You know that feeling when it's Monday morning at your MSP and your service manager is playing whack-a-mole with tickets, trying to figure out who's least busy. Meanwhile, project managers are dumping tasks on engineers like hot potatoes, and everyone's inbox is exploding with "urgent" work.
This old-school way of working, where managers push work onto techs, is breaking your team. It's not just about missed deadlines or angry clients, because it's actually messing with your people's heads.
Think about it for a second. When you constantly have work shoved at you, what happens? You stop thinking for yourself, and you wait to be told what to do next. You feel like a robot instead of a skilled tech, and every new task that lands on your desk feels like another weight on your shoulders.
Karen Martin, who helps companies fix their workflows, put it perfectly in our recent podcast conversation when she said, "When work is pushed onto people, it creates nothing but chaos and bottlenecks."
Here's what really happens when techs get work pushed at them all day. They feel like order-takers instead of problem-solvers, and they stop taking initiative because why bother when someone will just tell you what to do? Their brains get fried from jumping between different tasks, and they can't figure out what's actually important when everything is labeled as "urgent."
Every time your techs jump between tasks, they're not just losing time - they're losing serious productivity. Remember that 20-minute task-switching cost? In push systems where people juggle multiple assignments, that penalty compounds fast. When someone has five tickets assigned to them "in progress," they're losing over an hour and a half each day just to context switching. Pull systems with strict work-in-progress limits eliminate this drain. By allowing tasks to be finished before starting new ones, MSPs see completion times drop by 30-50%. One ticket at a time means deep focus, better quality, and faster delivery.
Now here's where things get interesting. What if we flipped the whole thing around? Instead of you pushing work onto your team, what if they pulled work when they're ready for it?
This isn't just changing how tasks get assigned, because it's really about understanding what makes people tick. See, we all have three basic needs at work that drive everything we do.
First, we want to feel like we're in charge of something, since nobody likes being bossed around all day. Second, we want to get better at stuff that matters. Third, we want our work to mean something bigger than just closing tickets.
When techs pull their own work from a list that's already sorted by priority, something cool happens. They stop being passive receivers and start being active players. They're not waiting for orders anymore because they're making choices.
Let me tell you about what happens at many MSPs when they're stuck in the same mess you might be in. Techs are buried in work, SLAs are getting missed left and right, and everyone is in constant firefighting mode.
When MSPs switch to a pull system, something interesting often happens - though service managers typically aren't sure it will work at first.
Before the switch, managers at many MSPs spend hours every day assigning tickets to techs. They try to match skills to tasks, but often get it wrong - sending complex network issues to someone better with printers, or routing a simple fix to their most experienced engineer. Techs open their queues each morning to find work they either can't handle efficiently or that wastes their expertise.
Here's something else that happens in push systems that drives everyone crazy - the rescheduling spiral. One emergency ticket comes in, and suddenly the service manager is playing calendar Tetris, shuffling assignments around, sending emails about changed priorities, and updating everyone's queues. By the time they finish reorganizing everything, another emergency hits. With pull flow, this nightmare disappears. When priorities change, you simply reorder the Ready column. Techs working on current tasks keep going, and when they're done, they pull the new top priority. This means no mass emails, no calendar chaos, and no wasted management time.
After implementing a pull system, everything changes for many teams. Techs now choose their own work from a Ready column based on their skills and capacity. Senior techs who used to get assigned random tickets often start pulling the complex challenges that match their expertise. As one tech at a client told us, "For the first time, I feel like I'm choosing my battles instead of having them chosen for me."
In many cases, the results come quickly. Tickets that used to take 10 days to close are done in 5, and techs report feeling way less stressed and more "in control." Service managers often cut the time spent assigning work in half, which frees them up for more important tasks.
We frequently hear comments like this: "I used to hate looking at my assigned queue every morning, yet now I check the Ready column and think, 'What can I knock out today?' It's weird how much better that feels."
Ready to try this? Here's your roadmap to making it happen.
Before anyone can pull a ticket, it needs to be ready to work on. That means having all the info you need, getting any approvals squared away, making sure you have access to what you need, and knowing the work can actually be finished without tons of delays.
When techs know they can actually complete what they pull, they stop worrying about getting stuck halfway through, and that confidence boost is huge.
Your Kanban board needs to make priorities crystal clear. Put the most important stuff at the top of your Ready column, use colors or symbols to show SLA deadlines, and maybe use different colors for different types of work.
This takes away the stress of figuring out what matters most because the board tells them exactly what to focus on.
Set a rule that each person can only work on 1-2 things at a time. This might sound limiting, yet it actually helps people focus, get into the zone, and feel good about finishing stuff.
Remember that every time you switch between tasks, you lose about 20 minutes getting your head back in the game. Those WIP limits protect your team's mental energy, and that protection is worth its weight in gold.
When techs finish something, they follow these steps. They move their done ticket to the Done column, which feels good. Then they take a second to appreciate finishing something before they look at the Ready column and grab the top thing they can handle.
This creates a nice rhythm that feels doable instead of crazy, and that rhythm becomes the heartbeat of your team.
"But My Team Needs Me to Tell Them What to Do!"
I hear this worry a lot from managers who think their techs won't know what to work on without being told. That's not giving your people enough credit.
Your team doesn't need you to assign every task. What they really need is clear priorities, which the board shows them. They need good training, which you provide. They need permission to make choices, which pull systems give them. They need to know they're accountable, which happens when everyone can see the board.
Actually, the old push way often hides bad prioritization. When everything gets assigned as urgent, nothing really is. Pull systems force you to get clear on what actually matters first, and that clarity helps everyone.
Some managers worry about the lazy ones who won't pull work. Here's the thing though - when everyone can see the Ready queue and who's working on what, people can't hide. Peer pressure works way better than you hovering over everyone, and it creates a healthier team dynamic too.
There's another powerful shift that happens with pull systems. In push mode, tickets belong to individuals - "That's John's ticket" or "Sarah owns that project." This creates silos and finger-pointing when things go wrong. With pull systems, work belongs to the team. When a tech pulls a ticket, they're not alone with it. If they hit a snag, teammates jump in to help because clearing the board is everyone's goal. This shared ownership means faster problem-solving, knowledge transfer happening naturally, and no more throwing work over the wall. The whole team wins or loses together.
This isn't just an MSP thing, because companies everywhere are figuring out that the old command-and-control way doesn't work anymore. Here's why this shift is happening.
Remote work killed micromanagement since you can't watch over someone's shoulder through a screen. Younger workers won't put up with being treated like robots because they want some control over their work. Today's tech work is too complex for managers to direct every single task, and waiting for someone to assign you work creates delays that kill your SLAs.
Smart MSPs are riding this wave instead of fighting it. They're creating places where techs organize themselves around clear priorities, and the result is better work with less stress.
Want to try this? Here's how to start making it happen.
In your first week, set up your Kanban board with clear columns and set those WIP limits. During week two, work with your team to define what "Ready" really means. Week three is when you practice the pull system in a safe environment. By week four, you go live and watch what happens.
Remember that this is about changing how people think as much as changing how work flows. When you give your team permission to own their work, they'll surprise you with what they can do.
The pull system is just one part of fixing your workflow, yet it's often the part that creates the biggest mental shift. You're taking people from "I wait to be told" to "I choose what's next."
That shift? That's where your team starts to shine.