Decisions by MSP Leaders: Balancing Input and Action

I recently reviewed the results of the Schnizzfest 2023 Event Surveys with my team. (Thankfully, our members rated the event highly across the board.) However at some point, my team asked me what I looked for when reviewing feedback. I told them my goal wasn’t to have the highest ratings, which surprised them and may surprise you as well.

Our members needed to hear some of the sessions at Schnizzfest, even though they might have liked other session topics better. It’s more important to me that we deliver the content they need, not just the content they like the most.

Something else I considered: No matter how hard you try, you can’t please everyone. A session that is the best for someone, for another that might not be the case. No one is going to like everything you do.

There’s a lesson that I have learned in running several successful businesses and it relates to both customer and employee feedback. The customer is sometimes wrong. In our business, as you know, the customer is often wrong — and, unfortunately, we’re the ones who must tell them. They want our results their way. It’s not that we don’t want feedback (of course, we do), but we don’t take feedback or criticism at face value.

I don’t love customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores when business leaders tie too much weight to them. You must consider two things. Knowing what people like and dislike is essential, but you must correlate it with what’s important to them. Sometimes a customer or employee may hate something, but it’s unimportant. Other things they may mildly dislike, but it’s super important.

We want feedback from employees, but business leaders need to make decisions eventually. For instance, when selling myITprocess to MSP owners, they would agree that they needed alignment and a vCIO process and that myITprocess would help. But then they would get their techs involved and have them vote on it. An objection I would usually overcome by responding with, “That’s great! Did your techs ever run high-performing MSPs?”

Listen, feedback is good, but leaders need to make decisions. Be sure to remember that leaders have a different perspective than any one employee or any one customer.

TOPICS: leadershipMSP advice
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