sarah.nicastro@ifs.com, Author at Future of Field Service

Episode 272

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes back Rainer Karcher, sustainability enthusiast, “climate activist in a suit,” and former Chief Sustainability Officer, who has recently departed the corporate world to start helping companies work toward their sustainability objectives. Rainer shares knowledge on current trends, common missteps, and the reasons why every organization should be invested in this topic.

Rainer is the Founder and Managing Director of Heartprint. He brings over 25 years of IT experience from leading companies like Allianz Technology, IBM, and Siemens AG. His expertise spans support, infrastructure, data centers, service operations, and IT sustainability. For Rainer, sustainability extends beyond environmental protection to encompass a holistic approach aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Agenda, addressing all ESG aspects.

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Full Show Notes

Rainer: So if we talk on sustainability in ESG, environmental, social, and governance, the social aspects then goes into pay gaps, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, all those features. And finally, then the governance aspect goes into the supply chain aspects. What is the code of conduct of a company to work together with throughout the supply chain? So what it definitely means is it is impacting companies all over the world. We do have, depending on relationships and customer scenarios, for sure, always the need to make things transparent. And this is the biggest aspect and the biggest achievement of initiatives like CSRD and some others as well.

Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be talking about sustainability, particularly the sustainability trends that should be top of mind for service organizations and service leaders. I would say in the last 12 to 18 months, sustainability is a topic that has been coming up more and more and more in the conversations I have and the events I attend, not because it wasn't an important consideration before then, but because I think there's an increasing awareness of the opportunities we have in the world of service to positively impact these initiatives and to take action. So I'm thrilled to welcome back to the podcast, Mr. Rainer Karcher, who is currently the Founder and CEO of Heartprint, Inc. We're going to talk a bit about that. Some of you that have been with us a while may remember Rainer. He was on the podcast back in 2022, I believe. And so a lot has changed since then. And I'm happy to have you back and talk a bit about what is going on in the world of sustainability today. So before we get into our topic, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your background, and we'll go from there.

Rainer: Thank you very much, Sarah. And thank you for the warm welcome. It's so great to be back. And it's indeed, it's 2022. I mean, look at that. It's time is flying. This is incredible. For those of you who haven't heard at that time, if you would jump back, you would see me at the big corporate world. In the meantime, I'm Founder and CEO, exactly as Sarah already mentioned, from Heartprint Inc., a company who is a focus on advising and incubating SMEs all over the world in regard of digital and sustainable aspects. So twin transformation is my key focus. In general, I'm an IT person since 27 years. I'm based in Munich, father of three. I do have 46 years currently on my back, and I am trying to put sustainability into every angle of what I do in my private as well as in my professional life. I'm very much interested in helping those who are interested in doing something, which is really working towards sustainability with experience, which I've made in the last couple of years in big enterprises, as I already said. So I did work for more than 10 years for Siemens. And then afterwards for the last nearly two years then for Allianz, so the insurance company and Allianz technology in that part, so the IT version in Allianz. And so this is a bit of me. As I said, I'm really looking forward now to give a bit of new thoughts, new experience, and enhance what we've already spoken about two and a half years back, Sarah.

Sarah: Yes. Going back to, so Rainer not only was on the podcast in 2022, but when we started the Future of Field Service live events, our first year doing those was 2022. And you joined us for a session in Frankfurt. If you remember how incredibly hot it was that day, that's what always stands out in my mind. We were roasting on the top floor of a building with no air con. And it was just uncharacteristically hot for that event. So what stood out to me about you then and still does is just the incredible passion you have for what you do and the energy you bring to this topic. And so you've taken that along with your corporate experience and you've recently begun your own organization, Heartprint Inc., as you mentioned. And so one of the things that is intriguing to me, and we talked a little bit about this recently, is the choice of name. Okay, so can you talk a little bit about the relevance of the name and the importance of a Heartprint when it comes to sustainability initiatives?

Rainer: Yeah, with big pleasure. And indeed, it was a well-taken choice to call my company Heartprint. So quite some time back in 2019, 2020, as I've started my journey in the corporate world at Siemens at that time towards sustainability, I've always looked in a holistic, full, big-picture approach to sustainability. So the SDGs of the United Nations is, to me, at least the most fundamental aspect to look at when we are talking on sustainability. But in fact, if it goes through the current priorities, we are mostly talking on climate crisis. We are talking on footprint, on handprint. So where is the own footprint to be reduced? Where could we improve the environmental impact and lower the damage we take? And the second aspect is to look into handprint aspect through digitalization, through automation. So where is IT able to help and to maybe release some pressure to automate reporting's and all those things? And what are they missing at that time? So in 2019, as I've started that journey, was an emotional connection. Because if we're honest, sustainability is a buzzword in the meantime. Everybody's talking about it. And if you look into the news, there is always big news on, I don't know, flying from the US to Germany is the equivalent of 3.5 tons of carbon emissions. Well, but the majority of people, let's be honest, 90%, 95% of humanity doesn't even know. Is that a lot or is it not? Is it something I can change? But what everybody is understanding definitely is that we have to do something. If you look around, if you see flooding's, if you see wildfires, like we've had been seeing it in beginning of the year in Canada, for example. If you see a drought, if you see the current situation all over the world, then there is an emotion. And that emotion is something we have to transport and translate into action and activity. So I am trying to establish the Heartprint as a third pillar beside the footprint and the handprint to connect both with people and with human beings. If we talk on sustainability, mostly there is environmental protection, but all the activities we do is, in fact, not protecting the environment. It's protecting the foundation of living for us human beings. If we go into diversity, if we go into inclusivity, if we go to, I don't know, accessibility aspects, all of that is improving our lives, the life of humans. And that human aspect comes with heart. And the heart is something which we always have to include to really make things happen. And this is exactly why I display myself already with the objective of who I'm able and willing to work with. And so my future customers, my potential customers should be those who are really interested in making things happen and really changing. And finally, then, with the last comment on that, sustainability is a transformation. And the transformation, which is not only for companies, for the economy and the society, it's for us, for human beings, the biggest challenge in general. We have to change our habits. We have to change lives. Does it mean that we always have to reduce luxury? No, it does not. But we have to do less, that's for sure. And we have to change. And if I do have a passion for it, if I do have an understanding that it's worth it, and there is love within and there is a heart within, then I have the willingness to adopt and to change and to go that way of transforming. And this is exactly what I'd like to do. And like I've said already earlier, I'm hoping for a lot of clients worldwide, which I'm able to help with my experience, which I've gathered over the last couple of years, and to create a vision, to create a strategy, to define a roadmap, and set priorities and get the journey started.

