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Chris joins Daniel and Adam to discuss Patrick Lencioni's Working Genius assessment, a 40-question framework about where people get energy and joy at work, contrasting it with tools like Myers-Briggs and DISC (communication preference). He explains the WIDGET model: Wonder (identify gaps), Invention (generate ideas), Discernment (judge ideas), Galvanizing (rally action), Enablement (help others move work forward), and Tenacity (drive to completion), plus how each person has two geniuses, two competencies, and two frustrations. They cover applying the model in MSPs to improve role fit, career progression (e.g., L1 vs escalations, sales vs sales management), meeting focus (strategy vs tactics), recruitment language, and reducing burnout through intentional time spent in frustration areas.
00:00 Introductions and Banter
00:23 Why Working Genius
02:08 WIDGET Overview
02:32 Wonder and Invention
03:18 Discernment and Galvanizing
04:13 Enablement and Tenacity
05:45 Genius Competency Frustration
07:50 Applying it to Meetings
09:17 Business Gaps and Stages
10:25 Every Job Uses All Six
12:04 Role Fit Sales Example
14:37 Technicians Need Clarity
15:07 Clarity Versus Escalations
15:50 Valuing Level One Talent
17:06 Career Paths and Intentionality
18:17 Time Blocking for Strengths
19:46 Hiring Amid Talent Shortage
22:00 Do Your Results Change
25:21 Engineering into Sales
28:40 Right Seats and QBRs
30:23 DISC Versus Working Genius
32:27 Wrap Up and Contact
Connect with Chris Cook on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/cookechris
Connect with Daniel Welling on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielwelling/
Connect with Adam Morris on LinkedIn by clicking here – https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamcmorris/
Visit The MSP Finance Team website, simply click here – https://www.mspfinanceteam.com/
MSP Glossary: MSP Finance Glossary Explained | MSP Finance Team
We look forward to catching up with you on the next one. Stay tuned!
Welcome back to It's a Numbers Game, the podcast where we explore the realities of running
and growing an MSP business.
I'm Adam Morris joined by my co-host Daniel Welling.
One of the biggest challenges in growing an MSP isn't a technology, it's the people.
We hire great engineers, promote high performers and build teams, but often without really
understanding where these individuals actually do their best work.
So today we're exploring a framework called Working Genius, it was developed by Patrick
Lencioni and it looks at where people get energy in the work and where they get drained.
It's a simple model that can completely change how you think about hiring leadership
and team structure.
And look, there's lots of different models out there that help you understand people
and understand how to get most from them.
And I guess this is just another piece of the jigsaw, so it may well be something
that resonates with you.
To walk us through it, talk us through it today, we're joined by Chris Cook, a certified
working genius facilitator who works with leadership teams to understand how the people
think, contribute and perform best.
Welcome to the program, Chris.
Thanks Daniel, good to be here.
Indeed, maybe we'll have a slightly more coherent conversation than we did last time we met
as we were both a couple of GNTs in at that point.
No, I think you're in jail that night, yeah, you're on your own, no, you've got to get
involved.
Very good.
So our topic, our starting topic for today is one that I'm sure I'll appeal to a lot
of our listeners in the MSP space because we all love old jigs, except we're going to
talk about a slightly different widget today.
Maybe you'd like to expand on that.
Sure, yeah, thanks very much Daniel, I'm not going to talk about the, like I mentioned
beginning, well, you've just mentioned it, not that widget, different widget and not
the widget that we were put on a dashboard and either this is something about understanding
who we are, that little bit better.
There's a model out there by Patrick Lencioni of the table group and they've done about
a million plus of these assessments now and what this is, it's a framework, it's a framework
that is built around where we get energy and what removes energy.
So I'll run through the model on the top, on the top level, we'll try not to go in too
much detail here, but I'll give you the bits that you need.
The important element to remember here is we've got all those other great tools, well, I
think that might have breaks, but good luck remembering all of your team members, the
FTP and all these things, all these different letters and then what we mean and then how
did they translate?
So it's great, but how great is it with application and actually using this stuff?
And disk is amazing, I've been through disk, I think it's a great tool to understand
how we like communication, but at the time it gets misused and it defines that individual,
so I used to be a high c when I was in a very tactical operational role, which meant
I wasn't allowed to make mistakes if I put a comma in the wrong place or if I did something
wrong, that doesn't define me as just how I like to be communicate to and communicate
with.
