EP233 – Don’t Let Diamonds Go:
Unlocking Future Leaders in Your MSP
with Julie Hutchison & Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts podcast. We're going to help you work out how to find your future leaders.

INTRO: Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million, and if already there, get to five and go faster at the end of the day. Isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

IAN: So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast once again, I've got you a treat today. Julie Hutchinson, our amazing, incredible, wonderful leadership coach is back in the house this afternoon. Good afternoon, Julie.

JULIE: Hello. Hello. Nice to be here.

IAN: How are we doing?

JULIE: Good. Really

IAN: Good stuff. Today we are talking about finding future leaders. Obviously spawned on from some conversations we've been having at the incredible Growth Hub and also a this isn't directly, but it's going to sound like an absolute blatant plug. We're going to be talking about a little bit about the Future Leader Program, which is a new program structure , that we're using at the Growth Hub. But I want to talk to you about what we're doing and why we're doing it to help you identify the right people in your organization. So that's what we're here today. We've all got great teams, we talk about team building an awful lot, we talk about getting the right people in place and all that sort of thing. But some of the conversations that's popped up and particularly something that you are heading up right now, Julie, is our Future Leaders Program, which is specifically to help those up and coming leaders. We're going to help you work out how to find the right ones, and maybe you might find some of the wrong ones, but just in case anybody's been living under rock and they don't know who you are, please Julie, tell the world who are you, what do you do, and who'd you help?

JULIE: So Julie Hutchson here and I'm a team performance and leadership specialist helping tech leaders to grow their businesses through building their leadership and team performance.

IAN: Fantastic. Sounded very official, very good. I indeed I did one of our clients said at one of our latest events, don't let the diamonds in your business go and this really struck a chord with you, didn't it? Put some context around, what the conversation was taking place and what was this particular MSP owner's point of kind of what he was making?

JULIE: I think this wonderful chap actually, he's growing his business in his, he's a really clear cut person and he likes to control his business quite a lot. And I think where it came about from originally was that actually we need to grow people because we need people to make good decisions in our business because although this person, they know names wonderful is really good at making decisions, his own decisions. But you can't grow like that. You can't leverage if other people don't make good decisions in your business. And what he was saying was, is that. He may have let a few people go rather than to allow them to grow in the business, you know what I think that's about is, don't let them go, grow them, because if you don't grow the diamonds in your business, the good people in your business, they're going to leave you. They're going to want to grow. They're going to want to be able to do more, have more, get more, be responsible for more. Yeah, and he was saying that in kind. He missed a trick really, he let people go because he didn't want them to grow and not because he's a bad person, but because he was, he's in control of that and actually needed to mature in his business so that he could see that. He needed to allow these people to become leaders within his business. So that, and actually, the benefit is that he's going to be able to step back. And have people make good decisions so that he doesn't, he can go on holiday, chill out, not have to keep checking his emails every five minutes. Because other people can take responsibility. And so don't let your diamonds go, whether that be through your ego of not wanting to release control dare I say or just not recognizing that these people need to, they need more than maybe what you are giving them. And maybe you're not giving them enough credit for what they can achieve. Because you're comfortable with what they are doing, let's say, rather than achieving. Does that make sense?

IAN: Yeah, it does. And you're just, I'm just going to lean back into the conversation we were just having a minute ago before we hit the record button, about thinking time and the amount of the length of time it takes to think, right? Someone said this to me back when I was in my corporate role and they said, nope, you need time to sit there and think. And I looked at this guy and I said, you are just crazy, you just need to just get on with it, get working, sitting around thinking you are having a laugh, I can't believe you're talking about thinking. And it was like, and I look back now and I just think this guy was absolutely right. We are talking about the business owner here, relinquish in some of their day-to-day working in it rather than on it sort of thing. So they can have that time. But how important is it that the senior leaders, the owners get proper strategic quality thinking time? You know that? 'cause that's a fear, isn't it? That if I go and build a leadership team, what am I going to do? And it's a worry. And if you spend more time thinking, strategically thinking then the magic really starts to happen, doesn't it?