Sarah: I love that. And I think it's a very fitting name for you. I had shared with you when we spoke, what came to mind for me is this is an area, different elements of sustainability are all areas that folks know are important. They know that they should have a mission around or a plan for, right? But those who are making the biggest difference in any areas of this topic are doing so because they have that passion. So they're not doing it just because they have to. They're not doing it because they're expected to or because they need to check a box of having X, Y, or Z strategy, but they're doing it because they see how it matters and why it matters. And I think I had said to you, as you help organizations build their blueprint for their sustainability initiatives, leading with that Heartprint, which I think of as the why, right? Why does this matter? Why is this so important? It's just such a good fit. So awesome.

Rainer: Thank you.

Sarah: All right. So let's talk about some of the current trends in the sustainability world that might be impacting the service realm. So I have a list here. I can read them off and you can just talk a little bit and then we'll see if there's any that I missed. So first is around regulatory pressures.

Rainer: Yeah, that's definitely something which, at least here on the European side, but even going and impacting companies in the US and in the world in general, we do have a so-called European Green Deal, which has been implemented three years ago already. And it's now slightly matching to companies. Depending on their sizes, depending on their revenues over the last next now four years, matching even companies with more than 20 employees and 4 million euros of revenue. So this will go down to the small SME world and as well over that time. It's a regulatory called CSRD, Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and it is replacing the non-financial reporting on the past. So this is nothing completely new. It's just now with a different focus and a way broader and deeper granularity if it comes to sustainability. So it does contain the typical environmental aspects like carbon footprint, like water consumption, air quality. It goes into biodiversity aspects as well but goes into social. So if you talk on sustainability in ESG, environmental, social, and governance, the social aspects then goes into pay gaps, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, all those features. And finally, then the governance aspect goes into the supply chain aspects. What is the code of conduct of a company to work together with throughout the supply chain? So what it definitely means is it is impacting companies all over the world. We do have, depending on relationships and customer scenarios, for sure, always the need to make things transparent. And this is the biggest aspect. And the biggest achievement of initiatives like CSRD and some others as well. On the other side, it does regulate where is investments going into the part of CSRD and that Green Deal is called EU taxonomy. So this is defining what is sustainable investments and how could I do that? I think the equivalent in the US is a bit the Inflation Reduction Act. So this goes a bit in a similar direction. And we do have definitely, therefore, a huge impact to all companies independent of where they work. And I think in particular, as you have to create a transparency on where your emissions are coming from and how you are making progress to further reduce and to get to carbon neutrality in the future, then until 2050 by latest to stick with that 1.5 degree Paris Agreement, which is to those of you who are not familiar with the objective of what science defined. We should limit the global average increase of temperature to 1.5 degrees, which in brackets, by the way, we currently already have achieved and got to. So we have already the 1.5 degrees. So we have to really fight hard to stick with it. But the thing is, to achieve that, you have to look into, for example, travel and the way you travel. So if you have field service, you normally spend a lot of time on the road. You get to your customers, you try to achieve them the sooner the better. So you mostly take not any public transport or trains. You jump maybe into a plane or you take a car and drive there. That has to be reported. So we have to find ways to lower your footprint, meaning maybe changing to better electrical vehicles if it's on short ranges or mid ranges. Maybe changing to sustainable aviation feel if you fly and if you have to. So there is always advantages and alternatives, but we have to focus onto that and you have to be aware on what you get. So this is the part of regulatory for environmental aspect. What I think in the US is quite well known is accessibility. So there is WRC. So the accessibility aspect there is now coming over to Europe. So in that remark, we're quite behind here and in Germany and in Europe. So we have the European Accessibility Act, who is now enforcing companies. Starting in summer next year. So in about a year from now on to make their product, their services accessible for anyone. So that means inclusiveness for blind people, for people with any kind of mental diseases or disabilities. That is something which affects for sure service and field service as well. Because if you have maybe online portals to start with your own service to reset the password or whatever it might be, this is definitely something which affects the field service in general and has very huge impact then to sustainability as well. And then. And finally, there is the aspect of human rights treatments. So in Germany, for example, we've started already last year, the so-called German Supply Chain Act. Now the European Union is enhancing that most likely in 2026 with the so-called CSDDD. And this is the Corporate Supply Chain Due Diligence Directive. And this then focuses on the whole aspect on human rights treatments, children, labor, modern slavery and name them throughout the whole supply chain. And again, if I'm, for example, working with a call center in India, I have to ensure being the company who is providing the service, that even if it's a third or fourth supplier to a tier three supplier. That they are treating human rights and payment, for example, the way it is defined in my local area and my local region. So I have to ensure this is in my own responsibility and not just handed to the supply chain and I just put my hands away. And so this is three major areas where, from my perspective, regulatory is definitely impacting what we currently do and even more in the future.

