Setting Expectations With Your MSP Clients & Team
Can Your MSP Scale Beyond You? Avoiding the Process Trap with Connor Fagan from Renada
Most MSP owners get stuck at the same ceiling: they are the smartest person in the room, and their "processes" only exist in their heads. When they finally try to document everything, they often create a bureaucratic monster that kills creativity and slows down service delivery.
In this episode of How to MSP, Andrew Moore and Connor Fagan (Renada) break down the high-level operational strategy required to move from a "hero-based" business to a repeatable machine. We discuss the "Ambiguity Trap," the dangers of over-engineering tools like Halo PSA, and why your senior engineers might actually be the biggest bottleneck in your helpdesk.
What You Will Learn in This Episode
00:00 – Simplicity and the Renada mission.
01:49 – Meeting in "The Dungeon": Connor’s remote office.
03:18 – From Curries to CTO: Connor’s journey.
06:33 – Partnering with companies, not products.
09:21 – Why Halo isn't for everyone.
18:28 – Trust is earned through budget and transparency.
22:41 – Navigating the Ambiguity Trap.
27:16 – When process kills ownership and creativity.
32:30 – The Escape Room exercise: Seniors vs. Apprentices.
43:46 – Why AI is often just a "party trick".
53:19 – Teaching your team what "good" looks like.
56:56 – The power of letting go and saying "no".
1:02:28 – The "Keep It Simple Stupid" philosophy.
1:10:21 – Navigating ADHD and learning via YouTube.
1:12:49 – Worst sales calls and the "Bellend" explanation.
1:22:11 – Recommendations: Why you don't know what you don't know.
Resources Mentioned
Guest: Connor Faga
Company: Renada
Music: Enter Shikari
Tech: HaloPSA , CIPP and NinjaOne RMM
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Connor Fagan (00:06)
I heard this years ago and it really resonated with me. Because everything I do is how simple can we make it? I'm obsessed with like simplicity in everything I do in my entire life. Because as soon as it's really simple and repeatable, it gets done way more accurately.
Andrew Moore (00:22)
That was Connor Fagan. Connor is the founder and owner of Renada, a UK based consultancy specializing in Halo PSA implementations and technical optimization for managed services providers. Working with over 300 MSPs and growing, Renada is a premier consultancy regarding MSP optimization. Today we discuss setting expectations in your MSP, building accountability into your processes,
and why AI may not be a magic bullet for your business.
Andrew Moore (00:55)
All right. Welcome to the how to MSP podcast. My name is Andrew Moore. I'm your host. And today we are meeting with Connor Fagan of Renada out of the UK. Connor is the good day. Cheers. ⁓ all the things. Yeah. ⁓ all the, so Connor is the owner and founder of Renada and they are one of the world's leading specialist in the Halo PSA.
Connor Fagan (01:07)
Good day.
Cheers.
Andrew Moore (01:25)
⁓ deployment and integration into managed service processes. But that's not the only thing they do there. And it's not the only thing that Connor does. So Connor, I'm interested to hear a little bit more about how you guys function, what you do personally. Why don't you tell the team about who you are and what you do and ⁓ where you physically are today? Where does the podcast find you?
Connor Fagan (01:49)
still hung up on world's leading specialist or whatever you just said. Yeah, it's funny.
Andrew Moore (01:53)
Everybody here in the US knows you, which means that if you're in the UK and people in the US know you,
you're worldwide.
Connor Fagan (02:00)
Yeah, we have partners all around the world, right? But you know, you find me in what I've called the dungeon, right? This is an office I renovated last year attached to my house. Every wall is black with a bit of deco behind me. It's not finished. It's a standard kind of thing. But I'm in the UK in the north of England. And you know, our team is fully remote. yeah, stuff like worldwide or people knowing us is just the I try and not really think about it because I'm just sat in this little
four-walled box, right? And I see my team a handful of the times a year when we're all just living our own lives. But yeah, today you find me in the dungeon, which is the new place to hang out, really. So yeah.
Andrew Moore (02:37)
I love the wallpaper
back there, it's very cool.
Connor Fagan (02:40)
Yeah, I need to some pictures online. Actually, I've done like different themed all around the room to give it a bit of color. The wife was like, it's going to be like really dark in there if you do everything black, like the AP is black, the AC is black, but everything's black. And I'm like, yes, the one room in the house that is like mine. Everything else is the wife's and the kids. That's it. But not the dungeon. So yeah, no, thanks having me, man.
Andrew Moore (02:59)
That's really cool. That's really cool. So tell everybody
your journey. How did you get to where you are? What are you guys up to over there? Just briefly kind of fill the team in ⁓ on what it is that Renada does, what it is that Connor does, and what differentiates you guys in the space.
Connor Fagan (03:18)
Seems to be a bit of a common story now. When I said it four years ago, I was quite unique, but everyone seems to be saying it now. Halo asked us to help them four years ago, is the long and short of it. So the backstory is I've been in IT over 10 years now, 15 years now, I don't know, too long. Used to work for Curries in the UK, which is my first IT role, which was fixing laptops and tablets. Then I started my first company, which is like a mobile laptop tablet repair company.
That didn't work out as first businesses typically don't. I then moved up north with the wife or girlfriend at the time, started working in education to do that for seven years, found my niche, which was infrastructure. So I was an infrastructure manager of like nine schools in the UK, managed the entire IT estate really, but mainly focused on infrastructure. Then merged into MSP world, went private MSP, then went into...
Education MSP as CTO. And when I was there, I went through an acquisition and I got a piece of paper on my desk, which was Connor, what stack are we using? And I replied, I don't like either company's stack. Maybe now is a good time to look at what's out there. Fast forward 12 months, we'd migrated to Halo, was about 60, 70 staff at the time. Did that for a couple of years and then left to start Reneda, which was to be.
Digital transformation, but for the SMB sector. My wife's worked in care all of her life. She used to moan all the time about their systems. And whenever I saw her laptop, I died a bit inside, honestly. And I really wanted to go in and be an advisor, but not an MSP. you know, one of the things I've always struggled with as an MSP is trying to convince a client they need this thing, right? Because they just think, oh, we're just trying to sell to us again. I was trying to bridge that market by being a consultant, but not actually doing any of the work. Just going in.
being a friend to, know, Andrew who owns the business, doing an audit and then go in, listen, I can be a bridge between you the MSP. I can be an advisor with any big decisions you need to make, but here's where I think you need to be. Here's the report. Check me in whenever you need me. And then I was trying to build like long-term engagements where I check in once a year, do an update, see where they're at. ⁓ Long story short, Halo said, I help? And here we are three and a half years later, doing Halo
Andrew Moore (05:35)
So do
you do you do any of the configuration on any technical assets at this point, or you're just strictly consulting and or, you know, helping with maybe do you do configuration within the Halo system itself, or do you just advise people to get stuff done?
Connor Fagan (05:51)
No, we actually, all we really do is configure technical solutions now for our partners, be that automations, be that mainly in Halo these days. we know we do. I say most of our work is in Halo, but we are Ninja One partners, so we help MSPs manage and monitor Ninja, set it up, order it, same with Hudu. We're doing loads with CIPP at the minute as well. Got a great partnership with them, we're pro-serve partners for CIPP so.
leveraging Halo is the glue if you will and then yeah leveraging tools around it. We're really really intentional with who we partner with because we partner with companies not products and therefore in the three years we've not changed our vendor stack at all. We're not just moving because there's a better margin or a new deal it's what is the best tool we believe on the market today for you as an MSP and what are we best at? You know I often joke with people saying you
I'm not tied to Halo. Halo just is right now the best PSA on the market. And if something better comes along, then we will explore that. Reality is we have a team of six now with four years into Halo. It's not just going to be an overnight shift, but I like that mindset because it keeps both sides accountable. Halo need to still keep putting out good work and being a great company. Cause if not, consultants will stop and consultants need to be doing the best with Halo because then we're adding as much value as we can. it's, I don't know, kind of a two way conversation.
Andrew Moore (07:13)
Yeah, no. I told all of my clients, and we do work in, it's Datto or it's ConnectWise or whatever, if I started an MSP from scratch today, I'd start it with Halo and Ninja. There's just a lot of really great configurable synergies between those two products together and scalability, which I think I'm starting to see ⁓ kind of a shift.
in the market as this first tranche of MSP type companies are starting to age out, right? And you're getting, I feel like almost like this new wave of next generation software and solutions for the MSP space where you've got younger people stepping in that are starting to take over or start MSPs. And it's just, I think that we're going to see a real
Renaissance over the next like 10 years. And it's not even particularly around AI. It's just the tools are changing. The direction of owners are changing. The buyers are changing. Right. Like the people who are buying MSP services are they grew up with technology. They understand technology. They they have configured things themselves in the past. Right. And so I think, you know, what we wanted to talk about today
was really focused around how to set the proper expectations within your business for your clients, which I think is a fantastic way to approach where we're going as an industry. And so I'd love to hear your thoughts on, as I've set the table here a little bit, how do you feel like the industry is changing and how you pull that thread through when it comes to making sure you're setting the right expectations within your company and for your clients?