So onto the work in genius, the work in genius is all about where we get joined like
I said.
So it's a sick letter acronym, it's 40 questions that you go through, it takes about five
minutes or so.
And the acronym is widget back to the original point, so we've got, if we start at the top
and work our way down, I'll explain what each of these mean and I'll go into how we break
it out.
So widget is at the top, you got a w, so if you think w at the top, we're 30,000 feet,
we've got w, w is wonder, wonder is all about what problems
are there?
What are the gaps in the industry and the company and the team, things like that?
So we're looking for opportunities.
And that in itself is a genius area.
So what we've got there, let's view these as different people, these, the w, i, d, g,
e, t.
Then you've got an i.
So the i is invention.
So what this person in invention generally loves to do, we take that wonder, that opportunity
you go, I've got loads of ideas, they may come up with 100 ideas and they do it naturally,
to put these people in a room and say, just come up with some ideas to fix this problem.
Now, not all of them are going to be great, but they've got lots of ideas.
So what we then need is somebody sat underneath that in a d, so a d is discernment.
So discernment in this model means we take an idea and we work out whether it's a good
idea or a bad idea.
Now you don't need lots of background knowledge and intellect, the people who help discernment
are very, have a very close connection with the limbic brain, which is the feeling,
really bad at brain.
So they have this feeling.
So when we say got feeling, that's the limbic brain talking.
And they just know.
So very good.
A lot of people project managers will be a deserter because they're very good at sculpting things
out and working through the future.
So once we've done all of that, that's the first part where we've then got the g.
The g is a galvanizer.
A galvanizer is there to rally the troops.
Great team leaders, lots of service delivery managers will probably, like the, the flourish
would probably be galvanizers and you get a difference between introverted galvanizers
and extroverted galvanizers, but galvanizers galvanizers.
They make sure on track with what we've already discerned from the stuff that we do we
talked about before in the WID.
And then we've got an E.
So we need a, anybody with an E, I've got an Abelman thinks it's a bit of a token one
just to fill up the acronym and not have would, but actually an E is the quintessential
tea player.
An E likes to be involved in things and the kind of person that would go, what do you need?
What can I help you with?
Tell me what you need that can help you move this third of our line.
And then finally you've got the tea and the tea is tenacity, tenacity, so obviously
you need the tenacity of each of these, but in this vein, this is the tenacity to get
it over the finish line.
Now each of these come with elements of what people like and what people don't like who
have these characteristics.
So the tea, what they crave is clarity, big create clarity.
Now there's more of all the people who have done this, a million plus people who have
done this assessment and bid through this.
There's more people on the planet have a combination of ET than any other.
So that means we've got a lot of technicians, for example, in our MSPs that are ET's,
they're sign roles and what they want is clarity, do where this is going to fit into
what, why we're talking about this.
So they want clarity, what they hate and what crushes them is ambiguity.
So if they don't know what they've got to do and what they should be working on next
as an example, it's tough.
And the problem here is they're maybe able to do a good job, but how long can they do
a good job?
The ten year rate is maybe not going to be as good.
So everybody got two gene, two of these acronym letters from this acronym are that you're
genius, two re-competency and three of frustration, I'll give you a mind as an example.
My genius is I'm a discerner and I'm an enabler, which means I like listening to other people's
ideas and saying whether it's good idea or bad idea and then mapping it out, going
away.
So it's already started running away with it in my head by the time we get at the end
of the conversation.
And then because we do that as a business, then I can go away because I know what we've
worked out, what we're going to do, and work on, I can jump in with my enablement and
say, throw what you need.
What can I help out with?
What have you got a hole in your business and you can't do this or what have you not
got the capacity to do?
So it's a fascinating model around that, but underneath that I've got my competency,
my two competencies are galvanising and tenacity.
Whilst I can do these, and I could do these pretty well, I've managed big teams by small
teams, which is where my galvanising comes in, tend to get to this point of every two years
earlier in my career, east of being cuties or little bath doors, things like that, beginning
in my career.
And I get to this two year mark and it's because I wasn't discerning and I was just
burnt out after two years, I was bored and wanted to change my role.
So this epiphany obviously only came later on in light.
