joanna.darby@ifsworld.com, Author at Future of Field Service

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Over the past couple of months, I’ve had a few different conversations with folks who have surfaced the question of whether or not the term “Digital Transformation” is (still) serving us. One point made is that it is a very unclear phrase – what does the transform in Digital Transformation really mean, they wonder? What constitutes ample transformation?

The other point I’ve had posed to me is that perhaps most organizations have digitally transformed – at least in their minds – if you consider the definition of transformation as a “thorough and dramatic” change. If a company has made an initial stride in digital adoption, perhaps they feel the term no longer applies since they have indeed “transformed.” What we’re really referring to is a transformation that is ongoing rather than final, but that begs the question of whether the term accurately reflects the vision of continual improvement and refinement that we know digital demands – or if that point is being lost in translation.

This article from the Journal of Business Research does a really good job of clarifying differences between digitization, digitalization, and Digital Transformation – but starts by referring to all three as “stages of Digital Transformation,” which to me is confusing. And I think this is where the issue lies – what may be well defined in some academic research isn’t being as well defined in our everyday vernacular. I certainly don’t have all the answers but am hoping to present some food for thought here that may help you in discussing this issue in a more relatable way in each of your businesses.

Transformation Vs. Evolution Vs. Journey

Not all that long ago, we were at a point where the term Digital Transformation made perfect sense. Companies needed to embrace the power of digital in a meaningful way and transform their businesses to compete in the digital era. While there are always outliers, most businesses have made ample progress in this effort and have reached varying degrees of digital maturation – which is why the message of “Digital Transformation” may be coming up short in expressing the need to continue reimagining the use of digital for the business.

So what term is the best term? The reality is, fair amounts of disdain exist for any of the terms that seem to fit – evolution, journey, etc. For companies who have successfully embraced digital, however, Digital Journey or Digital Evolution do make more logical sense than Transformation, which they likely perceive they’ve accomplished.

However, I’m not here to attempt to redefine how we discuss digital. And honestly, I think it’s less about what we call it than how we drive a common understanding and alignment within each business. If the term is Digital Transformation, that’s fine – but we need to ensure a pervasive understanding that “Transformation” doesn’t have a finish line; it’s an ongoing effort. Otherwise, you have companies who feel they’ve checked a box and then wonder why they aren’t seeing the impact they should.

The Real-World Digital Continuum

To communicate what I’ve gleaned from 100+ interviews per year over many years, let me share this “real-world” Digital Continuum. In day-to-day conversations and without any academic or tech speak, these are the phases I’ve seen (and do see) companies progressing through in terms of their efforts to maximize the potential of digital.

Digitize – The move away from manual. At this point, very few businesses have not embraced this phase of Digital Transformation (but don’t cringe, I do still sporadically hear stories of clip boards and paper workorders).
Optimize – The recognition of the true potential of digital and the initial efforts of using new data from digitization to drive efficiencies, refine processes, and evolve workflows and customer communications.
Automate – Moving beyond optimizing work to looking for tasks that can be automated using more sophisticated digital tools. Automation builds upon successful optimization to remove work that can be completed with technology.
Increase Intelligence – Using the wealth of data this digital world provides to make the business smarter and more agile. Intelligence gleaned can be used to empower the frontline workforce, to increase revenue, to introduce new business models, to improve product development, and so much more. In many ways, while companies may feel they’ve Digitally “Transformed” once they’ve optimized or automated, intelligence is where the real value begins to unfold.
Value proposition – The most sophisticated versions of Digital Transformation that I’ve discussed firsthand are companies who have successfully leveraged digital to create new customer value propositions. These companies have used their intelligence to define the ways in which digital can expand and evolve their customer relationships.

As I said, I’m not sure the term we use matters so much as the clarity of discussions we have around it – and the importance of recognizing that, whatever we call it, there’s no end to Digital Transformation. How your company leverages digital and the potential for that to grow and expand should be a regular through line of your strategic discussions.

Stay tuned this week for a podcast discussion with Andrea Pelizzaro, Connected Services Manager, BU Decanters at Alfa Laval about how the company is using digital both internally to drive efficiency and externally to increase customer value.

By Tom Paquin

A few weeks back, I ran a quick retrospective on my first Future of Field Service article, then followed that up with a slightly less old article. Today I was to talk about an article from mid-2019 on the idea of a chief service officer for your business.

You can read the original piece here.

That article discussed in detail the servitization mindset impacting businesses at the time. As I outlined it in the original article:

A shift away from ownership towards products-as-a-service.
An oversaturation of products entering the market from new, global entrants and decreasing barriers to entry.
A fundamental shift in the economy away from product-focused businesses towards services-focused businesses.
The need to diversify product portfolios with low-overhead add-ons that simultaneously offer value to the customer beyond your competitors.
Best-in-class manufacturers, retailers, and suppliers creating pathways towards completely upending business practices with service.

Servitizaiton shows no signs of slowing, especially in the wake of supply chain issues that are projected to run into next year, changing consumer sentiment, and new technology tools for delivering seamless service for businesses wherein service would not have been a consideration eighteen months ago.

And the best way to make it clear that service is not a line item on your balance sheet, but a new cultural pillar, is to align a Chief Service Officer.

Service is, as we know, more than ever, the primary touchpoint for businesses. With more ecommerce, and more channels for service through delivery and new business models, it’s reckless to slap service functions onto your business (especially by partnering with third parties) and expect them to carry your brand promise.

The Chief Service Officer can help set that precedent in a meaningful way for your business. As I wrote in 2019:

So what does the Chief Service Officer do? This will obviously differ from company to company, but on a high-level, here are some general ideas:

Own the technology rollout for all of service.
Work with product to set rigid parameters for service execution.
Develop benchmarks, roadmaps, and dashboard to measure service’s impact on the whole company.
Set up and execute on service business development efforts within sales.
Own the service management platform, tie it to all areas of enterprise resource planning, asset management, and customer experience management.
Make the push that your company provides service because it wants to faster a stronger relationship with its customers.

This hasn’t changed, and having an actual human being behind these processes means that service can be executed, on every level, from a more well-informed place.

Sarah welcomes Dr. Adam Bandelli, author of the book What Every Leader Needs: The Ten Universal and Indisputable Competencies of Leadership Effectiveness, to discuss how the unprecedented circumstances of the last two years have changed what leaders need to do to be effective.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we are going to be talking about the things every leader needs in a time of unprecedented change. I'm excited to be joined today by Dr. Adam Bandelli, who is the Managing Director of Bandelli and Associates. Adam, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: How are you?

Sarah Nicastro: Good. How are you?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: I'm doing well. Doing well.

Sarah Nicastro: Great. So, Adam recently wrote a book that he's going to share a bit about with us today. That book is titled What Every Leader Needs. And we're going to talk about some of the characteristics and advice that Adam shares in that book as it relates to some of the change and challenges our audience is facing. Before we dig in, Adam, can you tell our listeners a bit more about yourself?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah, absolutely. So, I am a leadership advisor and management psychologist by training. I did my doctoral work down at the University of South Florida, where I really focused on three things that have kind of transcended through my career. One is around leadership excellence, and that played a role in helping to write the first book. The second is around relationships and influence. And then the third is around culture work.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: So, I did my degree down there. I spent the first decade of my career working for a global management consulting firm, where we really focused on three different things. One is around leadership selection assessments, so helping companies hire senior executives into key roles. The second is around leadership development and executive coaching. So I worked with a number of leaders, Fortune 100 companies on down, C-suite, C-minus 1 to really help develop and cultivate the skills they need. And then the third phase is around transformational change. So really helping companies set a vision for their teams, and then instilling those norms and beliefs down to their cultures. I started my firm in 2016, and the last five or six years we've seen a lot of growth, even during the pandemic, and we're working with some great clients.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Good. Excellent. And we've talked a lot over the last year and a half, almost two years, about the elements of change that the pandemic has brought about when it comes to technology, leadership, culture, all of those things. So... All right, so we are going to share some of the insights from the book, but before we do that, I'm hoping you can talk a bit about some of the different forces that are causing an evolution around leadership.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Thanks. So, I think there are a couple things that are really causing a change in leadership across different companies and industries. I think one we're seeing more of this focus around crisis leadership. So the pandemic has really shown us that great leaders need to not only drive results and motivate their people, but they need to really have those connections individually with the folks that work with them. If we go back to the beginning of the pandemic, people were concerned about their children, their elderly parents, so having the work-life balance has gone away. And so, leaders who were able to sew into the relationships and really show an interest and demonstrate empathy for their people, are really getting the most out of their people as we get out of the pandemic. So that would be one place.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: I think the second place that leadership is really starting to see some changes is around inclusive and diverse cultures. And so coming out of social justice from 2020, many companies are now focusing on, how do we build more inclusive cultures? And how do we get our people from different backgrounds and races and ethnicities and sexual orientation to really have that connective tissue, where diversity of thought is the primary thing that's brought to the forefront and you're able to leverage the insights from people from all different backgrounds?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And then I think the third piece is really around servant leadership. And so what we're seeing a lot in our firm with our clients is this idea of authenticity. And so leaders who show up and bring their best selves to work are being genuine, they are being authentic, there's a level of humility that they show to working with their direct reports, to working with their people. And that really builds cultures of excellence for their teams and organizations.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it's interesting. So, I think about a few things here. I want to comment on a couple of the points you made, but before, maybe I'll add one or two of my own thoughts. One of the things that I think is both exciting and challenging for leaders today is how the need to be more agile, the pace of change, the pace of decision-making, right? This idea of being in a real constant state of continual improvement but like not in a way where like everyone's always continually improving, but like in a real like there are always real significant things happening, right? I mean, we're just in a place where there is a lot of disruption, and the idea of quick decisions, acting on your feet, being able to evaluate data and criteria in a very nimble way, those types of things, is a change in the landscape.

Sarah Nicastro: The other thing that we've talked about just a bit on here, because on this podcast we do often talk about the ways companies are leveraging technology to innovate, right? Is the idea that in many instances you have leaders who are not digital natives, right? But they're leading companies through digital transformation and the journey to digitalization, and what that means in terms of how they perceive themselves, how they need to build talent around them, how they manage and reward that talent, right? On outcomes not output, you know? So a lot of different things related to that.

Sarah Nicastro: But I absolutely agree with you that each of the things you mentioned, what's interesting to me is leaders that aren't good leaders are smart enough to know that they need to pretend to be good leaders. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: So like, what stands out to me, what I mean by that is, each of the things you said, like connecting with your employees and focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and... everyone knows that those things are important. So everyone says they're doing it, right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yep.

Sarah Nicastro: But the real difference is I think the word that you said, which is authenticity. Right? So it is, this is not about checking a box that you're a good leader, it's about genuinely giving a shit and showing up in that way. Right? And it can be really challenging sometimes to tell the difference, do you think?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you'll see short-term results if you put a quick bandaid around diversity, inclusion, or if you try to show more time for your people, but the best leaders are doing it consistently and they're committed to doing. And so there is no kind of drop off after a short period of time. They're genuinely trying to make the people around them better.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Yeah. And I think a lot of that has to do with a real recognition or understanding of the value that comes from that. Right? So if you think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, it's not about making sure that you're hitting X percent of this or pay equity in this area, right? It's what you said, which is, all of that is important, but it's also diversity of thought and opinion.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Like you should not want everyone around you to be the same as you, you should welcome people in that have different backgrounds, different experiences, different viewpoints. And that only makes your organization stronger. And so I think that there's this idea of historically, leaders... There's this perception of the elite and the top dog type mentality. Right? And I think in a lot of today's organizations, you see more democratization of talent and control, more empowerment, more realization that the more I engage my employees and the more they're invested in what they're doing, the better we will all be because of that.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yep, exactly. Yep, absolutely. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: It's really interesting though, I also feel for a lot of folks that I have on here, Adam, that work for leaders who are dinosaurs.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: So part of an old boys club.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And they see such opportunity for change in their own organizations, but it's just they're met with such resistance.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: They're hitting that wall.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And that's disheartening and it's frustrating and it's testament to that talent that sees that opportunity is only going to hang on so long before they take their talent elsewhere, because they're not in an environment where they can really contribute and thrive.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Well, I think we're in the midst of the Great Resignation now. And so leaders who are doing those things, they're losing people left and right. I have several of our clients who are going through that transition now, where the old guard who's been doing things the same way for years, attrition is going through the roof. And so, unless leaders are really taking time to develop their people and spend time with their people and build relationships with their people, you can find another job tomorrow. And so, especially... And it goes by the generational things too.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: You look at millennials or Gen Z, they're looking for variety, they're looking for things that matter in terms of social issues. And so, folks who are in their careers 20, 30 years, they're not wired that way.

