Humanize IT

Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. In this episode, Skip and Adam talk through the value of being lazy and how it can drive your success. We talk in-depth about how to work smarter rather than harder as well as tips on how to gain that focus you so desperately want.

Everyone has blind spots, do you know yours? How can you find out and what is the cost of having blind spots?

In this episode seasoned veterans Adam and Skip talk through blindspots and how egos get in the way as well as how to sort them out so you can continuously grow.

This coming week marks the beginning of the end of the year. Since it is a 2-day holiday it kills the week and bleeds into the Christmas season. So what can you do with this knowledge?

In this episode, Skip and Adam talk through the opportunities that the holiday season brings and some tips and tricks on how to make the most of the chaos through the end of the year!

Culture is often ignored when it comes to tech companies. What kind of culture are you creating? What kind of culture to you want to foster among your staff? If you are not deliberate you are leaving one of the most important aspects of your company up to fate.

Find out how to set culture and what the advantages are in this insightful episode!

Mike Giovaninni and Adam Walter will be giving a talk at 4:00 Friday November 10th at IT Nation connect. This podcast is a preview of that talk and how you can effectively step into a CIO or CISO role to do a risk assessment with a versitile tool...the SWOT.

Have you been told you need to be a better listener? Well so have we, well 'We' actually means Adam. So, how do you listen better, what does it look like to listen well and what are the results of those 'conversations'. In this episode, Adam and Skip talk through how to recognize when you are being a bad listener vs a good one.

October is an odd month, it seems so simple and easy, just one holiday at the end of the month. So why is it always so chaotic?

In this episode, Skip and Adam talk through the reasons why Octobers are so chaotic and how we can avoid it.

Do you ever wonder if there is a cost to being perfect? In this episode, we talk about how to become better rather than perfect. How you can stall your company by aiming for perfection rather than good.

At Build IT Live 2023, we met great people and had great conversations. We recorded this conversation with Jonathan Crowe about community building. Check out this great episode as we discuss how we build our respective communities and attempt to steal Halo's McLaren...

Some MSPs call it firefighting mode, some just are feeling overwhelmed. Whatever you call it, you are overwhelmed by the amount of data and items coming at you every day. We have sen quite a few MSPs who have been in this mode for YEARS.

In this episode Skip and Adam talk through different techniques to help you get out of analysis paralysis and get some traction so you can move forward with confidence!

Ever wonder what the future of MSPs look like? In this episode get practical advice as to what the next 5-10 years look like for IT Service Providers. Learn from Sunny Kaila and Bill Smeizer as they talk through what they are preparing for and what the future looks like for forward-thinking MSPs.

How do you build a successful MSP? In this episode, Sunny Kaila and Bill Smelzer talk about the experience and give advice. What is important? What should be a priority? As well as advice for MSPs just starting out.

Engineers are nerds and business analysis are beer drinking flunkies right? Many people have this view of us vs them when it comes to engineering. Heck we even have a joke "My tech would work great if it werent for all the users".In this episode Skip and Adam talk through the importance of joining forces with business minds to create a better world. That business is just as complex if not more so than advanced engineering designs. It is just a different set of knowledge completely.

One of our favorite topics revisited. In February we talked about putting the B back in QBR. This time we talk through HOW to accomplish a proper QBR as we walk through a meeting agenda for a QBR as well as WHY it is important to run your meetings this way. It will free up 6 hours of your time as well as provide more value for your client and increase buyin.

We often get asked how to find clients as an MSP. In this episode, Skip and Adam talk through lessons learned on how to find clients that fit your culture. There are critical mistakes we make when finding clients such as looking too broad or assuming every client is going to be a culture match. Tune in to help define who your clients are so you can find them where they are.

A certainty in life is that we can unknowingly be toxic while having great intentions. In the case of MSPs we can set up client relationships for failure unknowingly with great intentions. One of these is not trusting our clients in ways that matter. In this episode, Skip and Adam talk through a hard topic regarding admin access and who really owns technical assets at a business. A simple mentality shift will reduce risk, build relationships and help reduce toxicity.