Sarah: Yeah. So I just want to make a couple of comments for our audience. So one, going back to the point you made about field service and the frequent travel, right? So you mentioned looking into electric vehicles. I know that there's interesting geographical differences there because of the amount of travel or the distance of travel that's common in the US. And also the infrastructure is lagging and catching up. But it is something that is going to be continuing to progress and more and more important to evaluate. But I also wanted to point out this is where we see so many and we've had so many conversations on this podcast about the evolution of service delivery and looking at opportunities to do more remote diagnostics and remote resolution, right? So you can, in many cases, completely avoid travel that is just wholly unnecessary and has just been done because it's the way it's been done. If nothing else, through the remote diagnostics, you can understand what exactly it is you're going on site to do so that you eliminate any repeat visits. So, again, really looking to maximize the efficiency of that travel. Then there are also tools IFS1, that is a planning and scheduling optimization engine that does a really good job of making sure that you're appropriately leveraging your resources. You're minimizing travel. You can set whatever criteria you want to prioritize for companies that are particularly focused on sustainability. You could set the highest parameter to avoid travel or to reduce those emissions. So there's a lot you can do there. The other thing I wanted to say that is relevant to a lot of our service providers is to think about what regulatory pressures your customers might be up against, right? Because there are opportunities to maybe aid in that and have new service offerings come out of your ability to help them meet the guidelines they need to meet. I just wanted to add that. Now, you mentioned an investor preferences. So this is becoming more heavily weighted in investment decisions, which is another really important point for any organization that's going to be looking for investors is, you know, it's taking more and more precedent in those decisions. Another thing to consider is customer preferences. So can you talk a little bit about what we see related to how consumers and even business consumers are looking at the selection of their providers based on this commitment?

Rainer: Yeah, with pleasure. And thanks for that question. And thanks for the addition. You're totally right. So the geographical differences between Europe and particularly in Germany and the US is quite massive. So for absolutely there is definitely different addresses. So to the customer and to the investor aspect, I think in both areas, first of all, the awareness is dramatically increasing nowadays. And at least those customers who do have and if you're talking from B to C now, we do have a huge, huge topic that everyone is talking on. Am I part of the solution? Am I part of the problem? And everyone tries to be part of the solution for sure and tries to take an impact and influence into environmental aspects, into human rights treatments and all those things. So I think there is pressure coming from that angle generally anyhow. But even in the business surrounding B2B, we do have huge companies who do have set their own targets, but they are not able to achieve them if the providers and the companies they are working together with do not. So therefore, it's always a dependency on each other. Exactly as I said it earlier already, companies are able to help their customers, their clients to achieve their targets or they can even go against them. So therefore, I think that's a huge aspect which you always have to think twice about. In addition, I think what comes dramatically from the investor's perspective and now my last station I've been worked on prior to my own company was the insurance world and banking, financial insurance investment. This is quite close from the perspective. What they need to have there is reliability and a long-term planning. So I don't make an investment into a company which I have to be afraid of might not be existent anymore in a year or two. I'd like to understand that whatever they do is resilient. And resilient means in regard of the whole supply chain, if it comes to materials, if it is on maybe a reputational aspects. I do not want to work with a company. I don't want to invest into a company or I don't want to insure a company who I might see a risk that whatever business they have might get into press and media in a negative way, maybe in a year or two and they go bankrupt. And the third is if you just see one of the outcomes of climate crisis is strong weather results. So there is tornadoes, there is thunderstorms, there is flooding, there is massive heat or massive cold periods. And if a company is not at all focusing on those things and just simply working and hoping that nothing will happen, this might turn out against them. And if it just take a where to place a factory, how to set up maybe a service field where there's people maybe working in outside. If there's current temperatures, what we've seen in India or even in the US, I think there is a huge heat wave right now that doesn't work anymore. And this is exactly talking on resilience and prediction of what is coming next and what is maybe happening in five years or in 10. All of that is quite of importance if it comes to investments, if it comes to financial aspects and even the small little things loans, at least here. I don't know for the US market, but I know for the European and in particular German market. Banking is heavily looking who is getting a loan and for what conditions. So those companies who have a clear commitment, a clear sustainability commitment and the target setting and do have resilience and transparency already, they get loans to way better conditions than those companies who do have not. And maybe depending on the amount of investments or of the loan you'd like to get, you don't even get one. So therefore, this is already impacting heavily. And so we have two perspectives and two angles why it does make sense to focus on that.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. What about supply chain?

Rainer: Yeah, supply chain, I think, is a perfect example we've seen already throughout the pandemic. And I think mostly if you just remember that ship, which was in the Panama Channel, just blocking that for a couple of days, which brought a lot of companies really to their limits. This is, again, a matter of reliability and prediction. If I do have an understanding of who are my suppliers and not just the tier one supplier, but throughout the whole chain. And if I have a transparency of what is their impact and what could be an impact, if there is maybe, again, coming back to that strong weather results, if there is companies working in surroundings, mining, for example, where there might be huge flooding's or just temperatures in which people are not able to work anymore under such conditions, that brings my supply chain at risk. If I go to human rights aspect, fashion industry is a perfect example on that. We might still have in mind where there was in Bangladesh, I think, the stitching company who did put weight too many persons and people into one building and it collapsed and a lot of people died. The reputational aspect for those companies who got their clothes stitched there was tremendous. And this is exactly where I think we always have to have a bigger picture in regard of supply chain. We have to first understand who I'm working together with. And throughout the whole thing to the last moment, I have to make transparent. Is that the same values I am able to work with in my own company? I'd like to see throughout that whole aspect. And finally, what we always have to remind ourselves if the world would be perfect, if everything would be right, then we wouldn't have to do something. But it's not. If we just look around, if we just see what is happening all over in the world, then this is a bit of a responsibility. Every company leader, every C-level in a company has an independent of the size of that company, whether it's 50, 500, 5,000, 500,000 employees. You have to take responsibility and have to change.