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And so leaders at the highest levels are not being intentional about how to meet the needs of their employees, that will continue to happen.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I want to ask you a question, though, about... So let's, I don't want to say let's set COVID aside, no one can do that. And I agree that in the same way that we've stated here, COVID sped and exacerbated a focus on technology. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Because the companies that had it were glad they did, and the companies that didn't realized real quick that they should have gotten ahead of that.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: I feel similarly about the topic of leadership and company culture in the sense that I do think it has sped and exacerbated some of the companies that were perhaps already on this journey of caring more, and all of these things, but I do think it was underway prior. And what I wonder is, if you have any thoughts or opinions on where was the fork in the road, or like what created the fork in the road of the old guard versus kind of... I don't even know if there is a really good term for it in the organizational psychology world, but like this more new wave of leadership, right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. I mean, so you see with the gender inequalities that have been there for decades, that's begun to shift. I'm seeing more of the senior executives that I work with are women, they're empowering their people more, they're creating venues and opportunities where people can communicate more effectively. We're seeing it with minorities and ethnicity differences as well. So people who may have been in lower level roles decades ago, are now given opportunities at the top of the house, and they're bringing about that change.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And so, I don't think there was one point in time or one event where it shifted, I think we saw in the early 2000s some of this start to shift, we had the recession 2008, 2009. And in this last decade, we're seeing a number of different things. The LGBTQ, that's become huge in terms of just equality in the workplace as well. So I think all these things had their starts at certain points over the last 20, 30 years, and now we're starting to see some of the fruits of that as we're going into the last couple years and moving forward.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay. All right. So in the book, What Every Leader Needs, you detail 10 competencies for leadership success in today's landscape.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: That's right.

Sarah Nicastro: So, we won't have time on one podcast to go through all 10 in detail, plus, I want people to go buy your book and read about them there. But let's talk about a few. So first, let's talk about compassion.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So compassion is really about impacting people through communication, social awareness, and what I call relational intelligence. And I think the foundations of compassion are really around the idea of EQ and empathy. And so, great leaders have self-awareness about how they're coming across to others, they're effective at managing their emotions, and then they're effective about reading a room. And so those key things really make for people to show up in a compassionate way. But showing up and understanding people's emotions is just one part of it. And so the part that goes deeper is what I've coined as relational intelligence, which is the ability for people to successfully connect with others and build strong long-lasting relationships.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And so, how do leaders do that? They do it by establishing rapport with their people, they do it by taking time to understand others, to be inquisitive, to be curious. They're also valuing diversity as part of the programs that run their organization, and not just as a quick fix. And then this idea of trust becomes really critical. So, are leaders able to develop trust, give it out, earn it back from their people? And that really ties into role models and mentors, and how organizations are able to build systems where people who are new can learn from those who have been there, and vice versa.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. I'm going to come back with some questions on all of these, but let's go through them first.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So the next one is endurance.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. So endurance is really focused more around maintaining resilience, tenacity, and stamina to achieve your goals. And so, we've really seen this become one of the forefront leadership skills coming out of the pandemic. People have had to push through some difficult change and uncertainty. And there are different ways that leaders can focus on. I think what we've seen over the last year are that leaders who are very pragmatic and practical they were able to set goals for their teams that they can achieve in the short-term when people do not know what's going on and trying to figure things out day from day. Leaders who operate with endurance, they play at the right level as well. So this idea of delegation becomes really critical and how you're able to do that within your teams across functions as well.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And then there's a piece around balancing strategic and tactical issues. So great leaders who are able to show up with endurance, they know the level that they need to play, but they also know that they have the people around them to go tactical when they need to and they can pull back up. So, it's those kinds of pieces that really make for folks who are able to show that endurance over time.

Sarah Nicastro: So this is maybe a combination of both of those two initial characteristics, but... Well, I had a really interesting conversation a few months ago with someone I know who works within an organization that was really heavily impacted by the pandemic in a negative way, like many were, right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yep.

Sarah Nicastro: And the conversation we had was about that organization's leadership's missteps in not being able to separate the performance of its employees with the performance of the organization, right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So, it was this situation where... I just think when you think of endurance and you think about what everyone's been through during the last year and a half, I mean, this can apply to your real life too. I mean, I'll be honest, like I've had times where I've struggled and I'm like, "I can't do it anymore, I don't want to do it anymore." And I'm not talking about work, I'm talking about it all. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Like it's just like the whole thing has just seemed incredibly defeating at times, never-ending, like, "Will we ever be able to X?" All of the things, all of the worry, the stress, et cetera. So... And as a leader of a company, then that's compounded by your own... your need for personal endurance with whatever might be going on in your life, with the endurance of also the organization and the team. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think that when you were talking about endurance, I was just thinking like, "Boy, that has to be really, really hard to be a motivating force in such a taxing time." Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yep.

Sarah Nicastro: But the reality is, that's where I was kind of thinking about the intersection of those two traits, like endurance and compassion, right? Because, yes, it's frustrating to have to recognize your team for hard work when the overall performance of the company is suffering, but you need to have the compassion to know it's not their fault and they're still trying, right? And so, by not being able to separate those things, and either directly or indirectly placing that blame on them, you just kill the morale of your whole staff. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So, there's a lot that comes into, I would imagine, sort of the codependencies of these characteristics and how they all intersect.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah, that's spot on. I think there's a huge connection between a number of them, but compassion and endurance are probably two of the biggest ones that have been interconnected in the last year and a half.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And I can think of one example from one of our clients where there was someone who was new to the role and new to the organization, and didn't really know and understand the culture. And so, as performance started to dip for the organization, this leader started to push harder with his people and missed out on those moments to really empathize with what they were doing in their home and personal lives, because the blending lines of work and personal has really kind of been thrown into the forefront in the last year.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And so, he was unsuccessful in really getting to motivate his team, because he didn't take time for them, he focused more on what we need to do versus who do we have around the table to get it done.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. This is where I wish I knew sports better and I could come with like a really good analogy of like, "What type of coach are you? This guy or this guy, or girl?" But I don't. But I mean, it is very much a thing of... And I think this goes back to the EQ, the relational intelligence, and being able to say, "What do they need from me right now to endure? Do I need to be hard and strict and do I need to kind of lay down the law, or do I need to back up a little bit and be more compassionate, be more empathetic and kind of take a softer approach?" And I think that really good leaders can do both, they don't sort of just characterize themselves as one or the other. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: They can kind of put on different hats as needed to get the outcome.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Great leaders are servant leaders. I'm a firm believer in that. And so, servant leaders put their people first. And if you put people first and you sow into their lives, they're going to drill through walls for you. They're going to be committed to you if you don't lead by fear and intimidation. Some of the greatest leaders that I've worked with, understand that at their core, and so they show up to make their people better. And that shows up in the results at the end of the day.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. All right. The next characteristic we're going to talk about is vision.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. So vision is the kind of quintessential leadership skill. It starts on the very basic level. If you don't have a plan or idea for your future, you'll have no idea where you're going. So vision is about developing a clear sense of the mission and purpose that really provides direction to yourself and to others. And so leaders who are able to do that three year plan, five year plan, they at least get an idea of where they want to go and they can do the kind of delineation of where we are current state and where the future state is. But there's three important things that when you're setting a vision for your team are really critical.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: I think one, you have to build the playbook. So if I have a goal to do X, Y, Z in five years, what are we going to do each year to get there? And so building those steps until you can achieve that vision. But the most important thing with your people is to bring them along for the journey. And so, it's not just you in a room creating this overall theme or this overall approach, it's are you getting agreement and getting alignment, and making sure that your folks play a role in shaping what that vision will look like.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And then the biggest thing that I've seen that's been a challenge in the last two years has been celebrating the victories along the way. And so, leaders are constantly trying to strive for that next hill, that next goal or accomplishment. When they don't celebrate the victories, it can be very demoralizing to your team. So setting a vision really focuses on those three things. It's having your playbook, it's bringing others along, and then it's really being able to celebrate the victories along the way.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay, good. The next one is inspiration.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Inspiration is one of my favorite ones. This is really around motivating, encouraging, and influencing other people. And this is where it goes beyond compassion, because compassion is really understanding where people are and meeting them there, inspiration is how you're able to take that and really drive things forward. And so, inspiration really focuses on words that have power. Our words have tremendous power, whether it's good and bad. And the people that report to us can sometimes hang on everything that we say. So, are you being encouraging with what you're sharing? Are you pointing out things that they're doing well and providing that feedback on a consistent basis? So many leaders miss out on opportunities to provide feedback. And so, that's a big critical piece of it.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Rewards, recognition, and repercussions. That's another big part of inspiration. Are you setting clear expectations and holding people accountable? If you are and they're achieving their objectives, how are you rewarding them? And not just incentives and competent pay, but how are you giving them opportunities to take on greater responsibility, or increasing their scale and scope in what they do? And then recognition is about really supporting them and encouraging them to be promoted or to move on. Are you acknowledging the hard work that they're putting in?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And then the third piece around inspiration is really around developing the talents of your people. And so, great leaders are very intentional and focused on, how can I make my team better, individually and collectively? And so, inspiration really is shown and demonstrated by how you develop your people.

Sarah Nicastro: So what I'm wondering, Adam, is how reliant is a leader's ability to inspire its workforce on their investment in their own inspiration?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Explain that a little more.

Sarah Nicastro: So, I think for a leader to be able to go to work and inspire others, they need to be inspired.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think that sometimes leaders don't do a good job of conserving the time and energy to source their own inspiration. Does that make sense?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And so, I'm just wondering your thoughts on the correlation between those two things. Like they... I guess the concept of you can't pour from an empty cup, right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And so I think like some of the leaders I know that I think are most inspiring, actively prioritize investment in things that inspire them. So whether that's peer groups community, their own mentorships, reading, podcasts, movies, whatever it is that really lights them up, they know that they need to have the time to do those things so that they then have that energy to take to their role.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Where are they getting their energy from? Where are they getting their inspiration from? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think really strong leaders are balanced in how they do things. So they take time for their physical and fitness, they take time for their spiritual, mental, and emotional. So it's well balanced. But they have resources and tools that they leverage, whether it's books that they read, whether it's podcasts they listen to, but they're getting their inspiration from what they're seeing, and then it goes back to the idea around vision.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: They're getting their inspiration from, where are we taking this business? Where are we taking the team? Leaders who have the end state in mind can usually keep themselves engaged and motivated because they're moving towards something.

Sarah Nicastro: I also I think would say that some of the best leaders I know allow themselves to be inspired by their teams or individuals on their teams, right? Like they can also get inspiration from the people that they're working with.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. The last one we're going to talk about today is innovation.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. And innovation is really, how are you able to apply continuous improvements to processes and procedures over time? And so, innovation really focuses on four critical elements. I think one, innovative leaders anticipate the future. So they're constantly looking around the corner and anticipating what's going to happen next. Whether you're in an industry where you develop products, whether you're in a services industry, how can I meet the needs of my customers or clients before they even know they're happening?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: I think the other piece around innovation that's really critical is, can you put thoughts into actions? Some of the greatest leaders that I've worked with, not only have people around them who can come up with great ideas, but they're able to then track that back to, "Okay, how do we make this come to life?" Because you can have tons of great ideas, but unless you can bring it to the forefront and make it happen, innovation is not going to be useful.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Then there's this piece at the organizational level, which is really around how do you create cultures where people value creativity and they value idea generation? And it really starts from kind of having an open environment where people feel their values and beliefs are appreciated, and so that people can be more creative. And then going back to what we started with today is championing diversity of thought. You want different people around the table from you so that the best ideas can be brought to the forefront.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think one of the things that comes to mind when I think about innovation is, it seems like such a sexy word, but in reality, it's tied very closely, again, to endurance, right? I mean, it's to your point, you can have innovative ideas all day, every day, but if you don't actually put any of them in place, it doesn't matter. Right? So it's a big part of innovation is execution.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think that there's... Some of the most innovative minds I think are also just people that are programmed to think fast, move on to the next thing, think fast, move on to the next thing, right? So kind of tempering that with the ability to execute and the ability to kind of take things in the appropriate order to actually see them come to fruition, is a super important part of innovation.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And the other part that's tied into endurance is a lot of times people are thrown into situations where they need to adjust and change changes imposed on them that's not their choice. And so people who are innovative know how to adapt and respond. They're agile. They can respond quickly to those changing circumstances, and come up with solutions to adapt on the fly.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay, really cool. So, if listeners want to know what the other five characteristics are, they need to check out the book, which we'll tell them about later. But you also have a new book coming out in the spring.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: I do.