JULIE: Yeah, absolutely. What we see a lot as businesses are growing is that the owner feels guilty if they stop and they get off the hamster wheel because they're so they're used to doing the do all the time. Yeah. So it feels almost a little bit indulgent to stop and think. But as you say, actually that stopping and thinking is allowing you to regroup. It's allowing you to look at what's good what's not good, and to, hone. What you are doing instead of just keep doing more. And we know that we don't change our behavior unless we think differently. Yeah. So we are just going to keep doing. So we do need to change our behavior and we do need to allow other people to think in the business as well, 'cause if we only ask people to do this. We are feeding them and the phrase, teach a man to fish. Yeah. If we are not doing that, we're not helping them to think about the business. And that's make good decisions in the business, that's know which direction we're going in, know how they can change things, make things better, or any of those things. If we don't ask 'em to think like that, then basically we just have to keep feeding them, do this, do this, do this. And so what we're saying is we want people to step up so that they're thinking. You can then step back and do more as you just described, thinking time. But that's a different kind of thinking, more strategic thinking. But they're coming up and saying what direction are we going in? How can I help the team to do that? I've got ideas and I can start using those ideas, but if we don't bring those people in, they're just going to be sat there.

IAN: Yeah.

JULIE: Probably bored doing what you ask them to do or tell them to do, but not necessarily developing it. And so it's so important that you start recognizing. Who can do that? Who can be somebody who can start to become, the next me in the business who can think like me or think like themselves, but think in the direction of me that what I want to go in, let's say, so that I can actually trust them to run parts or all of my business so that I can step back and just do the directional stuff. Okay. But it takes us time to get off that hamster wheel before we can even do that.

IAN: Brilliant. Now, most MSPs could probably explain their teams, like Forrest Gump did, is a bag of licorice, all sorts. You never know what you're going to get. You've got lots of different people. And, we're going to talk in a minute about, some of the selection criteria that we use for the Future Leaders Development Program to make sure you've got the right people in it. But at what stage in an MSP's size, length of business, number of people, things like, when do they need to start to think about, do you know what? I think I need a team behind me. Is there a revenue target? Is there a number of people target? In your, experience what are some of the catalysts when you go, do you know what? I'm just so busy, I need to get someone to help me with this. When do they need to start thinking about forming their SLT or their senior people?

JULIE: Yeah I'm not going to give a number of people. But what I think we should be thinking about is like when you've just got let's say you've got five people, the communication lines are short.

IAN: Yeah.

JULIE: Okay. So I think something everybody is literally probably going to hear about that within seconds of me thinking about it. Yeah. And everybody's like part of that team. Yeah. It's really easy to communicate. It's really easy to see, for people to understand where you're going and what you're doing and what their role then is, as long as you've got some roles and responsibilities. But it's easy for us to communicate the bit where we can start to see. Hold on. This isn't working is I think of it like an elastic band. Yeah. It's gone a bit baggy. You know when elastic band goes a bit baggy. Yeah. And it's like there's no, there's now I'm not getting any feedback because the elastic band's gone too baggy, because I've stretched it too far. So I've got enough people that I can't control the communication or I don't get any communication from people. They're too far away. So mistakes start happening because I'm not able to control it.

IAN: Yeah.

JULIE: You know when I was in the police, we used to say one and eight. Okay. Which is like, one sergeant, an eight, right? Or one and six.

IAN: It's span of control, isn't it? Is what people come from.

JULIE: Yeah. It's, Can I communicate? Do they know what they're doing and am I able to manage and keep that group tight. If I can't, then there's probably needs to be somebody in between that's going to be able to do that for me because as, especially as the business owner, I can't manage marketing and administration and operations and HR and all those things all by myself. If I'm trying to just manage one person that does all those things, because, that's not, I've not got a head space for that. So, I can't strategically develop my business at that point. So I need to start putting people in once I get to that, what I call that baggy elastic band, which is where it's oh, actually I'm not in control.

IAN: Love it. Absolutely love that. So we identified that there was a need for our I can have that one in eight thing running around my head now, eight. We identified that there was a need, for below our clients for some support, which is why we put together this program, which is a monthly peer group, basically for senior leaders. But we had some criteria, didn't we, because the most important thing here is, so you've gone through this journey with that Julie's just explained and you're starting to lose the control of the conversation and the communication and you need to now someone's, someone needs to either step u or I need to help somebody step up. And just because they're a great tech doesn't mean to say that they're going to be a great leader. And also, one of the things you can't do is you can't go, I like that person, come over here. Hey you, I've got you a business coach. Bang, here we go. They're going to sort you out – it doesn't work like that. So what, we've identified this need for some support, the owner looks across his glittery technical desk with LED lights and fancy signage all over the place. Where does he or she start to go? They'd make a good candidate. They wouldn't, I'm going to ask them about this. what does the beginning process of finding, that's what we're talking about today, finding your future leaders start.

