You Don’t Have a Culture Problem. You Have a Standards Problem.

Seems like every peer group meeting or MSP industry event I attend, MSP owners are spending a lot of time talking about culture.

They organize lunches, plan outings, buy swag, create contests, add games to the office, celebrate birthdays, form culture committees, and hand out awards.

None of those things are inherently bad. But they aren't culture.

At best, most of them are employee engagement activities. People may enjoy them. They may provide a temporary lift. Some are absolutely worth doing. The problem starts when leaders mistake those activities for building a strong company.

You can have the best company picnic in town and still have a terrible culture.

Culture Shows Up in the Work

Want to understand the culture of an MSP? Don't look at the ping-pong table. Look at what happens in the everyday work.

What happens when a technician closes a recurring ticket without figuring out why it keeps happening? What happens when an engineer consistently fails to enter time correctly? Do projects routinely exceed estimated hours without anyone asking why?

L

ook at the salesperson who keeps selling things the operations team can't reasonably deliver. Look at the technically brilliant employee who treats coworkers poorly but is considered "too valuable" to confront. Look at the manager who consistently misses commitments without consequence.

That is your culture.

Culture is largely shaped by the behaviors an organization encourages, rewards, corrects, and tolerates. And what leaders tolerate may matter more than what they say.

MSPs Have a Particular Problem With This

MSPs are people-intensive businesses. We depend on hundreds or thousands of small decisions being made correctly every week, often without a manager watching.

Does the technician investigate the cause or simply clear the alert? Does someone document the solution for the next person? Does the engineer escalate early or spend six hours trying to be a hero?

Does the account manager tell a customer something they don't want to hear? Does someone notice that a process is broken and try to fix it, or do they just work around it for the hundredth time?

Those behaviors have an enormous impact on service quality, profitability, scalability, and ultimately customer retention.

Yet I see MSPs spend far more energy deciding what to do for Employee Appreciation Week than defining what great performance actually looks like.

That's backwards.

Sometimes "Culture" Actually Lowers the Bar

There is another uncomfortable side to this. In an effort to create a positive culture, some organizations become reluctant to make people uncomfortable.

Accountability starts sounding negative. Performance conversations get delayed. Managers lower expectations because someone is well liked. The business accepts mediocre work because "they're a great culture fit."

Eventually, the best performers notice.

Your strongest employees generally don't want to work in an environment with unreasonable expectations. But they don't want to carry people who continually underperform either.

A low-accountability culture doesn't protect employees. It transfers the burden from weaker performers to stronger ones.

That isn't a healthy culture.

What I Would Spend the Time On Instead

If I had limited time to improve culture inside an MSP, I would spend less of it creating activities and more of it answering some basic questions.

• Do people know what good performance looks like?

• Do managers address problems quickly?

• Are your stated values reflected in actual decisions?

• Can employees challenge a bad idea regardless of who came up with it?

• Do people solve problems or simply escalate them?

• Do your best performers see a future with the company?

• Do leaders consistently do what they said they would do?

• Does the company learn from mistakes or simply move on to the next ticket?

Those things aren't as visible as an employee event, but they are much more consequential.

You Can Still Have Fun

This isn't an argument against company lunches, outings, celebrations, or having fun at work. Do them. Just don't ask them to carry a load they were never designed to carry.

A company event might make someone feel good about work for an afternoon. A good manager can change how they feel about work for years.

A free lunch won't overcome unclear expectations. Swag won't fix a dysfunctional leadership team. And no amount of employee engagement activity will compensate for a company where poor performance is routinely accepted.

Build the company first. Then have the party.