Sarah Nicastro: So, can you tell us a little bit, maybe give us a little bit of a sneak peek into that?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. So as I mentioned, I've spent the last two decades of my life really focused on relationships and influence. So how can leaders get the best out of their people by the relationships that they develop? So, I came up with this concept called relational intelligence, back when I was doing my dissertation in graduate school. And I've refined this framework over the last 15 years, both personally and professionally. So the new book is called Relational Intelligence: The Five Essential Skills That You Need To Build Life-Changing Relationships.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And what the book looks at is this conceptual model that I developed that looks at five skills that lead to building a strong relationship to influence people. So skills like, how are you able to make an initial connection? How are you able to show empathy and curiosity for people? How are you able to embrace diversity develop trust? So the first part of this book really does a deep dive into each of the five skills. Very similar to my first book, there's practical applications at the end of every chapter, where you can apply these right away to use them.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: The second part of the book is the applications of relational intelligence on the different areas of our life. So related to our family lives, our friendships, our professional lives, and even our romantic lives in marriage. So it kind of shows how this applies to both things. We have seen in my firm with our clients become one of the most number one issues that people are facing right now. Especially coming out of the pandemic, people have lost that human element moment. We're doing our conversations like this at Zoom. So getting in the room with people and really being able to embrace others and being able to really reestablish those connections, is critical. And relational intelligence is really a toolkit for people to reestablish their relationships.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Good. So, what do you think are the biggest barriers to leaders embracing the 10 characteristics you outlined in What Every Leader Needs, and/or some of the points that you bring up in the new book coming out, the skills related to relational intelligence?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. So I think there is what we call the dark side of leadership. So there are certain traits that leaders demonstrate that can really get them into trouble. So things like Machiavellianism, narcissism, and pride. And so, whether you're building relationships with colleagues, or whether you're trying to inspire, motivate people, when leaders are self-centered and directed kind on their outcomes, when they view people as means to an end and they don't think about the repercussions long-term, there's this term, leading with the iron fist, leaders who do that will get immediate results for the short-term, but they'll damage relationships and they'll damage the impact and the culture that they have long-term.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: So, that's the first thing I would say that is a real big barrier is finding and identifying who those people are, and making sure that they're not in the roles where they're going to influence and impact other people.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: I think the second thing is really around this inability to change and adapt. The leaders who have struggled the most through the pandemic are the ones who have had an inability to adjust to working from home. I look at people in the restaurant, hospitality industry, who have always been in offices and in restaurants and in places, to be stuck at home it's very challenging for folks in that industry. Other industries like myself, professional services, I did most of this, where I was either at my clients or working from home writing reports. So it was not a difficult transition for me to do this. I'm extroverted and get energy off of interacting with people, so that part was hard. But I think those who couldn't embrace change have struggled.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: And then I think the other piece that's tied into this self-centeredness is leaders who only care about the results. I believe that the highest calling of leadership is development and cultivation of the skills of the people around you. And if you're just trying to push people to get to a number or to hit your top-line growth, you're not going to be able to generate that success long-term.

Sarah Nicastro: So, to what degree though? The last comment you made. I agree. Okay?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: But it doesn't seem to me that a lot of top-level executives and boards that I would interact with today would share that sentiment, or if they do, it goes back to the point I made early on, which is they can say it, but at the end of the day, all of the decisions they make are very driven by just numbers.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So, to what degree do you think people share that sentiment that you have? And is that on the increase?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. I think you go by generations. I think folks who are baby boomers, who are probably on their way out in the next decade or so, they have that old guard mindset. I'm working with a lot of executives now who are in their early to mid 40s, where the focus on people and culture has become even more important. So I believe you will start to see a shift over the next decade, where there will no longer be lip service to we have to care and show empathy for our people, that will become more of their priority. It's a much more important factor to millennials, it's a much more important factor to Gen Z. And so, that shift I think is going to start to really snowball over the next 10 years.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. I have a lot of other questions I'd like to ask you, but we're not going to have time for all of them today. We'll have to have you back sometime, maybe when the new book comes out in the spring. We can dig in to that a bit.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. I did want to ask, you've spent years and years working with different clients on both their businesses and themselves, in terms of their own leadership skills.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Is there any like daily practice or best habit that you would suggest to listeners when it comes to this concept of embracing modern best practices and educating and continually improving yourselves? Let's leave the people out that don't have a genuine desire to go up, because what's the point? That's a different conversation. But for the people that do, what is the best advice you can give in terms of good habits, daily practices, that sort of thing?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: So I'll start with what my clients do and what I coach them on, and then I'll say what I do personally, because I think that's more meaningful and impactful to your audience. The greatest leaders that I work with have healthy routines that they start their days with. If you go back to Tony Robbins, he talked about his Hour of Power, and a lot of folks. Oprah does the same thing. But you'll see successful people across all walks of life start their day with a consistent routine.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: For me, over the last several years, I've honed and refined it. So I spend the first hours of the day really focused on spiritual practices, physical health, mental and emotional well-being. And one of the things that I do that's very simple, everyone's probably heard of it before, but I journal. And so, journaling is one of the first things that I do in the morning, just getting my thoughts down on paper before I touch anything else or do anything else. And for what it's done for me is it's freed up the creative ability to write elsewhere without having writer's block or things get in the way of me putting my words to paper.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: So I've written both of these books, What Every Leader Needs, and Relational Intelligence, over the last two years, because of that one specific habit. I start the habit every January, where I'll sit down and just... Again, every morning, I have to fill one page of a piece of paper out with thoughts and just random things I'm emotionally experiencing or whatnot at the start of the day. And that has led into me being freer to write and to create and to be innovative in all the work that I do in my firm.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: So I would say to your audience, get yourself a good routine in the morning, have it be a combination of thought, physical activity. You want to both exercise the psychology of your mind and also the physiology of your body. And if you do that, I think it will impact your life in many different ways, but it will automatically set your day on a bright note, where whatever types of adversity come your way, because you've kind of given yourself that one hour to set the stage, it makes the rest of the day more successful.

Sarah Nicastro: What time do you get up?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Usually 5AM. So I try to do this with-

Sarah Nicastro: What time do you go to bed?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: 9:30, 10:00. So I'm an early fall asleep early, get up early.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I'm going to be honest with you, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I feel like I don't want this to turn into a therapy session, but I will admit publicly that I, in the last couple of months, have fallen out of that habit myself. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So I, five days a week, would get up, go to the gym at 5:45. I don't know that I was as good at the other parts, I don't journal and then... Those are all things I would like to do. Right?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And it's a completely different day when I do it. I just also... I struggle with the fact that I work full-time, I'm married, I have two small children. Like, I know it's, I don't want to say it's an excuse, it's a reason, but it's not a good enough reason, which is I'm just tired. I'm tired.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: But I actually ordered a Peloton last week, it will be here on Monday, and I am committed. You all can follow me on Instagram and watch me post my workouts daily starting Monday morning, because I know damn well it will pay off significantly. And I like the idea-

Dr. Adam Bandelli: You talked about inspiration. You talked about inspiration.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Where do you get your inspiration from?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: This is the hour of the day where you can get inspired by something you're listening to, you can get inspired by working out. So, this is the hour of the day you give to yourself. Give the first hour to yourself, give the first hour to energize and get yourself ready for the day, and it will impact the rest of the day.

Sarah Nicastro: For sure. Yeah, I think that's fantastic advice. And I think that I always go back to after I had my first son and I gained a ridiculous amount of weight when I was pregnant with him, but I did a program from home, it was a half an hour a day, and I always told myself, "It is 30 minutes, like there is absolutely no reason you can't prioritize this." And a lot of it is just habit, you know?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And that's why I think I've been frustrated, because I've had it for so long, and then I broke it, and I'm having trouble getting back into it, but I will, you know?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: But you're absolutely right, that it's a... People always... I don't know how you can get up that early, but like once you're doing it, you realize how good it is and how much it helps you. Like I always say too like, "I work out more for my mental health than I do..." Like, yes, it's good for my physical health, but like my motivation is how I feel, period. You know?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So, I think that's really good advice. Okay. Adam, any closing thoughts or comments before we wrap up today?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: No, no, this has been tremendous, a pleasure to speaking with you and your audience. And you can follow us on... Our website is bandelliandassociates.com, if you want to find out about the services that our firm offers around leadership development. And you can also go to the website, whateveryleaderneeds.com, that's one word. And that's where you can find places to purchase the book, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et cetera.

Sarah Nicastro: What Every Leader Needs. And the new book is coming out in the spring, do you have a month?

Dr. Adam Bandelli: April, 2022. If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, we're going to start posting about that in January. So there'll be a lead-up to the release of Relational Intelligence. And you can follow us on social media, we'll have all that information for you.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. Well, we would love to have you back when the new book comes out and talk a little bit about the content there. Really appreciate your time today. It's been wonderful having you. So thanks for coming on.

Dr. Adam Bandelli: Yeah, my pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. You can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future Of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Here’s what I know about change management:

It’s critically important
Lacking and/or shoddy efforts are the #1 reason given when change initiatives fail
People commonly acknowledge these first two points, yet STILL don’t put the time, energy, or investment into getting it right
It doesn’t have to be so hard; you just have to truly understand its importance and prioritize change management as a part of your strategy

If you listen to the podcast, you have probably heard me state how perplexed I am at the immense gap that exists between the “talk” around the importance of change management and the “walk” or action put in to getting it right. The harsh reality is that this must change. There is far too much change happening at far too fast a pace for companies to continue to be able to manage change in reactive versus proactive manner.

Making Change Management More Proactive

So, with that said, let’s move beyond rant to talk about five ways you could improve your change management effectiveness. These points were inspired by and some of them discussed in my podcast last week with Karin Hamel, Vice President of Services for US Digital Buildings at Schneider Electric. While Karin and I’s conversation centered around what it will take to build the workforce of the future, managing change is a key part of that – because not only is the pace of change not slowing, but the variables playing a part in companies’ initiatives are only growing more complex and interconnected.

#1: Cut Corporate Speak

Communication around change is no place for sesquipedalian speech. See what I mean? I’m laughing typing this, but the point is valid – the more you focus on concise, relatable communication the better it will be received and digested. Keep in mind that your goal in communicating around change isn’t just getting a point across, but also building rapport and connection.

“Make sure you talk directly to the reader, your technician in this case, the real person, and cut the MBA talk,” says Karin. “That was something that I found I really needed some help with. It was helpful to have someone point that out to me.” And here’s a tip: if you don’t know how your intended audience speaks or what resonates, you aren’t spending enough time with them.

#2: Focus on Collaboration over Communication

The next tip is to make sure you remember that change cannot be managed with communication alone, it requires collaboration. In fact, when you focus your efforts on collaboration over communication, you may find a good percentage of your change challenges alleviated.

What I mean by collaboration over communication is that you should not be focused on simply delivering a message – or a mandate – and expecting your workforce to fall in line. Rather, you need to understand the value in collaboration – a bi-directional exchange of points that helps ensure everyone is on the same page, feedback is heard and acknowledged, and change is being not just begrudgingly accepted but embraced.

#3: Help Employees Visualize Change

This is another great point that came from Karin. She has done some work with the Nour Group to help create a visualization of strategy. This visualization takes a plethora of detailed content, that can be consumed if and when it needs to be and simplifies it into one easy-to-digest graphical page.

“The Nour Group helped us go through our whole strategy slide deck, that 40-page slide deck that we all have sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, on a thumb drive. We took that and boiled it down to one page, that’s a very visual, graphic document, that really spells everything out, walks your audience through the whole strategy, and takes away that corporate speak,” explains Karin. “We use this visualization, and then print it out on mousepads, use it as a backdrop. Having it in many different places, so that it’s really repeatable, like a drum beat continuously throughout the year. It’s something like a war cry. Everyone can rally around this visualization and identify themselves there.”

#4: Prioritize Ample Training and Upskilling

We know that resistance to change is largely fear-based, and in today’s circumstances where frontline workers may have some valid trepidation around how their roles are evolving, the role of ample training and upskilling in change management cannot be overemphasized. Maybe you’re asking your workforce to use a new technology – you need to ensure you bear the burden of not only selecting a strong solution, but providing however much training, however many types of training, your employees need to feel confident in that tool’s use.

Perhaps their role itself is evolving, with new service objectives requiring a different approach and therefore different skills. This is a reality for many businesses today, and that causes a lot of overwhelm for your workers. If they know from the beginning that they play an incredibly valuable role in your company’s evolution, and that you are committed to providing them every upskilling opportunity it will take to make them successful, well – they may not fear the change so much.

#5: Recognize Efforts and Impact

Consider this scenario: Change is introduced, and mandated. Employee accepts that if they want to continue in their career, they must adapt. They work through the change, learning whatever they need to in order to thrive in the “after.” Employer seems to not even notice the emotional, intellectual, and/or physical effort this employee’s change took and continues without so much as a “thanks for your hard work” until the next demand arises.

