Chapter 1: Ready Player One

What a rush, my first 90+ days as an Evangelist for the ConnectWise Economy have been an eye opener. From my perspective the word or mantra of “purpose-built” takes on a bigger meaning here. Our VP of Strategy Tony Thomas is an avid reader and gave me the “Infinite Game” by Simon Sinek (who was also an IT Nation keynote speaker) to wrap a language around ConnectWise’s strategy and overarching ethos.

I’ve learned that ConnectWise views our ambition with unlimited time horizons, there is no end to the managed services industry or game. Making decisions is not about winning such a game, but to serve as many partnerships as possible with a lifetime of value. Clearly, we’ve seen some ahead days and some behind days where we’ve shown vulnerability and owned it, but it’s clear that the teams I’ve encountered here resolve to do right by our partners.

The aha moment I’ve had so far is that ConnectWise is not a product company, it’s a supply chain company. Let me explain. To have an economy you need to have a supply and demand loop that creates value that people want because it immensely improves people’s lives (at a profit). Now picture an infinite value loop.

Across all major curves of this infinite loop are the pains and struggles from 140+ million SMB end-client’s world-wide seeking some level of digital outcomes our partners are best equipped to provide them, our hundreds of thousands of global partners in turn have pains and struggles around running their business and delivering a line card of services that help them grow the value they offer, an ecosystem of siloed solutions that have pains and struggles to create a streamlined experience by meeting user in their day to day flows of getting stuff done. I’m learning (still learning…like miles more to go..) that ConnectWise is at the intersection of each of those supply and demand curves. It’s truly a channel centric world like I’ve never pictured in this way and even more excited I get bring my game to contribute to our vision and level up my skills the deeper I get. Anyway, there is a lot more about the infinite game that I’ll talk about as my journey continues.

That being said let’s all do me a favor so I can stop babbling… Go get the Infinite Game by Simon Sinek and learn about all five principles, if your already familiar with it, please share with others how your playing it.

Next up Chapter 2 of learning… Same bat channel tomorrow.

I’d like to share learning from my journey so far in five parts, each day between now and IT Nation Secure.