We tend to push our to-do list off until later or sometime thinking we will get to it then. However, when it comes to annual planning the year is deceptive since the last 2 months of every year are full of holidays, weather, and other people waiting until last minute to get their stuff done.

This makes things stressful and there is a better way that you have to do now. Tune in to this episode to find out what you need to do to avoid the trap of the last half of the year.

Many MSPs are simply seen as a reseller of technology and a service/maintenance organization. You need to re-define how your clients see you so that they can include you on the right conversations. Then when they have a business problem they will bring in their favorite advisors and ask their opinion on how to solve the problem.

In this episode Richard Bauer talks with Adam Walter about how he redefined client expectations in a simple way to make a larger impact.

As professionals, there are things you know in certain contexts. A desktop admin may be able to patch a cable in seconds from memory while a Server admin may have to look up the wire mapping. We tend to forget skills to make room for new skills This is not a bad thing, and is to be embraced. In this episode, Richard Skip and Adam discuss the necessity of losing some knowledge to gain relevant knowledge...even when it was hard-earned.

Too often we get lost in good intentions. We fail not because we are being lazy, rather that we are not focusing on the right areas. You can spend a hundred hours working on the right thing when 1 hour on the right thing will bring improved client relationships.

In this episode, Skip and Adam talk about how to keep the focus on the Main Thing.

As IT engineers we constantly have to step outside our box, whether it is trying to understand structural engineering while pulling wires or building stable data centers. In this episode, Adam and Skip talk through how to deal with being the wrong kind of engineer as well as how to work together with different experts to become something greater.

CIOs can be a tricky position to define for MSPs as in some sense many MSP leaders have always been in a CIO role, however what that role meant has changed as their MSP evolves. Yes there is a CIO and what does it mean to act solely in a CIO role?

In this wrap-up episode, Skip and Adam talk through what the main thing is that many people miss when it comes to acting in a CIO role.

This week we want to talk through what a CFO persona looks like within an organization. What do they care about...where are they at mentally? Spoiler, it has very little to do with accounting and everything to do with risk management. If you want to talk with CFOs or if you need to act in a CFO role, this podcast is for you to help understand how to relate to the CFO. If you are stuck in a leadership role with many hats...this is the series for you!

Part 2 of our series on MSP personas. We have the CISO which is a role that intertwines everything, we break down this role and what it is as well as what it is not.

In the last episode we talked through how MSPs have so many personas and hats to wear. This week we break down the CEO role and how to focus. What some of the distractions can be to working on your company as well as how to delegate the right activities to different personas.

If you are stuck in a leadership role with many hats...this is the series for you!

MSPs owners wear many hats, somedays you are a CFO making sure to collect payments and ensure bills are covered. Other days you are a CEO planning the direction of the company, or maybe you are a COO managing the security stack and maintaining clients. Whatever the case, we can order our thinking by considering each of these hats a persona so we don't get our conversations with clients and staff mixed up. In this pocast learn how to keep your personas in order and what they mean, in this series we will talk about each persona and how it is used towards your success.

We often create a heap in front of us of work and say "I will just chip away at it". In reality, we just always have pressure on us to perform and then we never feel like we are getting anything done. We are working hard and what are we accomplishing?

This episode is built for people who are working so hard and feel like they are getting nowhere.

So many MSPs seem to think they know exactly what their client's goals are and what they need. This is a key indicator that they are on the left side of the dunning-kruger effect graph.

The goal of business is the topic of this insigtful podcast that aims to help you get a grip on what your client's needs are and how to help them with their challenges.

Last episode we really boiled the conversation down to: The care and feeding of others and the care and feeding of ourselves. In this episode, Elizabeth talks about how to hold each other with curiosity. Don't assume you know what the person across the table; or even you need. We need to ask more human questions and understand the person across the table as well as ourselves.

We are great at updating computers and maintaining them. So you would think it would be easy enough to apply maintenance to ourselves. In this insightful episode, Elizabeth Copland discusses how we tend to neglect ourselves and how to be just as mindful about our meat computers as we are about silicon computers.

