EP287 - Get Your Time Back Part 2 - Stop Being the Default Decision-Maker in your MSP with Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of The IT Experts Podcast, we are at part two of Get Your Time Back. We're going to help you stop being the default decision-maker in your MSP.

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 back. Hope you had a great week. Hope you had a productive week after last week's show. If you've been living under a rock or away or wasn't listening to the episode, then last week we covered off part one of Get Your Time Back. And it was called Don't Confuse Activity With Achievement.

I gave you some great tips and tricks on how to start this journey to become more productive to help you to get more time back in your MSP. And today we're going to be talking to you, we're going to share with you actually one of the the GROW model that we use in the MSP Growth Hub to help you stop becoming that default decision-maker in your MSP.

All the time we hear this. Oh, I'm fed up of hearing about how people are busy and how people are overwhelmed. And then when you just start answering and you kind of like peel off a few of the little questions that we ask, before you know it, their team are just not helping them out. It all mainly starts with their team.

You know, if everybody's asking you everything in your MSP, this is a leadership pattern. It's not a busyness pattern. It's not a, you know, it's a, "We've got too much work on it." It's quite clearly a leadership pattern. And what's happened is you've slipped into parent-child dynamic. And for those who are parents, I've spoken about this before on the podcast. For those who are parents your kids become who you are, right? If you talk a certain way, you dress a certain way, guess what happens? They follow the shadow of the leader. And this is exactly the same as what happens in business. If you're not careful, you'll be going around and behaving and acting in a certain way. People will start mimicking and copying you because that's how they think that they should be behaving in business. And if you're busy because you're taking on everybody's, you know, work and you'll be in that bottleneck, you're then going to end up with 5, 10, 15, 20 busy people doing exactly the same thing until someone steps in and reminds you that what we need to be doing is we need to be at an adult-to-adult relationship. And this is the leadership goal, okay? So we spoke about it last week. You know, there's lots of things around why people are dependent on you and why you're that still bottleneck. People generally will say, "I can't do that," before they even try it. And one of the reasons why people don't like to try is because they're kind of afraid of failure. They're afraid they're going to get told off. They're afraid that if, you know, they do something wrong, a client's going to leave, they're going to look silly. You know, particularly if you're talking about S&C DISC scale technicians they don't want to look silly. They want to stay in a comfort zone. They don't want to be, dragged in front of other people to do something. So it's easy just to say, "I can't do it." And if you're one of those people who says, "Okay, I'll do it," before you know it, you know, it kind of goes back to that same problem again. You know the problems get escalated, but no one's actually stepping up.

We've got this great slide in some of the slide decks we use at the Growth Hub, and it's of about six or seven horses, and they're eating hay off the floor, and they've all got their heads in. No one's sitting to look up and see what's going on around. Their heads are down. They're all in like in a circle. If you could imagine a circle of all these big brown horses, their heads are all down, and, "No, no, it's nothing to do with me, gov. I'm not looking this way. I'm not looking that way. No, no, no, that doesn't," kind of like happen. So, you know, the problems are escalating, but no one's coming up with any solutions. That's probably because you haven't asked them if anybody got any solutions or allowed them, given them permission to make any solutions or anything like that. And then that drives with, you know, that leads to low initiative where people just, it's kind of like dumb them down. I'm sure you've all seen the YouTube video of I think it was either frogs or fleas that they put in this jam jar and they you know, a flea can jump very high. I'm not going to try and joke about the how high you used to think it was when you was at school because I was shorter then. Not much, but then. And these fleas were in this jam jar and they put the lid on it. They kept banging their heads on the top and bottom of this lid thinking, "Crikey, this isn't a good idea." After a certain amount of time, they took the lid off. Guess what? They didn't jump any further because they didn't know. So you're training people, if you're not careful, to have a lower level of initiative, to have a low level of not offering some solutions and offering some, "Yeah, hey, look, we should be doing this and we should be doing that." That's why I always insist that when you're setting people's targets, there should always be one in there about creating initiatives. What initiatives have you identified in the business that can help us to scale it and grow? Give everybody that objective. Only once a quarter don't want everyone coming up with loads of stuff all the time, because if they can't think of anything, then it gets repetitive so they can't think of anything, and then it all dwindles away. So just do it, just do it once a quarter. You're still acting as the decision maker rather than, you know, and quality controller rather than someone who's leading the business. And they'll see you as that, and so therefore they'll give you a question and they'll expect you to answer it, the cost of staying as that rescuer is it's going to cost you, money as well as time, as well as not necessarily the time that you could be doing something during that day, but while you're not thinking about, you know, strategically growing the business and strategically putting a plan together, guess what's actually going to happen kind of like moving forward? You're going to slow the business down, right? Because you will remain that bottleneck whether you like it or not.