Where do you see things going with that?
Connor Fagan (09:07)
think something to add before I go down that rabbit hole is something you said a minute ago which was you would start an MSP with Halo. Because I wouldn't.
Andrew Moore (09:11)
Mm.
Yes.
Really? What would you start an MSP with?
Connor Fagan (09:21)
Really? The cheapest lightweight system that I could start with. And I get asked this all the time because people are like, oh, if you start an MSP, you'd obviously start with Halo. I'm like, no. The amount of engineering we've put into Halo for our partners and for us over the years would detract from me starting an MSP. And to be fundamentally clear when I say this, I don't think I could start an MSP in this market.
to see if I can another day. I don't think I have the skills to do that. But if I was to start an MSP, the tooling would be at the bottom of the barrel. But the reality is, is Halo as a platform really hones to MSPs that want to refine their process, right? And when we're talking in a minute about expectations, they can really refine expectations, workflows process within a platform. If I'm starting a net new MSP,
I don't think I'd want to spend hours and hours each week refining my tooling. I want to be out there finding clients, know, seeing what they need before I start building my company around what I want. You know, we can we can say you would go and attack a vertical. But if I was on an MSP, I don't even know if I know where I'd end up within a vertical. You know, I might target lawyers, for instance, end up getting an in with a big agricultural company before you know it. I'm
down that rabbit hole. yeah, so I think for me, Halo is fantastic once you kind of matured a little bit, once you've had three to four to five years of growing pains to understand what works, what doesn't work. I think, and this is why we've kind of got our ICP now, which kind of is, there's less than five of you in an MSP. And again, it's variable, but depending on how long you've been in the platform or had an MSP, depending on where your journey's at, I don't think Halo is right for everyone.
Andrew Moore (10:51)
Mm-hmm.
Connor Fagan (11:11)
because of the time required to build it and the pain you may not have yet to know what you need.
Andrew Moore (11:18)
That's an interesting point because I feel like in my consulting, there are certain companies that haven't reached a level of operational maturity where they're ready for bifurcation of roles and responsibilities as an instance, right? The owner is not ready to potentially offload, but part of what they do on a daily basis to another person, because they just don't have the time or the service delivery platform built out yet to start.
moving account management roles and sales roles, they have to get to a certain point where they're even ready to make that change. So that's an interest. So I'm, I'm guessing based on what you said that from an operational maturity standpoint, that a company has to get to a certain level in order to be able to take advantage of tools like Halo, because otherwise it, the, the, the scar tissue isn't there to be able to understand what they actually need to do in order to deploy something like that is that kind of along the lines of what you were thinking.
Connor Fagan (12:18)
Yeah, I think one of the things I've really observed over the past few years is what ConnectWise was really good at, for instance, is their community, right? Where ConnectWise with IT Nation over the years of years had great documentation, great literature. They told MSPs how they should work. So the platform or the product of ConnectWise set the expectations for that MSP. This is how you should work. This is the best way we think you should work to achieve the best output.
They did loads around reporting and how what good looks like. And they defined MSPs what expectations or what outcome they should expect if they followed this process. And they did that for decades. The problem is, and as we spoke about earlier, the landscape is changing now because a lot of MSPs are going, well, I don't want to work that way. I want to be a little bit different. What if we want to take on this or what if I want to tweak this and the difference between something like ConnectRide, which is fantastic if you want to be
lead with something like Halo is, is you can go, well, I want to build it my own way and I want to set my own rules and my own workflows and my own whatever. And that's where the real nuances, I think, are starting to show between MSPs that work in a certain way and want to be really handheld in their operations, which is fine, by the way, I get it, versus MSPs that really want to carve and be unique and differentiate in the space. That's where these new toolings are coming along, which are more
more platforms, and I use that word quite openly, they are more platforms. They take a lot of engineering, a lot of building, a lot of ownership of the product, as opposed to something like Connectwise and AutoTask, is, work in this way to achieve this outcome.
Andrew Moore (13:52)
of you.
Yeah, I noticed that when I work with with my clients that are on connect wise, there are certain things that we have to do in the way that we build our processes that have to work around the way that connect wise is created. Right. And then that's going to happen with most tools. But the level of flexibility, I don't think is nearly as there when it comes to connect wise, as I've seen it with other platforms that may be more software focused, API driven, where there's
a more flexible, as you put it, like platform almost Salesforce esque where it's like, we're a platform. We've got a lot of ability to create customization and overlay and integration. How do you want to use us versus here's how you should use us. If, if that makes sense to you.
Connor Fagan (14:46)
Yeah, and that tracks back to where we talked about, you
I think it takes a certain buyer to get the most out of certain modern tooling, right? A lot of modern tooling is a little bit more open than it ever once was. APIs now, whenever we look at products, the first question is do they have an API? We've just gone through a HR platform review and every question or I've asked my interviewer, doing it, like, does it have an API?
I don't even know why yet. I just know if it doesn't, it's going to bottleneck me at some point. And it's such an interesting way. Like if we look at all the partners we work with, what we've been trying to advocate for is you need someone internally who's a little bit developer-y, right? Who wants to learn APIs and maybe a bit of JavaScript and a bit of AI and automation. And these were skills that I didn't know when I launched Renada. I didn't know what APIs were hardly. I knew what they were. And a few vendors at the time were saying,
you can connect to it, but it was never a thing where it was fast forward four years. If you're not using an API, you kind of get left behind. know, building middleware is an MSP these days is becoming a standard process. The problem is no one knows where to begin because none of us are developers, right? Or typically none of us are developers. And it's really expensive. And again, coming back to expectations to hire a developer because we didn't know how to manage them. You know, we
Andrew Moore (15:46)
Hmm.
Connor Fagan (16:08)
I own an app now, I don't know how this happened, but we own an app now and we speak all the time about hiring our first developer. I don't even know, I have no idea how I would manage a developer, how I would interview a developer. Like they could just, I would have no idea. How does it take to fix this thing? They could tell me an hour or tell me three months. I have no way of benching. Right. And this is kind of where we're at in the landscape now where things are really shifting and what was once
fixing a server following a guide is becoming, you know, how do we API into it to run an automated script ahead of time? You know, how do we become proactive rather than reactive? It was always something we used to say years ago, but now it is becoming more and more prevalent when you see it in MSPs, right? Those that are proactive are automating using AI and it's really exciting time.
Andrew Moore (16:46)
Right.
Connor Fagan (17:02)
for someone like me. think that's why Renada does so well because we get to play with the latest technology all day, every day and go, well, how could we fix that problem? And that's kind of where we get excited really.
Andrew Moore (17:13)
Well, and you had, you had mentioned that you don't take on that many projects. As a matter of fact, I tried to reach out to you guys recently to take on a project for a would be client of mine. And, you were quite clear. You're like, I don't have the bandwidth to do that. even though I was asking a favor and it wasn't, I wasn't offended by it. I just actually really appreciated, the honesty about
what you guys could do from a quality standpoint. So, you know, I'd like for you to dig into that a little bit, because I think from an expectation management standpoint, a lot of MSPs fall into the trap of saying that they can get stuff done in order to try to drive new revenues, generate business, move their company forward in some way. And I feel like you do in a lot of ways that if you're not setting expectations properly, you're not creating
that very beginning kernel of trust, which needs to run through the rest of the relationship. So how have you guys really adopted that strategy into your core values as a business? What you guys do to to manage your accounts, to bring on new clients? How do you manage expectations with new opportunities? What does that look like?
Connor Fagan (18:28)
Curious thing, it's taken me years and I'm still not great at it with terms of new business and saying no, because I just want to help people. I started this to help, right? It's not revenue generating and people keep saying our price is going up and I'm like, I have to do that because we're trying to produce amazing outputs, but there's only so many hours of a day. Running a consultation company is the hardest thing I have ever done because I had no idea and still really don't.
how to run a consultancy company. And what I'm actually really saying is, I don't really know yet how to sell time for money, right? Because that's in essence what it is, it's a one to one relationship. So setting expectations for us is super critical in everything that we do, because I go in with the mindset of, well, I just don't know what I don't know. So when I launched this years ago, and month to month contracts were what we did, and we still do, because I was very open, like, I don't know.
where this is gonna go in 12 months. I don't know if this is manageable. I don't know if the price is right. And we're very open about that, right? When we take it on a project for a client, we budget it and we will die by our own sword because I'm gonna say to you, Andrew, what is this piece of work worth for you? What do you wanna spend on it? And you might go a thousand bucks and I go, okay. And we'll sit down as a team and go, if this shoots over budget by double, triple, quadruple.