JULIE: Yeah. I think every business owner I, wants a leadership team that cares as much as they do about the business, okay. So capability aside, do they have the, with the tech piece or the whatever they're, the knowledge they can learn, anybody can learn any of that stuff. Okay. But really what we want is somebody who understands our vision and cares as much as us. So they're responsible as much as us that if I turned my back or, I was laid on a beach somewhere in Morocco or something, my vision would be implemented whilst I'm not there. Yeah. And I can trust that person to do that. You've heard the phrase safe pair of hands and so that's not about doing what I tell you to do. So it's a little bit go back to what I said before. Yeah. This is about somebody taking the reins and driving, stepping up. Yeah. And stepping up. You and I both know, coach you talks about about this and I think is a brilliant brilliant thing is that if you think of people in your business like. Are they helping you drive the business, right? Or are they a bit of a front seat passenger? Are they a backseat driver where they just tell you what they don't like? But they don't actually drive anything. They just moan all the time. And your front seat passenger, somebody who's actually, I'm not driving it, but I'd like to drive it and I can help, I can maybe navigate for you or whatever it might be. Backseat one sitting there telling you, hey, you don't like it. Yeah. Or are they just in the boot as luggage and you are pulling him along.

IAN: Oh, Julie, I love your analogy. So we've now got a Sierra estate and we are now pecking it up with people, Sierra, do you know what most Senator, since you

JULIE: Have a little police analogy here, we have a senator.

IAN: Senator...

JULIE: Do you remember the

IAN: They weren't estate?

JULIE: Weren't estate. But basically, if you think about people and across. No, why would you not actually talk about it? But one, we don't even want luggage in our in our business. We also don't want backseat passenger, don't want a leader who is a backseat passenger, 'cause they're the people that, although they're technically capable, they're just bloom and moan all the time about what they don't like. Okay. They're bringing you down. They don't help the business. Okay. So they're probably not a good future leader unless you can find out why are they moaning all the time and to change that, what you want is at very least, the passenger or somebody who wants to drive.

IAN: Yeah.

JULIE: That's when you start to see that their ability is to link what you are trying to do and go, I'm going to take that. I know what that means. I think this should be like this, or I want to help you do that so that they don't need pushing, they don't need dragging. They are already trying to move you forward. They want to get in that car and have a drive. Yeah, and I think that, if you want analogies, then you might as well think about it like that, because I bet you, if you're listening to this podcast right now, make a list of your people in your business and ask yourself the difficult question of, ah, don't come back to me though, when you do this, are they driving your business or helping you drive the business. You, and you could ask this off yourself, by the way, if you're a business owner, are you driving the business? And are, is, are they helping you drive the business? Are they a front seat passenger? Are they helping to navigate whatever are they a backseat passenger and putting you out, moaning and just making it harder? Or should you be dumping them out and get rid of that package? Okay? Because I bet you if you think about that, you will know which ones are your future leaders. Yeah. Because you know that they're helping you drive the business. So they're the sort of people that get where you're trying to go, they're on board the bus with you. They want to, they want to be with you. Yeah. And they understand your vision. And they're like, oh, that's really exciting. And I feel like I want to take responsibility for that, but they can also start to see how that can happen. Now they don't have to be amazing at everything. Because that's what we need to teach and that's why we have our Future Leaders program. But what we are looking for is somebody who shows those and you should be looking for is somebody who shows those traits of giving a damn, and being like, oh yeah. And not somebody who just literally goes no, it's past my time now. Because that's just somebody who's taking. So you want somebody who's going to be a win-win in your business. Yeah.

IAN: And that's, I love that. So you want someone who's sitting in the front seat who wants to control, everything that's going on. I do have a compelling need and apologize for my childishness in this. Can we actually add a roof rack to this car? So people who are hanging on by dear life and they're just about to be sacked just because they're just really not that well. Stuart spent like many years creating all these wonderful frameworks, how we assess our clients and how they assess their businesses and their teams. And we've just wrapped it up , in an analogy of a police car. So I can't wait for him to come back from holiday and we'll share him our new framework.

JULIE: They're clinging to the bonnet at the front and you're trying to get rid of them.

IAN: Which is absolutely great. So we've now got brilliant, right? So we've got, we've now got a list of a list of people or a couple of people who are, who want to share the front of the car.