Sarah: Yeah. The other area we talked about is circular economy and product design, things like that.

Rainer: Yeah. And that's a perfect example in particular for the aspect of service and fuel service. If you design a product in the way that you're first of all able to repair it quite well, and if it's not able to repair it anymore or for safety reasons has to be exchanged, for example, in aviation or in trains or transport, then it should be made in a way that you are able to fully reuse all the materials there. All the minerals, all the rare materials are limited on Earth. We don't have unlimited resources. We weigh more consumed currently than what we have on that planet. And it's very much linear. So we produce something, we use it at the end of the life cycle. We throw it away often to landfill, often exported to sub-Saharan Africa or elsewhere, and we just waste things and dump it. And this is exactly something which we have to change, which will first of all lower the cost. So this is the first thing. So it will have an improvement on financial aspects, economical aspects then as well. Secondly, it will help us to understand our products even better. If we design them in a way that we are able to just dismantle components and separate metals from plastics and from whatever type of things. And we are able then to create, I think, a longevity aspect then to our products as well. If we do have a focus on that, that it's not just like it used to be in the past. Electronical components are mostly the best example. My fridge just recently collapsed on Sunday in the evening. So at a time when everybody wants to have it, it was exactly 10 years and three weeks old. And that is something weird. I don't want to buy a fridge every 10 years. I would like to keep it as long as it can. And this is a bit of product design aspect. So we have to always keep that in mind while designing products. This might be more easy with one product, a bit more easy than with others. But in general, that circularity aspect and longevity aspect, this is two things which we definitely have to put more into focus.

Sarah: Yeah, and it's an interesting conversation. We have a podcast we did a while back that I will link in the show notes on the intersection of sustainability and servitization. When you start thinking about remanufacturing, recycling, and designing for lifecycle versus initial acquisition costs, there's a really big tie-in to this idea of offering products as a service, right? Because when the manufacturer is maintaining ownership of those assets, it makes some of those things easier to do. It's interesting to think about that intersection point. But regardless of what the plans are for the go-to-market of the organization, it's important to be thinking about those things. Are there any big trends that I missed?

Rainer: Well, the big trend currently, in particular, if you look into the digital and IT world, is artificial intelligence. So everyone is talking on AI. Everyone is looking into trying to find real use cases for AI. I think in particular in the service field, I just recently made the experience just myself. As I've started my own company, I had to do some contracts with a mobile phone provider and stuff. And it was a bit of typical German complexity and organizational background things. And I had to call that mobile provider company. And I reached out to, I thought at least at the beginning, a person I'd been talking to. I've explained the situation. And then after about five minutes of conversation, I had a bit of an awkward feeling. And I thought, well, that questions, even if the sound of that voice is very natural, if the questions are quite natural, but the way it's being questioned, this sounds to me scripted. So either there is a person who is just reading a script from screen or it's an AI behind. And I've asked that simple question. May I ask you, and maybe that sounds ridiculous. Are you real? Or are you? Artificial? And the answer was simple. I am an artificial and I'm a computer system helping you right now. And so I think we are just at the beginning of that. I think AI and the capabilities of AI are tremendously changing the way we live, the way we work, what we do and how we do things. In particular, in service areas, if you take the simple first-level support, if you take the simple questions and tasks, resetting a password, getting simple changes done in a contract, adding a new phone number, changing, I don't know, responsible persons and stuff. We should not have people who are distracted in doing that on a day-to-day basis. People should be working on creative things, on innovative things. People should be focusing on those things which really make fun to work with each day. So I think on that aspect there is a huge aspect to improve our lives with artificial intelligence. On the flip side of the coin it always comes with a price. And in particular AI is consuming already a huge amount of energy. So this is tremendous increase what what we've seen in the last couple of months now. Take the example, very tangible, Google yourself and put your own name into OpenAI, into ChatGPT4. Putting it into ChatGPT will bring up more or less the same results than what it is in Google, but it costs you 100 times more energy in ChatGPT than what it is in Google. And this is not just ChatGPT, this is any AI solution. This is already giving a bit of flavor of where we are going. And if you see the current offerings which are on the market, you can just now create video footage, which is perfectly well made. It looks real. It looks like it has been filmed from a huge professional group, but it's just based on a script. You can just enter text and just describe the scenery, what it should look like, and then AI will create the movie footage out of that. The thing is, the energy consumption through that is incredible and it requires a huge amount of compute powers or data centers, which means they need to be built. Currently, the data centers of the big providers are built in Canada and in Spain, in Europe. So both areas, Canada, we've spoken about the wildfires. Maybe not the best idea to put a data center there. Spain is currently running through dryness like never seen before. So in the city of Barcelona, I just recently spoke to a friend of mine who was living there. They are not allowed to water their flowers or their grasses anymore. They're not allowed to wash their cars anymore. It's even a risk that if it stays dry like it is currently, they are turning off water supplies every second day. So we're not allowed to shower anymore. There is still no tap water, because they're just running out of water completely. And this is the second area where there is a data center being built. Huge amount of data centers which require water cooling. So this is the flip side of the coin in regard of energy consumption. A second aspect, and I think the Times Magazine in the US just brought up a report about a year ago about ethical aspects of artificial intelligence and the treatment of, first of all, those people who are entering the data. So this is the one aspect, mostly, heavily underpaid in poor conditions, mental pressure, and then as well because there is people who have to enter nearly everything which comes to your mind and even those things which does not. And then in addition, we do have still a biased situation in artificial intelligence as well. So mostly the coders and descriptors behind artificial intelligence are like I, male, white, middle-aged and academic background. And does that reflect the humanity as a whole? Not at all. The thing is, AI will develop to mostly super intelligence and rapidly going towards self-educating itself without human interaction within the next four to five years. So this is what science currently says. So we have to set the layers and the foundation and the directions now. But, if we don't do it now, then it will go wrong into the angles, which we don't even want to have it. So this is a bit of the flip side. But still, even if it sounds like I'm an enemy of AI, I am not. I am quite sure we need to have it. It's part of a solution, but we have to treat it right.