I’d argue this is standard practice for many organizations, and the root of its faultiness is that it isn’t all too human. Your employees are people, and for many of our readers, those employees are the frontline worker that you are relying on to spearhead your company’s evolution from its historical incarnation to its modernized identity. Do they not deserve more?

They do. Change management would be far more successful if we focused on expressing appreciation for our employees’ efforts – if we showed empathy around how hard change is and recognized them for not only their willingness to grow and evolve with the business but for their efforts to learn and succeed in whatever the new normal is we’re introducing.

You can take notes from Schneider’s approach. “We built up a recognition program around this strategy visualization document and our Hero program. As a technician, I can identify how I can contribute to our overall business ambitions by this kind of map. Then we have peer-to-peer nominations so that as employees contribute or deliver on one of the key outcomes, they can be recognized,” explains Karin. “We have a woman that runs this program for us, and we have great internal communication around it. We keep it all connected to our strategy and it runs throughout the whole year, and we’ve found it has been a great accelerant to create the kind of movement in the culture that we want.”

By Tom Paquin

We prattle on and on about the power of service optimization here, the invisible “service bucks” saved from mitigating truck rolls and streamlining technician performance. And these are all valuable things, certainly, but more and more businesses, to justify upgrades of their service systems and the development of new tools, are seeking to understand the total cost of service operations for their business.

Putting numbers behind these functions is not new, but it has required a number of assumptions. And getting those costs together remains an integral component in allocation budgets, managing headcount, and crucially, setting service prices. So what are some tips on doing this with as few assumptions as possible, to provide as accurate a picture as possible of the total cost of service? Here are some thoughts:

You Can’t Measure Cost Until You Learn to Measure Service
Here’s the deal: Service software can, under many circumstances, turn data into an asset, and leveraging that data intelligently can go a long way to understanding how service processes fit together. Nevertheless, there’s two major caveats to this: Technical blind spots and human error (both of which are actually human error of course).

You can avoid technical blind spots by building a set of service tools that is as all-encompassing as possible. This means putting optimization, customer experience, enterprise planning, and human capital systems all under a single roof. Is this perfect? Of course not. One major consideration is where your software is coming from. If it’s all from a single vendor, then great, assuming that the ‘boil-the-ocean’ approach hasn’t limited functionality in any meaningful way. If it’s from a core vendor and a series of APIs, what’s the data “exchange rate”? Are your systems on comparable version numbers? Are they adequately calibrated to all new processes? These are all important considerations to ensure that service is being run correctly.

On the “human error” side, you need to ensure that you’re avoiding (as best as you can) bias in your technical criteria. It’s very easy to lean into things that make your business or your technicians look better. While that might be great for marketing, it limits the ability to price accurately, and it also impede the ability to benchmark service improvements accurately.

Wait, Should We Actually Care About Any of This?
I’ll end by saying that while saving a service buck is nice in the immediate, the true value of service optimization comes from what you can pass onto your customer. Those savings, sometimes intangible, help retain customers, encourage upsells, and spurn new business. And at the end of the day, every dollar saved is worth half as much as a dollar of new revenue.

So don’t forget who it is that you are optimizing your services processes for.

Karin Hamel, Vice President of Services for US Digital Buildings at Schneider Electric, joins Sarah to share five areas she’s focused on when it comes to creating the frontline workforce of the future.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we are going to be talking about five areas of focus when you are thinking about creating the frontline workforce of the future. I'm excited to be joined today by Karin Hamel, who is the Vice President of Services for US Digital Buildings at Schneider Electric. Karin, welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast.

Karin Hamel: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, thank you. So Karin and I were fortunate enough to catch up in-person in September in Chicago at the Service Council Symposium. She had a few sessions there that were wonderful, talking about some of her areas of focus at Schneider. We had a good chat, and came up with some things that we wanted to discuss with you all today on the podcast. So before we dig into the nitty gritty, Karin, why don't you tell our listeners a bit about yourself.

Karin Hamel: Sure. So Karin Hamel, and I'm coming to you live from Chicago land. Although I am not originally from here, I'm originally from the east coast, from Rhode Island. That's where I started my career back in the day with American Power Conversion. That's how I got into this sort of IT tech field, energy management. Along the way, APC was acquired by Schneider Electric. I took a little time off in between, but I've been with Schneider for the past 11 years. I have four children. To be honest, thinking about my career path, what gives me the most energy and passion, it is truly all around services. So I'm really glad to be able to be here talking with you about that.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. So you all know that I'm a mom of two, and I'm very passionate about power to the working mama, and shutting down any sort of narrative that says we can't do all of the things. So I admire the fact that you are equally passionate ab out your children, and being a mom, and also your career, and services, and all of the great work that you do at Schneider. So I love that about you. Cool. Okay. So we talked a lot on future of field service, and you and I at the event, about how the role of the frontline worker is changing.

Sarah Nicastro: So as service organizations innovate, and advance their offerings, and move toward this idea of delivering outcomes as technology continues to mature and become more sophisticated, the characteristics that you all are looking for in a frontline worker are different than they were two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, right? They're sort of continually evolving. So there are a number of things that you and Schneider are doing to sort of take action and respond to these changes.

Sarah Nicastro: So that's what we're going to talk about here today. We're going to talk about five key areas, and the first is shifting the perception of the frontline worker. So can we talk a little bit, Karin, about how would you describe the historical perception of what that role is? How that perception needs to change to reflect really what the role has evolved to be and is continuing to evolve to be?

Karin Hamel: Yeah. Well, I think the historical perception, and certainly the one that I have in my head when you asked that question is your typical Maytag repairman. The man that comes up with the toolbox, and the uniform, and comes into your home or your place of business, and he's there to use the tools out of his toolbox to fix whatever has recently broken.

Karin Hamel: That is not necessarily enough anymore, because now we know what the advancements have happened with technology, with data, analytics, and those types of insights. We can actually arm those technicians with these digital tools. Their toolbox is now more of a virtual toolbox in many ways. So if you think about the skillsets required today to really serve our customers the best that we can, they've enhanced. We have to really think about, how do we train up and skill those legacy workers to be able to be more well-rounded, but as well as look for those traits upon hiring and entry into the workforce?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I was doing a presentation a couple of weeks ago, also in Chicago, different event, but another Chicago trip. It was talking about some of the things that are necessary in today's landscape when it comes to modernizing our recruiting and hiring practices, right? Because as the workforce evolves, companies can't expect to continue hiring the same way that they were five years ago. It's just not realistic, right? I was co-presenting with one of my colleagues. When he sent me the initial draft of the slide deck, the title slide was a picture of two really dirty hands. I was like, "We can't use this. I'm not saying that's never a part of the job. But I'm saying, it's reinforcing a perception that is quite outdated."

Sarah Nicastro: It's very interesting how in many ways the role of the frontline is shifting from that very hands-on, mechanical, dirty work type job to more of a knowledge worker and a relationship builder. There is a lot of things that come along with that change that would be a podcast for another day. But you're absolutely right that the perception many have in their minds is not truly representative of the work that's being accomplished today, and how that will continue to change. So from a company's perspective, I think that's super important, because if we continue to have that outdated perception, then are we treating our employees in those roles the way that the type of people with the skillsets we want in those roles want to be treated?

Sarah Nicastro: I think it's also important from kind of an external perspective that we work as an industry at large to modernize that perception, because that's part of the key to being able to get folks interested in these types of jobs, right? One of the things that we talked about briefly at the event, Karin, was I love that you said this. You said, "So salespeople have things like president's club. Why aren't service workers rewarded in the same way?" Right? So tell me a little bit more about your thought process there.

Karin Hamel: Well, no one needs to be like the redheaded stepchild. I feel like we've done that to our field service personnel largely, as a trend in the past. We've overlooked them or taken them for granted. They are doing the dirty work, oftentimes. While we can enable them with technology, at the end of the day there are still plenty of dirty job sites that they have to go and help us resolve. So I do think that we have an opportunity to highlight the work that they've done, and celebrate the hard work that really, a salesperson, they do an amazing job of securing an order, right? Securing that relationship upfront with the customer, giving us work to perform.

Karin Hamel: But at the end of the day, that salesperson is selling the value that that technician is going to deliver. We are nothing without that side of the equation. So it's really important that we wrap our arms around the technicians, empower them, celebrate them, recognize what they're doing. When we see that internally, it catches on. Right? Then we create this movement across the organization, and especially when it's peer-to-peer recognition, and the salespeople recognizing the technicians, we create a much better culture where we work. That's a place we want to stay, too. It's a place people want to be hired into.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So sure, there is this ongoing conversation about the fact that in many industries, post-sale, the frontline technicians are the only person that interacts with the customer face-to-face, right? So there is a lot of responsibility of not just getting the job done, but reinforcing the company brand, and building and nurturing those relationships, and looking for different opportunities to serve customers, and weighing in on innovation, and all sorts of different things. So I agree 100%.

Karin Hamel: Yeah, I think about that technician is walking into that customer's site, and there are different sites every day of the week. They're wearing the company logo, is wearing Schneider Electric. They are bringing a piece of our company to that customer, physically, representing, every day, it's so important that we support those people.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. For sure. Okay. So the second key area is around increasing diversity. So we're talking about all sorts of diversity here, differences in thought, opinion, ideas that are so valuable for companies that are really looking to evolve and innovate. So it's important, but you and I both sat back at the event in Chicago, and kind of said, "Hmm, there is still not many women here." There is even fewer people of color, right? So we really haven't ... We've made progress, but we're not anywhere near where we need to be in terms of being a diverse space. How is Schneider Electric working to change that?

Karin Hamel: Yeah. I'm very proud of the programs that Schneider has been driving over the past few years regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think we do a really good job internally with our core values being, driving the right types of behavior that we want to see with our people, and making sure it's a safe, inclusive environment for everyone to perform at their best. When I think about the work that remains to be done, it will be all about enticing that talent, that diverse talent to come into Schneider Electric. If we think about the makeup and look and feel of that Maytag repairman persona, and the workforce that we've had historically, think about the why. Why has it traditionally been white males of a certain age, certain decade that they were born in, perhaps?

Karin Hamel: Well, it's really, the excuse that I've heard or the reason I do think that this is substantiated is we didn't have STEM programs for women or minorities. It was really, these electrical engineering programs, we traditionally didn't have that persona enrolled in those programs. But today, we do. We know that. I remember, being a mom of a 15 year old, seeing STEM as part of the curriculum at her school. I was like, what is STEM? I didn't, I had not been familiar with that term growing up. Now, we have, we can't ignore it, and we should be embracing it and leveraging it. So what we're doing is trying to find opportunities to create more entry level roles to get that talent in as soon as possible. Having programs like university recruit programs, apprenticeship programs, great onboarding and training to attract and retain that talent. So that's a big focus right now for us.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So it's interesting, it goes hand-in-hand with the first point around perception, right? Because to get younger folks more interested in these roles, we need to do a better job, like I said, of sort of ... I don't want to say making field service sexy. It can only be so sexy, I guess. But there are, I think, aspects of the job that are innately appealing. Then there is also a lot of things companies are doing and can do to make sure that you're thinking about what the younger generation wants out of its career, and finding ways to get creative and provide some of those things. There is this need to make sure you're communicating in a modern way what the opportunities are, why they're compelling, all of those things.

Sarah Nicastro: But to your point, it's also around not just looking to hire white, male technicians that have 15 years of experience, right? So how do you look for those ways, to your point, of bringing talent in sooner, where they're not already set on a specific path. But maybe they're open to different ideas and opportunities. Really, I call it farming some of that talent, right? But creating programs where you can give really, really skilled and good fit folks the opportunity to come to Schneider and progress in a variety of different ways, versus just looking for the people that have already done that elsewhere. I think that's a really important point. Certainly, a way to focus not only on the issue of the talent gap, but specifically on increasing diversity in the talent that you're bringing in.

Karin Hamel: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that's a super important way.

Karin Hamel: By no means do I ever want to ostracize the white, male audience, right? We need them. They're important. It's not anyone's fault. It is the situation that we're in. What can we do, because we know, now, that a more diverse collective group of people will be more highly engaged, and ultimately provide a better experience for our customers and all the other employees that they work with. So I think it's important to say that. We want everyone.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Karin Hamel: There is a place for everyone.

Sarah Nicastro: That's exactly right. It's not about reducing or eliminating that in any way. It's just about augmenting it, and adding to it, and making sure that anyone and everyone that has the desire to explore these type of career opportunities is made aware of them, and given the chance to explore those skills. So you're absolutely right. I don't mean it that way either. I've been in this space for 15 years, and I have relationships with so many people that fit that characteristic, and they're fantastic people. So many of them share the desire to bring the industry to its next iteration. So it's all a collaborative process. I think that everyone recognizes that it's important for us to bring all sorts of different folks into the mix. That's how we all are going to get better. Cool.