Is that worth it to us? Are we learning something from it? Can we reuse it for the client? We don't distill the work we do for you, Andrew. It's not what we do, but we'd have a conversation. And a lot of the time, MSPs go, yeah, sure. We've got some work under the minute and the client goes, can you automate this thing? And we're like, I don't have a clue how long this could take. It could take five hours. It could take a hundred hours. I don't know. What's your budget with it? And they're like, just go.
so far and then circle back in. But at the very beginning, we've been transparent about that. What we don't do is just start down this road of going, yeah, we can do it. Get $3,000 in and you go where we are and I go, we're close. And then get to $5,000 and then people go, we're nearly there now. Because you feel like you've been suckered, right? And that's...
All our engagements with our partners kind of go on that. I said to you at the start of this call, trust is a core value at Renada And trust is earned, right? You have to earn trust. Our partners invest in us every month by paying us, To deliver products or outcomes. And we have to build the trust that we can do that to their budget. If we start going over budget on tasks that we've scoped for and it costs them.
Well, they won't trust us to do any more in the future. Therefore, the foundations of what we're trying to build have been broken down. You may not know this. Our internal target, our ceiling of full is there's four of us consulting or doing consultation work. Divide that by three. So hours in a week, our target, our ceiling is 33%. If we have a client, you will commit to four hours a month with us.
We therefore commit to four hours a month for you in terms of work we can do. And we cap our ceiling at 33%. And that for us is full because we may go over uncertain tasks. We're still learning. We need time to learn how to do the thing you want. And you shouldn't have to pay us every time we need to learn.
Andrew Moore (22:04)
So you had talked to me about the ambiguity trap, right? And how you set expectations with your clients and what you recommend to MSPs about setting expectations. What is the ambiguity trap? What, does that look like for, for you when you see it and how do you steer clear of it? And how do you advise your MSPs to steer clear of it when it comes to how they're managing their internal processes or their
handling their clients' relationships in regards to how you're getting your system set up to support that. Like, what does that look like?
Connor Fagan (22:41)
So to kind of spin it, I see the ambiguity trap on the output. We're engaged by MSPs to help solve problems technically. An example could be, don't Connor, we keep having client servers go offline. How do we build alert in throughout of hours engineers so we know when they've gone offline? I spin it on its head and go, why are they going offline in the first place?
well, we didn't patch them. Why not? Because Andrew forgot to patch it. I then, I taught myself out of a lot of work, honestly, it's kind of a problem I have, I want to help. for me, it's about, I call it looking inwards. So whenever there's been a problem in IT that I've dealt with as a manager, because I've managed all my career, basically, I go, what didn't I give my team to solve that before it was a problem? Was it training?
Was it clear expectations? Was it process? Was it permission, right? Was it ownership? A lot of the time, if you don't give ownership, people think, well, it's not my problem. And very much for me, it's looking inwards and trying to remove any ambiguity. I'm quite black and white as a person. Did you tell this person to check that server on Wednesday? No. Then how would you expect them to know to check that server on Wednesday?
Right? Is a super, super simple thing. So for me, the ambiguity is, it surfaces on the output for me, because that's where we get dragged in. There's been a problem, there's been a crisis, there's things not working, how do we fix it? And a lot of the time I have to ask people to look inwards, As bad as that may sound, and I'm like, well, how have we got here? So in answer to your question, I think in terms of identifying it, it's always a little bit too late. Because something's happened to get there.
Andrew Moore (24:33)
I've
Yeah, I, I, I totally understand where you're coming from. And I think part of the root cause of some of that ambiguity when it comes to managing teams within a small business, I won't particularly say just MSPs, but within small businesses, right? You have people who are special and those people are entrepreneurs for whatever reason they are built differently.
Connor Fagan (24:51)
any company, right?
Andrew Moore (25:03)
They are very good at what they do. They are passionate about whether it's helping people, building technology, doing something. It could be a bit Taylor. could be whatever. And when they start to grow their business, they bring people in to help them to continue to make this business special. And as an example,
They'll bring a service manager in and they'll say, well, why didn't you look at those servers? And they were like, I didn't know I was supposed to. And they're like, I can't believe this. I don't know why you're like, like, and what I've had to continually remind my clients of is your employees aren't you. If you're a manager, if you're an owner, you have to realize that you're wired differently than some of these folks and that if you're anything other than completely clear with them.
It's going to be really hard for them to know what you want. It's rare that you find somebody that thinks like an owner that will work in your business. If you do, you've got a special person. But otherwise, you don't have to spell it out completely, but pretty much, is the way I talk about it. You don't want to remove their ability to be thoughtful and strategic, but you certainly don't want to leave any room for misinterpretation of what your expected outcomes are.
⁓ and I, and I think that that balance and being able to tell an owner how to do that and then having them create processes and whatnot so that they don't eliminate their team's ability to work as a team, to understand things, ⁓ kind of at a higher level when it comes to building out outcomes. I think that's the real skill in management is understanding how far you take that. But I really liked a post that you had put together, ⁓
I think it was yesterday, about too much process leads to unfortunate, I think it creates some ambiguity. creates a lack of really being able to think because you've eliminated everybody's ability to make decisions because you created too much process. So how have you been seeing that play out in your clients and within Renada's business? What are you seeing there with that?
Connor Fagan (27:16)
I think a key point that you kind of touched on then was from an owner perspective, right? If I was to hire someone, and we have this now with our internal IT, I'll be honest, it's a bit of a mess. We don't have clear ownership, right? What a lot of us do in technical is, you know, I hire someone in to manage the servers and we don't always tell them what we expect, but we tell them how we expect it, right? In the form of a guide or a SOP, right? So rather than me saying, right, you're responsible, Andrew, for servers.
I expect them to be up 24 seven. I expect them to be patched. I expect a handful of things. It's now yours. You own it. What we do instead is go, okay, Andrew, every Wednesday at four o'clock, you log onto the server, you make sure, and we end up building all these guides and all these processes in place that people have to follow. The problem you have with that and the post last night about bureaucracy was if you follow that guide and it still isn't patched, who's to blame?
Because the owner will think it's you because I've given you ownership of the servers, Andrew, but you'll think it's the owner because you didn't say in your guide that if the server's not on, I have to turn it on, right? To be facetious here. I think when you're in, we see this across certain clients we've got and we're trying to steer it, but when you have so much process, everything that you do is wrapped in process that becomes a blame game.
You didn't put it in the process. You didn't tell me I had to do that if this tangent came about. You remove the ownership layer and the accountability layer because people are just doing what they're told to do. But if you step back a little bit, I think a good leader does this, step back a little bit and set expectations clearly what good looks like, right? I think this is a fundamental failing that every business does really, right? What do we expect good to look like? If you give somebody that and say it's yours, you typically
with the right person in the company. That's a whole debate for another day. But if you've got the right bums on the right seats, you get way better outcomes because of that whole accountability piece. And because you've set clear expectations on what the outcome needs to look like, that person can do their own plans or guides or whatever they need to make sure their inputs are correct to deliver on those outputs. And I know I use them words probably a little bit too often, but for me at Renada we're doing tasks all day, every day.
And the one bit of the business that has spent ages to be fine and get perfect is scoping of tasks. Setting those expectations right at the beginning. What are we going to do? What problem are we solving? How long is it going to take? How much time are we spending building versus documenting versus handing back? Because once you know all of that, you can make an informed decision. I could just say it cost you a thousand dollars. But then when something starts to go awry, that's when I think
world's come tumbling down because there's just a complete lack of a trust, but being no one knows where to stand really.
Andrew Moore (30:17)
What you say tracks, because I was fortunate enough to go to a leadership conference once where they had some, I believe they were Navy SEALs, know, the American badass, you know, super soldiers. And one of the training things that they talked about was that they really focused on what the objective of the mission was versus following orders.
specifically to the letter. And the example they used was there was this group of people that were supposed to go to the top of this building and they were going to secure the building. Right. So that they could then be able to get line of sight on a specific road. That was their objective. So the outcome was get line of sight on that road. And they were told to go to the top of this building. And when they got to the top of the building, they realized that there wasn't enough cover for them. So they knew what the outcome was.
So without having to go back and ask for permission, they just went down to another floor, secured that floor where they had cover, and they were able to fulfill the objective. that was something that we injected into our process systems a lot, which was, let's talk about what we're trying to get accomplished here. We're going to come up with a framework for how we're going to accomplish it. And if you have to deviate from that slightly, that's fine, right? Unless there's something that you've got these out of bounds areas. Don't do this specifically in order to achieve your goal.
Connor Fagan (31:41)
costs.