And then the tenacity stuff I can do stuff, but I don't want to build a business around
doing something that I don't love doing.
I like doing stuff, I like getting involved in stuff, but I don't want to own it, I don't
want to finish everything.
So I build a team around me of people that like doing these things.
And then finally, I've got a wonder in invention.
So if you put me in a room, I'm a business owner, I have to do, I have to look at the gaps
and things like that from my business perspective, but I don't want to do it all the time.
I want to surround myself with people who like doing that.
So when I started my business, I got bored advisors, people who filled these gaps and people
who can help me with these elements, so I don't need that all the time, I don't need
to be coming up with a new idea.
I don't need to be questioning me everything all the time, just need to get things done.
So the acronym, I'll give you a visual that you can push out after this, quite an interesting
visual that's got.
When you look at it from a 30,000 foot view, that's strategy.
Your wonder in invention is strategy.
That's where we want to be in those strategic meetings, but then on the weekly on a daily
meeting, we want to be more granular, we want to be looking at the things that we can affect
now.
That's more enablements and trashity.
So anybody can be in any position, any genius, it doesn't matter, it's not to say to
be a CEO, you have to be a wonder of an invention.
But what you need to be is intentional about it, because if you're not as a CEO with an
MD, as a business leader, we have to spend time there, because what we'll do is we go
into a strategic meeting and we say, I'm not WI, I'm a TE, for example, let's go the
other end of the spectrum, I'm going to make all of the conversation super tactical.
And that's not the time for it, because as opposed to talking about where we want to
be, we're talking about how we're going to get there, and there are two different conversations
with two different times.
And what we end up with is this meeting stew, which Lencioni talks about in other books
that he's done, the advantage.
So it's actually, it sounds much more complex than it is, it's actually very simple.
So what you can do with this is once you understand yourself, you can be candid to yourself,
you can be more intentional about where you need to spend your time, you can understand
where your gaps are, what do we need to recruit for, but then what we've got, what we get
the tool where we can overlay all the different people in the business, and we can see where
the gaps are in business.
Because right at the top, what we've got is three categories in the elevator, I'll
stop talking about it, let somebody else get a word in that phrase, is we've got the
ideation stage right at the top, that W and I.
And then in the middle, we've got activation, that's the galvanizing and disarmament.
And then right at the bottom, we've got implementation.
So what I see, when I do this a lot, the companies that are missing a whole section, it's, and
it's so obvious when we see it, and I push it up, I talk to the clients and people that
we go through with us.
And it's so obvious to them that this is why they've had a problem, because if we go
from ideation to implementation, without testing the market and saying, is this the right
thing that we should work on, we're wasting time, we're wasting money, we're making
wasting resource and effort.
But there's impact if you're missing any of these.
So it helps us create a picture of the business and what we need and how we work as a team.
Every single job is a sick flat job, that's one of the things we've reinforced with it.
We've got to use all of them, but how much we use in each of these genius areas, I'd
down to what's that, but I've down to intention.
So it's a super interesting model, very easy to remember, I'm just digging a, just to
try and get some better understanding.
So you said every job is a six letter job.
So all of these, what are they, roles, types of thinking, emotions, what kind of like
cleverity, yes, yeah, yes, yes.
So all these proclivities are required or involved in some way, shape or form with every
role within a business, but some more than others and some individuals are more comfortable
with some more than others.
So is it about they're all there, but a tech engineer role might need a bit more tenacity
than they need wonder. For example, quite possibly, quite possibly. It doesn't mean that they
can't do the job. They're just going to struggle, get excited by it. So I think when we think
about the genius, if we put ourselves in a position, in a role, in a function where this is the
kind of work that we really enjoy, we're going to become more curious. And because we become more
curious, we go down rabbit holes and we become experts at that field, whereas it's very difficult
to go down rabbit holes about things that you don't care about. You know, like Daniel and I,
and I think you as well, I don't really like motorsports, we like cars, F1, things like that.