Sarah Nicastro: All right, so the third key that I want to talk about is moving from communication to collaboration. Okay? So when we think about the frontline worker, I think we've made strides here, but we've come from a place where we have folks that are happy to show up for work, punch a clock, see what the directive is, and oftentimes are just very happy to carry out the duties that they've been given, and do their work, provide the service to the customers, and be happy with that. I think what companies have realized is that with the immense amount of change that's underway, due to a variety of reasons, the idea of communication with the frontline becomes more important, because we need to not just direct, but bring them into some of the goings on of the organization.

Sarah Nicastro: But I think the point here is to take that a step further, which is the frontline actually holds a wealth of knowledge, and opinions, and insights that can really drive that change. So rather than just communicating, how do we collaborate? Right? So I know with some of the work that you've been doing on Schneider's strategy, you all have done a very good job of really, truly valuing the frontline input, and making sure that you're getting that. Thinking about some of the ways that you are communicating and collaborating, to make sure that you are really being impactful and effective. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Karin Hamel: Yeah. So I have a background in marketing and internal communications. I started in field service, I was responsible for driving communication programs for our frontline. It was eye opening to me, and extremely challenging to try to figure out, okay, how do I effectively do that? Because these are not people that are sitting behind a computer all day. It really was down to the working environment, and identifying that persona, white collar versus blue collar, and what does that look and feel like in the day-to-day?

Karin Hamel: So first and foremost, understanding how someone that's a service field worker, what their day looks like. A lot of windshields time, up in the morning, long drives, going to a different site every single day. Oftentimes, not using their laptop, using their mobile device instead. Not tethered to their Microsoft Outlook email inbox. Receive most of their information from their directing manager or supervisor. So with all of that said and done, your traditional newsletter that you do for communications is not going to cut it. That will not be read.

Karin Hamel: I have tried many things throughout the years, tried things like actually snail mailing a hard copy newsletter, we've done podcasts, we've done focus groups. But something that we've done very recently that I'm very excited about is we started doing strategy visualization. What does that really mean? Well, we started working with a vendor called The Nour Group. They helped us go through the whole strategy slide deck, that 40 page slide deck that we all have sitting in a desk drawer somewhere, on a thumb drive. Taking that, and boiling it down to one page, that's a very visual, graphic document, that really spells everything out, walks the reader or whoever is your audience through the whole strategy, and takes away that corporate speak. It really gives you that talk directly to the reader, your technician in this case, the real person, cut the MBA talk. That was something that I found I really needed some help with. It was nice to have someone point that out to me.

Karin Hamel: So using this visualization, and then printing it out on mousepad, using it as a backdrop for something else. Having it in many different places, so that it's really repeatable, the drum beat continuously throughout the year. It's something, like a war cry. Everyone can rally around this visualization and identify themselves there. I know what the things that I'm going to do in my day-to-day when I'm out onsite with customers. They're going to ultimately drive our ambitions for the year. So that's something that I will definitely be deploying for the unforeseeable future. I think I've cracked the code here, with all these other things I've tried.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So just a couple of comments I want to make on this, because this was one of the sessions at the Service Council event. You and the Nour Group did this sort of live, right? So you showed how you took this huge PowerPoint, and made it into this one visual that everyone can refer back to. The reality is not everyone in the organization is going to look through a 40 slide PowerPoint. I mean, who would want to?

Sarah Nicastro: So again, I think a lot of the impactful change that companies are making today, and this is a really good example, is just breaking out of habits. Right? So you create strategy, you put it into the corporate deck, you put it on the drive, you send out an email and say, "Everyone, make sure you look at this. Let us know if you have questions." Whatever. Right? It's not bad. It's just the way it's been done. But these are the opportunities to really reflect and say, "Hmm. So far technicians are spending X amount of hours in their vehicle each day. If they're only accessing their laptop maybe, I don't know, two to three times a week, is this a realistic expectation? If not, what opportunity are we missing to communicate the information in this deck to them in a more relatable way?"

Sarah Nicastro: So I'm just saying that for all of you listening that weren't there to see this, it was really powerful to see how the key points of the overall strategy were put into this one page visual. I think that the idea of eliminating corporate speak, super important. The idea of putting in the context of why does this matter to me, whomever you're communicating it to, is super important. How do I fit into this strategy is super important. The idea of it being repeatable, and seen in different places, so that there is an opportunity to catch it, and there is an opportunity to catch it over and over again. The other big point, to me, that this drove home, seeing it on a big screen, is you mentioned that oftentimes the frontline is getting the strategy message from their direct supervisor, right?

Sarah Nicastro: One of the things we've seen challenges with in, I'm not saying Schneider at all, but in different businesses throughout the years I've been doing interviews is you have a really good vision, mission, strategy, at the top, and it doesn't quite get to the frontline. It's kind of like, what's the old telephone game, where it just gets lost in translation. Sometimes, unfortunately, and this is another area that companies need to really understand, why does this happen?

Sarah Nicastro: But sometimes it's that level above, that middle management level that's managing the frontline that is the most disconnected, and maybe frustrated. So they don't share the passion of the people that created this strategy in communicating it. So what I liked about this visual is it's a very important reference point to make sure that everyone in the organization sees the same thing, and is on the same page. So you're not relying on that manager to communicate some synopsis of a 40 page PowerPoint. You're putting it out there in a way that everyone sees the same thing. So you minimize the risk of that breakdown in communication, which I also think is super important.

Karin Hamel: Yeah. So two things to follow up on that. So one, David Nour, he had the funniest statement. He was like, "What's the main radio station everyone is listening to? WIIFM, what's in it for me?" You get my point. So with these documents, how do you get through to the frontline? Show them what's in it for them. So if they can identify their contributions to the end goal in this visualization, and with what you're communicating. Then the other is I think what worked for us, and I mentioned it early on, was recognition. So we built up a recognition program around this strategy visualization doc and our Hero program. So if I'm a technician, and I can identify how I can contribute to our overall business ambitions by this kind of map, this resonates. Well, every time I do contribute or am delivering on one of those key outcomes, someone is going to recognize that behavior.

Karin Hamel: That's where we put in this peer-to-peer nomination. Anyone can go and say, "I'm going to catch you at doing something great. I'm going to encapsulate that in the form of a recognition." We have a woman that runs this program for us, and we have great internal communication. So people might not want to open up an email, or read some lengthy newsletter. But when they see their name in lights, they're certainly going to read that, or when they recognize a peer for doing something great. "Hey, he or she just got those accolades. I want to read that." So if we kind of keep it all connected, and this runs throughout the whole year, that has been a great accelerant to kind of create that movement in the culture that we want.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. For sure. We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment. Before we do, I want to talk about the fourth area, which is shifting the focus from purely effectiveness to empowerment with the frontline. So this is a huge thing. When I started covering this space, every single conversation was around how do we drive productivity? How do we make technicians more effective? How do we get to one more visit? How do we drive, drive, drive, cut, cut, cut, right? Obviously, every organization needs to maximize utilization, and make sure that technicians are effective, and productive. So that's not to take away from that.

Sarah Nicastro: But I think this idea of empowerment is very important, because we've better recognized the value of the frontline worker and all of the areas of the business that they can impact. It's not just about making sure they're effective. But it's really digging into what do they need from the company to be not just effective, but empowered, right? To have all of the insights they need on the job. To be able to make good decisions in real time. All of those things. As well as one of the things we talked about earlier, which is the idea of career development. Right? Giving people paths within the business to expand and continue their journey instead of looking elsewhere. So can you talk a little bit about the work that Schneider has done related to really empowering the frontline worker, to make sure that they have everything they need to be successful?

Karin Hamel: Yeah. Well, I think it starts with getting their feedback. So we have a survey that we do, a company-wide survey once a year. We say everyone is over surveyed these years. So the promise is once a year, if there was one survey that you had to take, take this one, because we want to hear your voice. As a result of getting that feedback, we put action plans in place to say, "What are the key drivers that are really influencing our employee's day? Are they happy?" Because happy people make happy customer. We really want to make sure they feel happy to show up to work every day. So first and foremost is listening to them. Gathering their feedback, and then creating those meaningful action plans that are going to enhance their day, their life at work. Sometimes, it's a matter of the right tooling and outfitting from a physical standpoint. Sometimes it's, we know that people say they don't want to do paperwork.

Karin Hamel: So how can we create efficiencies in terms of process or systems that we can free up their time, and give them their energy back to go and face that customer, and deliver an outstanding service experience? Other times, and you mentioned it, is, yeah, career path. Let's make sure that they see, if they have ambitions to go do something else, make sure that they feel like they can voice that to their manager, first of all, and show them a path. Then I think the last is mentorship. So creating a space for them to be able to talk about other things with someone maybe more senior than them, and matching them up, like a buddy system.

Karin Hamel: We have amazing internal training programs at Schneider, so if you decide that you'd like to go practice a different trade, or get into leadership, all the tools are at your disposal. So let's make sure we give them time in their day, in their week, to go invest that back. So this time of year, people are typically figuring out their utilization targets for next year. So if you're in control of that, think about how you might add a few hours back into their lives to give them time for that development.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think it's this recognition that the recognition of the frontline as talent, not just for their contribution. Right? So the historical view is just output, output, output. Right? But we've started to realize, what are we putting in to sustain that output? And expand that output, as the role changes, what more do our workers need from us to be able to expand, evolve in their own careers, and to your point, be happy? It's not just about what all can we get out of them. Then you're going to have a retention problem. So it's really also about what do they need? Even the visualization thing. There is this idea, I think, tied to empowerment is feeling invested in the story, and the company's mission. So not just throwing that out there and hoping they find it. But making sure it resonates, and making sure they feel a part of the whole Schneider story.

Karin Hamel: Right.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So the final area I want to come back to is around recognition. So you touched on the Hero program and what you're doing there. Again, I want to emphasize that as the workforce changes, the end all and be all is not just financial reward. Obviously, employees want to be fairly paid, and everyone should be fairly paid. But I think the point here is that these workers lack historically in being acknowledged and recognized for the important contributions they make. So again, just talk a little bit more about, so the Hero program. You mentioned it's a peer-to-peer nomination. This is, I think, a really important step toward making sure that these folks feel seen and valued for the hard work that they're doing.

Karin Hamel: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, so for me, leading services for the business unit. I'm responsible for setting the ultimate direction and the strategy, and then everything backing up into, okay, well, what do we need to do today to get there? What does the current situation look like? So I ask myself, what are the outcomes that I want to deliver? Then you back your way into, well, what are the behaviors and actions that I need the people to drive to create those outcomes? So then if we can map out those types of behaviors and actions for every persona in the organization, and specifically for field services here, that's how we started and arrived at that strategy visualization document. So that every technician could look at that and identify themselves, and say, "All right, this is clear. Simple roadmap. I need to do X, Y, and Z to plug into the overall direction and ambition of the group. Okay."

Karin Hamel: So we started, created a survey link. We've got some cash bonuses in place for those that are being strategically recognized. In the past, we have done president's club trip for these people. So picking one name at the end of the year for various reasons, and sending them on that sales president's club trip. That was very well received, as you might imagine. Another cool thing that came out of this was one of our monthly spotlight heroes, he was a technician out of Philadelphia, he felt so glad that he had been seen, and once we could tap into him, he had so many great ideas for how to improve the culture and the workforce.

Karin Hamel: He actually volunteered, he said, "Can we do a podcast?" So of course, let's try it. So great idea. If that's what you think is going to resonate with these folks. So giving them something. He's like, "There is only so many radio stations and satellite radio I can listen to. Let's give us something else, and let's talk shop on this podcast." So we've been trying that out lately. But it was nice to see, you know what? If we hadn't had this recognition program in place, I don't think we would have had the vehicle to get that idea out of Gary in Philadelphia. So you never know what can spin off from these types of programs.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's such a good point. Like I said, you want to create an environment where he is not just sitting on that thought, or that idea, or that feedback. You want him to feel engaged and valued so that he'll speak up. Right? You also want to create a space where it's okay if every idea isn't the best idea. But how do you get more dialogue around those things? Because that's how you're going to find the really cool, innovative things. It's funny, when you were talking about windshield time, the first thing I thought was podcast, because it just ... It is a really good use of that vehicle time for them to have an opportunity, whatever, that could take a ton of different paths, right? So I think it's really cool that you're doing that. Good job, Gary, for coming up with the idea. That's awesome.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, so Karin, in summary, is there any other insights, opinions, comments you have on this topic and how the industry needs to rise up to meet the needs of the workforce of the future?