Andrew Moore (31:41)
But you do want to make sure that you've got an understanding of what the outcome needs to be and setting that outcome. So to your example, your goal is to make sure that these servers have an uptime of four nines, right? Therefore, if the server's not on, maybe you should turn it on, even if it's not explicitly written in the SOP, right? I feel like that's a really misunderstood part of process development.
and training for individuals because if you're focused so much on the process and not on the outcome, people put blinders on and they don't think about what they should be doing. They think about what they have to do. And I think that removes critical thinking skills, which are, I think, frankly, more important in our industry than any other, other than maybe being a doctor ⁓ in our industry.
Connor Fagan (32:30)
100%.
And it kills not just critical thinking, but creativity as well. ⁓ I ran some training ⁓ years ago with a technical team I had where you're familiar with escape rooms, right? You go into a room, solve puzzles to get out.
I did an exercise where I paired all my engineers together based on level. So apprentices, level one, two, three senior engineers, and basically put them on separate tables. And it was escape room themed, basically. The idea was to log into the computer and tell me what the homepage was on the browser, right? So it was stupid things like no fuse in a plug and the password was a very basic encryption underneath and just stupid stuff like that.
Before I started exercise, the aim was, or I thought the outcome would be, the apprentices would finish first and my seniors would finish last. And I thought that because my seniors have been with me for years and I thought they would overthink it, right? Did the entire exercise and it almost played out perfectly. The apprentices came second, the level ones actually came first. Seniors didn't even think because one of the seniors was a good friend of mine at the time. He knew I was into cryptography at the time. He thought this cipher I did was some crazy crypto thing that I'd...
And it wasn't, it was just thinking up arrow was an uppercase and down was lowercase, left was like back a letter and right was forward a letter, right? So a B was an A or a C, whatever. It was super simple. The point of the ramble though there is
When we look at teams and look at solving problems, the higher up the ranks you go in an IT company, the more you learn about the problem and the more guides you've followed and the more processes you've done. So a simple problem, you always go to the nth degree of, right? I can't look into my computer, it's DNS, right? I've learned by doing this loads of times, it's always DNS, right? And you learn this kind of by, I don't know, almost like,
Andrew Moore (34:18)
It's always DNS. It's always DNS.
Connor Fagan (34:25)
You're kind of indoctrinated in a way, right? Because you've been stung so many times down the line that the process could be to check DNS. Whereas someone that comes in fresh, can't log in, will ask the question, are you typing the right password or is caps lock on? Right? And I think when you're doing tasks and telling people they have to do it in such a certain way, almost the more senior you get or the more times you've done it, you stop looking outside, you follow your blinkers, right? You follow what's directly in front of you.
Whereas someone that's new or fresh or hasn't done this will typically ask why a lot more, right? Which is great for certainly creative thinking. And I generally feel that if you are complete blinkers on, that is great for people who you don't want to think about the outcome. If you need to put a door on, right? You need to put hinges in a certain place that...
is perfect if the hold is square, right? If it's not square, you need to start thinking about it differently. Following a guide to fit that door is never gonna work.
Andrew Moore (35:32)
Well, what you want to be able to do is create some sort of framework, right? there's a difference between my former service director used to tell me that he would tell his team that there's a difference between a process and a framework, and that a process was something that you had to follow specifically, whereas a framework was a general guideline to getting something done.
Connor Fagan (35:32)
Hmm.
Andrew Moore (35:54)
I think that level of nuance can sometimes be lost on an immature organization because we're so driven by knowledge base and SOPs, right? Like we've been basically spoon fed for the last 20 years that you have to write specific processes and outlines for things that, know, these knowledge base articles for things that need to be done. Whereas a knowledge base is like,
Here is what we know. It's knowledge. Here's what we know. Here's what we think you should be focused on versus the, would say the knowledge bases are even more frameworky and open-ended than SOPs, right? So I, I see the difference. I don't know that there's a good way of solving for those differences because I feel like the one thing that managed service providers try to do that, that
I agree with, but I also feel can be a detriment to them in the long term is we as managed service providers want to create a consistent quality of service over and over and over again so that the end users have a very, ⁓ repeatable experience every time that they work with the service delivery team. And by creating rote processes for everything,
then they think that that's the way to get it done, where I think that there is some variance in the way that people solve problems because you're dealing with humans. Right. And so I very much see that there's a difference between going to McDonald's and going to a higher end restaurant where you have a waiter who helps to account for variations of the delivery of the outcome in order to drive a better experience.
So I think that there's a balance there where you have to figure out how to train people to know what processes have to happen. And then they help smooth and fill in those gaps in order to create a better experience. And I think that's where people are losing their way in the MSP space because they're so focused on these KPIs, these outcomes, like get the door hung, get 50 doors hung.
Right. But then you've got clients that are coming to you with all different sizes of doors, right. And want one to open one way and one to open another way. And one's got a window and one doesn't, they have all these things that they need to do. And they're still using these KPIs to measure whether or not you got these doors hung. And I think they're using them, you know, as you had mentioned before, they're using them kind of as a whip rather than a, you know, as as a punishment to kind of hold people accountable, rather than trying to measure.
what these outcomes are,
Connor Fagan (38:33)
I think it's really hard, right? Because we get asked all the time about like dashboards, can you me a good dashboard, Connor? I'm like, I can build your dashboard, sure, but what are we solving with it? Because if I just give you 50 numbers that you've got to make green, what is that talking to, right? A bit like SLAs, right? What does an SLA tell us? Well, it's a window of time, right, that we're going to do something in. It doesn't tell us about quality.
doesn't tell us about happiness of decline. It just says that we tick the box, right? I'm gonna respond within two hours. What's the quality of the response though? Right? I'm gonna solve it within four hours. Okay, but I could solve them all in four hours and they all get reopened again. But if we're looking at this metric, which is resolution versus, know, CSAT or quality or reopen count, which is more important, we're not addressing the problems that exist in front of us.
Andrew Moore (39:14)
you
Connor Fagan (39:28)
is a long and short of it. A bit like that crappy really adore analogy. Once we give people these processes to follow that are really linear, as soon as we have to divert from them, depending on who you are as a person and depending on what the recourse is, right? If you normally get chastised for not following the process literally, then you don't want to go off piste a little bit because I'm not allowed or last time I did that I got charred at. So then you end up pushing it back or escalating it and you end up with the post last night the whole
bureaucracy post, right, where if you put in too much processing and people are blaming each other because of the process, you can get a real hostile work environment, a really poor culture, because we are not setting expectations correctly on the outcome, but setting expectations on the input in this side saying you must only do what I tell you to do out, you're doing it wrong, which I don't think helps anything really.
Andrew Moore (40:20)
So my question to you is, how do you make that balance? What is the balance that you strike when it comes to setting expectations and generating outcomes and balancing what those outcomes are against the processes for the inputs?
Connor Fagan (40:20)
So hi.
Andrew Moore (40:38)
Because I know that that's going to come up. People are going to say, well, listen, I love what you have to say, Connor. Very academic. How do I apply that? What does that look like in my business? What does that look like if I'm configuring my PSA? What does that look like when I'm developing processes inside of Hoodoo or whatever it is I use? How do you explain that to your clients? What do you tell them? What's the advice?
Connor Fagan (41:02)
So multiple things really. So I love processes when something is repeatable. And I don't just mean kind of repeatable, I mean repeatable. Onboarding a user is a very repeatable process. We have to go through the same hoops, do the same things every single time. There might be some variance in job title or, you know, mold, but it's exactly the same thing. There's a process for that.
And the good thing is about that process, once you nail it, you can automate it. All right, that's kind of where we're going in industry now. So when you're looking at SOPs really, it's really, really highly repeatable things. Alternatively, the other times I think like guides or SOPs are really useful, is very bespoke things, right? Let's say I used to look after, I don't know what it was, it was kind of like an energy plant, but they used.
I can't remember what it was. They just took manure and made energy from it. was the long and short of it. Their software was crazy. It was written by some Spanish development firm 20 years ago. You had to do things in a very certain order or else it would just not work. And if it didn't work, you're speaking to someone in Spain on their time zone for thousands of dollars an hour to try and fix it and everything was just crossing your fingers. A guide needs to be in place for that.
You cannot deviate. Problem solving, though, incidents, you will, stuff coming into the desk. Well, what does good look like? Is the client happy at end of the call? Do we need every problem to go and try and find a guide that may or may not exist for a problem that may not even be the same? It might present the same. The client can't send an email. But how many guys do you want me to check before I give up? Before I call it, you know.
no good. So I think when you're trying to really ascertain how far you should go with the process or how far or even if you should start a process, I think you should ask about the repeatability of it. How much can we or how often do we repeat this thoroughly from end to end?
