gain, and each one's going to be slightly different when you get there. But how I approach it now, if I have to have one of those conversations, I actually try to take the emotion out of it and act as a representative of the business. It's not me, I'm a representative of the business's best interests here. And just going through that mental shift from, hey, this isn't me, it's, hey, what we're here to talk about is the metrics that we've gone through, that the business is expecting a performance today, right here, and this is where your performance is. So, not even making it about them but their performance, there's a gap in place, we want to support you in getting there, we want to recommend some things that we need to put in place to get you there, and this is what the expectations are going to be from the business within a certain time period. Even if it's your business, you can still represent the best interests for the stakeholders of that as well.

So that's, and I've had to have those conversations with friends. And the leadership style piece, I remember one of the conversations, I said, I really want you to be successful, you have got everything it takes, and I genuinely did want this person, they just were mentally a little bit checked out. I said, I really want you to do this, but you're not putting yourself in a position that the business is going to accept the performance. And he's just like, I get it, man, I completely get it, so let's go through the process. And he came out the other side good. So that's my take on it, and how I've had to differentiate between the two, and then have those conversations with your buddies as well.

Good tips there. Yeah, I mean, when you first have to let someone go, it is a, I like your approach, it's a battle scar and it never gets any easier. But I like that approach of sort of making yourself a representative of the organization in that sense.

Effective Leadership: Autonomy, Trust and Mistakes

Let's stay on the topic of strategies. We've talked a little bit around being a leader. What do you find helps you be an effective leader to inspire people? James, I'll stay with you.

There's a couple of things. One of them is helping those that you're leading achieve greater success than they think is possible. So often you look at talents and they've got an opinion of themselves that they're not good enough, or they're not there just yet, and your experience suggests that they've got everything in it, it is, how do you stretch them to come out the other side and go, wow, that was amazing? And do that in a supportive manner, that if they trip and fall, you can actually get them back on and help them. So I think that's really important. And then, I'm not a micromanager at all, but more of a, hey, let's shine the light on where you're looking to go, and give them the autonomy to carve their own path. I don't want to dictate how you do something, but I want to share the vision of where we're going, and you create your own authentic path, and if you mess up, pick yourself up and keep going. And you've got the boundaries to do that, unless you keep making the same mistake. But on the whole, that gives them this sense of freedom and belief that they've got the ability to try something themselves, and you often get better results. Okay, actually that was better than I would have done it myself. So those are two things: inspire them to achieve better results than they thought they could do, and then give them the runway to go as fast as they can.

Okay, Jordan, fuzzy?

Oh, it's interesting, but yeah, even what you were saying there, folks, that the leaders are the humanists as well. Everyone thinks, either put them up on a pedestal, dude, they're still just one of us and whatnot, and yeah, they stuff things up, they make mistakes. But again, I think what sets most of the better ones apart is that they own it, they're honest about it, and they go and do something about it.

Yeah, I think, Jordan's talking but we can't hear you. Yeah, there we go.

We had, so we're doing performance reviews this week, and I had a similar sort of conversation with one of my staff, and they called out around one of the things that they are making mistakes. And you know what I've always said is, it's okay to make a mistake as long as we identify I've made the mistake, we'll call it out early, we can get it resolved, and then ideally don't keep making that mistake, we learn from it. But if we see that there's a trend or there's something happening, look into why the mistake is made and what can you do differently to ensure it doesn't happen. And that can be logging an issue in the L10 for the team to discuss it, if you're not aware, if you don't know why you're making mistakes, perhaps getting a different perspective, or if you've got the idea, bring that to the team and get them to help.

Yeah, I think in terms of, you hear motivation is the other thing that I feel that people, you shouldn't, as a leader you shouldn't have to motivate people. Inspire people is quite different. Motivating people, they should have the motivation to come and do what they want to do each day, but it's important to understand how they motivate themselves and then, as a leader, be able to focus and enable some of those activities, whether that's personal growth being important for them, or recognition, or reward. But then, to get to that strategy or that destination, just involving them on that journey. So as a team, one of the things we do from a sales team perspective, for example, is just include them in when we're planning out what are the goals coming up, coming up with the plan to achieve those goals as a team early on, and everyone has a responsibility to achieve those goals. So they might not necessarily be accountable, but they're responsible for certain tasks and actions to achieve that greater goal that, as a team collectively, we're going to deliver. That's another thing that we do.

