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Author: sarah.nicastro@ifs.com

May 17, 2021 | 5 Mins Read

Foxtel’s Lessons Learned in Engaging & Empowering its Contract Workforce

May 17, 2021 | 5 Mins Read

Foxtel’s Lessons Learned in Engaging & Empowering its Contract Workforce

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

With the labor shortage proving one of the industry’s biggest challenges, there’s much discussion around the extent to which contract workers are a viable option to help organizations address the problem. There are some major differences of opinion on this topic among service leaders – those who are for the contract worker model are emphatically so, and those who don’t see it as a fit for their operations are firm in their stance.

In my opinion, any reasonable solution to a real challenge is worth evaluating. I also think that some of the greatest concerns around the contract model – namely a lack of control and the potential for negative impact on the customer experience – can be alleviated with a combination of strategy and effort. Australian media company Foxtel is a really good example of an organization that is successfully leveraging a contract workforce for field operations and has mastered the art of engaging and empowering those workers in a way that allows the organization to benefit from the flexibility and savings of the model without sacrificing its service or brand experience.

I recently talked with Nunzio Bagnato, Director of Home Service and Advanced Servicing at Foxtel, to understand what he’s learned in 23 years of overseeing Foxtel service and managing the company’s contract workforce. He shared some valuable lessons learned which you can catch on this week’s episode of the Future of Field Service podcast, but let’s summarize here some of the key points.

Lesson #1: Focus on Collaboration, Not Control

The concern companies have over not being able to control contract workers is reasonable in some ways, but to achieve success with the model Nunzio explains that you have to shift the thinking from control to collaboration. “If you treat your workers like a contractor, you're going to get contractor results. It's about building a partnership and working side-by-side,” he says. “Traditionally, a contractor model is transactional, it's a master/servant sort of arrangement, and that drives a certain behavior and culture. We’ve changed that culture.”

In evolving the way Foxtel views its contract workforce and focusing more on collaboration than control, the company has been able to improve those working relationships and create a contract workforce that is highly engaged and empowered to deliver the level of service Foxtel wants its customers to experience. “We have two-way communication and collaboration with our contractor workforce,” explains Nunzio. “We pressure test ideas with our field leaders and then with a focus group of technicians to get their feedback. We don't just make decisions and expect them to fall in line. They're the ones that are actually going to be delivering our service, so we need to consider their viewpoints and hear their voice.”

Lesson #2: A Positive Approach Will Yield Better Results than a Punitive One

About five years ago, Foxtel realized the need to provide a more sophisticated customer experience and shift away from transactional service. The company knew that to achieve this goal, the contract worker relationship needed to evolve away from a transactional relationship as well. “Previously, our technicians focused on the traditional metrics like the completion rates and we drove a volume-based behavior,” says Nunzio. “In the past technicians were penalized for not hitting those KPIs or milestones. We did away with that. Our view was that we're dealing with adults.”

Foxtel introduced a scorecard model focused on driving behaviors if felt mattered most in improving the customer experience and service delivery. It did away with the idea of punitive action for subpar performance and instead shifted toward positive reinforcement of desired behaviors and outcomes. “We wanted to focus on the positives. We wanted to look at what the technicians were doing really well, how they achieved that result, and promote more of those behaviors,” says Nunzio.

The scorecard was centered around incentivizing those behaviors by rewarding the contract workers who achieve the greatest results. Their performance on the scorecard determines a rank between platinum, gold, silver and bronze technician and platinum workers are rewarded by getting the highest volume and best schedule of work from Foxtel. Focusing on positive reinforcement for good work versus punishment for poor work has proven effective. “When we first started this journey and launched the score card model, 70 odd percent of our field workforce were bronze technicians,” Nunzio explains. “We're really proud that right now, 70 odd percent of our field workforce is predominantly platinum and a little bit of gold.”

Lesson #3: Clear and Simple Expectations Are Critical

So, with a collaborative mindset and positive approach, the third area that is key to success is to keep expectations around performance clear and simple. The Foxtel field technician scorecard has four quadrants: customer, cycle, finance, and quality. “We introduced the scorecard that focused on four quadrants,” explains Nunzio. “The first quadrant is all about the customer - customer surveys and arrival on time. The cycle quadrant is your traditional metrics, like completion rates. The third quadrant is finance, which looks at free issues and inventory. And then the last quadrant is quality, where we look at revisits.”

Four quadrants and only two metrics each at any given time; that’s it. “There isn't a lot of KPIs and that is by design,” says Nunzio. “We don't want to have too many, and we've identified the key areas of our business that we want the technician to focus on. You can have a laundry list of KPIs, you can really get carried away, but we chose the eight to keep it simple. We chose the eight because we wanted to shift the way we operated, shift the way we serviced our customers, and we felt these KPIs did that.”

The quadrants and KPIs in each which dictate the technician’s score and therefore tier make what’s expected of them clear and easy to understand. The quadrants never change, but Foxtel does update the two KPIs per quadrant as needed when focus on a certain area becomes important. Note they swap them out, though, versus add a metric in because it is important to keep the measurement targeted and simple.

If you use a contract workforce and are looking for some tips to drive performance or if you’ve considered a contract model but have some concerns, be sure to listen to Nunzio’s podcast for more detail on how Foxtel has mastered this model using its scorecard system.

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May 14, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Living with COVID: Meeting People Where They Are

May 14, 2021 | 4 Mins Read

Living with COVID: Meeting People Where They Are

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By Tom Paquin

In this week’s look at what our COVID-19 co-habitation looks like, we’re going to consider how service leaders can work with customers, given their new geography, new expectations for social interactions, and new predilections for working with technology. Fortunately, we’ve seen, over the last year, the various ways that businesses have begun to internalize these truth into a broader strategy. So let’s take those different areas that I mentioned before and break down some hypotheticals.

Tackling our New Geography
I’ve tackled this previously on here, as businesses have had to realign their strategies to work with a decentralized workforce. I’ve mostly considered this through its relationship to the home office, but I think it’s important to consider more broadly across service as well.

How will, for instance, our increased lean on home workers impact the telecommunications infrastructure? While the path of least resistance for most businesses is to cut costs, eliminate office space and the business internet plans that come along with them, and offer the savings to home workers in the form of a stipend. That might work for the businesses, but teclo companies might not be thrilled about the shift, certainly in terms of long-term estimates of the amount of their networks that are being used for commercial purposes.

It might, then, make sense to create “home worker” internet plans, perhaps sold directly to consumers, or to the companies for which they work, to offer preferred speeds and specialized service for business users. The increasing prevalence of 5G might prove to be a boon for such a program, as 5G hotspots could function as the conduit by which businesses manage their remote workers’ internet. For the many workers currently battling with their kids’ Xboxes for bandwidth, this would likely be a welcome addition.

Of course, decentralizing business operations means decentralizing business service for telcos—suddenly, business priority appointments extend outside of a major metro, into the suburbs. That means infrastructure needs to be top-notch, even in rural areas, and that scheduling and routing optimization needs to be the bare minimum. This is a single example, but it belies the broader challenges that many businesses will face as the dust settles and the nature of what work means for people changes indefinitely.

Making People Comfortable

I’m vaccinated, and pleased a proud to be, as are my wife, parents, and in-laws. It feels nice to know that, per guidance from the Center of Disease Control, that we can be inside together without masks. Some folks, even vaccinated folks, do not feel comfortable with that. That is fine, and for customer service to be managed, maintained, and exemplified, we need to meet the level of respect that people feel.

Over the summer, for instance, we had an issue with our septic system. It was necessary for the router person to enter our basement in order to access our cleanout. He chose not to wear a mask, never asked if we were comfortable with that fact, completed the job, was paid, and left. Yes, sure, I never asked him to put on a mask, because remedying the issue took major precedent, but that assumption is very troubling. So…I’m not calling that router guy again (I’ll note that I’m also not tripping over myself to be in a position where I need to call any router guy, but that’s that’s enough about that).

I’m reminded of Peloton’s service questions for customers. In a pre-COVID world, this was simple asks like, “Can I take off my shoes?” but as time goes on, and expectations change, asking people about their comfort level before barging into their house seems like a bare minimum. We all now have a very strange relationship with our personal space. Service needs to recognize that, and champion communicative consent over making assumptions about people’s comfort levels.

New Technology Frontiers

About a year ago, I wrote about a postulation that, within eighteen months, manufacturing would see a technology evolution equal to about five years. So—twelve months in, is that true? I haven’t studied enough of how COVID has impacted manufacturing yet to say for sure, but let’s assume that most businesses have adapted to survive. So businesses are moving along, what about customers? Well, I also wrote about that about a year ago.

So—there are these two forces—personal and professional—both advancing their technological capacity. Customers are more amenable to digital service offerings like self-service and remote assistance, and businesses are accelerating on their digital transformation journey as well. This is a little bit of a tease, but in the second half of the year, we’re going to look at how those two areas have converged in holistic detail, and furthermore, where we go from here. We’ve certainly developed blind spots in our meteoric launch forward, and I can’t wait for the dust to settle so we can look at service and chart a plan for what comes next.

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May 12, 2021 | 24 Mins Read

Cimcorp’s IT Strategy for Working Smarter

May 12, 2021 | 24 Mins Read

Cimcorp’s IT Strategy for Working Smarter

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Pekka Nurmi, Director of Corporate IT at Cimcorp, talks with Sarah about the company’s efforts to modernize IT to increase its ability to be strategic, nimble, and most impactful.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking about how organizations can work smarter when it comes to their IT strategy and IT operations. I'm joined today by Pekka Nurmi, who is the Director of Corporate IT at Cimcorp. Pekka, thank you for joining us today.

Pekka Nurmi: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay, so we're going to talk about how Cimcorp has made some changes in IT to work smarter instead of harder. Before we do that, tell us a bit about yourself, your background, and your role at Cimcorp.

