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Start Tech is an IT provider located in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, and was one of the first IT providers in the UK to become a National Cyber Security Centre Assured Service Provider. Their team has over 23 years of experience, and has a partner-oriented approach to their client relationships.
Ian Groves, the managing director of Start Tech, spoke with us about how implementing EOS® at their company helped grow more quickly than they ever had, and how Strety helps them keep their implementation on track.
Can you tell us about the beginning of your EOS® journey?
We’ve been in business since 2000, and up until about five years ago, we hadn’t grown much. We were just making it up as we went along — classic IT guys that stumbled into running a company. I found myself wishing there were a guidebook of some sort to tell me how I should be running my business, some way with more structure. Around 2019, a client recommended a book called Traction. I got a few pages into the book and realized: this could be pretty handy.
What challenges did you run into when you first got started with EOS?
Pretty early in the book, it mentions your leadership team. That was a problem: We had never organized a leadership team as such. So I bought a few copies of the book and called my unofficial leaders together. I handed the book out and we went through it together, with an open mind and a whiteboard.
It wasn’t always easy for us to be faithful to the framework, after running in an unstructured way for so long. For example, when we were making the accountability chart, we would have trouble building seats without trying to immediately shoehorn our people into them.
But we held each other accountable; we told ourselves we’re starting a brand new business. We’ve just cashed out, we’ve got plenty of money, and now we’re going again, building Start Tech 2.0. That mindset really helped us push through when we were in danger of falling back on old habits.
As techies who really clicked with working within a framework, we were hooked very early on. We've got the very stereotypical journey of introducing it to the management team, but then not really properly getting it down into other teams, then re-reading the book, figuring out how to use EOS® across departments, and it slowly but surely spread its way through the business.
What was the business impact of implementing EOS® at Start Tech?
The impact has been enormous. We've tripled our revenue and doubled the size of our team in the past five years — astronomical growth compared to the first nineteen years of the business. And that’s mainly because of the framework that Traction gave us.
The big thing for us was having a vision. Before EOS®, we just kept fixing problems while they cropped up until you know, one day there'd be no more problems. Having a vision and referring to it really transformed the way we worked.
What tools did you use for your EOS® implementation?
We got started with our copies of Traction and a whiteboard. Once we got a little further along, we used Word documents. As we tried to manage a living, breathing document and keep to the framework, we decided we needed more organization and flexibility, so we went to Excel spreadsheets.
Someone recommended we try Bloom Growth (formerly known as Traction Tools). It did everything we needed it to do; the logic was there, and if we were to build a tool ourselves to run EOS®, it probably would have looked a lot like Bloom Growth. There were a few quirks — boxes that didn’t expand, dropdowns that were a bit scratchy. The interface wasn’t exactly modern. But it did what it needed to do from an EOS® perspective.
How did you come across Strety?
I was actually telling someone in a networking group about Bloom Growth, and two of the guys shot back that if I liked Bloom Growth, I would love Strety. And they were right. I got about two minutes into watching a video about how Strety works and I was in. The Microsoft Teams integration was a huge draw.
In the early days of trying Strety, we realized how much more powerful it was than Bloom Growth. Again, we liked Bloom and weren’t actively seeking a new solution. It was an adequate digitized version of the tools from Traction. But getting some experience with Strety showed us that we had been using the weaker of the two options. We weren't unhappy with Bloom, but Strety goes way beyond the capability of what you read in the pages of Traction.
What features of Strety were you most excited about when you got started?
We were very excited about the mobile experience we could access with the Microsoft Teams integration. I’m a big user of Microsoft To Do, and often think of issues or something to talk about between meetings, which I would add to To Do. Then, I would have to transfer them into Bloom when I was back at my desk.
So with Bloom, I had to do double-entry, and oftentimes slow down a meeting to add things because I wouldn’t remember to do it ahead of time. Being able to put issues and topics into my meetings whenever they occur to me has been a huge boon.
What other features differentiated Strety vs. Bloom for your team?
Another draw for us were the reviews tool and one on one agendas; we had nothing comparable in Bloom. The general UI and fluidity of putting together the accountability chart and organizing everything was also much nicer. When you're techie guys, you can get a bit snobbish about a decent UI!
How does your team use the one on one feature?
The one on ones are really a chance for our team members to have a more ad hoc meeting, where they can talk about whatever they have on their minds. Some people really engage with their agenda ahead of time and put questions or concerns in, which is nice for their manager to come to the meeting really prepared.