Building Trust and Handing Over Ownership

Okay, so we touched earlier, and I don't think anyone's mentioned the word trust yet. So one of the things over the years, and I've mentioned this in this series before, I got thanked by one of my staff members, and he's now our operations manager, and he turned around to me, and this is Luke, if he's on the call, he said, thank you for trusting me with that. And I still remember that conversation, because I didn't realize that I was actually trusting him with something. It was like, in that sense I thought I just handed it over. What have you found to be successful to hand over ownership of things and allow team members to have that autonomy in making their own decisions? You know, there's a lot of people on the call here that they make all the decisions, and that's not scalable. So what have you guys found that is successful to encourage people to make quality decisions, right?

I would just think about, like, what's the worst-case scenario if this decision doesn't go as planned? Is it going to involve something catastrophic? More than likely it's probably not, maybe you'll have a little bump. But I would weigh up the opportunity and propensity for growth by developing a new skill set, and the upside versus the downside. Most of the time, unless it's critical, and there will be times where it's critical, like there's more upside than downside. But do it in an environment where it's safe, with boundaries, like you mentioned a second ago. I'm a big fan of, like, when I was hiring a few years ago at Pax8, I would want to get them on the phones as quickly as possible. You know, certain organizations say we want to do three, four months of training before, but I would rather just give them a week's worth of training and throw them on the phones. And I would say, make as many mistakes as you can as quickly as possible, because there's no experience like real-world experience. So worst case, we do a bad pitch on a great account, we don't get them for a while, so what, move on to the next. It's not the end of the world, but their ability to get up to speed and grow quicker, if you've hired the right person with the values and intelligence etc., then yeah, I'm all for autonomy.

Okay. Yeah, I think trust, there's a few different variations of it. So one is from the leader trusting their staff, but then it's also the team trusting each other. And so from a leader perspective, there's basic things you need to ensure. One, do they have the right tools they're going to need to be able to do the job that they're looking to do, or that you want to enable them to do? And by the way, this is something that I've struggled with, because you want to deliver things at a certain standard, and it's having the confidence that someone else will do it at that same level. So it's not easy. Making sure that they're clear on the outcome they're looking to achieve, and the support, and just checking in regularly, and it's not a matter of micromanaging it, it's just letting them know there's support there and just, are they facing any challenges? I caught up with Bergs probably a couple of years ago, almost now, over a period of a month or two, and that's the advice he gave then, is the advice he's just given on this call. So absolutely agree with everything he just said, and just making sure they're clear on what success looks like, so they go in the right direction.

But from a team perspective, you know, you might have great people that are all really good at certain levels, and there's just a bit of a lack of trust in each other, and then people are double-checking what's being done, or different things. And I'll use a sporting analogy, is that okay? I know what a tick call, so I look at it, it'll go over my head, but go for it, I'm involved. Pretty heavily in a Cricket Club, and so we've been around for quite a while, but we'd never won an A-grade grand final. And we had a new coach, we had a really good captain, we had probably the best team we'd ever had, and we just weren't getting there. And there was a defining moment that happened, where it wasn't in a game, it was on a Tuesday afternoon before training. The captain and the coach took the players into the change room and just started having a chat and calling out some of the things we'd done well and some of the things we hadn't done so well, and just went around the room, and every player started to talk about what they saw in the other team members, what were their strengths, but then also what were some of the weaknesses. And then each person spoke about what they felt was their strengths and weaknesses, and if they could do anything differently. And at the end of it, everyone walked out of that room with a bond that was tighter than ever before, knowing that it didn't matter what happened, someone had their back if something went wrong, and they were there to support each other. And then they ended up going on to win a grand final, which was excellent. But it's just that trust in each other and that bond as a team, then they're all going for that same common goal and can back each other all the way.

So we've got a question here from Daniel. What have you done in the past to address when trust has been broken? And I can see James has jumped straight into the chat and answered it, thank you James. But fuzzy, from your side, what have you done, or what have your team members done, to tackle when trust has been broken?