Karin Hamel: So I think for me, it's three points. One is invest in technology that is going to catapult you into the modern day experience that customers expect. So when you get those ... I'm speaking firsthand. When you get those emails from vendors that say, "Hey, notice you downloaded a white paper. Can I get some of your time? Hey, I saw you were speaking at this event, can I do a demo with you?" If you're like me, you're bombarded with those type of things, and you usually delete them. Take the time to entertain one here or there, and listen to what the industry is doing. Give it some attention. It will pay off.

Karin Hamel: Number two, invest in programs for your people. So what can you do? Listen to their feedback, and what can you do to free up their time, create a better workplace for them? Number three is just keep it real. Stay close to the frontline. Find opportunities to get out in the field, go onsite with your technicians, see the day-to-day firsthand, because that's really going to keep you honest and connected. You remember that corporate speak, MBA speak versus real talk? Never lose sight of just keeping it real.

Sarah Nicastro: That's a really good point, Karin. I think the investment of leadership's time in hands-on, face-to-face time with the frontline, right? I mean, I think that is an investment that pays dividends, both in being able to have an opportunity to hear some of their thoughts and ideas firsthand. But also, what it says to them, and shows them about how you value their contribution, right? It's easy to sit back behind your laptop and, "Oh, good job." It's a totally different thing to go sit in the truck all day, visit customers with them, and make them feel that you're present, you see them, you value them. I think that's a very, very, very good point. So good.

Sarah Nicastro: Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing today. I'm excited to stay tuned on the Hero program, and all of the other things that you all are doing. I believe, for those listening, I believe that the service council sessions are available on demand. So if you have an opportunity to go back to that archive and take a look at the session that Karin and David Nour did on strategy visualization, it's a really, really good session. So I highly recommend you do that. I appreciate your time today, Karin.

Karin Hamel: Yeah. Thanks, Sarah. It was my pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes. Thank you. All right, you can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @thefutureofFS. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

The market, technological, and environmental factors that create disruption to drive innovation are quite intense in today’s landscape. This puts pressure on business leaders to evolve and transform at a pace that allows them to remain relevant, keep competitive, and create differentiation. This pressure is not simply perceived – it is real, no doubt. But how that pressure causes leaders and companies to respond is quite interesting, and I think begs an exploration of the differences between urgency and haste.

On last week’s podcast, I welcomed Eduardo Bonefont, VP of Life Sciences Technical Services at BD for an insightful discussion around the conundrum of balancing short-term priorities and long-term success. He shares the story of how, in 2017, he was asked to take his current position to transform the service experience across BD Life Sciences globally because customer feedback wasn’t stellar, and he had a proven track record of aiding underperforming regions in transformation to better performance. He worked with leadership to create a transformation plan, which included investments in people, processes, and tools.

As he dug in, he realized that the mission to invest in new technology was in many ways at odds with the parallel mission to improve the employee experience – which he knew would equate to a better customer experience. In a nutshell, he and other leaders learned in their firsthand listening of frontline employees that the last thing teams wanted was investment in new technology – they wanted issues with their current systems that were causing daily struggles addressed first.

“It turned out that the cost to fix all the issues that they had, and there was a big list, was equal to the investments that we were going to make on new technology,” explains Eduardo. “Myself and the entire leadership team decided quickly that we needed to pivot our goal to refocus our efforts on fixing these issues to create a better experience for our associates. That became our “pause year” when we used everything that we had available to us in order for us to fix the old stuff before we began with new.”

The idea of BD’s “pause year” is so intriguing to me, for a few reasons. First, I think the pressure companies are under to innovate causes them to race – often past foundational issues that will ultimately inhibit their success. Second, it illustrates BD’s recognition of the very critical fact that employee experience is tied directly to customer experience. If your frontline service workers are frustrated, experiencing daily challenges, or disconnected from your strategy and roadmap for innovation, it’s almost impossible to accomplish your objectives. They are an essential aspect of your company’s differentiation, and ignoring their feedback, desires, or feelings – no matter how challenging to address – compromises the most important resource you depend upon to deliver the customer experience you’re striving for. Finally, it shows restraint in considering not just the short-term objectives or problems but in factoring in how the capacity for longer-term victory grows with a relatively short investment of time.

Set Sail for Service Success

“I am a sailor and in boating, if all of a sudden you run aground, there’s a sand dune or something, and you cannot move forward, the majority of boaters have an instinct to plow right ahead,” explains Eduardo. “They put the engine in full force, thinking ‘I’m going to get out of this. It’s not supposed to be here.’ But that can create damage to your boat, that can create damage to yourselves too. And it’s a very expensive proposal to go do that when the right answer along all along could have been, why don’t I just reverse? I already had a path behind me that’s working. If I take reverse, it’s the easiest way to get out of a sand dune when you’re stuck in order so you can move forward effectively.”

Eduardo and his team applied this analogy to the Life Sciences business and the overall objectives they had. Yes, they were trying to move ahead in improving customer experience. And yes, they believed that the incorporation of new technology was imperative to that mission. But they hit a sand dune when they uncovered the fact that their frontline workforce had some real issues they needed addressed. Rather than plow through those and risk damaging the business, they hit reverse and took the time to fix those issues so that the sail ahead would be safer, smoother, and with a higher likelihood of success. “Applying that analogy to the business, if you plow head, if you push forward, you could create a significant amount of damage and distrust that is just really hard to overcome in future years. At the end, you’re not going to get that continuous improvement if you don’t take the workforce into consideration.”

Knowing When to Hit the Gas vs. Hit the Brake

Eduardo was clear to point out that this pause year didn’t mean the entire business came to a halt while BD addressed employee concerns. They kept on with the day to day, and with focusing on improvements. But the brake was applied in terms of layering new technology investments on top of the tools the workforce felt weren’t working properly.

It can be challenging to determine when to apply gas versus when to hit the brake, particularly because pressures are high. While there’s no cut-and-dry formula for making the best decision, here are a few questions I think it helps to ask yourself and your team:

Are we balancing short-term pressures with long-term objectives and potential?
Will this decision harm us at all in reaching our longer-term goals?
Are we listening to and prioritizing what our customers want and need?
Are we taking into consideration, genuinely, the feedback of our employees and the realities of their experience?
Are we slowing down based on facts or fear?
Are we promoting employee creativity and employee voice enough, knowing that’s where many great innovative ideas come from?
Do we have technologies in place that we are keeping based on outdated criteria rather than a true consensus that they serve our current, and future, needs?

There are of course many more factors – if you have input on how you balance a proper sense of urgency with avoiding the risk of haste, I’d love to hear from you. And if you haven’t yet listened to Eduardo’s podcast episode, I urge you to do so – I really respect the balance he and his team have struck between prioritizing the employee experience and making progress on business outcomes.

By Tom Paquin

A few weeks back, I ran a quick retrospective on my first Future of Field Service article. This week, I’m going to fast forward a bit to an article from early 2020 which looks laughably quaint within the context of what was less than two months away.

Read the Article: What to Expect when you’re Expecting (Your Employees to Quit)

Today of course, the situation is exacerbated, with 30% of workers reportedly voluntarily handing in resignations.

We know the reasons for this—COVID has, for many, redefined the boundaries of work/life balance, shifted expectations about what a job can be (both through technology and also through necessity) and fundamentally changed the dynamics of the global economy.

And while this impacts every industry, it invariably impacts service at a greater clip. Service has never been an easy profession, and in a job landscape where physical presence in an office is becoming out of style for many business, the idea of being beholden to traffic, and being tethered to on-site operations can be an unattractive option for many.

And frankly, a lot of the hiring practices outlined in the article still stand. Where they can be enhanced, iterated upon, and reengineered to better support the workforce, and attract new people, mostly relates to technology.

We’ve obviously spoken a lot about remote assistance, and will continue to into next year, as it kept businesses running through COVID, and now offers the means to avoid costly truck rolls for more routine operations. It could also serve as the catalyst that keeps employees on board and attracts new ones. If, for instance, employees were able to work “Hybrid shifts”, in the field some days, at home others, it would offer the level of flexibility than many crave.

This is just one example. A more decentralized dispatch, as well, might offer some reprieve. It also will allow service businesses to do more with less, which, with a leaner workforce, might be the best option.

Eduardo Bonefont, VP of Life Sciences Technical Services at BD, talks with Sarah about the need to balance short term priorities with long term potential and shares an exercise in “pausing” that BD did to set the company up for better success.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking about the idea of slowing down to speed up. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Eduardo Bonefont, the vice president of Life Sciences Technical Services at BD. Eduardo, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Eduardo Bonefont: Thank you, Sarah. It's good to be here and thank you for the invitation to talk to the audience here.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. So I heard Eduardo present in September at the Service Council Symposium and one of the concepts that he spoke about was really, really interesting to me. And I asked him to join us today and talk a bit more about that concept. So I'm excited for our chat, but before we get into it, Eduardo, can you tell our listeners a bit about yourself? Anything you want to share related to your background, your role, anything you want to say as an introduction.

Eduardo Bonefont: Oh, sure. I'll share some highlights. I mean, I think my humility also says that I don't like to overshare, but I just share some key points about me and my background. I mean, I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, born and grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Probably you notice a bit in the accent. I came to New Jersey to attend electric engineering school. And there, I had just various internships, just basically to help with the college bills, but also to get some great experiences. I did get a nice internship at, back then it was GE, and they made satellite, spaceships that went into, in this case it was Mars. And my performance also there helped me get into a great leadership training program. And then when it came time to graduation, I was able to get into that great leadership for GE. And then back then I chose assignments that provided me broader responsibilities and just more significant things that I could do.

Eduardo Bonefont: But I also noticed that mainly if I went to the underperforming businesses, it gave me an opportunity to have those product challenges, but also expand the roles where I could really make some significant changes. And those underperforming divisions, I noticed that there is human pain sometimes when I met some of the employees, there is distrust and there's mental breakdowns in those underperforming divisions. But I learn a lot by myself that my joy also came by trying to make their lives better, help them achieve great success and also have some personal pride. And I spent 16 years at GE in different businesses and service operations.

Eduardo Bonefont: I was recruited then after that to help a team in Rochester, New York. It was a former company of Johnson & Johnson where I almost spent 10 years. And I'm now the global vice president for the life sciences segment of BD. And I joined there about six years ago. And at that point in time, I joined to improve an underperforming US service region that had bad customer experience, associates were working 30% overtime, there was a lot of disengagement and this role became my attraction as a next step challenge for me. When I left BD, the most interesting thing is that a lot of my colleagues and business colleagues, they found odd that I left our prior company for... It wasn't for money, but it was about the opportunity to take another team to great performance. And six years later, I'm the head of the division now.

Sarah Nicastro: That's great. I love that you're so passionate about the human side of the business. And I think that when you talk about this interest in helping underperforming areas, regions, pockets, functions turnaround, I'm sure there's a good correlation between that performance and how the human side of the business probably isn't getting paid enough attention. So that's very cool. And so you talked at the event about the idea of what you referred to as a pause year. So I want to talk about what that pause year was and what its purpose was, how it came to bear. So how did you end up with the idea of taking that pause year and what purpose did it serve for your overall efforts at BD?

Eduardo Bonefont: And this might take a little bit more time to set the stage because then in about 2017, after improving the performance of the US region, which we started becoming well known in the industry for our great service improvements and this was only US focus, I was asked by the BD leadership team to lead a project to now help transform the service experience for the entire life sciences segment. It was a collaborative project to bring many of these service leaders together to trust each other, collaborate and jointly create this better future. And at that point in time, our baseline surveys from our customers, there was this not so positive customer feedback. Bringing all these heads together was not easy, but we quickly learned that we have more in common than what could set us apart. And that was the passion for our customers.

Eduardo Bonefont: We created a transformational plan and that plan was supposed to evolve over the next three to five years. Our key focus was to first fix our issues then strengthen the operations and then create to a future where we could start excelling in the customer experience. There were investments that we requested for this journey but also created a new reporting organizational structure for this new unit that got created, Life Science Technical Services. And this led to my current promotion, but it also created broader roles and more meaningful roles for those individuals in that project, which some of them are now reporting to me, leading very broad regions and very broad functions.

Eduardo Bonefont: These new investments that we requested, they were focused on three things that I've talked about at the conference. They were focused on people, processes and tools. And we pushed a significant amount of technology. We created customer omnichannels. We had new tools for intelligent diagnosis to better solve our issues quicker. We got better at advancing resolutions. But another key objective that we had was to improve the employee experience. And that one had not improved as fast as our customer experience. Our customer experience was getting some great net promoter scores, but then internally, our associates were not improving how they felt about us, about the unit itself, which led to our leadership team and I to start, well, let's start getting some more feedback. And that led us to take a journey.

