Systems Are Solvable. People Are Infinite.

When I set out to write these 25 insights, I imagined covering a wide range of topics. Business mechanics, MSP-specific strategies, technology decisions, operational systems. And I’ve touched on some of that. But as I look back at the 21 insights I’ve published so far (getting close to the end!), I notice a pattern I didn’t fully expect.

Most of them are about people: leadership, culture, self-awareness, relationships. As I started planning the final four, I paused and asked myself: why is it weighted this way? The answer came pretty quickly. Because the people side is the hard part. And the hard part is where the real work is.

Don’t get me wrong. The mechanics of running a business are complicated. MSPs especially deal with enormous complexity. We coordinate multiple people, roles, technologies, and client needs all at once. Getting that right takes real skill and discipline.

But here’s what I’ve learned over 25 years: the mechanics are more predictable. They’re solvable. You can learn what works, borrow from others, build systems, and refine processes. Once you figure them out, they stay relatively stable. They’re complicated, but they’re not infinite.

People are infinite. Every person is different. Every relationship is dynamic. Often what works with one person won’t work with another. What worked last year might not work this year because people grow, change, struggle, and surprise you. You never really “solve” people. You just keep working at understanding them, aligning with them, building trust, and creating the conditions for them to do their best work.

I think I always knew this intuitively. But writing this series has brought it into sharper focus. Maybe it’s also just a reflection of who I am. The humanity of work matters deeply to me. When I look back on 25 years at Smart Dolphins, what I remember most fondly isn’t the systems we built or the numbers we hit. It’s the people I worked with, the relationships we formed, the team we became.

I’ve seen this play out in painful ways too. We’ve gone back to the drawing board many times on core functions at Smart Dolphins. We’ve re-engineered processes countless times, thinking we didn’t have the system right. And sometimes we didn’t. But looking back, the real issue was often that we hadn’t integrated the humans into the process. We hadn’t empowered people to own their portion of it. We hadn’t understood what motivated them or how they naturally worked.

We kept trying to fix the mechanics when the real problem was on the people side. And every time we rebuilt the system without addressing that, we’d loop back to the same issues. That pattern kept repeating until we shifted focus.

This shows up in leadership too. I’ve seen this pattern throughout my career, sometimes even in myself. It’s easy to overvalue process and structure, thinking if you just get the system right, everything will click into place. But when you overvalue systems, you stop seeing people’s potential. You treat them as static instead of growing. And they stagnate. People aren’t cogs. They’re what actually drives value and success. Jim Collins calls this Level 5 Leadership, the difference between the “genius with a thousand helpers” and leaders who build companies where the people, not the systems, are the real engine.

We just finished 360-degree leadership reviews for our current leadership team, and all five of us scored very highly. I think that reflects what happens when you focus on people first. When you truly see them, empower them, and build real relationships, they show up differently. They’re more engaged, more creative, more aligned. That’s not something you can engineer into a process.

This is especially true in the MSP world. Our industry is full of technically minded people who got into business because they love technology. It’s easy for them. So they build companies with that as the center, and then they struggle with the people side because people aren’t computers. People don’t respond to logic alone. They’re complicated. They’re emotional. They need connection, clarity, and care.

A lot of MSPs get stuck trying to tame that complexity, thinking if they just build the right org chart or implement the right ticketing system, the people problems will sort themselves out. These things help, but they fall short on their own. The business stays capped by the quality of the people and how aligned they are with the culture. The technology will always be there. It’s learnable. It’s predictable. Your people are the real constraint – and the real opportunity.

An awesome team of awesome people, aligned toward doing impactful work for awesome clients, will beat a perfectly optimized company with mediocre or disengaged people every single time. Human history has proven this over and over. And it’s certainly been true at Smart Dolphins for 25 years.

Business is like going out to a nice restaurant. You could order a side dish, fill yourself up, and walk away less hungry. Or you could order the steak. Systems and processes are the baked potato. People are the steak. One will sustain you. The other will actually nourish you.

So yes, most of these insights are about people, leadership, and culture. Not because I set out to avoid the “hard business stuff.” But because that’s where the real work has been. The mechanics are the easy part.

The people are where everything actually happens. And that’s the work that never ends, never gets boring, and never stops teaching me something new.

What’s this 25/25 stuff about?: 25 YEARS, 25 INSIGHTS – Reflections on Growth, Leadership and Resilience | Smart Dolphins IT Solutions Inc.