Most MSP partnerships don’t fail because the owners are malicious or lazy; they fail because the company outgrows the founders’ original skill mix—and nobody wants to admit it out loud. At small scale, “everyone does everything” can feel noble. At scale, it becomes a hidden tax: duplicated effort, quiet resentment, and chronic drift disguised as busyness. This episode tackles the uncomfortable but necessary distinction: ownership is equity, not a seat. A seat is a defined set of outcomes that must be produced, measured, and defended. If your org chart has titles without outputs, you don’t have leadership—you have labels. To turn equity into enterprise value, MSP owners must deliberately define roles, establish a cadence that forces visibility, and align around a shared operating system (including Vision) so accountability can’t be “delegated away.”
The deeper tension here isn’t “How do we avoid hurting someone’s feelings?” It’s “How long can we afford ambiguity before the company pays the bill in lost growth, margin compression, and leadership burnout?” In a $5M MSP, the sales function isn’t just closing quotes—it’s building a repeatable new-logo engine, reinforcing the sales-to-service handshake, and creating governance that prevents heroics from becoming the operating model. When an owner’s seat is defined but not lived—when the plan is offloaded to an employee without owner-level urgency—the business may look active while staying stuck. The fix is not more encouragement. The fix is clarity: define the outcomes, re-interview for the roles, and confront the fact that the business doesn’t care about titles; it only feels accountability.
In mature MSPs, “partner” becomes a dangerous word when it substitutes for clarity. Equity can be shared. Outcomes cannot. The business does not reward intent; it rewards results—revenue generation, service delivery performance, and financial stewardship.
Delegation is not the problem. Abdication is. When owners hand off strategy execution without retaining outcome ownership, urgency evaporates and cross-functional friction compounds.
Strategy is not a slide deck. It is a recurring governance rhythm that forces trade-offs into the open. Without cadence, planning becomes theater—well-spoken intentions followed by unchanged behavior.
The fastest diagnostic is simple: would you hire the current person—including yourself—into this seat today? If not, the issue is structural, not motivational. Left unresolved, it will surface later as burnout, buyouts, or stagnation masked as “being busy.”
Ryan Alter is a former MSP owner and operator with deep experience navigating growth ceilings, exits, and post-acquisition integration. His perspective emphasizes cadence, accountability, and the realities of leadership beyond technical excellence.
Josh Peterson is the CEO of Bering McKinley, a management consulting firm serving MSPs. He works with MSP owners to improve profitability, operational maturity, and enterprise value through accountability-driven execution.
No. Ownership is a financial and risk position; leadership is an accountability position. A business only requires that every critical function has a clearly accountable owner of outcomes. That person may or may not be an equity holder, depending on how the partnership and operating agreement are structured.
Owning a seat means being accountable for outcomes, not just participating in activities. You can help anywhere in the business, but if you own a seat, you are responsible for results, trade-offs, prioritization, and cross-functional resolution—regardless of who executes the tasks.
An owner can delegate execution, but not accountability. Employees can build infrastructure, manage pipelines, and run playbooks, but the owner must still hold the number, enforce priorities, and resolve sales-to-service friction. When accountability is delegated, urgency disappears and progress stalls.
Start with the needs of the business, not personal judgment. Define the seat, clarify expected outcomes, and establish a cadence for review. Most conflict arises not from poor intent, but from undefined expectations. In many cases, the conversation is a relief rather than a rupture.
That outcome is possible—but avoiding clarity doesn’t preserve harmony. It only delays and compounds dysfunction. If a partner’s strengths no longer align with what the business requires, the healthiest path forward may involve restructuring roles, compensation, or ownership to protect the enterprise.
A simple test: could someone outside the company describe who owns sales, service, and financial outcomes—and how success is measured—after sitting in one leadership meeting? If not, roles may exist in theory but not in practice.
Because tactics feel productive and strategy feels expensive. Moving to a strategy-forward organization requires protected time, recurring cadence, and visible accountability. Without those, planning becomes episodic and execution reverts to heroics.
Define the seats before discussing the people. Identify the outcomes the business requires, assign clear accountability, and install a weekly or monthly cadence that forces visibility. Structure precedes behavior.
If your MSP is paying the hidden cost of unclear ownership—slipping margins, stalled growth, or internal friction—Bering McKinley can help you define seats, clarify outcomes, and install the cadence that turns strategy into execution.