You know the confidence of the team will never grow because they're like the fleas in the pot, right? They're never going to go up, and they're just going to continue to do what they do. Always do what you've always done, you always get what you all, I think I've mentioned that phrase the on the last five podcasts that I've recorded. It's just such a great phrase to just remind everybody of really. So the performance of the business then ends up falling on your shoulders, and that's the whole performance of the business, not just the marketing or the technical or the projects or the finances. Everything does because you're the one who's kind of controlling everything.

Growth starts to stall if actually doing anything positive at all. And while you're, you know, you're rescuing, you know, you're not coaching. So as soon as you stop rescuing people you're going to start coaching. You're going to start developing the team. You're going to start developing people aligning them up with the vision, the mission, the values, the culture, what the business needs to do, and you'll shift people from this can't do to a can do attitude. And when they know that they can do... It's all about confidence, right? The strap line of the MSP Growth Hub is scaling with confidence. It has been since day one, and it will be, you know, forever. It's all about helping you. Oh, can I do that? Have I got the confidence to do that? And that's like so, so important. So you move from can't do to can do, and you'll also move from won't do to will do, and that's another key phrase there. And then finally, you'll get them from don't care to want to care. So there's a real line here. There's a real process here that we kind of covered off a little bit in the last show, but this one is all about, how do you stop being that decision maker? So how do we do just that?

STUART INTERRUPT : Hey, just a quick one from me for everybody that's listening. Stuart here. If you're serious about growing your MSP, but you're not sure what help's right for you, then just grab our Ultimate MSP Growth Guide. It's a really simple way to check out what's out there for support that could really help you work. There's no fluff, there's no filler, just facts, or alternatively, if you want to meet us face to face and see how we do things up close, come along to one of our events. They're regularly put on. They're all in the links below. Go check them out. And now it's back to the show.

IAN: Thanks, Stuart.

Number one, we stop answering immediately, okay? We need to start to coach people rather than rescuing them, okay? So when someone asks you to do something, you don't need to just quickly go "yep, yep, straight away." If you're with a client meeting, they're going to wait until the end, okay? So you can say to them, "Hey, look, I'm really busy at the moment," whether you are or not, so you could just use this as a test. "Hey, Jack, Steve, Janet," whoever it might be, "I'm really busy at the moment. Can you come back to me in half an hour? Just got to finish this off and let me know what it is that you want about." "Yeah, no problem." Talk and then they'll come back. But have a little think in the meantime about what it is you want me to help you with and what your suggestions are. As you go through time, you'll start to believe and they'll start to think that, they'll build their confidence. You'll build your confidence in pushing back, right? If you weren't in the business, they probably wouldn't even ring you. They'd just deal with it themselves. And they will be getting more in the routine of actually, having a bit of self-ownership and a bit of self-accountability which is really important.

So then I want to do is I want you to use the GROW model. So, first part of GROW is what's the goal? What's the G? What's the goal? What is it we're trying to achieve here? So whether someone's come to you with a conversation or a a problem, or a project, or whatever it might be, what's the goal? What is the outcome? What's a great result for us, and what would be a high-performing result for us at you know, after we've finished here?

Secondly, the R is reality. As Stuart would say to me, "What's the data telling us? What's been done before? What have people done before? Not necessarily in the business, but what's other people in the industry done before? Did it work? Did it not work? Would it work in this business?"

"Yes, it would. No, it wouldn't. Why wouldn't it work? Have we done it before in this business? What worked? What didn't work?"

And you'll hear, "Yeah, we tried that. Didn't work for, yeah, did that, didn't work for, yeah, that's a load of rubbish, no."

The way that you did it before, whatever the reality was, might have been different to where you are now. You might have a different team. You might have a different business environment. Things before, during, and after the pandemic for MSPs are very different places, and it's like just always looking back at history and then looking at what tools have we got now? You know, particularly automation and AI. What tools have you got that could make it easier, make it more profitable, make it quicker, make it so we deliver a better result, we get a better result for our clients? So have a look at the reality, the R in the GROW model, and see what kind of comes out of that.