Sarah: Yeah. No, it's a massive opportunity, but also something we need to be very conscious to use appropriately, to your point, and to protect humanity. Not to sound too extreme, but I think that's the biggest risk, right, is we need to be thinking about how it can augment our lives, not detract from them. Okay, so you said to me recently, there's always an advantage for sustainability. And I love this viewpoint because we're talking about a lot of the trends, but they can be relevant for people for different reasons. And there isn't necessarily a right or wrong reason. But your point is, there's always a reason and there's always an advantage. So can you talk about some of the important advantages that people need to be keeping in mind.

Rainer: Absolutely. And thank you for that question. I think we still have too much of a discussion on whether it's true or not. Is climate crisis man-made? Is it not? Is science right? Is it not? I do have a very clear position on that. But independent of this, go down to the simple things. If you consume less meat, if you drink more water instead of, I don't know, co-course things, this is improving your own health. So this is the first thing. And your own health, if you take the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals, good health and well-being is part of sustainability. So this is already a first advantage. So it's extending your life. It's bringing you into a better health situation, making you maybe more mobile. You can just do more things with your kids, with your family, with your relatives. So this is the first thing. The second is, if you stick with that example of eating less meat, that helps the planet. It helps maybe to get a higher quality of meat because you're saving money. If you do not consume meat each day, but only maybe once per week or twice, you can consume the higher quality products, helping then the animals and the animal treatment as well and reducing in many, many aspects, therefore sustainability, negative topics then too. It saves you money. So it has an economical aspect then in addition and brings an overall aspect or take it from a perspective of a company. And now going to the angle of inclusion, we do have, and this is where the US is quite, quite, quite advanced, for example, towards in particular Germany. You've always been way more inclusive in the US than what we've seen here in Germany. We are now putting a focus on that for multiple reasons. So if you take as an employer, those into consideration to be employed, to be working for us as a company, who might be blind people, who might be on the neurodivergent spectrum, people with autism, which we've completely excluded in the past. We've not even provided working environment, which had been capable for those people. If we now do, we are lacking talents tremendously over in the world already. So a company who is more inclusive just has an advantage. It's easier then to get functional situations covered and get people working for you and being happy for working for you. Sticking with the company topic, if you are providing a surrounding where people can really heavily work towards a better future and in that remark, take their maybe private passion and their own drivers into their jobs, into their day-to-day operational aspects, that makes them more happy. So this is a bit of talent attraction, talent retention. People are motivated to stay and go the extra mile, because it's not all about money. And if we're talking on that, if you go to maybe not our age, if you not go to those who already are in 15 or 20 years of employment, but those who are now starting Gen Z or even more Gen A, who will come next, I think the majority of them, they want to work for a company who is not focusing just on a career on, I don't know, car allowance or the next step of salary and advancement. So for them, it is very much important to have purpose. And the purpose comes with sustainability focus as well in multiple angles. So there is an additional advantage. And if you then take just us as human beings, I'd like to provide a surrounding to my kids. And I have three, as I've said at the beginning, which is at least as good as it has been in the past as I've known it or maybe even better. So the advantage to me is to leave something behind which I can be proud of, which I had been actively working towards and which is helping then my kids as well, and not just mine, but kids all over the world. And I'd like to improve it and not damage.

Sarah: Yeah. No, those are all good points. And I think there's so many different lenses to look at this through in terms of the personal benefit and the benefit to the organization of doing these things. The other thing we've talked about before is if you have people who are perhaps less altruistic, there's a lot of areas where we talked specifically about travel with field service. There are a lot of areas where putting action to this focus both improves the sustainability aspect, but also can reduce costs or improve efficiency. And so there's those things as well. And then, of course, we talked about the aspect of competitive differentiation of the customer and investment decisions starting to be more and more weighted toward organizations who are taking real action, et. cetera. So I guess the point is there's so many different ways to look at this that come back to doing something, right, and taking action. I just thought of another question, which is going back to, we talked about the Heartprint piece and why it's so important. But as I mentioned, there's all of these reasons we've talked about today to have initiatives in place. And unfortunately, there are still organizations who are then coming at this from the perspective of checking a box versus a true commitment. And I was just curious to ask your perspective on the current risk of greenwashing. I mean, this is something that has never been good. But I have to think with the growing movement and increased focus. And also from a technology standpoint, we've talked about the realities of transparency, right? And being able to more easily assess who is full of it. So what's the status of greenwashing? Do you think it's going away? Do you think it's still a problem? What do you think will happen as we build toward more and more transparency?

Rainer: So it's a very good question and already upfront firsthand, it won't go away. As long as you do have humans who are intelligent, smart in using the right words, the right visuals, the right transparency in their own perspective and the way I'd like to see it and I'd like to use it, there will always be greenwashing from an outside perspective. That's for sure. I mean, there is the attempt now to regulate even that. So the already spoken about CSRD, so the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is now being enhanced with a clean claims directive. So, the green claims directive is regulating when are you able, for example, and how do you have to set up your strategy to be allowed to talk on carbon neutral or net zero? You have to, for example, to stick with that, you have to reduce your own footprint by 90% and only 10% is allowed to be compensated and offset with certificates. If you have to compensate more, then you are not allowed officially to use the term net zero. So this is already on its way. So this will be implemented pretty soon. Does it keep all the companies away from greenwashing, surely not. There will always be ways to display things a bit better. On the other side, I think more and more people who are working in those surroundings. So sustainability managers, chief sustainability officers in those company, at least those I know they all have a passion for what they do like I and do you have it. So they are really trying to impact things and they are not willing to greenwash, they are not willing to support companies. They must speaking for 100% all of them know and not. So there is surely so to say, black sheep in between there is even here. But the majority is interested in really taking impact. And I think over time, those companies were still trying to fake and just making a check in the box, they will be very quickly get transparent in comparison with others. So it's always very little companies who are providing a service as a single company, there is always comparisons with others. And you'll always be able to identify those who really make things serious and mean things serious and are really in that transformational process. And those who are just doing the check in the box thing and just throw it away then. So I'm pretty confident if you just keep your eyes open, if you trust them to your own gut feeling to your own heart, if you listen to what they are talking about, then you're definitely identified.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think are the most significant changes we're going to see in this space over the next 12 months?