Andrew Moore (43:16)
And then people are going to start asking, well, that sounds like a really good way of approaching it because then I can use AI to do it for me. And I know you've got an opinion about that because I don't know that, you know, I think you and I agree in some regards is that AI isn't going to solve every problem on the planet because it's not built to do some of the things I think people have been told to believe it should do.
that makes sense.
Connor Fagan (43:46)
I get really hung up on it. So like we're seeing loads of AI in the space for inbound of tickets, right? Let's say incidents again, where AI is presenting the resolution or the perceived resolution based on the tiny window of data it has, right? The problem you have with this again, you know, going 360 back to expectations is, what are our teams supposed to do with that information? Are they supposed to blindly follow it?
If they don't follow it, but it was the answer, are they chest eyes because they could have done it quicker. Like what, what are we asking of our staff here? Why did you follow that guy? Why didn't you research it yourself? Well, I thought I was supposed to follow the bot. I followed the bot. I've taken the server down. Why did you follow the bot? Like, I feel like you're adding such ambiguity to like what they're supposed to do because it's presented with a perceived solution. My, this is my concern with it. We don't really put this in place for anyone because
I don't quite understand how to deliver it without causing damage. What is it, is it a helping hand, is it? Like, I don't know. Like, you could argue while they could go to Google and make the same mistakes, but when you go to Google, you're asking the questions to try and find the answers to something you need to know, whereas AI is giving you what it thinks are the answers are to questions that might not even be in front of you.
Andrew Moore (45:06)
Well, and I think I listened to a really interesting podcast recently where a gentleman was talking about the future of AI and education of the workforce and his position on it was AI can be really good at eliminating these rote tasks. Update the status of the ticket, make sure that you've got a contract attached to the ticket or agreement, however you use it in your PSA. Like all these things that we expect are
technicians to do the PSA should be able to do a lot of that work. So what does that mean? Well, you've eliminated basic task level work, the stuff that a process is good for, like check this box, do this, do this. His position is AI is not going to eliminate education. AI is going to exacerbate the need for education because if you're not teaching your staff,
how your business works, what your outcomes are, how to critically think. When AI eliminates all the task level work, you're going to be left with a bunch of people who only know how to do tasks and they're not capable of making those decisions. So I think that what you're saying around how do you set expectations? How do you drive strategy and thought process into what you're asking your team to do actually lines up really well with what
that gentleman was saying, and what I'm really kind of starting to lean towards in my own opinion of what AI is going to do for the workforce. It's not going to eliminate jobs. It's going to change the function of jobs to eliminate repeatable process, rote task level work and require people to actually think for the first time in some of their careers.
Connor Fagan (46:56)
We did
a series on AI the first time ever since this came out, just before Christmas, around how you can use AI in your MSP basically. And there's not a lot that I think you should be using AI in your MSP for. We have AI Auto Triage, right? It can rename the summary of a ticket. It can set the right categories and give it a priority. People ask me how valuable that is to an MSP and I'm like...
Like it's great at catching P1s a bit quicker. If you've got loads of tickets sat that haven't been looked at for an hour. Like categories are great, I guess. Like, do you report on categories now? No, then what problem it fixing, right? I'm quite data-driven, so I use categories loads in a former setting, right? It was the way I made decisions basically, but.
Andrew Moore (47:41)
Right.
Connor Fagan (47:49)
We had a mature team that was taught around it and we leveraged it and we set expectations and all of that. And it was a part of our language, right? A lot of MSPs don't care about that, which is fine. Yeah, got to. But you know, an inbound of a ticket, for instance, AI is fine, right? It's average. I think AI for me is just really good at gathering loads of data together is a long and short of it. Like taking, we use it for recording transcripts, right?
take loads of data and summarize it great. Use it for account management. You can look at loads of different ticket data and put it in a nice paragraph. A lot of things you're seeing with AI in a minute that they're really party tricks really, are algorithmic by nature. What I mean by that is we used AI to auto schedule all of our tasks into our diary. We gave it all of our appointments, we gave it the time and the start date of the task and we threw it at AI and it would pick the best slot and it would do it.
Problem is, it would every day mess up. It would put it over another task. It didn't consider you had a lunch break there and it was failing over and over again. We rewrote it fully with JavaScript and it has been flawless ever since because it's very simple. When can we do it is a fixed parameter. How long does it take is a fixed parameter. They're all fixed inputs. Therefore we don't need AI to tell us when to do it because we already actually know this. AI is great for POCing.
Right? Without trying that with AI, we probably never would have got here because we don't know JavaScript and AI helped us to write. I'm going to say some of it, all of it. Let's be realistic here. Right? Are we kidding? My AI is great for that. But I think, and I say this all the time on various podcasts and chats with people is what is it, what makes a good MSP, right? The service we provide to our clients. I've never had a client in any set to go.
be really good, Connor when I ring you up. I got an AI voice assistant and I could spend 15 minutes arguing with that before I could speak to you. No one's ever requested that, right? No one wants that. It's great to fix certain problems like booking a flight. If you want to change your flight, I don't need to wait and hold for half an hour to speak to Dave. If I could do it via a phone assistant, fantastic. If I could securely reset a password via it, whole other debate for another day, fantastic. Certain things it is...
quite good for if you can trust it, right? Which is a whole, again, another debate. But I think, yeah, what are we trying to solve? I always come back to this, like what problem are we trying to fix? And this is why I think this topic today around expectations is so hot for me at the minute because I'm all the time getting dragged into conversations where if we just looked at what the problem was and actually set better expectations at the beginning, we'd have way better outputs nearly all the time.
That's without using AI or any other fancy tooling, just simple human conversations and simple clarity can solve a lot of problems we have in, not in our industry, just in life, honestly. In so many walks of life, if they just set better expectations, you'd be so happier, right? You order a takeaway and say it's going to be half an hour. If they told you it was going to be an hour and it came a little bit earlier, you're way happier with that because they set better expectations. It's not unique to our sector. It's just...
recurrent problem that if we spend a little bit more time at the beginning could massively help us all down the line. At least that's what I feel.
Andrew Moore (51:21)
No, I agree with you a hundred percent because I believe that trust is the key to success for any service business, whether that's restaurant hospitality or whether that's, managed IT services. If you set expectations through your marketing and then you fulfill those through your sales process, setting additional expectations that are fulfilled by the operations team.
The operations team is managing expectations through their account management. And you just create this perpetual opportunity to generate goodwill with a group of people to help them achieve their goals. That's the most important part of what we do. are, you know, MSPs, TSPs, whatever you want to call us, service is the middle name, you know, the middle word in every one of those names. So I agree with you 100%. I think the challenge
that a lot of people have when it comes to providing service to kind of take it all the way back to expectations and why they're important and why it's a challenge is I feel like there's just a lack of wanting to say no. People are just really wanting to make the client or the other person, you know, their teammate, whatever, they just want to make them happy because that's why they got into this. They got into it to help. And I think that's the challenge of knowing to say, when I set expectations,
it actually benefits both of us and it makes us both feel better rather than just us saying yes. And I think that's where MSPs really struggle is where do they start? Where do they begin the process of trying to set expectations? Where do you see MSPs really needing to set those expectations when you're in Halo or you're working with them on some sort of a process development project? Where do you see the need to really dig in and say, man, I y'all had just started setting expectations.
here. Where does that typically happen when you're working with companies?
Connor Fagan (53:19)
I think it's with their own internal team. I think it's with the staff you've got. The staff you've already got employed, right? The people around you. Does everyone know what good looks like? I have this debate a lot with MSPs. Does this person in your sales team or this person on the projects team or this person on the second line, do they know what good looks like?
And I don't just mean we've hit all these dashboard numbers that are green because it doesn't mean a lot to us. It's not a visceral reaction when there's a widget that's green. It's not like, yes, I'm nailing it, right? It's not going to get shouted at. It's the reverse, right? And I think it's, it's yeah. What are we, what are we trying to achieve? What does good look like? And just my head's racing a little bit just because it's funny. I've never really connected to the dots before. So we said a minute ago really resonated with me about AI. I think my frustration with AI is you can't clearly set expectations with it.
like you tell it what you want and it may or may not do it no matter how what guardrails you put in place it will just not do it.
Andrew Moore (54:20)
So, so I talked
to a developer friend of mine, I'm glad you brought that up. He says that's a feature, not a bug. AI is developed specifically to create this illusion of creativity and interaction. And so therefore variance is something that's built into it by default, which is why you found so much more success with creating a script to execute something versus allowing AI to do it. Because without guardrails of application management,
in the way that AI processes information, it's built specifically to do exactly what frustrates you about it. Like that's your problem.
Connor Fagan (54:58)
no matter
what controls, like there's something called temperature, right? If you're paid with AI a lot, can temperature like zero is, don't be creative, 100 or whatever the parameter is, be free, right? You can temperature zero and lock that in and say, never do this thing and one day it'll just go, screw it, right? Like I'm gonna do that thing anyway. that's, yeah.
