As a TruMethods member, it is likely your Member Success Advisor has asked you and your team ‘how do you think the technology success process will improve personnel and company culture?’ Often this question stumps new members, as it is something that they have never considered. After all, having great company culture is typically thought of as a ‘millennial’ thing, and so many companies, even MSPs, are a little more ‘old school’. But company culture and Technology Success are inextricably woven together, and a healthy culture can really take a good company to greatness.
How can the technology success process impact culture? For one thing, the TruMethods version of Technology Success involves having strict edges on roles. While one person may be wearing multiple hats, discipline is kept between those activities and everyone knows where their boundaries are and what they specifically need to do. This leads to fewer people stepping on toes and everyone being more comfortable in their position.
Secondly, Technology Success encourages mastery in one’s position. When everyone is equipped with the knowledge and expertise to do their job efficiently and effectively, it makes it so much easier to have not only a less stressful day at work, but a better work/life balance. When someone is an expert in their field, it takes them much less time to fix problems. Since a lot of our day is spent fighting fires, we’d really get a lot of time back if those fires took less time to put out.
How can culture impact technology success? If the entire team is not on board with the TruMethods way, this can definitely cause the program to be less successful or even fail entirely. Technology Success cannot be achieved by one person alone; in a perfect world there would be at least one full person in each role, to create more of those sharp edges. If management is not on board, it makes it even more difficult because then TruMethods is not part of the direction in which your MSP is going. It’s like if there are 4 people in a canoe and two people are rowing in one direction and two people are rowing in the other direction, the boat is never going to get anywhere.
Additionally, from a more holistic perspective, if an employee is not fitting in with the rest of the team, it is going to cause tension. This impacts all aspects of the business, including the Technology Success process. If the team is more worried about dealing with a human resources problem than providing excellent and proactive services to their clients, it can really derail the entire endeavor. We would like to think that we can just put all of our feelings aside and work with others and sort of forget we’re humans while we’re on the clock, but it simply isn’t true. All members of the team should be able to gel together enough to be able to work cohesively.
Well, what do we do if company culture isn’t quite at the top of our list right now? Before gathering the team together, it would be good for management to consider your Core Values and Company Purpose. These are the driving factors of your business, the big things you want to put out there with your company, and the things you stand for as professionals and business people. It can also guide employees to do the right thing in the context of your Company Way when management isn’t available to answer questions. For example, one of TruMethods Core Values is to ‘Be Awesome’. This sounds like a vague statement at first, but it’s so much deeper than that. Being Awesome to us means that we do our best every day, we strive to go the extra mile, we do the best thing for our clients even when it isn’t the easiest path to take. Our President, Gary Pica is very careful about the people he hires because this intrinsic motivation and how it fits in with TruMethods’ company culture is too important to mess up.
Another thing to do is to try and be patient when guiding employees on their newly-defined culture path. Sometimes the ‘reset’ button is going to need to be pushed; everyone takes a breath, redefines what they need to do, and centers themselves to move forward. People not only tend to balk a little at newness, but they also tend to be recidivists and go back to the way they did things before. It’s going to take a little bit of time and practice for things to really sink in and become a habit.
Implementing Technology Success has a huge impact on company culture. People love seeing their work rewarded and having a more predictable and less hectic day, and that is what Technology Success can do. Tech Success can also provide the structure to have the time for people to truly succeed, like expert-level training in their role and time for continuing education. In turn, having a healthy company culture is a foundational building block of any company to make sure all team members can work together cohesively. While this may seem like a more modern concept, dealing with who we are as human beings can only further our knowledge on how to work together and make our MSPs the best versions of themselves.