Pekka Nurmi: Well, like you mentioned, I'm head of the whole of our corporate IT systems in six countries and three continents. And maybe a little bit different about my background is that I was actually a management consultant prior to working as a IT director, and I think has helped me a little bit in this transformation.

Sarah Nicastro: So your consulting background was in management? So on the business side or on the IT side?

Pekka Nurmi: In the business side, but I always ended up doing something with IT. So I sort of all the time, every year, I gravitated closer toward the IT topics all the time. I did have IT background. I'd been programming some software to couple of companies in way, way, way down the line, but the IT, of course, always something that I'm always seem to be gravitating toward that, so I think the current position came naturally.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think some of the conversations we've had on this podcast, folks talk a lot about how traditionally IT and the business side, in many instances, were fairly siloed, and there's more of a need to really merge that together. So I think having that business background and bringing that to an IT role could be really helpful in creating that closer collaboration.

Pekka Nurmi: I really think so, that that is the case, and a really good idea I think to having the background.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah, I've talked to folks where the two within a company are at odds, and it doesn't work very well, right? So everyone needs to be friendly and work together, and I think when you have some experience seeing the other person's viewpoints, it's helpful in being able to do that.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. So tell us, how would you describe Cimcorp's IT strategy overall?

Pekka Nurmi: Well, I think the big idea, like a really big scale, is that we have six offices all around the globe, and the idea is that no matter where you go, you would always have that similar technology and back-end systems waiting for you, so you can just hop on the plane and arrive to another continent, and start working. That's the big idea.

Pekka Nurmi: But more about the strategy is that we seem to be and we are always reducing the number of the systems in house, because we really started from a situation where the number of different systems was just immense. And we were in the continuous loop that update, upgrade, and then you would [inaudible 00:03:56] to lag so much in behind. So we really decided, okay, we need to cut down the number of systems and concentrate on the core systems in general.

Pekka Nurmi: And also what we're doing at the moment is we're trying always to find things to outsource, and there is so much of new stuff we have to take care of, like a compliance, information security, and embedding IT and IT processes to be since development. And that seems to be the core, so we really always are trying to find things that, okay, we don't have to do this anymore. This is a ... Well, it wouldn't be fair to say trivial things, but less important stuff.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Outside of your core competency, right? You want to be able to focus on what matters most, and not have to become an expert in everything.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. And I've been discussing with many of my colleagues in similar positions at similar companies, and we seem to agree on the thing that unless you're a little bit proactive in replacing and updating and upgrading, you will be on the worst side of the slope, and you always are playing catch. And that's not a good place to be.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. And so from a high level, it sounds like global consistency is important, and then looking at simplification of complexity in the systems that you're using. And simplification in management, so that you're focusing on what matters most instead of trying to focus on every single thing.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. It's like when we start discussing with business, okay, what can we do and where can we improve? I really hate to say that. We could do that, but then I'd have to update system number one, system number two, and system number three, and maybe then, if all things go forward, we can do that. And that would be six months later. I prefer to be able to say that, okay, we are almost there. We have this one system, maybe two if things aren't bad, and then we can move forward. But the complexities, that can drag you down a lot.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and so the idea of consolidating to less systems and also the idea of outsourcing in the areas where you can leverage external expertise, it's almost the management of IT, the planning, the strategy has become the job versus the management of systems, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: So it's more of, like you said, staying ahead of things and looking at, okay, where do we need to be in six months? Where do we need to be in a year? So the more you can rely on folks to be a part of getting you there, then the more you can focus on staying ahead of that strategy, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Yes. And finding suppliers and partners who have a vision of the future, what can it be, because we cannot be inventing everything in-house. We are relying on our partners insights on many of the topics, so it's about finding who has the right vision, who has the capability to execute that, and things like that. So it's like managing a network of partners who are on the same page with you.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I'm curious to ask you, Pekka, though, I would say the majority of companies that we would have listening to this podcast would agree with the concept of focusing more on core competencies, right? So however you get there. Simplification of systems, outsourcing of different areas of expertise. But I think there are some that really, really struggle with the concept of relinquishing control, and so they're fighting their desire to do it all, and that all is growing and growing and growing and growing, and it becomes harder and harder and harder to do it all. Because as digital matures, there's just more sophistication, more capabilities, more opportunities. And so the world is expanding, and they're trying desperately to keep it all within their grasp.

Sarah Nicastro: So what would you say to those folks about the value of letting go, and then also how to shift the mindset, and know that it actually could help you more to not try and control everything in-house?

Pekka Nurmi: That's very familiar topic. That's where I started when I got this position. The IT department that, okay, we've done all, everything in-house, and this is how we want to operate, but through a lot of discussion and opening the idea that how management sees IT department, I think that opened up the idea that ... Like if we're trying always to do everything, we will be so slow that ... We would be a focus of top management, like a gaze on the IT department. "Why are you so slow all these things?" And through that, and a lot of discussion, and more discussion, and meetings, and staying in the different offices and talking to IT people, we gradually were able to see that. Okay, we just cannot go on like this. There's just too much to do, and being able to prove the point that, hey, we actually are quite slow on certain topics. So my team gradually realized that you have to do something.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's the idea, I think, that in today's landscape, the pace of innovation I so fast that it becomes almost impossible to keep up if you're trying to become a master of all, right? It becomes advantageous to rely on the experts in those different areas versus ... It's almost unrealistic to think that you can take the time to do all of those things and stay ahead to the degree you need to be competitive and all of those things.

Pekka Nurmi: And it's fantastic to see those small wins. Being able to prove that we're on the right path because being able to do something in two weeks with our partner that would have taken six months in some other way. So it's like, okay, this is good. This is a good way. People are happy about it, and we get compliments from the management. "How did you guys able to do that in such a short note and timeline," and the cost wasn't actually that bad.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and it comes back to the idea of any change, right, or any evolution. If Cimcorp was used to doing this all itself, and you come in and you say, "No, we really need to shift and look at outsourcing more," the first few times you have those wins, you have more and more light bulbs of, "Oh, okay. This can work. It wasn't a failure. Everything's okay," and then the comfort level increases, and you start to see how you can really expand there. That makes sense.

Sarah Nicastro: So talking about innovation, I came into this space, Pekka, in 2008, and have been interviewing folks like yourself on a daily basis since then. And it's been really interesting to see how digital environments have matured and become more sophisticated, and just the wealth of opportunity that exists to companies today with the technology that's out there. How would you say the focus of IT innovation today differs from IT innovation of a decade ago? What are the major shifts?

Pekka Nurmi: I had a fantastic discussion with one of the colleagues from another company regarding this exact topic, and we were thinking, okay, 10 years ago how we would have solved this item at the time. And we would be selecting really dedicated IT people that is into IT, but they're probably thinking that, hmm, actually regarding one of the topics we were discussing about, we decided that actually we don't want to have IT staff on that at all. It's more like we were starting to discuss that wouldn't there be some business consultant that has some capability in IT that would define that area?

Pekka Nurmi: So I think that this goes back a little bit to where we originally discussed about the consulting background and things like that. So the business is much more involved and should be much more involved. It's not like the IT side has become any less important, but in order to get things done and the complete ideas, it's like the scope of things has increased. It might be 10 years, but it's enough that you solve the IT side. But today, you have to solve the IT and business side on the same time.

Pekka Nurmi: So I think that this is the core change that has happened in the 10 years.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, that makes sense. I think the importance of it is has it even increased significantly. You look at all of the digital transformation that's underway in every business today. I think the importance is critical, but I think what we're talking about here is the idea that it's shifting from the criticality of internal execution to the criticality of strategy, right? And how that allows you to scale the way that you need to be innovative and competitive.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So I wanted to come back to the title of the podcast, so talking about working smarter, right? So I think we've touched on some of those things, and we're going to dig in a little bit more. So we talked about simplification of systems. We've talked about outsourcing in areas where you can really benefit from leveraging external expertise. Is there anything else you would say is a characteristic of how Cimcorp is looking at IT in terms of working smarter instead of working harder?

Pekka Nurmi: Yes. We've done a lot of work on that topic, and I think the core thing is trying not to over-complicate any of the processes and topics. If we look at ERP systems or software in general, they already have a built-in processes, and tried out ways to work. And all the jobs I've had and all the customers I've had, I always saw that idea that everybody was trying to over-complicate that. "My process is so special. Our business is so special." And as an outsider, you could always say that I've seen this a thousand times. It's the exact same process repeating itself time and a time and a time and again, but the people running it are always saying that this is special. "We need special software." And the loop starts from there.

Pekka Nurmi: So the idea is to have an open mind that maybe somebody has found the golden nugget or golden egg of approaches that's already built into the system. Like ERP systems, they have tens of thousands of clients, and that have been running for decades actually. So the process, it might have been already evolved. And in many cases, I've found that accepting the ERP system might actually be already really smart.

Pekka Nurmi: And having the talks with the people that "This is really so special," or is there someone we can do a benchmarking on? And finding the ways that, could we just use this? There might be some idea in the background, and try it out, and if it's not, then we do something.

Sarah Nicastro: It's such a good point, Pekka, because I think the sense I get in talking with people is almost customization is a badge of honor. It's like, "No, we could never use an out-of-the-box solution. That's just preposterous. Our business is far too important for that," right? And I think, again, going back to evolution over the last 10 years, there probably was a point in time where that was more accurate than it is today.

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Where the solutions were not sophisticated enough, or weren't incorporating best practices from 10,000 customers, or what have you. To the degree where it was x-percent there, but you needed to add onto that. I think you're making a really good point in that, while businesses have been maturing and evolving and transforming, so too have technology providers, right? So the point you're making about, hey, maybe it's worth taking off that badge of honor and not looking at it from the context of we need to make this super complicated because we're important and we're different and all of these things. And looking at, wow, could we make our lives a lot easier, maybe spend less money, have a faster implementation, maybe get better value if we open our perspective a bit and just consider that.