Eduardo Bonefont: The two heads of the two business units that work for me and myself, we decided to travel into business of Global Associates, which started in the US, just closer, then we went to Latin America then finally ended our trip in Europe. And in Europe, that's where it was our big aha moment. And we landed a big score that I can recall at that time. We were in a classroom setting talking to associates, town hall style. If you picture the town hall or the classroom, it was kind of a slope classroom. We're at the bottom, they were at the top and we're talking to them about the performance and about the future. And they were excited about the vision. We can see the excitement about the vision. And as soon as we got into the Q&A, that's when the conversation got really honest. And we started hearing about the hurdles of the systems that they had, systems that basically they were not communicating properly.

Eduardo Bonefont: The most simple way to explain this is like asking you to type all your work in Word before you send an email. It's a very simple way to explain it, but it was a lot of rework that was taking place to our associates, which we learned before we began this journey, there were some service enterprise systems that had not yet been fixed that we used every day that needed some work. And it was a truly honest conversation. And once my leash when I got back to the hotel, our heads were spinning, "What do we do now?" But feedback is a great gift that we had just received. And now it's up to us to now take the next step. And I'm not taking credit for the decision, my leadership and I that evening, we aligned that... At the hotel, we're at the lobby bar just having a conversation and say, "We need to focus all our energy into fixing that employee experience." It was the thing that had to become our number one priority.

Eduardo Bonefont: And during that trip, as we began to... I started asking the questions, "Well, what is the cost? What's it going to take? How long can we do this?" But to cut the story short, it turned out that the cost to fix all the issues that they had, and there was a big list, to make it go away was equal to the investments that we were going to make on new technology. And that became the decision that myself and entire leadership team made quickly and we aligned quickly that our goal needed to be to refocus our efforts to fix these 16 issues and hurdles in order to create a better experience for our associates. And that became truly our pause year when we used everything that we had available to us in order for us to fix the old stuff before we can begin with new.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So I do have a couple questions. One is, so basically when you came into BD and you did this role in the US, the success you had there, the leadership team essentially said, "Okay, Eduardo, we want to replicate this and create more consistency across the life sciences function. So we're going to create this new role, you dig in with these leaders, you guys decide to go around and get some firsthand feedback from the frontline workforce and that's where you start to get this feedback." So my first question, and I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I just want to hear what your response is. So you said that you had already started to improve customer scores and outcomes, but the employee experience is what was not improving. So if the customer scores were improving, why did you care as much about the employee experience scores?

Eduardo Bonefont: Well, our employees are the bloodline of our success. And I began talking about my early career, how that connectivity to those that support us, our engineers, our field engineers, our associates, it is the lifeline of the organization. Services is a human context board. Without that human success, we do not have a business. But the leadership around me, I guess we think alike, we act alike and they all saw it the same way. It had to become our number one priority to realign that. At the end, we're talking about improving something so they can become more successful at what they do. It's not disconnected from achieving our financial and our customer performance goals without having that intimate connection. You don't want your field engineers to go to customers and say, "Oh my God, everything's broken." And at the end, it also helps us with their morale and also the customer experience. And happy employees leads to happy customers, that's a corny saying, but it's true. And we all felt jointly together that that was the right focus.

Eduardo Bonefont: And we got it all. After we decided to focus, we got the employee experience, we got the customer experience and at the same time that financial performance was also transformative and taking place at the same time.

Sarah Nicastro: So the reason I asked that question is to just point out the fact that I think there are some organizations that don't prioritize employee experience as highly as they do customer experience. And so if they had been in the position where the positive impact was already being reflected on the customer side, they may have been more likely than BD was to overlook the challenges that still existed on the employee experience side. So I think it's very smart. And I think it's smart because you are absolutely right that number one, those improvements that you saw in the customer experience without this focus will probably be significantly more with doing this. And number two, those improvements, had you not done this, could have been temporary, because at the end of the day, if you have employees that are disconnected, frustrated, disengaged, as service continues to be a strategic part of the business, if they're not on board, it's only a matter of time before that surfaces.

Sarah Nicastro: So like I said, it was a trick question because I agree wholeheartedly with the approach you took, which is why I wanted to have you on and have this conversation. But I do think that there are some people that maybe would've looked more at the short term success and not made a more weighted decision on what to do next.

Eduardo Bonefont: But look at the damage that you can leave behind if you take that approach. And for me I always say this, that services is more like a family. And at the end, if you plow through something, I mean, you can leave a lot of damage behind that may be hard to recover. Maybe if I can add one analogy and I use this in boating and I am a sailor, but if you have a boat and then all of a sudden you run a ground, there's a sand dune or something, you run a ground and you cannot move forward, we're surprised that the majority of boaters, what they do is they want to plow right ahead. They put the engine in full force, "I'm going to get out of this. It's not supposed to be here." But that can create damage to your boat, that can create damage to yourselves too. And it's a very expensive proposal to go do that when the right answer along all along could have been, why don't I just reverse? I already had a path behind me that's working. If I take reverse, it's the easiest way to get out of a sand dune when you're stuck in order so you can move forward effectively.

Eduardo Bonefont: That is the same analogy that I use if you plow head, if you push forward, you could create a significant amount of damage, distrust that is just really hard to overcome that in future years. And at the end, you got to look at yourself, you got to look at the people around you because you're not going to get that continuous improvement if you don't take them into consideration. And that's why I also used that terminology, service is like a family. I mean, we still have difficult conversations but at the end we're aligned into what direction we're going to move forward as organization.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's a really good analogy and I think it's really important to emphasize the point here that you obviously have a deep appreciation for the fact that these frontline workers are ultimately the key to BD's success when it comes to services. They're the ones that are face to face having the interactions. And so sometimes those employees aren't maybe as appreciated either at all or just in how a company communicates to them as they need to be. I mean, it is really a critical asset that companies have and it needs to be looked at the way you look at it in terms of we're a family, we can't move forward together if a chunk of our family is unhappy, frustrated, disengaged. So how do we get to the bottom of that? So I think this idea of employee engagement and its importance is one thing I want to stress.

Sarah Nicastro: The other is how you and your team took the time to travel around face to face, listen to this feedback firsthand. You didn't sit in that room and have these immediate scripted responses. It was really hard listening and walking away and saying, "Okay, we have to figure out a solution to this issue." So it was an authentic desire to hear what they had to say-

Eduardo Bonefont: Listening is very hard. A lot of people don't practice listening, but listening is harder than talking. It takes a lot more energy than talking.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, especially when you're doing it with the intent of looking for a better path. Sometimes people can listen without the intent to take action on what they hear. So it's sort of checking a box or the lip service of, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, we went around and we visited people and we heard what they had to say." But there's a difference between listening for the sake of listening and listening with the intent to take action on feedback. So you did both, which is really important as well.

Eduardo Bonefont: But if I could go back early to a point that you made was about the importance of the field engineers. The pandemic proved that. Not that they're important, they're heroes. If you know about BD, we're medical technology company making life-saving equipment and also equipment that's used in research. Our business did not stop because of COVID. Our business continued. Our field engineers still had to go to and take the ultimate risk in order for them to continue to provide that equipment running needed for healthcare, needed for COVID detection, needed for COVID research, needed by those customers of ours. When the pandemic hit, my number one priority became keeping them safe at the end. That became my number one daily. I woke up every morning, how are we going to continue to do this, to do their jobs and keeping them safe? But the pandemic proved their heroism because at the end, no one questioned themselves or no one second guessed their jobs when it was still time for them to take care of the customers.

Eduardo Bonefont: I as a leader, our priority became to make sure they had the right equipment, they were safe, they had the right mask at all times so they can stay safe because our number one goal became is we were not going to lose anyone to a job-related risk. And there were some close calls as far as when the pandemic first started in China, we sent our equipment to China. They have to be safe. They had nothing. We sent to China. And then once that came to the West, we found ourselves in one case, I'm not exaggerating, we had maybe 36 masks left for 1000 employees. And then I recall that in that desperate moment, I... And we were getting supplies in but they were late. I made a call to my China colleagues and, "I need help." I said, "Do you have something for us so you can send us?" And they gave us the greatest gift ever. Over a weekend they responded and they sent us what they could in order for us to have masks for every field engineer until the new supply came in.

Eduardo Bonefont: That shows the family, the connection that we all have and how we touch each other. And I'm still touched by that event that in that moment of crisis that we had, someone that we helped earlier paid us back, not only in one kind but in tenfold in order to keep associates in Latin America, in Turkey, in Europe, and everyone on the road still running and be safe.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And you don't get that level of solidarity and community without really investing in relationships with your people. So that's really good. So here's another point I want to make sure we make in today's conversation. So it just so happened that as you went on these trips and you heard this feedback firsthand, you said that the employees were excited about the company's vision, but it was these day to day tools that they were real really frustrated by. And so it just so happens then that the feedback was really around the technology. And so here's another big area where I think companies race to their detriment, which is this idea that, "All right there's new technology coming out. We need the latest and greatest, we need AI, we need machine learning, we need this, we need this." And so they keep layering these things on top of systems that are not really strongly effective to begin with, which to your point, just increases this frustration.

Sarah Nicastro: And so I love the fact that you heard what they said. And so in this pause year, what that meant was instead of investing what you had to invest in new technology, you took a year off of doing that and invested those same funds and resources into fixing the issues that the employees had surfaced. So I love this because I think it's super smart, but again, I think it would freak a lot of people out, to be honest. I think they would be fighting against that urge to race, race, race to get to the next thing, speed. Everyone has this pressure, "We need to be more competitive. We need to do this. We need to get to this." So this idea of, "Let's step back and let's work in reverse for a bit before we leap ahead." So can you talk about, what do you think it is? What do you think some of the reasons are why that strategy, which seems very smart, would be really hard for a lot of folks to land on?

Eduardo Bonefont: Yeah. Let me first say that in past year we did not waiver from our financial commitments, performance commitments, nor our customer commitments. Technology is a tool for us to be able to get better efficiencies, growth, and to better serve our customers. It'll give us performance over the long term. And it's good that we take a multi-year approach. When you look back that one year, you look back now it's a blip, it's inconsequential that one year that we took, because at the end, we had a vision of continuous improvement. And maybe that one year actually gave us more feedback because that employee frustration was also a big source of poor productivity, rework, more admin work, less time away from serving customers.

Eduardo Bonefont: So fixing their issues also became a boost of productivity for us. Why do people miss that feedback? I think it's probably lack of inclusiveness. If you're not an inclusive leader, you're going to miss a lot of trends, a lot of potential hurdles that your organization may be facing. You also got to have a vision, a long term vision because if you're focused too much on the short term, that could also hurt your business and we knew that the one year pause might just be a minor blip in our overall long term solution. We had the patience to see that long term effect take through. So inclusiveness and vision was the things that helped us to make the right decision for us while still meeting our business commitments that we had for the company.

Sarah Nicastro: So when we spoke earlier on, we talked about the fact that it's been important for you to create a speak up culture. So did you run into any issues as you all were doing these visits and collecting this feedback? How did you encourage people to weigh in, to be honest and be candid and to share openly?

Eduardo Bonefont: Sure. I'll start with myself. I mean, I've always encouraged any individual to always ask me any question and I'm always going to tell you the truth. The truth maybe I can't tell you right now or the truths you may not like, but then I'm just going to be candid with you. But I also encourage that transparency and honesty from every leader in my organization. We're always collecting feedback. One thing that I criticize myself every year is I need to make sure that I improve our communication style. We also need to make sure that we're listening more. We've done just multiple things to be able to listen to our customers. One of them is this employee net promoter score that has been so effective for us. That's just one tool to pause our organization on a global basis how they feel. I mean, would you recommend BD Technical Services to your friends and colleagues? That is a very hard question to score well in, and our relationship score.

Eduardo Bonefont: So we ask of our associates and there's also other questions that they answer too as far as how we do around people, processes and tools. We have advisory councils that we created. We have more forums. I myself did probably 200 skip level meetings last year or more. I think I'm underestimating that, but I'm always maintaining that connection and we're asking every leader to do the same thing. Every individual in our organization deserves to work for great leadership, deserves to work for good managers. And our mission and our vision is to make sure that that standard of leadership performance, that every lead, every associate around the world is experiencing the same thing. So that's why we're always opening the forum for discussion. We're opening the forums for challenge. We welcome people to challenge us. And our leadership team and I will exercise some things where I... My leadership team will challenge me in public just to make sure that they understand it's okay, that when I admit that I'm wrong, if I admit something, it's okay to do that because we need to able to feel comfortable to challenge you leader, speak up, say what's on your mind.

