Freedom & Growth with MSP Procedures

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In this article, learn how MSP procedures and delegation drive business growth, freeing you from the superhero syndrome.

Bryce Whitty from Technibble here and in this article I’m going to share how and when I create our processes in my business.

When delegating tasks in your MSP, it’s always an internal battle not to do something yourself. We have superhero syndrome and feel no one can do it better. But that doesn’t grow your business because you are tied up in all the small tasks.

Procedures grow businesses, and the value of creating procedures is that you no longer have to do it yourself.

This is how I generally make processes and procedures in my own business:

I don’t make a procedure for one-off tasks since we’ll probably never do it again, and I don’t want to waste my time building out something that I’ll never revisit.

But I will create a procedure if I need to do something multiple times.

I usually do the task the first time myself if I want it done a certain way, and I document how I did it along the way.

I usually tell my staff to “look it up” if I don’t want it done a particular way, and an error would not be crippling. There is a world of Youtube video tutorials and vendor support documents, and I don’t need to spend the time to recreate that.

Sometimes there are tasks that my staff know how to do, but errors sneak in. So we built a system for it. It could be a process, a checklist, or something to prevent that issue from happening again.

I allow my staff to edit those procedures because sometimes we figure out it needs improvement. Sometimes the initial process could have been better, or new software and services enable us to do it better. We’re always finding new ways to do things or optimising existing systems, so give them the ability to update the documents to match.

Sometimes, a procedure is difficult to document in text, so consider recording a video instead.

Understand that it’ll take you much longer to create a procedure for a task than actually, but it may save you from doing it the following thousand times. So, in the end, it’s worth it.

Remember that established internal processes and procedures make MSPs sellable when the time comes. They fetch a higher price when the new owner knows the business can continue its success without you.

So when a task can be done without you, create a procedure.

When your staff are still asking you questions even though there is a procedure, update that procedure to include the answers to those questions so they don’t need to be asked again.

If something goes wrong, add to the procedure to stop that from happening again.

Eventually, your processes and procedures will be well-rounded and robust, and any new employee can hit the ground running. Less reliance on you will free you up for higher-end tasks or more free time.