Sarah Nicastro: I think that's a really, really important point, just to think about the progression that's occurred, and next time you're evaluating software, why don't you think about looking at it a little bit differently, and not staying stuck in the history of it, but looking at what is out there right now.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. And also in my career, I've had a chance to look at ERP systems that were implemented two or three years ago, and I was invited to check that, how are we doing today with the system? And that always ended up like 60 to 80% of those modifications, the customer started paying for the ERP provider that, okay, we remove these customizations because the ERP system was right in the first place. But they just didn't accept that. So I've been seeing that happening so many times over.

Sarah Nicastro: And to your point, it's probably beneficial to, like you said, try it and if you do find areas, proven areas, where you need something, that's fine. But don't go into it with the expectation that you could never, because you might find that you could make things a lot easier. Okay.

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Very good.

Sarah Nicastro: So from an IT perspective, part of your job is helping Cimcorp to stay ahead of customer demands, and to enable internal operations and enable externally for a good customer experience. What would you say are the top demands of today's customers that end up falling into necessity from IT? You take customer expectations. How does that translate into what you're expected to deliver?

Pekka Nurmi: We are using IFS ERP system, and they are talking about moment of service in their topics, and I actually fell in love with that slogan, "moment of service." Because that describes quite accurately what we need and what the customers need. So the IT systems really have to be there, present, and have a real-time information that you can provide that. There's no other way. When the customer contacts you, they might have a spare part they would need desperately delivered overnight, or something, other issues going there, and what the customer wants to hear is that, okay, it's a can-do answer. And within that first email, phone call, whatever support ticket you might have done, and they really want to hear that, that, okay, we are on that, and we know what's going to happen, and when we going to be able to fix it.

Pekka Nurmi: So the moment of service is actually really fantastic word to describe the need of IT.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I agree, and I think there's a lot that relates to that moment of service in the sense of it's a moment, but it's far more than that, right? So that moment of service is a moment of experience, but what happens in that moment, that can mean it's brand perception, right? It can be customer loyalty. It can be the difference between revenue growth or revenue loss. Service as a differentiator is where we are, right? And so how you align your infrastructure and your people to be able to, like you said, what do they want? Boom. We're ready. We have it. We're there. We're giving them what they need. It really is the name of the game. Everything you're doing is working to ...

Sarah Nicastro: And we're going to talk about this in a minute, but it's really this game of mastering complexity. And I say "mastering," not "simplifying," because you can simplify to a degree through some of the steps you've talked about so far, but the rest of it you have to master. Customers don't care. They don't care how much effort you're putting into delivering when they need it, but you have to be able to do it, right? So, yeah, that's a good point.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. There is a huge amount of complexity in the background, but like you said, the customer doesn't care. They want their issue solved in as fast as it's possible.

Sarah Nicastro: Huge and only multiplying. It's not a huge amount of complexity that's going to stay level, right? The more sophisticated everything gets technology-wise, and the more consumer experiences that impact what customers want, that level of complexity keeps climbing and climbing and climbing.

Sarah Nicastro: And going back to the beginning of our discussion, that's why I think it's such a good point for folks to understand the idea of mastering it all yourself is not sustainable, right? You have to start looking at how to work smarter instead of harder because you can't do what you need to do in that moment if you're trying to ... I'm thinking about little people inside trying to master all of this complexity. You have to look for ways to streamline that.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So let's talk about the IFS ERP and then your recent transition to IFS Cloud as a real world example of the things that we've been talking about so far in action, right? So this is an example of how you're walking the talk of what your strategy is in real life. So just tell us a little bit about the migration from IFS ERP, which I think you deployed around 2016, and then transitioning to the new IFS Cloud, and how that touches on some of these themes.

Pekka Nurmi: Well, I've been doing exactly like we discussed before that. What I've been getting people to accept is that the baseline in the IFS might be acceptable for the business process. And for us, IFS has been able to provide many of those. I'd say they're like blueprints for our operations, and they've been giving us areas where we can work smarter. We've been even getting ideas on how to set up our VDM systems in the background based on what IFS, how the architecture has been formed in that system.

Pekka Nurmi: Really, the idea is that we've been trying to accept that what the platform enables, and we've been trying to channel our energy to provide value to the customer using that. But the innovation in that is really about we are accepting IFS as a platform, and we already discuss about limiting the number of those systems. We did our homework, and we decided that IFS is a good platform for us.

Pekka Nurmi: So it all comes together. And in our case, it seems to be working quite well.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Now, how would you articulate the difference between the IFS ERP deployment circa 2016 to what IFS Cloud offers?

Pekka Nurmi: The change has been immense. The first feedback we are getting is that the HTML5 interface is huge improvement. People love the face that you can access with your mobile phone all the time. That's big plus. And it has developed a lot.

Pekka Nurmi: Back in 2016, we knew where IFS was going in the future, and I think with IFS Cloud, we are getting that system that we bought in 2016. So I'm really happy about the roadmap for IFS really came to reality for us.

Sarah Nicastro: And that goes back to the point you made at the beginning about if you're going to rely more on partners ... So if you can acknowledge the fact that you can't do it all, and then you know that you need to choose smartly who you want to work with, right? Because you're trying to work with less people. As you said, you're trying to really simplify the ecosystem in terms of eliminating too many disparate systems and looking for more of a platform relationship. It's a good point of don't just look at what's there now. Look at what that roadmap looks like, and think about how the organizations that you're choosing to work with, how are they innovating and what are their plans, right? Because you want to future-proof yourself in the sense of, do they have what you need now to run the business and deliver the moment of service the way you need to, but then also as your business evolves, are they evolving too so that you're not in a position where in too short of a time you're like, okay, well, this worked, but now we've outgrown it, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Really it's the same concept we talk about with a lot of the folks that we have as guests on the podcast of moving away from a transactional relationship and moving more toward delivering outcomes and building partnerships, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly.

Sarah Nicastro: Good.

Pekka Nurmi: And I think one third of the decision to select IFS back in 2016 was actually that. How do we see IFS as a partner for our future? So we have a pre-finalist system in that one, and that this was really clear that with IFS we decided that we can trust them to be our partner and guide in the future as well. And that's really important.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay, so we talked a little bit about the fact that a lot of what IT is responsible for today is that concept of minimizing but also mastering complexity. So like we said, customers don't care how hard Pekka is working every day, how hard Cimcorp across the board is working every day. They just care that you're delivering what they need when they need it, right?

Sarah Nicastro: So when it comes to delivering that ultimate simplicity to customers, what are the keys to doing that? So how does a solution like IFS Cloud or other tools that you use ... What are the key ingredients to mastering that complexity to be able to deliver an experience that really hides all of that complexity from the customers?

Pekka Nurmi: I think I'm getting back to the basics that we cannot invent everything in-house. We absolutely have to be able to trust to the partners we select and the people we do business with. And we don't want to select partners that wouldn't be giving us anything in return. Like, okay, we pay you money, and you provide us the service, but we really want them to be providing innovation and the platform actually. Like with IFS, they are giving us the service platform in so many ways.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think it's worth revisiting that point of why a platform play versus disparate solutions makes sense. And I think what it really comes down to at the root of it all ... There's many reasons, right? Part of it is just for you the complexity of managing multiple relationships instead of one relationship. But I think when you look at it from the customer perspective, and when you look at it from the ability to deliver in that moment of service, it comes down to eliminating failure points. The more systems you have tied together, the more opportunity there is to falter in mastering that complexity, right? The more cohesiveness you can create behind the scenes, the better your chances of delivering that simplicity to customers.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. Of course, we do alternative scenarios. That's what we do, and we started one alternative. And when we discovered that we would have to build 19 interfaces between two systems, and most of them two-way interfaces, so that was immediately the point that we don't want to do that. We don't want to be spending the time working the interfaces, all the changes in the system that will affect the interfaces. So, once again, we found a position where we would be digging a hole underneath us with those interfaces.

Pekka Nurmi: So, once again, one platform, one solution will help us to focus on the business actually.

Sarah Nicastro: So another area I want to talk about, Pekka, is around data. So we talked about how complexity has increased and it's continuing to multiply, and I think a lot of that has to do with the criticality of data, and data as a resource. So you mentioned the real time data is essential for delivering what you need to in the moment of service. So there's leveraging data within Cimcorp to do that, right? And then there's the idea of the potential for leveraging data externally, right? So with a customer base.

Sarah Nicastro: So tell us a little bit about what that looks like, and how you're looking at data and its limitless potential both internally and externally.

Pekka Nurmi: Oh, this is a topic. We always seem to have multiple data improvement programs ongoing all the time everywhere. That seems to be the thing of today. There's always something to fix, and especially now that we've expanded to new countries, and there's different cultures and people with very different backgrounds. And the most reason we have found that we need to have a ... What would be a right way to say it? We want to enable people to understand that the importance of why they are entering the data, and if I'm not entering this, this will affect this and this many departments after themselves.

Pekka Nurmi: And we've been finding that when it comes to data, we have to provide more understanding to the whole organization around the data, and also we've invested heavily into data warehousing because that is the big thing in future development.

Pekka Nurmi: But it's a really big topic, data, but that's a big focus area, and in my mind, I return to the situation where we have multiple systems. And with multiple systems, we would have to worry about the data. And, once again, we would find ourselves being farther away from the core idea.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. And I think there's so much to sort out yet about the real potential for all of the data people are gathering now, right? And how to make use of it, like I said, both within the company and within the customer base. And I think part of why it's important to relinquish some of the control of the systems that allow your business to run is so that you can focus more of your energy and efforts on sorting out how do we leverage data better in the future, right?

Sarah Nicastro: So that's a strategic focus, right? That's something that is worthy of thinking and time and resources and energy, whereas you don't want to spend those time and resources and energy managing a bunch of configurations on a bunch of different systems because it's not bringing value to the future of the business.