Andrew Moore (55:16)
I've done that with prompts.
Like I've told the prompt I was like, do not do this. And then it did it. And I went back and at some point I start yelling at my AI. I'm like, why did you do this? And it's like, I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah, no, I totally did that. It's like, come on.
Connor Fagan (55:26)
⁓ yeah,
Yeah, I had it today.
was doing some book tracking on the app we have. I tried to use the MCP server again, just look at the books and tell what's going on. was like a billing issue and people using it without subscription. like, what in the... I was like to AI, was like, how have you... He's looking at all the logs. How have you figured that out? What you're telling me I'm looking at on this screen going, they don't... My children went, oh, the hypothetical Connors, what they could have been there. And I'm like, Jesus.
What are you doing to me? Like I'm thinking I've got non paying subscribers and I was coming out. It's like, no, looking at your code, this is what could have been the errors. And I'm like, geez, I nearly had a heart attack this morning about half night. I've come in, cup of tea, just, you know, have a look at a few errors from last night. The minor for what it's worth. load of crap. But ⁓ yeah, it's like, yeah, unsubscription. And I'm just like, it's like, I just, I just assumed. Right. ⁓ And I think.
the anecdote, right? Or whatever it's called of, know, assumption makes an ass out of me and you or you and me or however the hell it is, is I think that's where, you know, going back to your question about what problems do we see a lot? Is that assumption layer? Is that assuming it's that and we call it expectations, call it whatever you want. But as soon as you start assuming someone's going to do something that you want to do or the way you would do it, you're in for a really rough day, especially as an owner, right? Like
Andrew Moore (56:35)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Connor Fagan (56:56)
I care way more about my company than anyone I employ ever will. And you have to be realistic with that. I was at an event a few years ago and someone said to me that the best thing you'll do Connor is stop expecting people to do it the same way you do it.
As soon as you let go of that, you'll grow more as a person or grow as a company or whatever you're trying to do will be freed up. Saying no is exactly the same thing. There's so many great analogies for saying no helps you grow or whatever. I'm gonna butcher them, Google them in your own time if you're out there. there's so many things that, or so many people, So many analogies which is saying no helps you grow that you have to start believing it and only by doing it do you actually,
understand what that means. And I think what it means a lot of the time is, you know, I follow a lot of trades people because that's a hobby of mine for some reason. And the joke is they always like price up something too expensive not to get the job, right? Rather than just saying no. Can you fit a bathroom? It's going to be a nightmare. No, I don't for $10,000. Suddenly you get the job and then you're in this world of hell. You're four months overdue because you don't know what you're doing. You never wanted to do it in the first place. Like your team are screaming at you because they didn't know what you were supposed to do and
You could have just said no. And it's not about saying no and suddenly your bank account gets massive, right? It's not a direct correlation, but it's happiness within the team because they're doing things that you agreed you was going to do, right? I think one of the biggest things we're seeing in large MSPs is a big disconnect between the sales team and the engineering team, right? Things are sold that we can't do, right? Because there's that disconnect all the time. And just by being really clear and having real clarity on...
what you do do and what you are good at. When you start saying no to things you're not good at and focusing on the things you are good at, everyone within the business is happier. Your sales team can sell it better, your support team can support it better, your finance team can reconcile it better. As soon as you start doing something completely abstract because the opportunity was there, the entire business crumbled because you've all got an hour figure out how to sell, buy, manage, support, whatever it is you've sold that week basically.
I think it comes back to your question.
Andrew Moore (59:12)
And I think to that point, there's two points that I want to drill in on just real quick that I really liked that you said. One was letting go, saying no. I see that one of the things that I also learned in that leadership course from the Navy SEALs was it's better to get 60 % out of somebody autonomous of the work that you could do at 100 % than for you to have to continue to do that work.
Because at some point you can get them to get to 80 % or 90%. Your first time around, they may only get 60 % of it right or accomplished the way that you would do it, but they'll start owning the process. And that's how you start building a team around you. And you start creating opportunities for people to learn and grow. So you have to be able to say, that person's never going to be as good as me at doing that one thing in that one way, but they'll get there. If
that's what they're focused on and not me trying to do it and do 16 different things at the same time as well. So that's a really important aspect of what I think you just said of being able to let go. I think that's a critical part.
Connor Fagan (1:00:24)
Well the irony is,
the way you think you do it, probably isn't the best way either.
Andrew Moore (1:00:34)
That's a true point. I think that, I don't know if that was in the article that you posted, but I think it was something else that I read recently said when a company has an owner or a leader and they are the best at what they do within that business, that scales up to about a hundred people. This was their hypothesis. If that person is still the best person at everything in that business at a hundred people.
they'll never get over a hundred people. They have to have people that are underneath them that are better than them at sales or better than them at operations management. Because once you start getting to a certain size, that, that thing that you were just talking about, which was my second point was these creating processes and expertise of skill between departments. That's where I see the most trouble with an MSP.
What we start to see is you can be really good as a smaller MSP, but when you have departments and then you have to span work between departments, now that you've created a sales group and an operations group, where that issue that you get between the two teams is because there's not a clear understanding of a process that has to happen in order for sales to do something that operations can fulfill. So you get this thing that I call pig tossing, which is you take this big.
gross thing and you throw it over the fence and hope the other person can catch it. ⁓ I think that that's, in my opinion, where processes become really important. think that that interdepartmental communication, interdepartmental work, I think is the key to where you should maybe start looking at putting processes versus creating frameworks within departments so people can think autonomously. But if you have to move that work between different groups, I think that's where maybe a process might be better served.
Connor Fagan (1:02:28)
Really interesting then, some actual con of advice, I think here. When you're doing that exercise and you start asking those questions, you need to make sure you're asking what MVP is or what the smallest barrier is or the smallest thing you can do to achieve that, right? An example being, if a client needs a new laptop and the sales team need to buy a laptop,
What is the minimum amount of information the sales team need to deliver on that? Is it just rough budget and time scale? Is it rough budget vendor and time scale? A lot of the time we see because of an industry of built around guides and FAQs and SOPs and all of this, we go, okay, well, the technician then must provide the RAM, the CPU, the operating system, the due date, the budget, the 54 things, then you bottleneck the business.
because the inputs on the technician, which have never really been employed to do sales, now have to think about every single tangential variable to be able to get the sale to the sales team. So what happens is they either don't do it or it sits with them for a week. So when you're trying to build any process between even departments or any tasks you're doing or anything really, what's the minimum we need? And if you flip it on its head a little bit, to get the outcome, the laptop to the client, what does the client need to answer? What do they need to know?
So I think when you're starting any process and I'm a big believer of, know, it's an American app, I actually keep it stupid, simple, is it? Or keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple, stupid. I learned this, I learned, I claimed not very well, but I heard this years ago and it really resonated with me. Because everything I do is how simple can we make it? I'm obsessed with like simplicity in everything I do in my entire life. Because as soon as it's really simple and repeatable, it gets done way more accurately.
Andrew Moore (1:03:55)
Keep it simple, yeah, keep it simple stupid.
Ahem.
Connor Fagan (1:04:15)
As soon as something's really abstract and really complex and really complicated, there's bound to be loads of errors, it's bound to cause friction, it's bound to cause frustrations. And the end goal could just be a laptop for $500 and people lost their minds for two days over it. And I think the companies that, again, going back to the very beginning of this call, transitioning to Halo, they're going, how clean, how easy, how simple can we make our business? What are we doing?
monitoring security, monitoring patching, helping clients. Let's focus on that and do it really well and really easy. So we can divert more energy into, I don't know, AI or automation or whatever the other fun stuff we want to learn is.
Andrew Moore (1:04:56)
Well, and I like what you said about, you know, that specific example for a laptop. I see it in a, in a, when I look at processes, I've really become accustomed to looking at things from theory of constraint, which is work in, work out where are the bottlenecks, bottlenecks being a requirement for a system. There will always be them, right? They will always exist. So where do we want to put the bottleneck? And so when you look at a process like that, when you talk about simplifying it,
You have this issue where a technician has to figure out what does this client need in order to achieve this outcome of purchasing this laptop and have all these, I have 15 different decisions that I have to make versus taking that decision point, which is your bottleneck and moving it to another part of the process. So what we would recommend to our clients was you sit down and you go to the client and you said, we've got two laptops.