Look, it's hard, it depends on how it was. Look, it's not a 30-second question, it's how was the trust broken? Was it vertical, was it horizontal? So was it peer-to-peer? Well, they need to, you can guide them, you can help them, but it's going to take time. And most, look, 90% of the cases, it's time, as they have to prove that it was a one-off event, or whatever happened, and that they're not going to do it again, that kind of builds back up. Sometimes it can't, sometimes it depends on what it was, trust can't be repaired on certain things. So at that point in time, yeah, you may actually have, you might be exiting that person, or that person might resign or whatnot. If you're looking from a manager or from a leader perspective, sometimes you can't have that, and that's just what it is.

Yeah, trust is a big topic in that sense, right. I mean, I've had team members where that's been broken over the years, and sometimes you can't walk it back, and that's a tough situation to be in as well. But you know, it's something that everyone will tackle differently, I guess, depending on the circumstances.

I think it depends, it depends on the situation. It always comes down to the situation. If it's something major, then there's probably not a lot of chance, or it's going to take years for that trust to be rebuilt. If it's something minor, it could just be a conversation, and it may not actually be a trust issue in the end, it may be that someone didn't understand the context of why someone made a certain decision. So having a little bit of a discussion around that context, then someone could see the other side of that.

So yeah, and it's interesting, fuzzy, one of the things that I've learned over the years is, always try to get a balanced perspective. If you're hearing something, get both sides of the story before you actually action or make a decision. And I'll give you an example. There's been years where I've had a partner email me saying, hey, I haven't heard from this person, they've done a crappy job or whatever, and initially when I'd get those I'd knee-jerk and go, rip the records, what's going on? But then I learned, after doing it, he goes, can I just walk you through my communication? Like, oh yeah, actually you're more in the right here. I know the customer's always right, but you're in the right. And then I'm able to see the two sides to the story. So that's something which I've learned myself to always try to do.

Firing Customers and Putting Staff First

I'll call that out for a second. If you're 100% right, but I don't necessarily agree with the old mantra, that was in my mind 20, 30 year old thinking, that the customer is always right. I think there's, look, I've told a customer before that they're wrong, or that we're not going to accept that, or we're not going to do whatever. Sometimes you've got to have that frank conversation as well. And well, yes, the customer is critical and key, but I think your staff are more important.

I agree. Yeah, I agree. And it's incredibly empowering for your team for you to fire a customer as well. They gain a bit of loyalty, yes, your other customers or clients will benefit from it as well, because you're not focusing all your attention on dealing with those.

Spotify is the, they tend to come up. You can always talk about that with new customers as well, that sets the expectation that, yeah, you've got to be a right fit, otherwise you're not going to just leave it, let it hang and let it happen, you've just got to do something about it.

Yeah, I had someone ask me the other day, what's your target market? And in EOS you need to define your marketing strategy, but we also have a few other things that go in there. And I said, look, these are some of the verticals we typically work with, but the way that we determine if someone's a good fit is, do they fit these types of personality traits and values, and can we work well with them? Because we know there's certain clients that if they're aligned to our values, we'll do great things together and we'll achieve some great outcomes, but if they're not, it's going to be a challenge from day one. So that's definitely our approach when it comes to new clients as well.

I was actually having a conversation with an MSP this morning, and they were effectively bitching and moaning about a customer, but they've had this customer for years and years and years, I'd say going on 10 years. And they'd finally gotten to the point that they were ready to call it, you know, and because they'd seen what it had done to their team members. I think it was along the lines of, you know, I saw an SMS, and that was it, you know. They were dealing with it, the staff were dealing with it, and even though it wasn't their problem, it took time. It's scary to have to do that, just like letting go a staff member, right. It's scary when you've got revenue and you've got all those extra bits that you're looking at, that whole extra layer of complexity.