Eduardo Bonefont: We love to hear that because feedback, like I said earlier, is a great gift for us to be able to improve our direction. And more and more, we're creating these sessions where we're allowing... For example, when we create our strategy and our vision, it's not just seven leaders locking themselves in a room, we're inviting the next level and the second level of leadership into those meetings for them to weigh in. We encourage them to debate, decide, argue with us in order to create a common plan. There was one time this past year we're creating our growth initiatives about our future, it was a very important session and for the first month and a half after we invited the second level of leadership, we spent most of that month and a half in what I call that storming phase. But once we got through that storming phase, norming and aligning came very quickly. It was surprising how aligned we were and how they were able to take what they learned at those meetings [inaudible 00:32:32] strategy. It got communicated down very fast, very effectively and that helped us in order to drive even faster performance, higher growth and just phenomenal results in our last financial year.

Sarah Nicastro: So I mentioned earlier there's a difference between listening for the sake of listening and then listening with the intent to take action. So to me, there's probably a number of different ways that this pause year was powerful. I think that this idea of slowing down to speed up, if we take a step back, we might take five steps forward. But I think one of the most powerful parts of it is how it illustrated to your frontline workforce that you cared, that you heard what they said, and that you were committed to putting action behind that even if that meant changing plans a bit. And to your point, I do absolutely understand the need to clarify. We're not talking about a pause year, everyone took a vacation. We're not talking about we didn't meet the customer's needs. We're talking specifically about the idea that rather than racing to invest in new things from a technology perspective, we listened to the feedback and realize we needed to first improve what was in place.

Sarah Nicastro: So how do you feel that BD's willingness to show action taken on this feedback? How do you feel that has benefited the organization in terms of taking that pause to be able to then speed up?

Eduardo Bonefont: At the end I'm the key business leader for BD for technical service. So at the end, it's like that transparency about slowing down, I also reflect it up as well. At the end there was... As a leader, you have to be sensitive to how much absorption and adoption can happen at any given time when you're introducing all this new technology. And I mean, it was an easy conversation with my leader and my colleagues around the other functions that support us, because at the end, it's about creating a better need to focus on your current objectives and focus on something that needs to improve. One other... Wait, if I flashback now, right now, even in this challenging times when people are leaving companies, people are jumping ship or the great resignation, we probably have had one of the lowest turnovers that we've ever had in six years. And that is due to the trust, due to how passionate and committed our associates are to our vision and to our journey.

Eduardo Bonefont: So it's an easy conversation at BD. It's an easy conversation among everyone when we have to focus on doing the right thing. It's about doing the right thing not only for yourself, for the company, for you, but it wasn't a difficult decision. And again, at the end, we create a better focus, better energy, better enthusiasm and also achieve better financial results. But not everything went well. I mean, obviously some of those issues that I talked about, some of them took longer. We committed we're going to fix all your issues. Some issues were easy, some issues took a year and some others took a year and a half to two years, but at least we constantly kept communicating it's coming here, about the deadlines. We opened the lines of communication and created a globe of community, of people to make sure that they knew and helped those fix those issues.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, I mean, that communication part is really important. And I think just the willingness to take the action goes a long way in building that trust and being able to give those updates and have that transparency. Everything doesn't need to go perfectly as long as you're communicating and-

Eduardo Bonefont: It's always good to ask for feedback all the time. I'll just give you example last week, I was doing a field engineer ride along where I met with four field engineers and we drove to each of their customers as they were doing your jobs. I love doing that and I know they like having the global vice president with them but what they didn't realize, I enjoy more. I enjoy more seeing them at work. I enjoy seeing them in front of the customer. I enjoy seeing what the customers say about them, because that just gives me a great lift, a lot of energy, enthusiasm because I also use that as a way about testing this vision that we have, is it working, you are aligned to it? What could change?

Eduardo Bonefont: And that's why I encourage everyone, humility to listen, feedback at all levels thus transform an organization, but it also energizes those four field engineers which I had a great time with. And I was very proud just to see how much the customers adore them about the hard work that they do. It can be an uplifting experience for any leader. And I'm still enthusiastic about that visit that happened last week. I came back away with five pages or notes of things that I needed to do in order to maintain our vision intact and to continue to improve it.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's really cool. All right, Eduardo, our last question for today is what advice would you give someone listening that likes this idea of slowing down or pressing pause but feels very overwhelmed by the need for speed?

Eduardo Bonefont: I think I'd go back to the advice I gave earlier about the boating example. You got to look at yourself in a mirror every day. Are you proud of the things that you have done? Are you proud of the changes that you're making? What is the impact on your associates? What is the impact on the organization? What is the impact on the people around you? We all... If you're in services, not everyone wakes up every day to be yelled at by a customer. It takes a great passion, a great encouragement. It's a different person to be in services. We take beatings from the customer. We have pressures internally, but at the end it's a love for what we do. It's a love for improving the lives of others. And my encouragement to individuals, you can still show humility, you can still show appreciation, you can still show caring and you can still have great performance if you are able to connect all those together to create a team.

Eduardo Bonefont: You can have it all. And speaking right now, I'm not telling you that everything went perfect. I'm not telling you that every performance metric... We met them in some ways. And overall, when you look back, it was successful and there were some challenges along the way, but we look back, we made the right call. Now three years later, I think we make the perfect call given that... And we never expected a pandemic to hit. We never expected the period that we're in. And looking back, we have such an enthusiastic associate workforce that are helping us transform our organization to new levels. And honestly, out of all the journeys that I've had and I've met a lot of great people throughout my career, not only for myself and for our leadership team and our associates, this is our Picasso moment because we've created something great, and we're not done yet, that it's going to continue to have better performance and better impact to the BD as a whole and to the life sciences segment.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right that looking back a year is a blip. So it was really a relatively short term investment in building that trust with your teams that I think will have a long term positive impact. So I hope that people think about this a little bit more, both from the perspective of employee engagement and how to prioritize that, the idea of not getting so overwhelmed by the short term objectives that you fail to look a little bit ahead. And then also this idea that particularly when it comes to technology, you can't just layer on, layer on, layer on things that are not working. You really have to dig in and make sure that you're being smart about what's in place and what needs to happen. So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your insights with us. And I think it is wonderful, wonderful advice for folks to hear. So thank you Eduardo.

Eduardo Bonefont: Yeah, I'm very happy to have connected with you and I still appreciate this opportunity. I do think that you and I are aligned on our passion for a topic that's very important. And I hope that's becomes a bit interesting for individuals to see that you can still have a great performance and also bring important resources and associates to better performing levels and create a better working environment. So thank you for that opportunity, I enjoyed it and I look forward to connecting with you again.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks Eduardo. You can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can also find us on LinkedIn as well as Twitter @TheFutureOfFS. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

Last week was Thanksgiving in the United States and I love the reminder the holiday gives to reflect and practice gratitude. I also moderated a panel last week on the labor shortage and the combination had me thinking about the criticality of showing our employees we’re thankful for them. We know that retention is an imperative aspect of the labor shortage and I am not confident we’re doing all we can to show appreciation for our employees in non-monetary ways.

Of course, your employees expect fair and equitable pay and let’s hope you’re all providing that. But today’s employees expect far more, and many companies haven’t taken the time to gain a solid understanding of what’s important to the new generation of workforce and how elements beyond pay make a huge difference when it comes to the employee experience, employee engagement and, ultimately, employee retention.

On last week’s podcast, I spoke with Dr. Jack Wiley, who is recognized internationally for pioneering research linking employee work attitudes to measures of organizational success. Most recently, Dr. Wiley was professor of psychology for Manchester University, where he founded the undergraduate program in industrial organizational psychology. He currently serves as the chief scientific officer at Engage2Excel, and as the president and CEO of both Jack Wiley Consulting and Employee Centricity. He was on to discuss his most recent book, Employee Centricity, for which he conducted vast research on what it is employees want from their managers.

“I think we're all aware of the fact that over the last 18 months, the workplace dynamic has changed in some ways that will be more or less forever going forward. I think some of these changes are simply going to be changes that we're going to be dealing with in our careers as we move forward. So, that represents an unprecedented challenge for managers. They have a lot of additional issues that they need to be attending with, especially today in the United States, we saw the August numbers show that 4.4 million workers quit. A recent survey that I saw indicated about 65 percent of employees are actually considering leaving their current job,” he shares.

I’ve seen some of these statistics, so they didn’t shock me as much as what Dr. Wiley shared next. “Over 70 percent of managers in the United States, and I'm talking about all industries, all different levels of management, smaller organizations, larger organizations, over 70 percent of managers either had no training in people management or the training they had received was limited to no more than four hours,” he says. “And so, when we consider the centrality of people management responsibilities in the context of the overall role of the manager, and over 70 percent had no more than four hours at best, also I think is part of the problem.”

Effective, engaged managers and overall company culture are critical to employee retention – so we must do a better job of understanding what our workforce wants and needs and ensuring our leadership is both committed to and able to provide that. There are many layers to this, but employees that feel more appreciated and valued is an important piece of the puzzle. With that in mind, here are 10 ways you can show your employees you are thankful for them that have nothing to do with compensation:

Recognition. We all want to feel that what we do matters, and we all want to feel valued for our contributions. This doesn’t have to be complex, but it is often overlooked. When is the last time you genuinely thanked an employee? We can start by doing more of that and we can build upon that by ensuring others within the organization see the hard work of employees, creating programs that showcase efforts, and even giving awards for those going above and beyond. “Providing recognition is about psychological appreciation,” says Dr. Wiley. “’Thank you for a job well done. I'm not going to take credit for your good work, I'm going to make sure you're in the spotlight up the chain of command.’”
Listen. Again, this sounds simple but happens far less than it should. Employees want to feel their voice matters and they want to know their ideas are valued. They want to feel comfortable coming to managers with thoughts, concerns, personal needs, and so on. Moreover, the input of frontline employees is double the gift, because not only does listening help employees feel more important and engaged – but their ideas are often different and very valuable when it comes to setting strategy and making investments. Creating a culture where employees across the organization feel comfortable speaking up is a must today, and this includes a willingness to be open minded and a preparedness to have hard conversations. A great way to show an employee appreciation is to ask in earnest, “What do you think?”
Offer mentorships. Mentorships are a great way to help employees stay engaged, motivated, and keep personal connections that build longevity and loyalty. New employees can “learn the ropes” and mentors can get to know employees in a deeper way, which can help with building on strengths and developing their careers. A mentee who feels a mentor is investing time in them will appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow and will feel valued by the company providing such an opportunity.
Provide career mapping. It’s very important for today’s employees to have options for growth and career progression. Employees feel appreciated when they have an opportunity to grow their skills, their experiences, and themselves within an organization. Career mapping provides this to your employees, but it also helps for you to map talent within your organization to retain as much as possible and to put stars in optimal roles.
Value outcomes over output. The traditional working world rewarded hours clocked in or pieces of parts made – output. The new working world needs to shift to ensuring employees feel valued for the outcomes they can achieve, not the output alone. Setting success criteria based on desired outcomes, and then measuring employees based on that, enables you to give employees more latitude on how they accomplish what you need them to accomplish which helps them feel like a larger contributor. “Employees want more flexibility in how they go about their work. So, they're looking for their managers to provide them with more autonomy. Help me understand what the work is you want accomplished but give me more room to decide how I'm going to go about doing that myself,” explains Dr. Wiley.
Look for opportunities to reskill or upskill. A great way to thank employees for their hard work and dedication is to give them the opportunity to learn a new skill or to advance their training. Whether something as simple as a “we’ll buy you a book a month” program – which I love – to more formal training, an investment in your employees’ education and future is a great way to show you appreciate them.
Give time back. What’s more precious than money? Time. Another great way to show gratitude is to give the gift of time back. In 2020, IFS decided to give every employee their birthday off. We also have an annual CSR day that we can use to volunteer however we’d like. These small gestures have a big impact.
Show your trust. Being micromanaged is a fast path to employee frustration and disconnect. We must learn how better to empower our employees, and this requires trust. Feeling trusted is another way for employees to feel appreciated and my guess is that most of the time, employee outcomes improve when trust is increased.
Prioritize mental health. Showing your employees you care about them as human beings, not just for their performance at work, is a great way to show your gratitude. The last two years have been challenging and many people need more connection than they did pre-Covid. Offering support and resources around mental health is a way to say thank you and a way to ensure your employees maintain their wellbeing.
Promote fun. We don’t all need to have ping pong tables in our offices, but there’s nothing wrong with having fun at work. Nurturing an environment where employees are encouraged to have fun – or perhaps even coordinating a fun-only activity or outing every so often – keeps morale high and helps employees know you appreciate them.

What would you add to this list? I’d love to hear!

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