There's an admin laptop and there's an accounting laptop. And here are all the specifications that you're going to go ahead and make the decision that we're going to do 80 % of the time. So we don't have to bottleneck it with the tech. So now we've eliminated that friction of being able to wait for that to happen. And the sales team can just show up and say, pick one of these two options that everybody's already agreed to back to setting expectations. And you already know from a client perspective, this is how this should work. This is about how much these are going to cost and any deviation from one of these two assets.
is going to require a custom build, which will then move to a two week turnaround time because they're going to actually have to have an engineer involved to look at it to figure out what I need. So I love that analogy because I think that sets the table for the idea of how do you use process to set expectation and how do you take work that could be better used in a different or could be better served in a different part of the process? How do you move that work so that you eliminate friction and create higher capacity in certain areas of your organization or higher throughput?
I guess.
Connor Fagan (1:06:47)
Yeah, and my post on LinkedIn last night basically said, you know, we built a process six months ago. We had a VCO in, we sat down, we went through every single nth degree, every single thing, every tangential variable, and we built a process in, and it was this monster of a workflow in Halo, and it was marvelous to look at, right? It took months, hundreds of hours to build it. Ruined us as a company for three months. Absolutely ruined us. Because everything was wrapped in process.
Nobody knew what good looked like at the end. That wasn't the question anymore. It was, what have I got to do to get to the next step all the time? I've got to escalate to you. You've got to review it. I've got to go back. Connor's got to do this. And it was just like, we just become robots clicking buttons to move the milestone one step further. And it was horrific. Like it literally ruined us because the question was, and you know, going full circle is no one knew what the expectation was of them other than to click the next box. Cause there were so many boxes to click to get to the end because I thought the problem was
actually output when it wasn't, it was input. It's typically from my understanding, typically always input. I was too focused on why didn't we test this thing properly to have now five test procedures and four plans and how do we know what to test? Well, define it at the beginning as opposed to just saying, can we test it? Right? Like a very simple thing, clarity at the beginning, make sure it's tested. And if you don't know what that looks like, ask for help from a colleague. But I tried to, and again, failing on me, we learn.
predict all these outcomes and all these tangents by dictating what I wanted the outcome to be that everyone who was doing the task or doing the thing failed to ask what good look like, failed to remember that we're trying to help a client with a problem. Instead, it was this big arduous process of really passing the book, if I'm being honest, know, blaming each other. Well, Connor never typed in this box that you wanted the test strategy to be this. but I didn't write that up last night and it's changed. He ended up just
Andrew Moore (1:08:33)
Mm-hmm.
Connor Fagan (1:08:42)
cycling through documentation and notes and SOPs and guides and all the time to almost not be called out for it failing, right? And I often call it the enterprise way. An analogy I can make with this is, loads of small businesses don't have many like HR policies, right? You can go on holiday whenever you like, Andrew, right? And then one day you take the piss and you ring in a day before, and then there's a policy you have to book in a week in advance.
And as companies grow over years and years and years, they get all of these policies in place because one person might have done something a little bit off piece that ruined it for everybody else, right? I'm now always trying to be really mindful of that and every interaction we're doing with clients with our own internal stuff by saying, is it an anomaly or is it just never set expectations correctly at the start? This is why this has happened as a byproduct of it.
Is it unique to us as a business? Is it individual? Is it a training problem that actually I just need to sit down with Andrew for half an hour with before I put in this new way of working for the company?
Andrew Moore (1:09:43)
I think that's an amazing place to wrap things up today. I'm really excited about the conversation that we've had. ⁓ So thank you for your time. ⁓ Connor is an expert at process management and integration of technology systems into managed services groups and beyond. And so I'm glad that he was here. ⁓ We have one last thing to do, which is I'm going to ask you a few questions.
if you would be so kind as to answer them as honestly as possible. ⁓ What is the best book that you ever read that helped you in business?
Connor Fagan (1:10:21)
So, I can't read books. I have never read a book in my entire life, which I didn't tell you ahead of time because I thought it would be quite fun. As I spoke about earlier, I recently got diagnosed with ADHD, which answers the question as to why I can't read books because I will read a paragraph and it will disappear from my head.
Andrew Moore (1:10:26)
Okay.
Connor Fagan (1:10:45)
I've never done, I can't do, I've done any, I don't have any, any, any, certifications, no degrees, can't struggle to sit through training, never read a book. And I think just to summarize the, the hour of chat we've had, a lot of it for me has been learned through feeling and getting feedback from teams and clients as to what has or hasn't worked. So in terms of the best book, I, I physically it's, it's been a frustration for mine for 33 years until recently as to why can't I sit down and read a book.
my brain doesn't allow me to do such things.
Andrew Moore (1:11:16)
So let me follow up on that. How do you stay on top of things? What do you do? Because I'm sure that there are other people out there that are like, awesome, I'm struggling with the same thing. So how do you stay on top of stuff? How do you know what's going on with the industry ⁓ AI? How do you even know how some of the ⁓ stuff should work when it comes to interacting with putting processes and systems together? Where do you educate yourself? How do you learn things?
Connor Fagan (1:11:47)
So I am, I would say 99 % of my learning has been YouTube for my entire life. Cause it's been around me growing up. I learned to do networking by Eli the tech guy. If anyone knows him from years and years ago, I watched every video of his endless times on domains and forests and know, V-Lans and I learned visually and then by doing. So for me, I keep up to date by
every night watching YouTube for hours in bed and just being hungry and curious.
Andrew Moore (1:12:19)
That's awesome. And I've heard very similar things from people. I'm a, did not grow up with YouTube. So to me it's, it's been super helpful in a lot of ways cause I can watch somebody do it. So I'm like excited about it. But my first, I'm old school. My first is like, where can I go read about this? So I could try to find a book somewhere, but YouTube has been invaluable for I'm sure everybody that has ever been a network engineer in the last like 20 years, like it's been a big help. So that's cool. Super cool.
Connor Fagan (1:12:26)
Yeah.
percent.
Andrew Moore (1:12:49)
All right, what's your favorite curse word?
Connor Fagan (1:12:53)
Yeah, so I like curse words that can be used interchangeably for things that are good or bad. Okay. So my, don't want to say much. Okay. And it's the C word and I'm not going to mention it. I'm not going to drop the C word. It's a heavy word, right?
Andrew Moore (1:13:03)
⁓ yeah, no.
Connor Fagan (1:13:08)
for me, if you say it with intention, it's a really powerful word. No ambiguity with it. There you go, expectations. When you use the C word, you know exactly where you stand with it. And that's why I like it. It always gets a visceral reaction no matter who you use it on, no matter what time of day it is. ⁓
Andrew Moore (1:13:16)
So yeah.
Is there, I'm going to ask, I'm going off script, but I want to ask you because I don't often get a chance to, to interview someone from another country. So is there a, which wouldn't be super Cause I know there was some might be that wouldn't be like super offensive. Is there a word that you use in the UK like bullocks or is there something that you guys use that you're just like, this is my favorite, like local colloquialism, like kind of catch all for a curse word. there one that you
Connor Fagan (1:13:31)
Mmm.
Andrew Moore (1:13:57)
you like there that you'll kind of use more often than not. Yeah.
Connor Fagan (1:13:59)
Yeah, I got one for you.
I don't know if you guys would use it or not. It's really used like bellend is a very common term.
Andrew Moore (1:14:06)
No, I don't know what that is.
Connor Fagan (1:14:09)
So you are a bellend. Can refer to as like dickhead, right? But yeah, bellend, there you go. You would hear that a lot in the UK. If you're getting swore at. I wouldn't use it in a fun way. Maybe you would, but yeah, It's a classic.
Andrew Moore (1:14:10)
The bell end. Yeah. Yeah.
No. Yeah. All right.
Learn something today. All right. It's gonna it's gonna be built into my vocabulary. ⁓ Who's your favorite band or musical artist? And why? What do you what are you like?
Connor Fagan (1:14:29)
I hear you using it now.
My favourite band is a band called Enter Shikari I've grown up with them as like the 2000s rock punk emo type phase. I've listened to them for 15 years plus now. I was almost going to name my son after them, but I turned out to have a son and had a daughter instead, so we had to pivot. We were convinced my second child was going to be a boy, but a girl popped out. We didn't find out was a surprise. We just mentally got it was going to be a boy. I was going to name him after the lead singer, but...
We didn't, had a girl, so she's called Renee. So yeah, Bank On Energy Khare. I like the band just because they're diverse. They've changed genre throughout the years, a bit like what we have to do in our sector, right? We have to be nimble. We've got to be quick on our feet. We've got to be on our toes. As you mature, you change the way you run your business or what you care about or what your values are, right? They shift with age. And that band, think for me, just grown up with me and has shifted and changed not to...
fit the mainstream, they're not a mainstream pop band, but they're just, I don't know, they're just fantastic.
Andrew Moore (1:15:43)
So you said they're like kind of rock punk parent, like are they like paramour? Like where, like where do they fit into like, where, where would they fit in? on the, like what would be more of an equivalent kind of big name artists that people might realize, like know that that would be equivalent to them.