Identifying Thought Leaders is hard. Sometimes it is easy to get swept up listening to a great speaker and confuse them for a thought leader. For reference see the TED talk on voice inflection.

In this episode Skip and Adam talk though what it means to be a thought leader, how to identify them in the tech space and how to leverage them to build your company and personal mindset.

In 2021 we began the merger process between Virtual C, Manged Services Platform and the birth of HumanizeIT. How is that going? What are the ups and downs of a merger and where do we go from here? All these things are discussed in our State of the union address!

Automation can be your best friend and save you hundred of hours. It can also be your worst enemy when overused and customer service takes a turn for the worse as you disengage with clients. How do you find the balance we talk about how to find the balance and use the right tool for the right job.

It is great when you drink your own kool-aid and have a lot of confidence in your own ideas, however, it is also hazardous.  To honestly know if your ideas are good we need to hear from outsiders.  This is the power of validation,  listen to this podcast to ground yourself and gain insight as to whether you are talking into an echo chamber or understanding whether your product and services provide actual value.

Kyle Christensen and Adam Walter continue the conversation of "What does Success look like?"  In the first session we talked about the problem of defining success. Now we talk about how to process our work and come up with a defined outcome of what success looks like for us individually.

So we talked in part 1 about how  QBRs are more like QTRs and all the things wrong with this.  In this episode we talk through how and why to change your focus in these meetings. It will benefit both you and your client, you sell more projects and your client's business will grow.  Listen to find out how!

Many engineers don't understand how to talk business in QBRs.  So they fall back on the familiar and talk about technical things. However, QBRs and strategy sessions are more about discovering what the business objectives are than about technical specifics.  
In this 2 part podcast Skip and Adam tackle the tough question: "How do we talk Business as Engineers?"

The knowledge you have today may not be useful tomorrow. It may become outdated or you might move to a new context or the tech you have might not be relevant. When this happens you have to let go of the old knowledge. Being deliberate about what you choose to know is key to staying focused and creative.  This episode covers how to transfer from one area of expertise to another.

There are fewer professions where the Peter Principle is more prevalent than engineering.  Just because you are a great engineer does not mean you will be a great leader.  In this podcast Skip and Adam discuss how to transition from engineer to leader. 

What is the biggest issue facing MSPs today?  In this episode Skip and Adam rant about how MSPs are being brainwashed into solving the wrong problems...all to get rewards they don't really want.

Check out this tough episode where Skip and Adam clearly define the largest issue facing every MSP today.

In the first episode (with that horrible audio in the middle) Bruce and Adam discussed the issue that we don't treat people like human beings anymore.  In this episode, we discuss easy steps to avoid this problem. How to ask better questions and how to build relationships that benefit both MSPs and their clients.  Stay tuned.

In business we tend to treat individuals like clients, opportunities, processes, everything except for people.  In this engaging hard hitting episode guest speaker Bruce Sarte and Adam Walter discuss the problem that businesses have today: "We don't treat people like people".  

What will 2023 bring?  Skip and Adam do their best to predict what to prepare for in 2023 with the upcoming recession.  What should you focus on?  Listen to find out!

2022 is coming to an end, so we are taking some time to recap the highlights of this awesome year, as well as touch on some of the things we will be working on in 2023.

Work life balance is hard. In this episode we talk through the importance of finding some joy in life.

Reviewing your lessons for the year is very important, this podcast walks you through the importance of discussing what went well, what could have been better and what are you going to change going forward.

It is the season!

It is almost cliche but IT departments exist in silos.  We see everyone not technical as outsiders. What if...we treated them like teammates with value to add to the conversation?  What if we brought them in and sought their advice?  A lot of cool things that is what will happen.  Stay tuned to this episode to learn more about how to create dynamic teams that are inclusive and take your solutions to the next level. 

Be a fly on the wall and join  Vonahi, AlertOps  as we discuss IT Nation 2022 highlights.  Also guest star appearances from Tom Lawrence and Elizabeth Copland!  Amazing discussion, massive margaritas, Guacamole is made fresh and a really fun environment all around!