Sarah Nicastro: And I don't think anyone has a real good handle on exactly how powerful the data side can be into the future, but that is a really good argument for why you need to focus less on systems and more on strategy, right?

Pekka Nurmi: Exactly. I'd say this is exactly the way.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I wanted to ask, Pekka, you mentioned a couple times throughout the conversation interacting with some of your peers, and I think that's a really good point because that's the premise, honestly, of Future of Field Service is being able to learn what other folks are doing. But how do you do that and how is that important to you being able to stay in tune with how other companies are tackling challenges and handling their own innovation?

Pekka Nurmi: What I actually do is I continuously encourage my staff to find these benchmarking companies, and be active in ... There's these end user groups we are finding. There's an internet-based communities where people have discussions, and I've granted them time to help other companies, and also search help from other companies. So I think we don't want to be stuck inside the walls of our department, and I think it's more like encouraging that we discuss with the outside all the time, more and more, because we can only win. Of course, you cannot spend 90% of your time discussing with some other companies. You have to have some limits on that, but still the basic idea is that every week you should try to find somebody to help, find somebody to get insight on what you do.

Pekka Nurmi: And we seem to be finding. Today, we are getting emails from other companies that have heard about us and want to discuss. So it took one or two years to get us started, but we're finding really good partner companies we can discuss with. And also some of the partners have active ... They provide also insight that this company might be benefiting you, and maybe you two companies should discuss.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right. Yeah, I think there's so much power in building that collective knowledge, and it is very important to make the time to look outside of your own company and your own day-to-day. Because I think creating that space is what allows you to not mimic what someone else is doing, but survey the landscape to get different ideas to bring back into your own business. I'm a huge advocate of that, and I think it's a really good point, particularly if there are folks listening that some of the things we've talked about relinquishing control and outsourcing makes them nervous. Talk to some other people that are doing it to see if you can increase your comfort level a bit.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah. Of course, you have to be really careful to which companies you talk to and which people, but generally, I'd say I really recommend that. It has provided a lot of value for us.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Okay.

Sarah Nicastro: Last question for today is what do you envision the IT strategy of 2031 looking like?

Pekka Nurmi: That's a big question. First thing that comes to mind is obvious there's going to be more public clouds being used, and information security will by any mean be of lesser importance than it's today. But I think along the lines about what we discussed earlier, it's going to be more about businesses' IT strategies aligning in many ways. And I would say that there would be more partnerships with the IT suppliers, just like we discussed before, as sources of innovation and platforms and new ways of working.

Pekka Nurmi: And maybe there would be more deeper level partnerships on IT with our customers, too, just thinking about all the IOT data that we discuss about. All of that I see as a big part of IT strategy for in about 10 years' time.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So that will keep you busy.

Pekka Nurmi: Oh, I'm sure.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Well, Pekka, thank you so much for joining and sharing your story today. I really appreciate it.

Pekka Nurmi: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: I think there's some excellent points in here for people to consider, and I certainly appreciate your perspective.

Pekka Nurmi: Yeah, thank you. It was nice to be here. So very good discussion. Gave me a lot of ideas, too.

Sarah Nicastro: Good. Thank you. Yes, yes. 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 by visiting IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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The 5 Tenets of Cimcorp’s Modern IT Approach

May 10, 2021 | 6 Mins Read

The 5 Tenets of Cimcorp’s Modern IT Approach

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

As digitalization permeates every area of the business, we’ve seen IT become far less siloed in its strategy, processes, and execution. The lines between the business and IT blur as technology becomes increasingly critical not only in how a company operates optimally, but in its value proposition for its customer base. With digitalization playing an ever-increasing role for businesses in every industry and geography, what needs to change as it relates to the IT approach to keep pace with innovation and remain competitive?

According to Pekka Nurmi, Director of Corporate IT at Cimcorp, it is critical to modernize your approach and focus on working smarter rather than harder. Cimcorp is a global supplier of intralogistics automation with systems used within manufacturing and distribution centers in over 40 countries across six continents. I recently sat down with Pekka to record a podcast that you should stay tuned for, but am sharing here the five major point of how he describes the company is working smarter versus harder to modernize its approach.

Tenet #1: Evolve Your Perception of IT’s Role in the Business

As I said, it’s imperative for the business and IT to be working alongside one another to accomplish today’s objectives. Many organizations have made strides in eliminating a siloed structure, but others have work to do in improving collaboration. “The business is much more involved and should be much more involved than it was a few years ago,” he says. “It's not like the IT side has become any less important, but in order to get things done and the complete ideas, it's like the scope of things has increased. Today, you have to solve the IT and business side at the same time.”

Particularly in service-oriented businesses, IT capabilities are crucial in delivering on the expectations of customers. Cimcorp is a user of IFS Cloud and, as Pekka mentions, believes strongly in the IFS mission to help companies master their moment of service. “We are using IFS Cloud, and they are talking about the moment of service and I fell in love with that slogan, ‘moment of service,’” explains Pekka. “Because that describes quite accurately what we need and what the customers need. The IT systems really have to be there, present, and have real-time information to provide in the moment of service. There's no other way. When the customer contacts you, what the customer wants to hear is that okay, can-do answer. So, the moment of service is actually really fantastic way to describe the need of what IT has to delivery for the business.”

Tenet #2: Relinquish Control and Leverage External Expertise

A key mindset in Cimcorp’s mission to modernize IT and reduce complexity is to understand that the idea of doing, owning, and controlling everything is outdated. A modern IT approach acknowledges the expertise that lies outside of the organization and finds power in utilizing that expertise in order to reserve more skill for strategy than execution. “We're trying always to find things to outsource, and there is so much new stuff IT has to take care of, like a compliance, information security, and embedding IT and IT processes,” says Pekka, “And that seems to be the core, so we really always are trying to find less critical tasks that we can outsource.”

For many organizations, Cimcorp included, this is a major shift and can take time to embrace – but in Pekka’s opinion, being a master of all is no longer a realistic goal. “Cimcorp has historically done everything in-house, but through a lot of discussion and opening the idea of how management sees IT department, we helped the company embrace this change,” Pekka explains. “It was based on an understanding that if we're trying always to do everything, we will be so slow that with all there is to do, it just isn’t reasonable. Being able to prove that we're on the right path by being able to do something in two weeks with a partner that would have taken six months internally helps foster acceptance. People are happy about it, and we get compliments from the management, ‘How did you guys do that in such a short timeline?’ and the cost wasn't bad.”

Tenet #3: Embrace a Platform Approach

To simplify and master the complexity that is inevitable in today’s digital landscape, Cimcorp has fully embraced a platform approach with IFS Cloud. “We are always reducing the number of the systems in house, because we started from a situation where the number of different systems was just immense. And we were in the continuous loop of update, upgrade, and then you would begin to lag so much behind. We knew we needed to cut down the number of disparate systems and concentrate on the core systems in general,” explains Pekka.

When you look to consolidate into a platform, it is important to choose a partner that you feel is aligned with your short, mid, and long-term business objectives. “We’ve focused on finding suppliers and partners who share our vision of the future, because we cannot be inventing everything in-house. IT, for us, has become less about building and more about managing a network of partners who are on the same page with you,” Pekka says.

In evaluating options, the value of a platform approach was clear. “Of course, we do alternative scenarios. And when we discovered that we would have to build 19 interfaces between two systems, and most of them two-way interfaces, that was immediately the point that we knew we don't want to do that. We don't want to be spending the time working the interfaces, all the changes in the system that will affect the interfaces. So, once again, we found a position where we would be digging a hole underneath us with those interfaces,” explains Pekka. “There’s innovation in accepting IFS as a platform and limiting the number of systems. We did our homework, and we decided that IFS is a good platform for us.”

Tenet #4: Think Out of the Box

Perhaps one of the most impactful points of my discussion with Pekka is his description of the outdated view many have of software systems in the sense of overlooking the idea that a solution might work quite well for the business, right out of the box. We talked about the fact that this may stem from a historical viewpoint of far less sophisticated solutions, but that with what today’s technology providers offer, insisting you require customizations is – in many cases – an issue of pride versus reality. “ERP systems or software in general, they already have built-in processes, and tried out ways to work. And all the jobs I've had and all the customers I've had, I always saw that idea that everybody was trying to over-complicate that. ‘My process is so special. Our business is so special,’” says Pekka. “And as an outsider, you could say that I've seen this a thousand times. It's the exact same process repeating itself time and time and time and again.”

What Pekka urges you to consider is to evaluate the out-of-the-box functionality before pressing for what you feel may be necessary customizations. “Have an open mind that maybe somebody has found the golden nugget of approaches that's already built into the system,” he says. “They have tens of thousands of clients, and that have been running for decades actually. So, the process, it might have been already evolved. And in many cases, I've found that accepting the ERP system might actually be really smart. At least try it out, and if it's not, then look to do something.”

Tenet #5: Focus on Continual Improvement

IT today is incredibly fast paced, and Pekka and I discussed that the primary role of the function has shifted from doer of all things to strategist and manager of all things. This means an increased focus on education, innovation, collaboration, and partnership. It also requires a constant state of movement. “I've been discussing with many of my colleagues in similar positions at similar companies, and we seem to agree that unless you're a little bit proactive in replacing and updating and upgrading, you always are playing catch. And that's not a good place to be,” Pekka says.

Pekka encourages his team to look externally for information and inspiration. “I continuously encourage my staff to find benchmarking companies and to be active in end user groups. We don't want to be stuck inside the walls of our department, and it’s encouraged to discuss with the outside all the time, more and more, because we can only win in gaining that insight,” he says.

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What Criteria Do You Use to Power Planning and Scheduling Optimization?

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What Criteria Do You Use to Power Planning and Scheduling Optimization?

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By Tom Paquin

We talk quite a bit about the importance of planning and scheduling optimization. We know the business value, we know what constitutes best-in-class optimization, and we know that optimization is a lot more that auto-scheduling and recommending a couple parts.