Now, I could go down a rabbit hole and think and talk and read books and watch documentaries
and go to track days. Fun. But if you put, I don't know if something about ballet in front of me,
I'm just not interested. I appreciate it. I'm just not interested. So I'm not going to go down
that rabbit hole where I'm never going to be an expert on it. So if we think about that from the
roles perspective from a function, because there, anybody can do any job. But from a, let's take
care, the easiest example is a sales role. If we've got somebody who, I see a lot of good sales
people, a pattern of being like IG. So inventors and galvanizers. So people who are just really good
at, I say, really good, they enjoy it. So they become really good at going out there, talking to
people, being excitable, educating about the things that they care about. And they do really
well, quote over quote, when they get, their reward is a promotion to a sales manager. And they
a lot of the time fall down because they're doing a different role. They're managing numbers,
they're managing people. And they're not, they're not doing what it is that they like to do.
They're not doing that specific scenario. Then what changes from being a salesperson to a sales
manager within the six proclivities? That can never change. So that widget will never change.
This is who you are. If you've answered the questions, honestly, which, as in which emphasis
change changes on a pro, at a proclivity level. But this depends on the final, what the expectations
of that function. So what you tend to see in a business development, a sales executive role,
is that they've got to do the doing. They've got to go out there, they've got speech people,
they go to the events, they do the stands, they talk to people, the full of energy, they're that
person. And that typically talks to that GI topic, sorry, the proclivities, the genius of galvanizing
and invention. When you get to a sales leader role, sales manager role, what you've gone from
being in it to being more on it. So what you're now doing is saying, okay, these are all our
targets. We're maybe looking at budget, we're looking at sex, we're looking at different
things that we can go and do. We might have to go and look at wander or adventure. We can do
these things. But the 10 you're not going to be as good. And they're going to strum and just
help them enjoy that specific example, the shifting more away from an emphasis of what did you say,
discernment and galvanizing into wandering invention. Is that right? The role probably demands
that little bit more need to look at more opportunities. Like what can we do? How can we innovate
basically on what the industry requires? That person can still do it, but just probably not
want to do it. That's the point. So we're moving to somebody who's genius expert level is
maybe the two geniuses that we mentioned before, the galvanizing the invention. And we know,
saying you're going to do this function, but that function actually requires a different set
of accountability, different set of competencies of things that we're good at and we like doing.
And we think a change is striking out if that's all right. And I'll look at the technicians,
fair client engineers. If we build a system around documentation, SOP standards, everything
like that, we've got a system that's built out really well. We've got all of the ticket comes in,
everything's prioritized in whatever PSA you're using. We've got the next ticket to work. You see,
we're going to go through that one and I'm going to click through that. I've got a checklist. I've
got all of my interlinking knowledge based documents. So I know how to fix it. I know what steps I need
to go through. That's clarity. That's clarity and somebody with enablement of
plasticity is going to love giving up because we've got everything. I know exactly what I've got
to do. And we don't need to break everything down to the minutia and just talking blue sky
perfect world. That's what they'd like to do. But then when you get to escalations,
if we've got our systems set up in the same way, we can do escalations, but I hope you don't
need to do escalations because it's all been answered in the documentation. But if we've got
escalations going, it's usually because we haven't got them documented. So what we need
there is somebody who's going to thrive from thinking outside box. We're going to look at somebody
who's looking at different ways of fixing a problem. And the point is that we, if we look at this
down from a different perspective now, we've got level one engineers who are remunerated to a certain
point because of their value to the business. And a third liner who's getting over an escalator
is going to get paid more money because they're of more value to the business because they've got
our experience. But we're now saying that there's a limit to how much this person can own and
enjoy their work because they're going to have to move to this escalation as well as they're not
doing as much and maybe not be as good at doing. But actually having somebody who's really good at
level one is vital, just like having a really good dispatcher, vital to a business because you've
got people to understand things and they're looking at different ways of making their life and their
role better because they're interested in it. To two things, first of all, I now know what
preclivity means. So I'm going to add that to my diary today. Daniel Fasaurus.
The Daniel Fasaurus. And as a people analyzing tool, I think this makes a lot of sense and there's
a lot, there's a lot to digest there and appreciate. Probably a podcast is not absolutely the best
medium. Me seeing that visual guide, which yeah, if we've got a link to that, we'll certainly include
that in the show notes, something that'd be really helpful. I'm really fascinating. And I think
for me, this is key in understanding what not just business owners, but anyone occupying a role,
if you're already good first or second level engineer, then maybe we assume third level is the
next progression, but actually perhaps that isn't. And career planning can now be, can now be
more realistic just so they, yeah, if you're going to go and become a third level engineer, you might
have more money, but you'll be a lot more unhappy in that unless, and I think you said earlier,
the intentionality around it unless you would in the knowingly do that. And so now I am going to be
happy because I am exchanging more interest in that topic. I'm going to be more disciplined around
delivering what I need to, again, within that different role. So I think, am I right there? It's
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surviving and start thriving. Absolutely. You think of all the good points, and I think
all of these things we can talk about, I could talk about it, so the cows come home.