Connor Fagan (1:15:57)
know where they would position these days if I'm being honest. Yeah similar to that paramour era they were definitely about that paramour era there's kind of like rock heavy scream.
Andrew Moore (1:16:06)
Yeah, you're
like rock emo. And I was like paramour, like kind of more like I saw them live. They were really good. They put on a great show. you into that. Okay. Nice. I mean, I love punk music, so I have to check them out. That's Love it. Yeah, I need it because I'm gonna put it in the show notes. So definitely send me a link. What's the worst sales call and you don't have to name names.
Connor Fagan (1:16:10)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they were at the same festivals as them basically. A little bit more edgy, I guess. But yeah.
Check them out, I'll link you afterwards.
Andrew Moore (1:16:32)
What's the worst sales call, client meeting, personnel meeting? What's the worst experience you had dealing with somebody at work? What is it? What sucks? Okay.
Connor Fagan (1:16:41)
I've only had one, which
might sound crazy, right? Again, on topic today, my pricing's on my website. You know what you're paying for. My funnel is YouTube First. You know what you're getting. If you get through price and liking me, you know what the whole is gonna be about, right? Again, I hate ambiguity. You've kind of probably got this from this call. I hate the unknown. Kind of goes with my anxiety. So...
Andrew Moore (1:16:57)
Mm-hmm.
Connor Fagan (1:17:07)
I had a sales call once and it was passed across to me and I didn't know the person and I said, no, I'm not interested, right? Because this is why I hate referrals as well, because they don't know me at this point. So I have to sell who I am as opposed to with my funnel. I'm just telling, well, finding out what problem I can fix for you. So I got a sale passed across to me. Started the call with standard Connor, right? Forgetting he doesn't know who I am by any stretch, which might seem really arrogant, but that's just, know, most people have spent 20, 30 hours.
watching me on YouTube or listening to my shit on LinkedIn, right? So like, kind of, you know what you're getting. And we're just saying to him, you know, this is what we do. And he was like, I want to do it on my own. And I'm like, well, I want a consulting company. So I won't do that. And basically the guy just shot the call down and basically said, I've completely put him off the product. He was never going to buy it again. Now it was the worst call has ever had. And just went in on me basically for 10 minutes.
I ended the call with him, ⁓ counseled my entire day cause he just completely threw me. ⁓ rang actually a head of EME a ninja sales and we got called David at the time. ⁓ good friend of mine and, and Magnum was like, cause he, know, did well as in sales. was like, how the, how the fuck do you deal with this? Like, I can't do this. Right. I'm too, I don't know. I just want to help people. Right. And I was just trying to be honest and like, you know, buying this product is really hard. It's going to take a lot of hours, but that's where we come into help. So you don't have to waste all your time. It's like.
You've insulted me. know how to do IT. You just didn't get me. And basically what David said was, you don't know what has happened in their day leading up to that conversation with you. Their dog could have died. Something bad could have happened. Their partner could have left them and you was just an easy avenue to vent. You can't let it get you. Touch wood, it's never happened since. It won't happen again because I'm a bit more aware of
Andrew Moore (1:18:34)
Right.
Connor Fagan (1:18:58)
understanding people don't know me, which again, sounds really arrogant. It's not how it sounds. Yeah, that was just the biggest shock to me. Like the guy hated me. And it was a shame because I just wanted to help. I don't, you know, we turn business away. I'm not trying to like power sell or aggressively lock people in. I'm just trying to just help with the problem if you've got it. And so yeah, that that sucked at that. Ruin my entire day. But we learned from it.
Andrew Moore (1:19:10)
Yeah.
Well, it,
as long as you've learned from it, like I think a lot of people will just be like, people are assholes. And so, you know, that guy was just an asshole, but I think it's, it's one of those things where that's some of the best advice I think you've ever heard a partner give another partner, which is, Hey man, sometimes people are just having a bad day and you, you got the end of the stick and I'm sorry, but because some of that's true. I've actually had, I had situations where
things didn't go well and there was some back and forth and then someone called me a couple days later and they're like, Hey man, like, I'm sorry. Like I should, I, this was what was going on with me. I was like, ⁓ yeah, that, or I was dealing with somebody at a client and they came in on me and I escalated to the owner of that business. And I was like, I don't, I'm not going to be okay with this person talking to me or my team like this. And they were like, listen,
this person's wife just got diagnosed with cancer or their kid was in a terrible accident. And you're just like, ⁓ I it doesn't necessarily make it right, but it also helps you to understand that it's not always personal and people aren't always just, you don't lose faith in humanity as much. You just gotta realize everybody's got their own stuff going on.
Connor Fagan (1:20:35)
Well, it's a great summary to this call, right? And it all comes back to expectations. If you're really clear up front with your expectations, then I think you'll have a much happier life, right? In that situation where I've seen MSPs where their engineers are getting abused by end users basically. And I'm like, I wouldn't, there is no way I would ever allow that at Reneda. I would be in there on a call within minutes and my team know that. So my team are trusted in that. They expect me to handle that.
So yeah, think it's people can be shit, right? I can be shit. You know, I wake up grumpy some days and I'm not the best me, right? That happens. And I think, yeah, being aware of that is helpful. I see a lot of LinkedIn posts about people emailing and swearing at people. I'm just like, yeah, I could get it though. Like something like 94 sales emails. It's really frustrating, right? It's how you take it is no offence is taken, not given, right? A lot of the time, but
You can certainly imply it and I think that sales call with me. I think you wanted to make me cry. Certainly what it felt like anyway. So yeah, it's a tough one. Tough one.
Andrew Moore (1:21:41)
Yeah. Well,
thanks for sharing that. That's great for everybody to hear how you got perspective on it. Well, just to kind of like wrap up here, I always like to know if there's someone out in the channel that I should talk to you that I haven't talked to yet or that you might recommend. So is there a person out there that you think would be great to share their story or something that somebody's been coming to you with that you're like, man, you should talk to this person because they've got a really unique perspective on stuff. Who do you recommend people check out? And maybe I can entice to come talk to me for a few minutes.
Connor Fagan (1:22:10)
⁓ So ⁓ I'll shout out Chris. So Chris is our fractional coup, VCOO, whatever you want to do it. I reached out to Chris a couple of years ago from EthicEye. He loves reading. I actually use Chris as my source of books. It's a running joke. Just give me the highlights of this thing you've learned. He's geek. Well, I'm obsessed with technology. He's obsessed with business. And just for everyone today, I'm not telling you I know the answers how to solve all these problems.
Andrew Moore (1:22:29)
He.
Okay.
Connor Fagan (1:22:40)
I'm just trying to make you aware of these problems probably exist and these could be some ways you might try and approach them, but I'm no business expert. Whereas Chris has ⁓ done the research, walked in those shoes, I guess, is very ops heavy. Read every single book about how to grow a business and what doesn't work and what does for me. I'm more reaction based. I've felt it. I've learned by failure really. we worked with Chris, them for a few years. He's kind of keeps me sane and level headed and helps me on the...
Operation side where I'm most inexperienced because I'm leading technical teams. never ran a company before. So yeah, I'm shouting out Chris today from Ethic Eye.
Andrew Moore (1:23:21)
I love that. I am. And what was Chris's last name again? Chris Cook. I think it's I think it's refreshing to hear a leader in the in the channel that says, I don't know everything and I rely on other people to help me be smart. think that that's a really great lesson for a lot of people to to to take from this conversation today, which is you may not know everything, so you should probably find people to do. And I'm hoping that that that message.
Connor Fagan (1:23:25)
Chris Cook.
Andrew Moore (1:23:51)
resonates with folks because, you know, coming back to full circle, setting expectations where you're like, I may not know everything, but I can certainly find somebody who can help us. I think is the crux of what a great service delivery team does, which is just to say, we may not be great at it, we're experts at it, but we'll figure it out. Right.
Connor Fagan (1:24:06)
Exactly. ⁓
The best saying is you just don't know what you don't know. I use it all the time, I overuse it really, but it's true. And everything I do, I'm almost quizzing myself of what don't I know about this? Where am gonna get stuck and what's gonna trip me up? And then that's where I go and seek help or ask my team or.
I say we all grow or fall together at Reneda. A lot of decisions we make as a collective. So yeah, if we're doing something we've not done before, we agree with it as a team, as a collective, and we jump in. If it doesn't work out, well, we all had our input, we all tried, and we'll fall together, luckily. Touch wood to date, that hasn't happened, but we do it as a company, so yeah.
Andrew Moore (1:24:56)
I love that. love that. Well, Connor Fagan, thank you so much for your time today. And I look forward to continuing to watch great things out of Renada and continuing to work with you with our clients to drive outcomes. So thanks again for being here. Cheers.
Connor Fagan (1:25:02)
I think so.
Cheers, Andrew, thank you very much.