Here's how you can harmonize individual responsibilities with team goals in a computer repair team.

Collaborative Mindset Adopting a collaborative mindset is key in a computer repair team. It means you're willing to share knowledge and resources, and understand that helping a teammate can indirectly help you meet your individual targets. For example, if a colleague is struggling with a complex repair that you're familiar with, offering guidance can speed up the resolution process, benefiting the entire team's productivity and customer satisfaction.

Not having a clearly-defined role can be a serious pitfall, one that can easily get no consideration before it's a problem. I encountered a situation supporting a Fortune 500 client. My supervisor told us a few lower-level techs were coming to assist with a refresh/re-imaging surge. There was no clarification exactly what their roles would be or for how long. With one of these entry-level folks at my site, we put him through the basic image process. But as time progressed, I made the decision to gradually teach him more. It seemed prudent, both for his growth and better supporting the client. My supervisor later chewed me out for taking him beyond the base-level project. I don't regret my actions, but having clear roles would have helped.

I cannot understand how an IT team can function without some type of open-ended group chat. Knowledge bases are critical, emails are important and DMs obviously play a vital role. But at the end of the day, an ongoing group chat in Slack or Teams is a game-changer. It opens the door to answering quick technical questions and coordinating logistics. When I was in the North American team for a Fortune 500 company, we'd have special projects patching zero day exploits or updating Windows 10 for security. The formal process was logged elsewhere, but we avoided stepping on toes and provided gentle reminders when brain farts occurred. An open team chat also encourages camaraderie. I'm known for engaging and keeping a sense or humor.

Formal documentation is critical for an IT outfit's survival, and somehow it ends up being overlooked far too often. Having more than just one person know the answer in in-house environments is huge, but explaining how an MSP client's environment is built and can be repaired is even bigger. Take lots of screenshots, dig into details and reference each step. Best yet, when the article is complete, have someone else give it a once over for accuracy and clarity. Having a proper KB is great, but even a collection of Word documents is far better than nothing.