But how does it help us? What can we go and do with it? What's the application behind it?
So there'll be a proportion of your listenership, is that the right word?
Leadership. Let me check the proportion. Yes, for it.
And there are solo owners, which is awesome, which is great. But it's hard. I've been there,
I'm sure you guys have been there, and it's tough doing everything. So how do we make time to do
the things that we don't like doing? We need to be intentional about it. So when we really
viscerally understand what it is that we like doing and what we don't like doing, as opposed to
just having some idea around it, we can be more intentional about it. Because I struggle doing
that wonder in invention, I, for example, have like a 30-minute block, a couple of times
out of the week, which is what I call my T-zone. So it's my tenacity of doing my Wi, because
that what I need to do is just go deep on a few topics. I don't want to, it's much like we know the
pre-ageal principle 80, 80, 20, where a lot of the things in life can break down to 80%, and 20%.
Same kind of thing now, we want to maximize them with our time in the area that gives us frustration.
Otherwise, we're building a world that we don't like doing, and there's no longevity there,
we'll burn out, and that's no good for anybody, so good for you, it's no good for your family,
it's no good for your team. So really, if we, even if I know what we're talking about so well,
but I'm talking about everybody, and when I talk about a team that could be contractors,
it can be clients, it can be anybody, all these stakeholders that you've got, it's not good for
anybody. We can create a longer tenure behind the work that we do. I enjoy it anymore. It's really
that simple, but that's not going to happen by accident. Some people are lucky and they've got it
all-sust. Not everybody has though. So the application here really worked well with, we're going to
kind of segue on to something, if that's all right, on to kind of like the
talent shortage that we, the perceived talent shortage that we've got, and I remember probably
three years ago, Adam and we saw each other, and this was a topic at one of the tech-tribe nights
that we were up recruitment people. There's no first liners. Okay, well, it's difficult finding a
first liner always has been, always will be, because how do we quantify and qualify whether they're
the right people for the job? We can just kind of give it a go. We're going off university degrees
a lot of times, sometimes, or college or aptitude, things like that. And really understanding,
and this is not a tool to qualify people in and out of roles, by the way, this is, if we understand
what the function is that we want that first one, and I'm only using first liners in example,
you can work with Eddie by the way. If we understand the qualify, what the purpose of that role is,
just talking to the company purpose and why they exist and what they're working toward,
it's not just this verbose that says, this is what we stand for, which we refer to as our values.
And then we talk about the actual role with the comp, this is what you're going to be accountable
for in a role, three or four things, and this is what you need to be competent at to do this role.
When we bake in the language of, we're talking about this line of self-tenacity and enablement,
and reinforce, you will be doing something that has already been defined. Not coming up with what
we're actually doing is we're talking to the limbic brain, we're talking to the feeling part of
their brain that we struggle putting language behind. And when somebody reads that advert,
they look at it and they go, that's for me, that's, that's what I like doing, whether they know
they're working genius or not. So if we understand what we need in that position, we can build roles
around it and we can start talking to that person. So when we recruit, we get sometimes, what
are you thinking inundated by lots of irrelevant candidates or no candidates at all?
So that's about the positioning and where we couldn't it. So there's never any silver bullets
with this, but what we need to do is be clear as the who we are and what it is that we want,
and we'll end up with the right people in the right heart. And so just a couple of questions
actually, can these change? So if I just give you an example, a person of the example, maybe
to bring it to life a bit, certainly from an identification perspective, I saw myself as an
engineer, but that's what I did, that's where my skills were, that's where my authority came from.
And that was everything in my world professionally, and then one day I find myself having to sell,
and that was like an alien territory, no idea how to sell, what is this thing I've heard of it
before, that's about as far as it's got. So I then had to somehow pivot into a different skill set.