True best-in-class optimization automates repeatable tasks, provide real-time resource adjustments that are scalable to meet the number of technicians in a firm (whatever that number might be), and can provide planning insights for a day, a season, a year, or whatever unit of measurement that your business is in need of.

An automation system, at its best, actually automates activities. And like any AI-powered system, you can’t just provide inputs without matching criteria for how to catalog, rank, and execute those inputs into practical outputs.

So it’s necessary, then, to build a set of criteria that moderates your service system to prioritize outcomes, which will ultimately be passed on to your customers. I’ve written about this previously as a function of AI-based learning. Let’s outline some criteria areas that best-in-class systems can employ in this capacity:

Customer-Oriented Criteria

As we frequently discuss, building outcomes-based service scenarios has become an imperative for many service providers. Planning and Scheduling systems are an important (and often overlooked) piece of the outcomes-based service mix. So for that reason, you can build outcomes into the systems to help prioritize jobs to meet SLA expectations. Here are a few examples of criteria:

  • Time from ticket-to-invoice
  • Downtime expectations
  • Dispatch expectations
  • Asset value expectations

The list goes on and on, but, as an example, if you promise 2-hour resolution time for a specific asset for a customer (like our friends at Scientific Games), when a ticket is raised, it needs to be appropriately scheduled and prioritized to meet those SLA expectations.

Operationally-Oriented Criteria

These tend to be what people think about when considering planning and scheduling tools, but as you can see, they’re only one piece of the puzzle. Here are some considerations:

  • Cost per truck roll
  • Location
  • Technician schedules
  • Time per job based on criteria

And so on. The name of the game here is to build a list that offers businesses the ability to derive the most value out of a day’s worth of technicians. And something to note is that might not be the highest quantity of completed jobs in a day, and, when the criteria is established, you might end up being surprised by what the optimization tells you is the right thing to do.

Sustainability-Oriented Criteria

Finally, and most compellingly, is the ides of using optimization as a launchpad for sustainability. Yes, I wrote about this not long ago, but let’s outline some of the criteria that best-in-class optimization systems can work off of when building and stress-testing schedules:

  • Drive time
  • Fuel consumption
  • Trucks on the road

And so on. And yes, these naturally overlap with what’s going on in the world of operational criteria, but as I said in the article I linked to above, there’s an added value, and added imperative for businesses to focus on it. It might just be what drives a customer to choose you over the competition.

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Is Your View of Outcomes-Based Service Limiting Your Success?

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Is Your View of Outcomes-Based Service Limiting Your Success?

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Jason Prokop, Director of Field Service, and Alesia Magon, Sr. Manager Technical Support & Repair Center, both of global laboratory diagnostics firm DiaSorin, take a deep breath after the massive growth, major pivots, and immense perseverance of the last year to talk with Sarah about their lessons learned.

Sarah: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to take a moment and press pause to reflect back after the COVID sprint. While we certainly aren't completely past the pandemic, we've reached a point where a lot of businesses are stopping to take a look at the lessons learned and the experiences they've gleaned over the last year.

Sarah: I'm joined today by Jason Prokop and Alesia Magon, both of DiaSorin. Jason and Alesia, welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast.

Alesia: Thanks for having us.

Jason: Nice to be here. Thank you.

Sarah: Thank you for being here. Let's start with some introductions. So why don't you tell us a little bit about DiaSorin, your roles and anything you'd like to share about your backgrounds. Alesia, do you want to go first?

Alesia: Sure. My name is Alesia Magon as Sarah mentioned and I'm the senior manager of technical support in the repair center at DiaSorin. I'll let Jason describe DiaSorin too in a little bit, in a global sense. But what I'm responsible for, is the 24/7 technical support team at DiaSorin Inc., across the U.S. and Canada, as well as the repair depot and internal service for equipment that we have here at the DiaSorin Inc. site.

Sarah: Excellent. Jason, can you tell us a little bit about DiaSorin and your role?

Jason: Yes, hi. I'm Jason Prokop. I'm the director of service and support here at DiaSorin Inc., out of Stillwater, Minnesota. So I'm responsible and our team's responsible for the field service across the United States and we also have a subsidiary up in Canada. We directly manage our customers install base. We do preventative maintenance, repairs, et cetera.

Jason: So DiaSorin is a global manufacturer of immunodiagnostics products. We're very multi-international company from that perspective and we really specialize in specialty diagnostics. That's why if you see our brand, DiaSorin's called the diagnostic specialist from that perspective. So we try to come out with niche and innovative products, that fit gaps in our customers' needs from that perspective.

Sarah: Okay, great. So I wrote an article, I think it was, I believe it was late 2020 and it was my love letter to the service industry for surviving such a crazy year. Alesia, you actually reached out to me, after coming across that article and saying, "Hey, this really resonated and I think that we experienced a lot of this and we have some interesting stuff to share." So here we are. So can you tell us a little bit, what about that article resonated most with you?

Alesia: Yeah, during the pandemic, there was a lot of news and media about the frontline workers, as there should have been. That's completely appropriate. There was people, many, many industries and types of people that were serving the communities, that weren't as readily noticed. When I read that article, I thought, "Absolutely, yes. This is the love letter to the people in this community and the community of the service industry, that are trying to help in their own retrospective ways for the customers that they serve." And thinking specifically about the service industry at DiaSorin, I thought, "Yes, this is what we went through." We had unbelievable challenges, but we had a lot of lessons where we learned about perseverance and we learned about how to stay strong and you wrote and touched on several of those points in the letters and I shared it on LinkedIn, as an effort of expressing the same level of gratitude back to the service department that we represent.

Sarah: Yeah, you make a really good point, which is there's many layers and types of essential workers, right? So some that have experienced maybe different things first-hand, like those that are on the front lines in the healthcare industry, certainly I think deserve to be top of mind, when you think about what this last year has looked like. But to your point, there's a lot of things that are a little bit more behind the scenes and a lot of people that have worked really hard to serve those front line workers and to make sure that those front line workers have been able to do everything that they needed to do for patients and for people that have been impacted most. I think that that's a really, really good point.

Sarah: Now, DiaSorin being in the industry that you're in, just so happened to be in a position to provide testing for COVID and therefore, had maybe a doubly crazy year last year, because you experienced some really intense growth. So Jason, can you tell us a little bit about sort of, what's the core business? So what were you kind of up to before COVID hit? Then, what has that growth looked like? How did you sort of pivot and start providing that testing and what did that kind of mean in terms of the impact on the business?

Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So pre-COVID, it was typical business as usual for our organization. We had our national commercial meeting laid out at the end of February, where we were given our strategic objectives of an organization, with the products that we were going to come out with and launch and what our focus was going to be for 2020.

Jason: So we were all out on our plan. Everybody, all the information was cascaded to everybody in the commercial organization, as well as internally. Then come mid-March, things changed. Now we're in the midst of the pandemic, so as an organization and being we're very innovative from that perspective, we saw what was needed in the market place. So we quickly, our molecular colleagues out in California, came up with the PCR test for COVID. Then our global colleagues in Italy and internally here in Stillwater, came out with some amino acids, both for IgG and antigen testing. Now we have another IgG testing for post-vaccination from that aspect.

Jason: So then we saw much interest in the market place, because no vendor was ready with the supply to meet the demand from our customers. So then we quickly had to collaborate with all of our colleagues, both from a corporate level and in the U.S., as well as our instrument manufacturers, to look at what we could do with our supply to meet the demand of the public and I think from that, we saw the communication across our organizations really increase, even though we're in this virtual setting from that perspective. We all had to communicate with one another on a daily basis, to make sure that we could get done what we needed to get done for the organization, as well as our communities and society from that perspective.

Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative), okay. So can you give us kind of a base line to think about, like, "Okay, before COVID we were producing X units." Like how much did that really boom the business and like a scale for what you had to adjust to.

Jason: Yeah, so I can talk a little bit from an instrument standpoint. So from a molecular standpoint, our install base more than doubled in 2020. From immuno standpoint, we had a couple months where we installed more instruments than we ever have in the history of the time that I've been with the organization and I've been here almost 27 years from that perspective. I think from an immuno side, in one month we installed over 50 instruments in May, I believe. Typically, we do maybe 10 a month. So it was all hands on deck, to get our customers the instrumentation and the testing they needed to keep up with their demand that they had.

Sarah: Yeah. I think it's interesting that we think about, I think a lot of times when you talk about reacting to change, you think about in the negative sense, right? So like a lot of the organizations we've had conversations with around COVID, unfortunately what that looked like for them was, a significant reduction in business and some people had to make layoffs. So I think there's this perception of the challenges of COVID being more on the side of that contraction. But I think it's just interesting to point out that, challenges can also come in the form of opportunity, right?

Sarah: So I mean let's set aside the fact that you're all employees of DiaSorin and DiaSorin now has this opportunity to provide this testing in this time that it's needed, which obviously has a growth impact on the business. But you're all still human beings, dealing with the same fear and uncertainty and trepidation, in your own lives, right? But there's also a real business aspect of like, "Oh my gosh. Like we have the chance to step in and do this thing and being able to do it." Right, I think the recognition of the opportunity is one thing, but the ability to pull together quickly as a company and execute on that opportunity is a totally different thing.

Sarah: So I think kudos to you guys as an organization, for being able to see where you could have an impact and get to work, doing what needs to be done. You're talking about a global company, right? So all of that communication. The logistics. Everything. We'll talk a little bit about that. I think the other thing that's interesting to look at here is, not only was it a really hard year in many ways, even though for you guys that meant really, really rapid growth. During that, you ended up with the strongest NPS score that you've had since you started measuring it. So how? Like, how did you do that and why do you think that is, or how do you think that was accomplished?

Jason: Man, I can speak to that. So, if I look at it from my perspective, it's all about the great people that we have within our organization and I'm just not talking about all of our people in field service from that perspective, but that's internally, across all of our organizations, everybody stepped up. Did we all have some anxiety? Absolutely! I think everybody in society had some anxiety about stuff.