O- options. What options do we have? And don't just sit there and go, "I don't know really we could do this, or we could do that." You know, do some possibility thinking. I did this once many years ago with a group. I was giving back a bit of time to a local charity with some people who were unemployed who were trying to get some jobs, and they were all a bit down in their luck, and they were kind of there because they didn't really want to , they did want to be there, but they didn't have much self-worth because it was like the world had just chucked them on this scrap heap. And I've gone in there and said, "Right, come on then, what is it you used to do?" "Oh, I used to work as a chef." "Ah, great." So I got this whiteboard out, and we got chef in the middle, and then on the outside doing a bit of possibility thinking, and it was all around where's all the little bubbles and all the little things you could connect to, back to.

Say, "You're a chef, right? Brilliant. So what could you do? You could teach people how to cook. You could come up with a recipe book. You could come up with a, you know, a video course. You could come up with this..." You know, all of these things. So brainstorm with everybody. Get the options, brainstorm, do it on a chart, get people excited. No such thing as a stupid answer. Just let's just put it all out there, and let's just really have some opportunity thinking around how do we actually solve this problem? How do we actually make this project go a little bit further, faster? But get those options down really clear, and some of the most craziest options that you'll ever imagine will probably be the ones that would actually work because- When everyone says that they can't, I always sort of think, well, okay, well let's what if we did do it?

What if that did work? What if we did make a little dent in that and that did work, and we changed that process a little bit and used some different tools and some different people and different methodology? Then you get a real buzz when that kind of like works forwards.

And then W in grow is what's the way forwards? So we know what it is. We know what the reality is, what's been done before. We've got our options, and then what's the way forwards? What are we doing? What are we moving on from here? Accountability is absolutely critical, as like with ownership. So if it's a project, digest it up and give the owners, you know, let people take the ownership. And be really careful here. There's a difference between management and leadership, okay? If you're telling people what to do, and you're telling them the KPIs and telling them h- how they need to do it, when it goes wrong, guess whose fault it's going to be? It's going to be yours.

So what we want to do is we want to make sure that somebody owns. So are you okay to take ownership for that because it's within your remit? Yeah, no problem. Right. What does success look like? What does going above look like? What does failure look like? What does the definition of done look like? You know, when you say that's finished, you're going to bring it to me, whatever it might be, and I'm going to be delighted because we're going to have a really clear expectation exchange on what it is, and guess what? It's going to be amazing.

So then all of a sudden, you've got four or five people, for example, they've all gone off into the sunset. They know what they're trying to achieve. They know how they've achieved it before. They know what the options are. They know what the way forward is, and then you're just going to come back in and have a little check-in and make sure that everything's all in place. So Ask better questions instead of giving people the answers. You know, ask people, "What would you do about this? What have we done before? How can we make this work? How can we really build that engagement?"

Let the silence do the work. There is nothing more powerful than silence when you're working with a team, when you're coaching with people, and particularly if they say, "Oh, that's a really good question," because if they, if anyone ever says, "That's a really good question," it means it stumped me a bit and I need to pad a bit of time while I think of the answer, because I really want to give you a great answer. But let the silence do the work. Say, "Okay, come on. What ideas and what answers have we got to, and what solutions have we got to this problem?" Build the ownership and not the dependency. Make sure if you've got the dependency, you know, you think about dependency, what's the biggest dependency in a line of dominoes?

It's the first domino, right? If he goes over, the whole lot's going. So make sure that you aren't building leadership by dominoes. There's another podcast. Just thought of that one. That'd be a good one for the future. You know, be the leader in your MSP that it needs, and not the firefighter that it leans on. And that's kind of the end of the show. It's a little bit shorter than normal, but it doesn't need to be any longer than that because this is the key areas. This is the second show on you know, getting your time back. Please take these tips and tricks, put them into your business. They absolutely work. They work with consistency. They work, you'll have a bit of fun doing it as well. And you can thank me later because you will see exactly how much better, more efficiently your business will run.

So I'm going to let you crack on. Go and build that business that works for you and not you for it. Take these tips, share them with your team, have a chat about them. If you need a hand with any of this stuff, get hold of myself and Stuart. We can sure to help you out. If not, enjoy the rest of your day. You crack on, and we look forward to catching up with you on the next show. You take care. See you soon.

NEXT WEEK TEASER: In next week's IT Expert Show, you're going to absolutely love this one. Well, you might do, you might not. It's about governance, but it's more important, it's around why poor governance could absolutely kill any valuation you're even thinking of in your MSP. We've got Ken Ralston back in the house again, and he gives us a real blow-by-blow what good governance looks like, what non-existent governance looks like, and how MSPs are putting themselves at risk and the things, everything in between. Don't want to miss this show. Tune in, listen and find out how build a good governance process in your business to help protect it and build that value.

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're 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 degree scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time, engage and 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 best now.