So would I have needed to have moved into different proclivities here, or was it just,
or did I change something about myself in doing so? Because by the way, I enjoy selling, I enjoy tech,
and I enjoy selling. So it wasn't that I didn't enjoy it. So how does that kind of work?
Yeah, well, we've got 16 personalities, I'm sure you'd come across that one, was it,
any, any gram? You don't want that one? Anyway, it puts the whole world into 16, and I don't think
it's as linear as that, right? I personally don't anyway. Okay.
When I went through certification on this, one of the things that came up by a lot of people
on the course was this question, does this change? Can this change over time? Now, there's a bit of
a caveat here, and the caveat is, number one, how well do you know yourself, and how well can you
answer the question? There's 40 questions, they're incredibly accurate, they're very well curated,
but very pointed, and they've got it onto a football 40, and the point is, when we make a decision,
and then we answer these questions, I'll get, I am getting to the answer with this point, by the way,
is, I always ask people who disagree, and by the way, I've got discernment, and anybody with
discernment always disagrees with their results. Can't pass a lot of it, so I'm prepped and
permed and ready for that one. One of the questions I ask is, how long did it take you to fill it in?
And the ones that we've had the wrong results from someone, maybe been two out of about 300 that
have done, have taken about half an hour, 45 minutes, because they're sitting, they're reflecting,
they're trying to convince themselves that the world that they've got, and the work that they do
with the stuff that they enjoy doing. Bear in mind, this is not that way, you can't and can't do
anybody can do anything. This is about what you enjoy doing, so if you understand yourself well
enough to answer those questions, honestly, it'll be accurate result. What you could be in,
is this kind of limbo period in life, where you just yourself is so alien to yourself, you don't
have to answer the questions, you don't know what it is that you like. So the textbook answer is no,
it will never change, but the reality of it is how you know yourself at the time of answering
the questions. Now I've done mine three times at different stages over the past three years,
like one was where I was worked for somebody else, and now I've got my own business, and then
doing different things on that journey, and they've been the same each time or mine. They don't change,
fundamentally they don't change, but if you're creative, I don't mean creative is like an artist,
if you're creative with your thinking, you could do any role, if you can capitalize, so what's
you're saying that you're an engineer and you wanted to sales and you like doing both of these
things. What you did is you took the engineering element that you were interested in, and you didn't
problem, I'm only assuming here Adam, is that you probably didn't view sales as sales, you probably
viewed it more as education about the engineering. It's more about viewing it like that, a lot of people,
I think, but sales on this pedestal, and actually if you think about it,
we'll actually listen to a poll green, we're tired of every today, and if you put yourself in
another person's shoes and understand them, that's perfect marketing really, and that's all it is,
really, we're trying to talk to these people about the things that we care about, probably
where you did well in sales, you talk about engineering. I love it, and I was nearly with you there,
Chris, because I was thinking exactly that, what's the way of gaming this square in the
circle here, Fred, and I was thinking maybe the thing he actually enjoyed doing was helping people,
because in as an engineer, you're helping to solve people's problems as a salesperson,
you're helping them buy what they need to want, and so maybe we've identified it as a role,
but actually, it's a weekly, I give you a great deal. Is that fricking a ditch?