Jason: But we also knew that we were doing something different and really making a difference from that perspective. So all the people across the organization really stepped up, both internally and in the field and I think our customers saw that. They saw us as an organization, that's going to continue to provide excellent customer support, innovative products, to meet the needs that they have at this time, in a very quick and nimble fashion. Nobody ever stopped. I mean, whatever we asked people to do, of course everybody had a little anxiety about it and we were empathetic to that for sure, because we had the same type of anxiety. But they knew that they were doing the best they could for our organization, as well as the customers out there and all the people within the organization deserve all the credit and I think we had some of the best people of any organization that's out there.

Alesia: Add to that, Sarah, that the industry was, we saw it in the media everywhere. "We need more testing." People were saying, it was March, the middle of March, when the U.S. really became impacted by the pandemic and the number one response was, "More testing, more testing, more testing." Our organization a lot of great people within this company, who are very innovative in the scientific industry, were able to come up with that solution and the customer saw that DiaSorin is a solution provider, right? So we're able to come up with the plans.

Alesia: There was a lot of shortages of a lot of things, but testing was one of the things that was most talked about. When we did that and then you couple it with something that we were already providing before, but our employees dug deep and did it even better this year, was we really provided that customer support and that's not just like the front line people who are talking to the customer, although they are extremely valuable to that, being the face of DiaSorin, it was the people who were staying late and making sure that everything was received on time. It was the people who were processing the orders when they didn't necessarily have to. It was the people who were taking care of their children at home, while still working.

Alesia: I mean it was a lot of people who had to do things that they've never done before. But realizing the importance of why they did that and it was visible to our customers. We were able to say, when they were saying to us, I'm having to show up in the lab and to do the testing, we were saying, "And we're side by side with you, we're helping you." They saw that.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah. We're going to talk a little bit more about kind of the people part of this too and I think that's the most important part. But before we do that, I want to talk about the logistics. The operations of things, right? So in this case, you're talking about growth that was spawned by this crazy once in a lifetime, hopefully, event happening, right? But any company that experiences really, really rapid, big growth, struggles with how to scale and how to react quickly and nimbly to accommodate that.

Sarah: So I think there's a message here, not just, "We grew so much because of COVID", but just, "We experienced this rapid growth, period and here's how we adjusted our business operations to be able to navigate that." So can you guys talk a little bit about some of the areas of operations and how you sort of made some changes and pivots to be able to react and respond to the opportunity that was there?

Alesia: Yeah. Yeah, there was quite a few of those moments. So starting on day one, after we realized what was happening, was about the safety of our employees and what we were going to do. So what do we need to implement in order to get people safe? So for technical support, it meant, "You're working from home immediately." Well that meant that we had to set up their home offices and structure their home offices and ensure that there was business continuity with the phone lines and we had to ensure that there was no major disruptions. Other companies experienced that too. Our customers saw no difference on any of our phone support whatsoever. From a repair center perspective, where we had people who were having to work here at the office, in order to accommodate the needs, it was making sure they had the right PPE. That they had the right safety protocols.

Alesia: It was moving things around in the space and the lab, so that they were able to do that. It was making sure that we had procedures that they could all have their own laptops, where they were making sure that they were reading them without touching other people. It was making sure their badges were only allowing them into certain areas. There was a lot of things that we did, in order to say, "Okay, first is your safety and how are we going to do that?" From a field perspective, we did that as well and Jason can talk a little bit about the safety that we did for the field service employees.

Jason: Yeah and that was working very closely with our corporate colleagues, as well as internally with our health and safety teams and stuff like that. So you know how it went from a PPE perspective, where now everybody needs masks and there's no masks available and you're trying to find lab coats, you're looking for gloves. We were looking to make sure that we could find alternate suppliers, than our base suppliers, to make sure that we had a backup, in case there was a need from that perspective. We had to work with our corporate colleagues up in Canada, because now we can't ship stuff across the border, from that perspective, to get people PPE. So a lot of that comes back to that communications that we had within our teams.

Jason: So that really helped us get ready for that. Then even to keep up with demand, we had to hire some new head count, to make sure that we had enough people in place and then as Ally said, we had to look at social distancing between our confined space, to make sure that we could keep people a safe distance apart. Then we had to look at alternate shifts that people could work, as well. We had people in the field that had daycare needs. So they had decided, instead of working a normal eight to five, that they would work five to one PM, to be able to take good care of their customers still and that's kind of the ownership that we see from our service department, as well as all of our departments internally, is that they really were owned the situation and were very accountable for everything that needed to happen, from that perspective.

Alesia: Yeah and a lot of those pivotal operational things, head count, shifts, safety, working with colleagues around the world, they seem at a glance, something that you could breeze over, but they all took several hours of conversation to figure out, "How are we going to do this and how are we-

Sarah: Yeah, at least, I would think. I mean and it's easy to kind of look back. They say like rose colored glasses, or what have you. But the other thing is, in those very early stages, the circumstances were changing, almost every day, right? So it's like you figure it out once and then you get going and then next week it's different. Then you figure it out again and then, so it wasn't like, we've kind of as this has gone on, we've fallen into a norm. It's not the norm anyone wants, but we've kind of reached a more level state. But in the beginning, I mean it was different requirements and regulations and stipulations being introduced, really all the time. So I think the attention to detail and again, that level of cross-functional and regional communication, is really important in being able to make the changes you guys did and continuing refining them, as you went along. Any other things to note, in terms of logistically or operationally, how you guys kind of accommodated the growth?

Alesia: The main logistics points when it came to servicing, were really about working, when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, besides the staffing and how we had to manage that, was about the logistics of the parts. The logistics of the instrumentation. We really had to collaborate and communicate much differently to our corporate colleagues, in the way that it wasn't that we were speaking about things differently, but we had to speak about things much more rapidly.

Alesia: So instead of weekly communications, it was daily communications, because guess what? "Today we need this, this, this, this." They had to say, "Okay, now we need to gather up the people here that need to help with that. We need to talk to our suppliers. They need to talk to their suppliers. Who's our alternate suppliers? Where are we getting it? How are they going to be imported? How are they going to be exported?" There were so many meetings where we just had to come up with those solutions very quickly and get the right stakeholders in place immediately and there wasn't a person who didn't try to respond to that need.

Alesia: But the logistics of service, although PPE was something that many organizations were contending to get at that time, it's also a lot of those parts require special metaling, special people who are working on manufacturing lines that all were impacted by COVID, as well. When those production lines were shut down, because of a potential COVID case, which did happen multiple times. We had to think about, "Okay, now what are we going to do in the supply chain and how are we going to react?" That was something that we tried to make sure did not impact the customer. We were going to do everything that we could as an organization, to make that transparent to the customer.

Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.

Jason: Yep and when we had such an increase in our install base, I mean we had to keep from an inventory standpoint, from spare parts, to be able to service our customers. Like you said, it changed in a month. We would have to manage our reorder points and everything and what our consumption is, pretty much on a weekly basis, to keep up with the growing install base that we were having. Because, we need to make sure we're supporting them in the best possible way that we can. Did we have some challenges? Of course we did. I think every manufacturer that's out there had some challenges from that perspective. But I think we, through a lot of dedication and commitment of our people, we made our way through it quite well.

Sarah: Yeah. So thinking about reacting to this. If you look at it from the business perspective, you're talking about being more nimble, more flexible, more creative, more probably organized. All of the things. What would you each say is the biggest lesson, business-wise, that you've learned, that you think you'll carry into the future? Like out of this experience, what's the one thing that you think will kind of persist?

Alesia: For me, from a personal perspective, right? Yeah, so for me, I would say that I really just want to continue to look at employees' individual situations with the business needs, because not just during COVID, but other times, people have various challenges and you have to be able to say, "Okay, how can we respectfully accommodate those needs and still meet what the objectives are of the organization?"

Alesia: So that's one important thing. But retaining being nimble. It's how to communicate with the other people. I know we've said that word multiple times, but really that was one of the things that came out is, we realized, "Okay, well forget the phone call. Now we're going to do a video chat. Now I'm going to chat you all day long about little individual things, in order to get the end goal done."

Alesia: When we're being nimble with the solution, it's, "Okay, so this is the way we've always done it. We've now proved to some people who have hesitation about that change, that we can do it and we can be just as effective and we can be just as efficient and let's figure out a way to get through it." I think a lot more open mindedness has definitely come out as a result of the COVID experience.

Sarah: Yeah. Jason, what would you add?

Jason: Mine would be similar from that perspective. As leaders within the organization and being we managed a lot of field based staff from that perspective, we want to make sure that they're still engaged from that aspect and we used to have a lot of regional meetings. Go to customer sites and visit. Now we don't have the opportunity to do that. So we're continuing to look at ways that we can keep people engaged from that perspective, where it used to be, well we'll have three regional meetings, we'll go visit some customer sites.

Jason: Now we have to look at alternative ways that we can keep all of our employees engaged from that perspective. I think we've been okay at it, but we still have some work to do from that perspective, because it's hard to be as engaged as you can be, when you're talking through a video monitor or on the phone, from that aspect. I also think that from this and the virtual environment, when we look at jobs that can be done remote, via all the time, or at least provide our employees that flexibility when they have personal needs, to be able to work from home.

Jason: I think from an executive level and leadership level with the organization with the tremendous job that everybody did this year, there's a lot more trust in that aspect, where the old school mentality is, if you're not in the building and you didn't punch your time card, I don't really know what you're doing. I think we actually saw our productivity probably increase with a lot of people working remotely. Probably a little less distractions. Probably a little less meetings being called, that you really didn't need to go to, but people spent half a day in meetings, rather than utilizing that time in a value-added activity. So I think that's going to help us in the long run, for sure.