Rainer: Yeah, 12 months will definitely be the time in which we'll see artificial intelligence, as already spoken about, dramatically increasing. There will be new technologies arising, which we might not even be able to think about right now. If you're just seeing the latest trends and the development of GPT and open AI, this is changing the world in a massive speed life never seen before. So this is the first thing. Second is, I think we have to have a way bigger focus on resilience and to be aware that things which we've already seen now. So, the effects on climate crisis, which is not going away anymore. So if you're still talking on make things transparent and report the as is, we have to put a bigger focus and we will have to dramatically fast focus on what will happen in the future. So prediction will be one of the aspects where both AI and resilience will have a huge role into it. So we have to adapt to situations. We have to get alternatives. We have to find ways to treat things and to handle things for us being human beings. But as well for companies and for service technicians, for example, then as well, for sure. And I think finally, what I hope and this is, I'm an optimist by heart. So glasses half full for me, not glass half empty. I think the world is connecting more and more. And what I've recently seen is that even those who a lot of people still think there is absolutely no awareness. So mostly what I hear if I'm talking to people, it's like, yeah, but what are we able to do if China is still treating how things is being treated in China? So China, for example, is the country which installed the biggest amount of renewable electricity over the last 12 months. So they've massively increased. For sure, not only for sustainability reasons, but they did. And the second is China is now implementing a third of the KPIs in the measurements of the European corporate sustainability reporting directly. So they're taking it over. They've seen based on our example. It does obviously work out. Well, not only for ecological reasons but for economical reasons as well. It does give advantage as competitors on the market. So they're just adopting it. They're taking it up. And this is, to me, a piece of hope that we as humanity and as in particular the enterprise world and the companies and the SME world, we are connecting globally. We have a global issue. We have a global problem. So we have to treat it global, not as competitive advantage, not with intellectual property, but with collaboration and with working towards one goal together with everyone who's in the world. And I think this is the three main aspects which I will, and I'm knocking on wood that it will make come true in the next 12 months, which will happen.

Sarah: All right, last question is, what are you most excited about in being out on your own with your own organization, helping companies work through this through Heartprint?

Rainer: Oh, wow. That's a very good question. So the one part which I'm really happy is speed. I mean, the big difference between the enterprise world and the SME world is definitely a yes in the enterprise world means yes. But we have to talk and listen and maybe make a concept here and do a pilot case there. So this is always time-wise, very slow and complex through the complexity of the organization. So it's something which was in regard of the speed we have to have for fighting climate crises and advancing and doing good things. This was something which worried me and which annoyed me in a lot of cases. And the SME world, I think in that remark, a yes means yes. And then it means yes now. And a no means no. And this is a bit of what I'm very much looking forward to being confronted with. If I'm able to maybe convince someone to really do things and execute things and they are willing to do it, then that means that we are doing it. And then that means we're doing it now and not in two years or in three. And so this is the one part. And the second is I'm a very straightforward person, as you know me already, Sarah, and the listeners might have identified over the last 40 minutes already as well. And now I'm not under the requirement to politically adjust everything. I say this is what makes me really happy. I'm able to just talk the way I am, to position myself the way I am, to go straightforward and just execute things, the way I'd like to see them and I'd like to make things happen. And this is helping them as well.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. You're able to really lean into your authenticity. And I'm excited to see how that helps you have an impact on these others and helps them have an impact on their objectives. So really happy for you, excited for you, and really appreciate you coming to share. We will make sure all of your contact details are in the show notes. So if people want to get in touch to talk about their journeys, they will be able to do that. And of course, we hope to have you back again sometime.

Rainer: I would be hoping to, not only in two years, but maybe a bit earlier. And always a pleasure talking to you. Thank you much for the time. And thanks for having me, Sarah. Thank you.

Sarah: Thank you. You can find more by visiting the home of UNSCRIPTED at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.ai. As always, thank you for listening.

An artificial intelligence (AI) search company called Lucidworks recently published a report on what they characterized as a slowdown in AI spending, and it brought to mind a roundtable discussion at our recent Future of Field Service Live event in Cologne, Germany.

During my final interview with Jelle Coppens, Product Domain Expert for Service and Repair at Electrolux, the discussion turned to AI. Electrolux is using IFS's AI-powered planning and scheduling optimization engine (PSO) and plans to expand their use of the technology. The conversation was a great real-world use case of AI in action, but what struck me was that during the roundtable sessions after the session, some participants said they are growing tired of hearing about AI.

I get it. AI is an inescapable topic, no matter what industry you are in. Much of the roundtable venting had to do with the volume of AI coverage and the lack of specifics on exactly where and how to use the technology. (“We are tired of hearing about this technology” is not part of the Gartner hype cycle, but maybe it should be!)

That's why the Lucidworks report caught my eye, because their data indicates actual deployment experiences are throwing some cold water on AI-mania, and that will probably help make the projects that do move forward a lot more successful. I think what has happened is that the bandwagon took off without many defining a clear business case or selecting proven, functional tools. Now we are stepping back to assess how best to make use of AI, and I can see how all of the conversation can cause some to grow weary.