JULIE: Yeah.

IAN: Which is why we put the program together. We got to test them out to see, they might say, yes, I'm interested in this, because they might either be fearful, they're going to get sacked, or they might think, do you know what? I'm going to get a bucket load more money or, so we need, we now need to test the kind a bit. It's a bit of an acid test here, isn't there? Just to demonstrate do they have the values, the passion, the drive where they get into flow and things like that. I guess the thing we're trying to do now is we're now going to test some people and they're either going to rise to the top or they're going to bob in the middle, or they're going to, fall to the bottom sort of thing. What does that process look like in terms of priority of, skills, ethics, values, all that sort of stuff, isn't it?

JULIE: Yeah. I think, number one, they've got to understand your vision. That's one. Do they understand it and are they number right? They're with it.

Number two, as you said, their values, do they have my values? Okay, you'll notice that this is not, can they do the job yet? This is about behavioral stuff. This is about human things. Okay? Because, somebody could do the work, but could drive you absolutely insane in your business. You need to do the human stuff first. Once they've done that, then going along that, not just about the old baggage stuff, but that's about can they come in an adult way and take responsibility? So you want to be able to see they don't have to be doing it at every level, but they have to, you have to see that they've done that. Yeah. In their role, are you pushing them along in their role or are they pushing the role along? So we want to be able to see, do they take responsibility at an adult level? That it's my stuff and I'm going to get it done and I'm going to push that and maybe making change. So you want to see people that are coming up with ideas. So that would be the things that I think are the most important things. Yeah. Do they want it? Yes. Yeah. Do they want it? There is no, no point in you trying to get them to do that. Because if they don't want it they are...

IAN: This has got to be them now coming, wanting to drive. They want to have that driving lesson. Yeah,

JULIE: Exactly. Yeah. And they, so they don't have to be able. Yeah. So they might need, because the whole point about training people is that you want potential. They still need confidence, they still need tools. And that might be soft skills, it might be a bit of communication, it might be, how to deal with difficult people. It might be what does it actually really mean to be a leader? Yeah. Because maybe they've been watching you and thinking, ohh, what am I supposed to do? 'cause you are racing around like a headless chicken. So what does it mean to be a leader? And all of those things, they can learn. But we've got to make sure that they have the desire to step up and to own, own something really. And I think that's all that's really all you need in terms of to enable understanding,

IAN: So now we've found the potential future leaders. How do we actually grow them?

JULIE: It's really important that we don't expect them to be perfect straight away. But we do need them to understand where they are good old coaching, where they are and where they want to be, or where we want them to be, but also where they want to be. So we need to start by in some way saying what, how mature are they as a leader at the moment? What are the traits that they, if we had to score them out of 10, what would be the ones where they're already an eight and what are they already, for, and there's nothing wrong with needing development. That's okay. As long as we've got potential, so we use the in their Future Leaders program, we use the leadership maturity score. Yeah. Which scores them on a number of different things about their communication style, their understanding of leadership, lots of different things. And so what we're doing there is saying, look, it doesn't matter where you are, but where are you? So that we help them to recognize where they are. And that we then can look at, okay you need. To work on various things to basically get to a level that we would say, yeah that's green. If you were going for a red, amber, green, that's green for go as a leader. Okay. What that means is that you identify these good parts and not so good parts, and then you work on those pieces so that they can fill in the gaps, essentially.

IAN: Yeah,

JULIE: I think that's really important that they are okay with not being perfect because a lot of them think they need to be perfect. And that, that's about confidence really.

IAN: Now, with the you've identified a leader. Do you have to have a role for that person, like finite, agreed, while these person's going through the training, what does a, what comes first? The role of the person, because that's, if you develop a person and they become. Great, but you haven't got a role for them, then okay. That could be a bit of an awkward conversation or you could develop someone and then not make it, and then you're going to have to step them back down to what they were doing before. What, have you seen work in the past where, there's a potential role in a year or 12, six months time or something like that? What's, what does, what's your view on that?

JULIE: I think if you don't develop people that we said this at the very start, they're going to leave if they haven't done

IAN: Right.

JULIE: Okay. So sometimes you have to do things a little bit before maybe you are ready or sometimes you have a need and they have to do it before they're ready slightly, and so there, there's both ways to look at it. But I think that, and we have some people on our future leaders program that the very first thing they said was, but I don't have a team. That's why you're calling you a future leader as opposed to a leader program, let's say. But, the thing is to be a leader, you don't need a direct report.