Sarah: Yeah. Okay. So we talked about the fact that your people was the biggest key to being able to survive and thrive over the last year, in terms of the business. So you guys have mentioned I think, one of the important pieces, which is, there seems to be this pulling together, because everyone realized they were working toward a common good, right? So you guys were navigating this growth, because you were doing something that was having a direct impact on this life experience that we were all having. Alesia, talk a little bit about that kind of interconnectivity and how you think that played a role in peoples' commitment to working harder, or doing whatever it takes to scale up the way you did and to meet the outcomes that you needed to for your customers.

Alesia: Yeah, for sure. There's very few experiences that one goes through in a lifetime, or even generations, in which we all can say we experienced the same thing at the same time. That in itself, creates a connection between the people, right? So it's not the weather that we're talking about, because I mean we were all experiencing the weather that day, but we're talking about how this is impacting us. But it's impacting us in real ways, like real ways where, maybe you've not seen your grandmother for months and months at a time. Or your mother, you have to take care of. Or you're nervous about the fact that your child didn't have childcare, even people who had come with just very unique life experiences, that seemed heavier than normal, right?

Alesia: What made it different was that, a lot of people were having that same feeling, at the same time and it was a result of this. Like what it meant to be stuck in your home for several months. Or for me, I'm in the same building as a part of my team and I couldn't even see them for some months. I had to talk to them virtually, even though we were in the same building. All of those sort of things, really impacted peoples' moods, right? It should have. It did and we're all human. But, one of the things that that meant was, "Okay, I'm having this challenge in my life and my colleague in Italy, in Germany, in the United Kingdom. My colleague who lives in Massachusetts or California, they were all kind of experiencing that."

Alesia: So when I said, "Hey, today is a harder day for me", or that employee said that, we were all saying that. Then, you still saw your colleague next to you, digging deep and trying hard and working the longer hours. Or taking a rest when they needed a rest and you're covering for them, right? So somebody said, "You know what? I need this day off. I have bereavement, I have COVID leave." When that happened, people said, "Okay, I will do more." Because their turn was coming up, right? They kind of knew that. The people who didn't have those turns, felt, I saw a lot of gratitude and feeling fortunate for that. I still see a lot of us feeling connected, "Oh, I see that Italy is closed down again, for instance, last week. That must have been really hard on Easter not to be able to see your family." "Oh, yes that was." Or for all the other holidays that were going on and people didn't get to see their families. Then we were saying, "And when you can work, please come in and help." And people did and they replied to that.

Sarah: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. Yeah, no. I think that makes sense. I think there's definitely this sense of deeper human connection to one another, after the last year. I think that that's the one thing that I hope out of all of this sticks, if anything. Because I think that we just view things differently and I think it makes us kinder to one another. I think it makes people, I'm not a patient person. So I'm not saying like, ultimately patient. But like a little bit more patient and just like I said, a little bit more considerate of what someone else is going through, knowing that we're all going through something and I do hope that that is something that we cannot dismiss when we do get back to an increased sense of normal. Because it is really easy to be kind of wrapped in your own world and your own experiences. But I think this connection that we all have to one another, has been one of the biggest positives out of a really bad situation.

Sarah: So I love the fact that you guys had such a positive response from your teams, in terms of that banding together and working toward a common good. I know we talked before about how important empathy was in leadership over the last year. Can you guys maybe talk a little bit, or give an example about how you have employed empathy with your teams throughout this experience?

Jason: Yeah, I think that was probably one of the most important things that we did as an organization, from that perspective. Because, we're all experiencing the exact same thing. First part is really listening to them, because we're not all in the same situation. Everybody has personal challenges that they have to go through, from that perspective and we all understand that. We listened to all those situations from that aspect.

Jason: We had COVID situations that happened amongst our teams and what we kind of really found from that is, the team work amongst the regions and departments that we have within the organization, that's where I really saw a positive change, because everybody was going through the same thing, "Okay, so and so has COVID. I can take his spot for a little bit. I'm going to go step in." Without any hesitation.

Jason: So I think the biggest thing that we really had was listening. We all had anxiety about what was going on, specifically at the beginning of the pandemic. I think that anxiety has lessened a little bit, but everybody still has a little bit of that there for sure, but really just listening to what their needs are. "If you have to take time out, it's okay. We'll figure it out and everybody else will just step up from a team aspect to get done what needed to get done."

Sarah: Alesia, what would you add?

Alesia: I mean empathy is a word that has gotten thrown around quite a lot, like you know, if you're a servant leader, then you're going to be empathetic to your employees. But what does that mean to really show empathy for one situation is, to be there other words that we described. Empathy for someone's situation is also to say, "We can be creative in this situation and we can allow for that to happen."

Alesia: For those reasons, there was huge kudos to the HR and executive team at DiaSorin, because they allowed the managers to express that creativity. It didn't have to be broad streaking policies that, of course we have policies, that's not the point. But they weren't so broad streaking that it didn't allow the manager to express empathy in a very specific way. I think that the other thing is that when you do show empathy for the employees, it's a double empathy. They show empathy for you, because there were multiple days where I had bad days too. I was experiencing some hardships too. My employees said, "It's okay. You don't have to be perfect today. We're not expecting more from you today."

Alesia: That sort of thing, again, going back to the human side of what COVID left. I mean we were asked to be, like you said, sprinters of this experience. We were asked to sprint through months and months and months of work and we were asked to live during this time, as well. They were sometimes contradicting one another. But that empathy portion of it, how to express it. Not just how to listen and not only to just say, "I am empathetic", but to be empathetic, was something that we were able to do this year and both from an employee side and from a managerial side.

Sarah: Yeah, I think we've had a number of conversations now on this podcast, about the reality of leading by example when it comes to vulnerability and normalizing conversations or making employees feel comfortable saying, "Hey, I'm struggling. I need a break." Or, "I have this going on." There's certain people, certain situations, where it's really hard for folks to speak up, or to feel comfortable, or not scared right, of, "Well what's the reaction going to be? Should I just force my way through it, or what have you?" Related to COVID and not.

Sarah: I think that we've had some really good conversations about, if you can figure out appropriate ways as a leader, to show a little bit of your own humanity and be a little bit vulnerable with your teams, then it shows them that it's okay to do the same thing. I think that that's a good thing. The other thing I think Jason, you mentioned earlier. Some of the field technicians were able to switch their schedules from eight to five. To five to one, right?

Sarah: That might sound like a really small adjustment, but I mean for a lot of people, that probably made the difference of, their spouse not needing to leave their job, or their family not losing an income, or it's just the amount of stress that that situation, in and of itself. People that have kids that couldn't be in childcare or in school, that were both working. I mean we've also talked on here and have relayed a lot of statistics about the number of women that have had to leave the work force in the past year, because of that situation. So those are real tangible things that you can do, right? They're concessions you can make, changes you can make, that don't detract from that employee's ability to do their job, but are just a different way than the norm, that allows them flexibility that probably was priceless to them. Do you know what I mean?

Sarah: To me, that is what empathy is really about, is taking action on what those needs are finding a way to have that common ground. I think that throughout this conversation, you guys have said again and again, like how much your employees cared and how much they wanted to pull together. That's a two-way street, right? If DiaSorin wasn't wanting to hear what those needs are and make adjustments and be creative, those people may not feel as passionate about their part in everything and vice versa. The more you saw them respond and the harder that they wanted to contribute, the more they wanted to contribute, the more you valued their contribution and thought, "Okay, we need to make this work. Like there has to be a way to achieve the right outcomes for everyone."

Sarah: So I think that it's a really good illustration of what needs to happen in that give and take with valuable employees and just thinking, Jason, to your point about not being stuck in the old way of doing things, or some of those thinkings that maybe, over the last year the company is kind of realizing, "Yeah, we felt that way, but it's not proven to be accurate." So yeah. I think those are really good examples and I think it's a really cool story you guys have about how the company has come together, how the employees have contributed and how you've made it through hopefully, the hardest part of the sprint and now you can, whew, breathe a little bit at least. So just one last question, in terms of what are your final thoughts in terms of the biggest lesson you've learned? The biggest take away you have from this whole experience?

Alesia: The biggest take away that I have is that, there's two things. One is, that we're strong and capable and we're able to do things. So I shared with you once before in a conversation. My son learned how to play piano virtually this entire year. I would have never thought that possible. Okay, so there's a lot that we can do, that we never thought that we would be able to do and we walked away with it. Like don't self-limit, right? Then the other piece of that is that, although the virtual is great and there's a lot to it, the other piece that I've learned is how much I enjoy just being around people and what kind of energy that brings and can bring to an environment.

Alesia: So when there is more people around and in the office and you're able to communicate with them face-to-face, or you're able to have a meeting with somebody who's experiencing something and you want to have that meeting face-to-face, there's nothing that really replaces that. I don't really want to replace that. So although I'm able to do things in a lot of different ways, I want to always be able to carve out time to do things face-to-face, when we can, so.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense. Jason, what about you?

Jason: Kind of what I learned from this is, if we have the right people in place across the organization, as Ally said, we can do it. When we had to ramp up, not only from a manufacturing and service and installation aspect, it almost sounded like it was impossible to get all the stuff done that we needed to get done. But then we really saw how good the people that we have within the organization and how committed and dedicated they were to the group. Which makes me very proud to work with the team that I work with, as well as everybody else across our entire organization from that aspect.

Jason: The other piece is kind of like Ally's, is I really miss the face-to-face aspect. I'm okay with the virtual, but it's just not the same. So, I can't wait until we're back to a little bit of normalcy, so I can get the field team together and we can have a regional meeting and have face-to-face discussions and continue to build our relationships from that perspective and hopefully sit at the bar and have a beer or something like that, as well, because we can really do a lot to build relationships in a face-to-face setting, that I truly miss. I miss going to our customer sites and seeing all of our colleagues in the field, as well as internationally. So I hope everything continues to whatever the new norm is, the quicker we get there, the better from that perspective.