Enhancing Team Communication, Remote and In-Office

All of this, though, trust, you know, all these sort of bits and pieces, come down to communication. And I think that communication is a fundamental principle of ensuring that your team is performing successfully. So how do we enhance team communication, particularly for those of us, I know that not all MSPs work remotely, so I'd like to tackle this from two sides of the fence, working from the office but also remotely. How do we tackle team collaboration and communication? All right, sorry, James, you mentioned earlier that your team is starting to work more and more remotely. How do you drive good communication while still ensuring that they're meeting their outcomes and all these other bits and pieces, that they're happy at work, that they're meeting their KPIs etc.?

Yeah, I mean it's a really good question. I don't have a silver-bullet answer, because we're continually trial and error. But I've learned, joining Pax8, working with some other senior experienced leaders how they do things, and I'm happy to share them. One of the things we've transitioned to, we haven't gone through EOS, but we've started implementing L10 meetings in our leadership meeting each week. So we have our leaders for the region, and then what we also have got, we've got multiple other teams, and each of those teams have then got their own kind of management meetings as well. So we're using the L10 structure for our own leadership, and so we have a weekly leadership meeting. We then have a bi-weekly get-together for the entire organization, and then we also do one for the wider team every couple of weeks as well. So again, it's not perfect, and we're trying to work towards communication and actually keeping everyone abreast. My team is entirely remote, like everyone that works in it. So we have struggled with a little bit of disengagement at times. But one of the things which I picked up from Tyra, who's joined the business running the sales side, is he runs a weekly meeting for the entire team, not just a sales order, but for all of the different areas, and then every department has got an opportunity to just give an update on anything critical for them for the week. And that's actually a really interesting way of hearing what all the other departments are doing, and that helps with the remote-based workers as well.

So meetings, you know, on the topic of meetings, I'm not a big fan of meetings, and I often find, particularly with COVID and the way meetings are set up, people put an hour of your time in your calendar, and they feel they've got to take it all. So I've actually said to my team, be ruthless with meetings, and don't show up to them if you don't need to, like reject them, and if you need to leave early, leave early. And I'd respond to some people that put an hour in saying, just make this half an hour, as well, because it just does get a bit overwhelming. But yeah, that's how we're doing it. I wouldn't say it's perfect, but structure with L10, regular levels of communication of leadership and management, and then the wider team as well.

Jordan, are you guys back in the office 100%, or what's your setup?

Yeah, we are, we're all back in the office as quickly as we could be. We still have people that work remote. In here in Northgate some people will work a couple of days from home and that works well for them, but predominantly my staff are in the office in Northgate. In regional Vic we have the staff working remotely all the time, because they're in different parts of regional Victoria, and then we've got staff in Queensland that are remote, and then over in Manila as well, and that's a hybrid setup in Manila as well. So it is a challenge to have a dispersed team, because even if people are in the office, they're not in the same office, so that can be a challenge.

In terms of driving that team communication, from my perspective it's really, I need to be vulnerable and open, and allowing staff feeling comfortable they can call things out to me around things that I could do differently, and then understand that the same will come back, and enabling them to become more vulnerable really helps. Ensuring that there's a sense of community within the team, that everyone's opinions matter, and ensuring they're participating in the weekly L10, not just sitting there and listening in, so everyone has a voice and everyone has the ability to contribute to what we do as a company. Making sure that we're sharing everything we're doing. I like James, Bergs' suggestion of a weekly call, getting everyone to jump on, I think that can help definitely as well. And really promoting fun is the other thing, so if we can get more people together that can help. One of the things that we did through COVID, and a lot of teams probably did this, was we had the digital room that we created on Teams or Slack called the Hokey Pokey room, which people could jump in or jump out whenever they wanted and just connect. And even still now you see people doing that, they might be working from home and they'll jump in. We actually named our podcast after that, so share on Spotify, jump onto the Hokey Pokey room. But yes, it's really, you know, being vulnerable, ensuring that everyone has the ability to know that they can talk about different challenges and different issues, and then bring it back to what's the common objective and goal that we're looking to achieve, and making sure we're on that same path. It's challenging, I guess, when you've got teams that are remote.