However, I do believe AI is an incredible opportunity – in field service and beyond. One we need to take caution to harness appropriately and balance with humanity, but the potential to layer more intelligence into existing digital ecosystems is massive.

AI in Field Service

In field service, AI is (at least near term) best suited for what the tech industry now refers to as co-pilot scenarios, where the algorithm exists to enhance or augment workflows, rather than supplanting the real humans doing that work. In applications where there are simply too many variables or too much data for a person to possibly evaluate accurately, AI can help narrow choices and point people in the right direction. It can also help to automate work that is time consuming but low value, and to heighten predictive capabilities.

AI projects that are not well planned or properly implemented can quickly prove to be costly and useless. Large language models (LLMs) trained on unfiltered data can hallucinate, and models that ingest AI-created data can suffer from what is known as model collapse (I talked about this back in April).

The Lucidworks survey indicates that AI adoption is beginning to slow because of some of these concerns, with just 63% of organizations planning to increase AI spending this year, compared to 93% in 2023. According to the study, just around one quarter of planned projects are fully implemented, and 42% have not produced significant benefits. In many cases, projects haven’t made it out of the pilot stage.

The number of companies worried about project cost has gone up 14 times compared to 2023, and concerns about response accuracy have increased by a factor of five, The more complex the application, the more these concerns increase (along with costs), while success is harder to achieve.

The WBR Insights "AI in Field Service Report" also mirrors some of the Lucidworks findings. In that survey, 92% of respondents said they struggled with legacy integration in their AI implementations, and 74% were challenged by a lack of data quantity or quality. Costs were a problem for 62% of organizations.

Most of the companies in the WBR were already using AI for predictive maintenance (88%), parts wastage prevention (82%), case predictions (58%), and call deflection (57%).

When it is deployed successfully, AI can produce notable benefits in time savings, increased first-time fix rates, reduced parts wastage, and faster resolution times. For instance, another report from MarketsandMarkets claims the integration of mobility and AI in field service can result in 30% to 40% productivity gains.

So, are we facing AI fatigue? In some cases, yes – but not because the technology is overhyped. Rather because many companies leapt into AI projects haphazardly when the buzz began, only to learn the business benefits of AI demand a much more fastidious approach. To me that’s what this data represents; a collective step back to take a more tempered, strategic approach to AI, which will ultimately pay off.

Episode 271

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro takes the hot seat as she is interviewed by Professor Hany Salah of the American University in Cairo about the relevance of service transformation. They focus on the shift from viewing service as a cost center to a profit center and the importance of mindset shifts and change management. They further discuss best practices and trends impacting how companies are innovating and evolving.

Sarah Nicastro is the creator of Future of Field Service and VP, Customer Engagement at IFS. After completing her bachelor’s degree in psychology and then her MBA, Sarah intended to get into the non-profit sector, but life had other plans. She began her career in the media with Field Technologies magazine never even having heard the term “field service.” Expecting to grow bored quickly, she was surprised to fall in love with the layers of evolution and innovation that have kept things interesting for all these years.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Full Show Notes

Sarah: Involve your workforce early on in the process to make them feel a part of it. And also, it's not just like a change management trick to make them feel a part of it. We also need to respect the fact that our frontline employees that are engaging with customers on a day-to-day basis often have a far better understanding of what the needs actually are than managers that sit layers and layers and layers above. So it's not just sort of an exercise to placate them and to make them feel part of the journey. They really can contribute significantly to helping you achieve the best outcome, but involve them early and all the way through.

Hany: First, thank you, Sarah, for your participation with me today. My pleasure to have you in my strategic management course with my participant. My pleasure.

Sarah: Happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Hany: I like it a lot, the term customer engagement. So what does it mean, customer engagement in real, related to a lot of buzzwords, how we can consider customer feedback, customer satisfaction, customer experience, and customer centricity? What does it mean, customer engagement?

Sarah: Yeah, that's a really good question. So the way I like to think of it is customer experience is probably the most common focus for people. So when they're considering themselves as customer centric, they think about the customer experience. And then when you think about the customer experience, oftentimes, different terms come into play of the customer journey, customer feedback, customer sentiment, those sorts of things. I think for me, customer engagement is sort of, if customer experience is more of the brain side, customer engagement is more of the heart side. Okay, so where customer experience is more thinking about what happens when a customer purchases our product or engages with our service, how do they feel leaving that interaction? Customer engagement, to me, is about the relationship so not just on an individual transaction basis or experience basis, but more, how does the customer feel about our brand and our value as a whole? And are we diversifying the value that we're providing, not just through our primary products or services, but other ways that we're being a trusted advisor or building that relationship. So that's how I think about it.

Hany: Great. Related to services transformation strategies, how can an organization effectively identify the services need regarding transformation, the net full change management, how we can change our processes in real in order to increase the efficiency profitability from the business generated under term services transformation strategy?

Sarah: So how do you identify what the need for service transformation is?

Hany: Yeah.