Sarah: Yeah, I'm with you on the face-to-face. I work from home as my norm, so pre-COVID. But I always traveled a lot and so it's still been a big adjustment, in terms of I really enjoy getting together with colleagues and people in the industry and going to events and all of that. I really miss it, so. I'm with you guys on that. I think there's something to be said for a little bit more flexibility, or hybrid situations and certain things that really don't need to always be done on a location, or in an office. But there's just certain aspects of this that really are better in-person, so. Hopefully, I'd say I'm counting down until the next time I have a beer at a cocktail hour at an industry event. But I don't know when that will be, so I can't be counting. But I'm very much looking forward to it, so.

Alesia: Absolutely.

Sarah: Well thank you both so much for being here and sharing your story. I think it's a very, very impressive feat that you guys have accomplished and it definitely sounds like there's been some really good lessons that have come out of it and if we had to go through it, then that's all we can ask. So thanks for coming on and sharing them with us.

Alesia: Thanks for having us.

Jason: Thank you.

Alesia: It's been a great conversation.

Sarah: All right. Great. You can check out 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 by visiting IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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How To Nurture Creative Confidence to Fuel Innovation

April 26, 2021 | 9 Mins Read

How To Nurture Creative Confidence to Fuel Innovation

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By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I was recently chatting with Rangika Ekanayake, Sr. Manager of Software Engineering at IFS, and loved her insights around creativity. While she’s looking at creativity primarily through the lens of how to impact and improve UX in design, the principles she shares are applicable for anyone and any industry in need of thinking about how to further nurture creativity in an effort to innovate and maintain competitive edge.

In the world of service, we see an opportunity to grow revenue by offering a unique and differentiated experience or outcome to customers. The inception of that value proposition, however, requires a level of creativity that doesn’t always come naturally to every leader and every organization. The good news, according to Rangika, is that you have every opportunity – as individuals and as companies – to cultivate more creativity to fuel innovation.

Rangika is a self-inspired UX enthusiast with a deep passion for UX Research and UX Design and an enthusiasm for inspiring and helping others. She started her career at IFS 15 years ago as a Software Engineer and today is a Senior Manager of Software Engineering where she works with the R&D Projects leadership team to support continual improvement of software delivery within Projects and alongside contributing to the UX team in UX research. She has spoken on several SLASSCOM (Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies) webinars on the subject of UX Design and UX Research and has created a non-profit website, Journey2UX.com, to act as a repository of resources for industry newcomers. Here, Rangika shares her thoughts on how best to foster creativity.

Sarah: I think there can be an assumption that you’re either born “a creative” or not. Do you feel someone can be “born” creative? For those that aren’t, can creativity be learned?

Rangika: To quote Pablo Picasso, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Most people believe creativity is a trait an individual is born with – either they have it or they don’t. But I consider this a myth. I’m a strong believer that creativity is an attribute everyone has within themselves when they are born. But, because of socialization and formal education, some of us lose this creative impulse on our journey to adulthood.

For example, if we give set of blocks to group of children and ask them to build something, everyone will grab few pieces and they will start creating imaginary buildings, animals, etc. While at the task, how about we stop them and start to teach them to build a certain item in a specific way? Then there will be some who start doing it the way they were taught, and some will still prefer to do it in a way they imagined. Then, what if we punish some of them for doing it differently or if we tell them what they created is wrong or useless? Of course, some of them might stop what they are doing altogether or will start to build it in the exact way that we taught them, because of the fear of either getting judged, being wrong, or looking stupid. Then, consider the situation if we continue to do this for years and years. Day by day, some of these kids will lose their courage to become creative and some will still continue to carry it. When they become adults, society will categorize the people who still have the creative impulse as creative and others as noncreative.

But, can we boost up the creativity within these people who consider themselves as noncreative? Of course, we can. Because it is still within them, and we only have to retune their creative muscle. This is what’s referred to as helping them rediscover their creative confidence.

Sarah: How would you define “creative confidence?”

Rangika: “Creative confidence is believing in your ability to create change in the world around you. This self-assurance lies at the heart of innovation.” according to brothers Tom and David Kelley in their book, Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential within us all.

Creative confidence is an individual’s belief that he/she is creative. When we were kids, we were often bold, inspired and acted daringly. Those days we were imaginative, curious, and endlessly creative, and we possessed endless capacity for innovation. So, in other words, creative confidence is our own self-assurance that we can regain that kid.

Sarah: As an individual, how can leaders foster their own personal creativity?

Rangika: According to Tom and David Kelley of IDEO, any individual can restore their creativity or creative confidence by overcoming their fear of failure, taking frequent doses of inspiration, and by stopping procrastination and starting “doing.”

  1. Instead of fearing failure, start to learn from it. In schools, we were mostly being taught to avoid making mistakes and it is the same story in most workplaces. Therefore, we often avoid it at all cost. But as it turns out, failure can be one of our greatest teachers. Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” So, we need to flip our mind to learn from failures rather been afraid of it.
  2. Take frequent doses of inspiration to life. As our schedules get busy and responsibilities increase, it is hard to find time for inspiration. But inspiration is the fuel for creativity. So, how do we get fueled up? Be curious. Try to look beyond the obvious. Try to schedule daily space in your calendar to think, take a walk, or daydream. Keep some form of idea notebook to capture things that cross your radar. Practice empathy. Also, one of the best ways to get inspired is to step out of the context — look at something you might never expect to be helpful or relevant to the task at hand.
  3. Stop overplanning and just start. Even though we have a creative idea, acting on it can be daunting. Therefore, to minimize the risk impact, adults spend lot of time on strategy and planning. But there are times where the best you can do is just get out there and take action — stop focusing on the huge, overall task and find a small piece you can tackle right away. Because creativity and creative problem solving is rooted in action. Studies show that teams who test five or more ideas at the same time are 50% more likely to launch successful solutions than those who explore a single solution.

Sarah: What’s your best advice for making time for creative thinking when facing many day-to-day pressures?

Rangika: As said earlier, try to schedule daily space in your calendar to think, take a walk, or daydream. It does not have to be a long duration – 15 minutes would do. No matter how packed your schedule might be, if you are willing to find some time, there will be a way. You can utilize the time you travel, shower, etc. But, the most important thing is to practice it consistently. Because creativity is also like a muscle; the more you practice, the more it is strengthened.

Also, it is important you keep some form of idea notebook to capture things that come to mind. Do not just let them drain away. In addition, when you try to generate ideas, focus on the quantity – shoot for 100 instead of 10. Aim for as many new ideas as possible. The greater the number of ideas you generate, the bigger your chances of producing a radical and effective one. On the other hand, it allows us to let our minds wonder without restriction and that’s how most of the best ideas are generated.

Sarah: From a company perspective, what’s key to creating a creative culture?

Rangika: If a certain company wishes to create a creative culture in their workplace, it is of utmost importance that they make sure to build a fail-safe environment for their employees. Because no matter how hard we request employees to be creative, if they don’t have an environment in the workplace where they can try out their ideas without the fear of being judged, evaluated or punished based on the result, employees will not bring forward their original ideas freely.

At “X - the moonshot factory," they live a simple mantra: "Fail fast, fail often." Terrible ideas and failure are not only embraced, but celebrated. In his TED Talk on “The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure”, Astro Teller, director of X, says, "We spend most of the time breaking things and trying to prove that we're wrong. That's it. That's the secret.”

In addition to creating a fail-safe environment, another aspect that companies need to focus on is encouraging inspiration and innovation. Because if we expect the employees to be creative, then we need to provide the space and time to be inspired and innovate. If their work schedules are tightly packed with other work items, even though they want to be creative and innovative, they won’t have the breathing space to do that. So, if a company desires its employees to become inspired and innovate, then they must empower their teams to be inspired; let them find ways to understand the users of their product, system, or service; and allocate some time to be creative.

Sarah: What are some tactical ways leaders can encourage their teams to build their own creative confidence?

Rangika: Most importantly leaders need to start, by believing everybody can be creative and by accepting failure as a natural part of the creative process. Just as the leaders encourage teams to be creative, they need to encourage the teams when ideas fail. Also, acknowledging a team’s hard work while reminding failure happens to everyone and motivating them to learn from failure rather than shying away from it will create a great impact on building creative confidence within the team.

In addition, consider introducing initiatives that encourage inspiration and innovation within team members - e.g. Innovation day, encouraging frequent field visits to get to know users better. Also, “Worst idea brainstorm” is a great method to help teams to overcome their fear of failure and to open up the imagination and help them get in touch with creativity. Additionally, an “Idea Diamond” is another method which encourages the teams to generate innovative ideas. Another tactic is starting off the discussions from the newest member in the forum. This not only opens up a fresh perspective, but also will make sure that these ideas won’t get shadowed by the perspectives of experienced members. Similarly, from time to time, disrupting the routine, such as changing the environment or team setup, can help teams to think and act differently. Finally, encouraging the teams to simply start rather than overplanning is a key factor.

Sarah: What final thoughts can you share?

Rangika: Creativity is not only for artists, designers, and musicians. It is not a fixed trait gifted only to specific people, and it is not only for kids. Creativity is essential for every individual, not only in their career, but also in their personal lives. Bill Moggridge, IDEO cofounder, strongly believed that most people are vastly more creative and capable than they know, and I believe the same. So, it is all about boosting up the creativity confidence within these people. But creative confidence cannot achieve only by reading, thinking, or talking about it. Rather, confidence in your creativity gets strengthen through action and practicing it often. So, try harder, give frequent space for your mind to roam free, start learning from your failures, get inspired, and simply just take action. The rewards and the individuality you will gain are well worth the effort.

If you’re interested in taking a deeper look, here are some references that Rangika suggests:

https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Confidence-Unleashing-Potential-Within/dp/038534936X

https://hbr.org/2012/12/reclaim-your-creative-confidence

https://www.creativeconfidence.com/about/

https://www.ideou.com/products/unlocking-creativity

https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-YScywp6AU

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEusrD8g-dM

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