For other team members who don’t necessarily have a laundry list of things to discuss ahead of time, the meeting agendas are still very helpful. There, they document what happens in the meeting and we have a trail of where next steps came from.
Have you used any of the other performance management tools Strety offers?
The reviews are having a real impact on our business. I think we're probably similar to a lot of tech companies in that it’s a little awkward for us to sit down and dig deep on performance in conversation. Having the reviews done ahead of time kind of dehumanizes the process in the right way. It makes it where the system is asking the questions and driving the flow, not the manager across the table, which can feel a bit adversarial sometimes.
Plus, the guys are more honest when they're filling in a form versus being in a conversation, where it’s so easy to get defensive or nervous about how to answer. We've definitely had feedback from members of the team that they wouldn't have done it in a verbal sit down one to one.
As an example, we had someone who went through a really tough time after a terrible accident. And of course we stood by him and helped him out and did what we could to support him. He's not the sort of guy to vocalize how he felt about that, but in his written notes through that meeting, he wrote stuff down that I don't think he would be able to say aloud without getting upset.
We've had another case where an apprentice was struggling and not really fitting the brief. Once he got through to that screen, it kind of dawned on him how his performance was. I think having it in that screen-led form disarms the situation and makes it not a malicious conversation. No one's going to misinterpret it. I think that's a really interesting concept in how to do reviews and give people the opportunity to document them in advance. We love that feature.
These performance management features are definitely a value add and fit beautifully with the rest of the EOS® framework that we’ve implemented through Strety. That's been a hidden benefit of it.
How has the team adapted to using Strety?
Better than a duck to water. It’s such an obvious, self-led platform that you really don’t need training on it. In terms of ease of use for new starters, it's probably one of the simplest tools you kind of got to be trained on when you come and start an MSP. There's not much of a learning curve.
And Strety’s help and videos and documentation is fantastic. If you do need to see a sample of how something's going to work, just go and watch a two minute video.
What else have you noticed about your experience using Strety versus using Bloom Growth?
The other thing that stands out is the speed of the development cycle and the responsiveness of the Strety team. The moment we spot something and we're asking questions or looking to make any small changes, they’re taken care of.
“In my decades of experience in tech, I've never known a dev team turn corrections, enhancements, and new ideas around as quickly as the Strety team does.”
I remember there were little things, like setting the currency to be GBP and pound signs, and it wasn’t showing them on the vision sheet; it was still showing dollar signs. We reached out and literally an hour or two later, it’s fixed. In an impatient, fast world, it goes a long way to see responsiveness like that.
How has using Strety impacted your team’s compliance with the EOS framework?
It's helped massively. With EOS®, I re-listen to the book probably every six months or so; I just put it on the car whenever I'm driving. And there's always bits of learning where we've pulled ourselves away from the framework or where we've got a little bit distracted. And I think Strety is just about rigid enough to keep you in line with the framework pretty well.
“Strety is the best platform to run EOS® out there, and it will help you stay loyal to the EOS® framework.”
What changes have you seen on your team since starting to use Strety?
I would say people are more accountable. It goes back to thinking about EOS® and how it applies to the company as a whole. People often think it’s only the business owner or someone who’s self-employed who has ambition and the vision for how they want to progress a business. Actually, more often than not, everybody within an organization wants to know whether they’ve done a good week’s work. They want to know what defines a good week for them as an individual. Having the weekly meetings and the scorecard help them tap into this natural impulse.
Good people aspire to beat what they’ve agreed to in their scorecard. Coupling that almost competitive KPI aspect with one on ones, having them in the calendar and creating the structure, also makes it easy to depersonalize the performance piece in a way that’s easier to talk about. It’s almost like closing another ticket — just solving problems rather than agonizing over things without context.
Do you have any you would give other business owners who are curious about running EOS?
Do it! Speak to people who have done it — people who have done it successfully. I have seen people who dabbled with it, didn’t really execute, and then say it didn’t work. From personal speaking, the framework isn’t the problem; it’s usually the way you’ve approached it.
Keep in mind that the whole philosophy is about teamwork. The best thing I did was order five copies of Traction. Everyone else bought themselves into the idea by engaging with the book themselves. And that meant I wasn’t pushing water up a hill: we did it together. That made a big difference.
Thanks, Ian! For more information on how Start Tech can help with your IT needs in the UK, visit their website. If you want to see how Strety can help your EOS® implementation, start your free trial or schedule a time with the Strety team to get a tour of the product.