I missed the water cooler talk, and just how much value, before COVID I don't think I gave it as much value as what I really should have, like that just casual catching up. We've actually started, and this was one of our HR team initiatives, we do a Friday fun day. Not as good as the Hokey Pokey room, and clearly we need to up our naming convention, but I mean, we are called Hosted Network, we're pretty generic in that sense, right. But the Friday fun room is just half an hour, and we come up with, sometimes it's super casual, other times it's a bit more, we play games, but it's half an hour on a Friday and everyone's welcome. And we've found that to just let people break down barriers. It's not compulsory, people can, you know, but it is hard. I saw Daniel mention sort of like Friday pizzas. You know, it's hard when you don't have everyone in the office in that sense. Do you guys, there was another one of our partners, they do like Krispy Kreme donuts, I think that's actually one of their teams in Manila, whenever they go over there, they're always getting Krispy Kreme donuts and those sort of things, and that's just icing on the cake, there's a bit of a pun in there if anyone got that one.

We do, in the office, so we have, you know, we've got Chris from On-Site Massage who's been coming out here for probably four years now, and so there's a massage table in the boardroom that gets folded away, and then he comes out and the team get a massage if they want, it's up to them. So there's lots of different things that we do, and it's important, I think, Daniel asked, you know, are our pizzas enough, or should you be doing things differently? And not everyone wants or takes part in what we do, but there's something that they enjoy and like and will appreciate. And so it's understanding that different people, like someone might not want to be having too many carbs and they might not want the pizza, right. So it just depends, everyone's different, and so that can be a challenge as well. You can't always cater to everyone's needs, but if you map it out and people know what's available, that's important as well.

A little bit, is setting up a social committee and having different people from within your organization, from different departments, organize something together on a quarterly basis. And that way it's actually driven through the people and the team, as opposed to yourself. That's what we do, I mean, we're a bit bigger, but that way you get diversified opinions, and quarterly events of some sort.

Absolutely, the ownership there as well, it's a healthy relationship. And there's a comment we just had in the chat there, and I think that's one of the really important things here, it's that comfortableness to have that healthy relationship, to be able to make sure that people have each other's back and move things forward.

Final Tips: Communicate, Set Goals, Be Genuine

Guys, we've got four minutes, so I'm being tapped on the shoulder virtually to wrap things up a bit. But last tips, in terms of motivating for success, fuzzy, what's your one big tip?

Just be open, honest, communicate. When you think you've communicated, you haven't, communicate about 10 times more than what you think you need to, reinforce that in any opportunity you can. And just be real, again we talked earlier about the no-dickheads rule, just live that, don't be horrible to the team, don't be horrible to clients, just be yourself. And yeah, if it's transparency and open, keep it simple.

Yeah, I agree with all of that, fuzzy, and I'll just add, identify and have a think about some aspirational goals, and maybe include your leadership team or your team in with that as well, and share them with the team. Set some goals, set some team rewards for getting there, that incorporates all functions. And then just manage the metrics and lead your people, that's what I'll leave you with.

I love that, that was a perfect little thing you said earlier, manage your metrics and lead your people. That's it. Thanks, Jordan, any final tips of wisdom to wrap us up?

Yeah, I agree with everything that's just been said. But you know, you're not always going to get it right, but make sure you keep practicing them, and just continuously stay focused on that objective. There's, you know, I don't know if we've got time, but there's a Michael Phelps story that would be good to share at one point, around that. But just make sure everyone's on the same bus and you stay focused on where you want to go, and, as fuzzy said, be genuine and transparent, they're probably the most, you know, invaluable. I think if you do that, then you're approachable and people feel comfortable coming to you, and that fosters more trust, and that's the foundation.

Wonderful. Guys, well thank you so much, I've really enjoyed today's conversation. And you know, the recording will be sent out in the next couple of days, we also always send out an email after this. But if you are interested in checking out the previous MSPs in Conversation, and we'll quickly share my screen, check out our events page on our website, hostednetwork.com. Our next MSPs in Conversation is on August the 16th. We're going to be talking about strengthening your employer brand, so how to help attract better talent and standing out in the ever-competitive environment that we've got for talent at the moment. How do you really attract and retain great IT talent? So that one will be really interesting, so make sure you attend on the 16th of August. But until then, thanks for joining, and our panelists, thank you so much, really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks guys, see you all later.