Game-changing MSPs stand out from the crowd. These are the ones who attract top talent (and keep them!), have incredibly satisfied customers, and see their revenue grow. Such businesses build this success on a solid foundation of a game-changing culture. As the founder and owner of an MSP for almost 20 years now with more than 500 employees across three continents, I have strong opinions about culture that I want to share with you.
Culture is a feeling – I truly believe that – and if yours offers a really good feeling, then that’s a huge reason why your team members will want to come to work on Monday mornings. It’s the way we behave around the office and each other, supported by rewards and consequences that are transparent and fairly distributed. My feelings about culture are so strong that my company developed a new employee/client engagement platform, Team GPS, that is based on the many lessons we’ve learned over the past 20 years and will help MSPs build a strong internal culture.
Here are five ways for you to create a game-changing culture.
- Clarity of roles and goals – Strong leaders create companies that are purpose-driven and know why they exist. They’re performance-focused and know what they want to achieve. This vision must be clearly communicated to your team members so that they understand how their roles are critical to the success of achieving your organization’s goals.
- Welcome dialogue – You must provide a sense of inclusion, belonging, high engagement, and emotional safety so that your employees feel empowered to get help and to ask questions while also being held accountable for their work. They will appreciate this and share this with their social circles, drawing more talent to your business for you to hire.
- Instill Trust – By authentically soliciting feedback from your team members, you can build trust. One MSP owner I spoke to recently meets one-on-one with all of his employees on a regular basis, face-to-face. For remote workers, it’s mandatory that they meet online via video so that he can see their reactions. You should seriously consider this practice. And it’s not to talk shop. You share beliefs, articulated values, family issues, etc. You truly get to know that person as you would do with someone in your immediate family because your employees are an extension of that family.
- Winners Only – I tell my team that there are no losers in our community. You’re either learning or winning. No one should fear making a mistake – especially when they explain to you their motivation for their actions. There might’ve been good intent behind it. It just didn’t work out as expected. How many times have you made what you thought was the correct decision, only to find out later that it was incorrect?
- Demand Collaboration – Don’t tolerate petty “siloed” behavior; instead you must call for cross-boundary, know-how exchange as this cultivates a positive climate of mutual reliance. This will instill greater teamwork and is hugely critical to hybrid work environments. Your team members will bond better while collaborating, become familiar with each other’s work habits and styles, and grow as a team. My business is comprised of teams across three different continents, so I incorporated The Collaborative Way system to help improve our collaboration.
Implement these five best practices and you’ll begin to witness a game-changing culture in your business. It won’t happen overnight. But what will happen quickly is your team will see the degree of your effort to create a healthy, productive, and successful environment for them. They will appreciate it and contribute themselves to this very welcomed culture, knowing that senior leaders want what is best for them.
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