IAN: Yeah.

JULIE: Okay. Because what we are looking for is a behavioral trait. We're looking for a behavioral a set of behaviors that wherever you are, whatever role you were doing in any business, someone would look at you and say, they're a driver. Yeah. Going back to our analogy. Yeah. So what we are doing is training behaviors and outlook. Understanding, and so I believe that if you've got somebody in your business that you think, I'm going to need them to do that, or I'd like them to be ready to do or have a role, but they're not ready yet, but I can see that potential, then even if they don't have anybody to manage, let's say they can grow as a leader, because that's about how you show up. That's about for every single person that you speak to, how are you, being experienced, let's say, and so if I think if I experience you as a leader, then you're a leader. Yeah. If make me feel like I want to get on board with this, whether I be a client or a supplier or Bob sitting next to me type thing. If I feel more inspired, more clear and more capable because of the way you've sat next to me and said something, anything, then you are a leader. Okay, so again, we can add in, oh, here's your direct reports and do some one-to-ones, and all of those things to come of the technical skills of being a manager, let's say. But as a leader, I think once you've got the behavioral traits, you can do it.

IAN: And I guess that when you've, once you've identified that you've got a leader that's worth investing in and you whatever training it is that you are going through with them to support them. You can, if they may not be an exact fit, absolute role, that's a cookie cut to put them in right now. You can, start off by maybe seconding them into a position or giving them a person to report to for projects. Yeah. Project type of work or a particular account or things like that where those skills are all transferable around. Helping you not have to do the thinking and, being the driver, isn't it?

JULIE: Yeah, absolutely. Is there anywhere in your business that you, because you're the driver, if you're the owner of a business a growing smaller business into a bigger business, there are many things that you are driving, many projects, many. Departments, if you want to call them that many areas of your business that you're driving. Yeah. It doesn't have to be a department because you haven't got a department yet. But if you've got a project or a problem or even a client, that needs managing or, needs something to happen that needs a driver, then. There's opportunity Yeah. For future leaders and you were asking earlier on about testing, how do we do that? You can test that ability to drive or be part of a part of something by giving them projects or by giving them a specific thing to do an area or even a secondment. Yeah. By testing that out and seeing what happens. Love that. So I don't think that you have to, they have to have a position. You have to grow people sometimes before you've got. Everything in place.

IAN: Fantastic. Absolutely. Brilliant, Julie. Golden nuggets all over the place and a really simple kind of structure for helping us find those future leaders. What's your summary takeaways for everyone to get out of the car, they're listening to the poll and get into the bus to help them find their future leaders.

JULIE: I think they need a chauffeur. That's what they need because they want sit back a chauffeur.

IAN: They want to sit or chauffer, sit chauffeur back,

JULIE: they really? With a glass of champagne while everybody else does all the work. That's what you really want.

IAN: I'm learning new things about you every day.

JULIE: Anyway, my top three things are, look, start looking at your business and you in your business and identifying, os this the right time by, we talked about this baggy elastic band of communication is it starting to get awkward? Are things being missed? Can I control? Yeah. So number one, identify, is this the right time? Number two, start looking for those people who can drive in your business. And you might even need to have conversations about, some people will be like, oh I would like to be that. And it's actually your backseat passenger, we need to see some behavioral change. So you can start to identify, maybe grow people to be ready or even tell them that you're looking for drivers in the business. So that's next step. And then after that, is making sure that the people you pick are definitely able to step up. Yeah, but they don't need those, they don't need everything, but they need to be able to be a driver.

IAN: Brilliant stuff. Yeah. Thank you Julie.

JULIE: Sorry, support them...

IAN: No that was great. Really enjoyed that show. That was a really good structure and absolute key for helping you find those future leaders. So well done on bringing the program to life and I'm sure we're going to hear more about our candidates as they grow and develop. Yeah, over the next weeks and months ahead. Good stuff. Well done. Thanks again. Look forward to catch up with you on the next one.

JULIE: Thanks everyone.

IAN: See you later. Bye now.

OUTRO: Oh, but one last thing just before you shoot off. And if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you are already there, accelerate to five, then we want to invite you to come and take the MSP Mastery quiz. And in just three minutes, you're going to get a 360 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engage in, align your people and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review on Spotify or iTunes, or your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now, you can go and enjoy the rest of your day, and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the.