A great example with my wife, she'll tell me for saying this, but so my wife, she got a degree
in interior design, and then she went to go and work for one of the world's largest architectural
practices, became their in-house interior designer, very kind of person who, when she gets so excited,
only dogs can hear, she speaks so high-pitched and excited, she gets really tired, because she's
passionate, she cares about it, so guess what? She ended up with a job in sale in a different business,
because what she's doing is talking about something that she cares with the use,
so he's exactly the same with a different industry, so it can be used in so many different ways,
and that doesn't mean you're going on to be a business owner, so you've got tactical all the way
to invention, and this is why when we talk about, I understand why people say it, when we talk
about on the business and in the business, if you're a business owner, you have to work on the
business, no, what about was you were a business owner that is tenacity and enabling,
but by spending 80% of my time working on my business, I would not like my life, and I'd go
be much better served, going work for somebody else, if I'm intentional about it, I will
make sure I'm spending the necessary amount of time on the business, and when I'm looking for
outside help, be that a contractor or advisor or a new team member or peer support, I'm going to
get that help of people who like doing that there, and bring them into it, so I think it's all
about that individuality of making sure, it's not like a very American world, I've made you
sure that you're spending your time in the area that makes you happy, without neglecting the other
elements. Yeah, really interesting, and it puts me in mind of someone we all know Paul Lloyd
does it to me, and it's many years ago now, something along the lines of, you can do it yourself,
or you can pay someone else to do it, they're your two choices, and I think the extreme would be,
I really enjoy doing first-run work, so I see I'm going to help this, it doesn't mean that I
can't also own the business as well, and yeah, shareholder, as long as I've paid a CEO, a
salesperson, all of the other roles that I don't enjoy doing, but how we get to that position
maybe is a topic for another podcast episode. You know, I could talk about it all there
wrong, there's so many applications behind it, but it really is, we talk about outsourcing,
every got an internal team to support all of the guy at this new gig, or do we go to somebody
like Uptan, or help tell whoever it is that we want to go and use this stuff, it's using the
experts in their areas, because we'll look at the next generation of MSPs, they're the MSPs,
they're the people who are getting under the hood and understanding the people and why that
company's trying to go, not the company who's necessarily turning up every week and saying,
this is how many tickets we fixed, and we've done this much within SLA, and we've breached this,
but I don't care, ask the question as to where you're going as a business, and as opposed to,
I think the easiest analogy here is if you sit down on a QBR, I know we're bleeding into an
entire different topic here, but if you sit down in a cry of meeting on a QBR and you just talk,
you just become human, much like we're doing it, just have a conversation, and that conversation is
going to go to a point of where they're going, where their business is going, what they care about,
because everybody likes to talk about themselves and what they're doing, and they'll be interested,
and they think that you're interested because you're listening, but if you could use some kind
of technology, AI, whatever, record it, and be really present, and record that meeting,
and take that back to your techies, whoever it is who scopes projects out and say,
okay, this company, let growing this year, they're going to go from one site to three sites,
was opposed to that client coming to you and saying, well, I need to go from on-prem to
Azure, because what clients are going to say that, we should know that based on their path,
but we're only going to know that if we ask the questioners to where they're going as a business,
so it's right people, right seats, basically, we put those conversations in there.
One last question, we need to be quick, because we're at time, the challenge is to take a minute
on this, Max, what, using other models, in particular, the disk model, that was helpful also from
a sales perspective, in trying to understand a more optimized approach for that target client,
so the first discovery meeting, we might start to look in, are they, is it about the monkey,
the gregariousness, sell that stuff, is it all about chat or relationships, or is it all about
detail and numbers, or is it about goals and challenge and growth and domination and all this kind
of stuff, so look, but the point is you're composing a net of very basic level, what type of
proposal, for example, to pull together, is it just a word, is it just a sentence,
it's the numbers, or is it really detailed, or it's spreadsheets and all sorts, you're right,
and so I felt quite useful, could this tool be used in a similar way, or is it more
comp to a step on from that, in a complex add complexity, and you wouldn't use it in that way?
I think the main distinction, the main difference between the two tools, is that the disk is a
communication preference, and you're absolutely 100% bang on for use cases there, great use case,
but for example on the red, I've got a little flick of it, the red is basically the leader,
isn't it, it's the high team, they are, you breathe, be bright, be gone, and then you've got
the blue, which is the sea, and they are, give me detail, so if I went to a
prospect, for example, and I, and they are a high D, yeah, I go in with detail, I've lost them,
they're just not going to read it, when people call it ADD, or ADHD, or whenever they label
that we want to put on it, they just don't want that level of detail, it's not for them,
what they want to know is that it's going to work, the working genius is not really about
that, disk is perfect for that, the working genius is more about putting the right people,
it's going to help that conversation, and identify that with quite a, okay, that's cool.
Really, really fascinating conversation, Chris, and I didn't even need age in Drail to help
probably locate it, so hopefully there's some good listening there for audience,
if anyone would like to carry on the conversation with you, how best to get in touch?
Yeah, thanks Daniel, thanks Adam, it's been great talking, I can talk about working genius
quite a lot, but yeah, anybody wants to get in touch with me, I'm very responsive on LinkedIn,
I've got a newsletter, so I'll put the link, I can link to you guys if that's all right,
so yeah, just reach out, happy to talk.
Great guys Chris, thank you very much for joining us here, lovely, thank you for having me.
It's a Numbers Game