Sarah: Right. Okay. So there's a lot of different ways you could look at answering that question. Okay. So. A lot of it depends on how the company is perceiving service to the function of its business. What I mean by this, when I said that early on in my career, I became very intrigued by what was going on. There was a shift that took place then where service traditionally had been perceived as a cost center. It was a necessary evil. It was a means to an end. And the entire focus was on keeping costs low, keeping efficiency high. And there was a shift to companies starting to recognize that service can actually be a very strong competitive differentiator. It can be a huge potential profit center for businesses. And so part of how you would answer that question depends on how a company perceives the service function. So if it is one where it's fundamental to their value proposition and it's seen as a potential profit center, then I would say one of the first things you need to understand to answer the question of how you must transform is what it is your customers want and need. Okay. So I always suggest starting outside in instead of inside out. Okay. So I think that would be where I would begin is really trying to understand what do our customers think about what we deliver today, but also what aren't we doing that they would find value in or what are others doing that they find value in and really sort of assess how much of that competitive advantage you are delivering on. Okay. Then you have to have a good understanding of where you are today. So if there are these different opportunities for you to deliver more value to your customers in a way that would help you make more money, what would it take to do that? Is it different skills, different service delivery model, et cetera, et cetera? And then that's where you figure out sort of where you need to transform. There's also the whole consideration of the internal side. So how efficient are you versus how efficient do you need to be? but I think the best starting place to answer that question is looking at it through the lens of the customer, because if you're harnessing the potential of service as a competitive differentiator, you're able to increase your profit margin where not that you don't want to be efficient, but like that shouldn't be the primary focus. I feel like efficiency is the primary focus for an organization who's still sort of perceiving service as a cost center, not a profit center. So I would say starting with really understanding what your customers want, need and value, and then kind of assessing how much of that you're delivering today or how much you could potentially deliver.

Hany: From your perspective, what are some common challenges in front of organization to increase the services efficiency from internal perspective and from external perspective in order to engage a lot of stakeholders during end-to-end lifecycle?

Sarah: So I can think of a few big challenges. The first is really that mindset shift. So kind of what we just talked about of how service is perceived. It's an early challenge, but it's one that a lot of companies get hung up on because particularly when you think about a company that has a long history of delivering products and or products and services, that mindset shift of not thinking about the product or the service or the line item that you're offering and instead thinking about what brings value to the customer. So the outcome or the peace of mind and what does that look like? That can be a really big hurdle for companies to get over that I think is sort of the starting line for the journey. So that mindset shift is one and that mindset shift has to start at the top, but it trickles down through the organization. So generally speaking human beings are hardwired to resist change. And so when you start really changing the way that you are approaching customers, what the go-to-market might look like, how you're delivering service and what tools employees are using or how they're engaging with customers, it can be a lot of change for people to come on board with. So change management becomes incredibly important. I think the next one is really the technology landscape, because I heard someone say at a conference a few weeks ago, and I liked the way they phrased it. They said, the technology landscape has become more and more sophisticated, but have we? So the technology landscape, there's a ton of capability. The challenge is not in the capability, it's in readying the business to be able to apply that capability. And so that can be a challenge. And also it's evolving so quickly. So there's this pace of change from a technological innovation perspective that companies really have to keep up with. But it's tricky because you also can't race ahead of where the business is. You have to bring the business along. So I think that can be very challenging. And I would say for the vast majority, of companies that I talk with, another really big challenge today is talent. So attracting new talent into service at the pace that existing talent is retiring or leaving the workforce, understanding that the historical practice of hiring based on prior experience is really, really not sustainable. We need to think about how we train employees that have potential, or aptitude, but not necessarily experience. And that just means doing a lot of things differently within the organization to sort of adapt to just the realities of the talent landscape today. So that's another.

Hany: Another point linked to your direction. In a lot of organizations, we are struggling to serve customer SLAs. So from your perspective, how we can accelerate our SLAs from a response time perspective, resolve time perspective, and how we can rely on technology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, any cloud application to serve Mr. Customer better, specifically from SLAs scope obligations.

Sarah: Good question. And this is an area that is really exciting because the technology is there and it's ready to help. OK, so I think there's a couple of layers to that question. The first is, are we leveraging remote capabilities to assess what's going on? So right out of the gate, if we can understand what the problem is, sometimes we can remotely resolve that problem. Sometimes we can't, but we can significantly increase first time fix if we just know what we're going to do. Right. So organizations who aren't doing any sort of remote diagnostics, remote service, attempting remote resolution. That's a big shift taking place right now because you have the AI and the machine learning capabilities. So if you have connected devices, you're able to sort of start to predict. Potential failure points, you're able to monitor for issues, et cetera. And then you have tools like augmented reality that there's a wide range of things where you can have a technician to customer interaction. You can have a technician to technician interaction. But there's a lot of ways that we can start to use some sort of remote triage or remote assessment as our first line of defense. So right there, you can avoid any unnecessary trips, things that are really simple to fix. Sometimes you even have human error. Customers think there's a problem, but really you need to just tell them, switch this, do this, et cetera. So eliminate any of those unnecessary visits with remote capabilities. Then there's incredibly sophisticated technology on the market right now. IFS has its own AI-powered planning and scheduling optimization tool. So I could tell you stories of a bunch of different companies that are using it that just what you're saying. So the thing that's really interesting is you can set the criteria based on what's most important to you. So for your example, you're asking about meeting customer SLAs, okay? So you put in those SLA requirements, you put in your talent, you put in your parts, you put in all of the data, and it will automate the process of planning, scheduling, and dispatching so that you are meeting SLAs, you're minimizing travel time, you're minimizing repeat visits. So there's a lot of efficiency and productivity gains that can come from using those technologies. The other thing that's interesting about the planning and scheduling optimization tool is the criteria isn't the same for every company. So you were asking about customer SLAs, but let's say that you're in an industry where response time isn't mission critical, but the customer has really strong sustainability initiatives. You can then set the criteria around least travel time or least emissions, right? So you can pick whatever it is that your primary goals are and then automate your operations based on that and compared to a lot of the manual processes that companies still have in place for dispatching, it can provide a huge, not only cost savings, efficiency gains, faster response, etc.

Hany: I totally agree. My criteria to measure the efficiency regarding how we can implement service in real, how we can measure the gap between what we say and what we do. So in order to increase our efficiency and by the end of the day have the readiness to apply all scope obligation based on SLA's obligation and scope of work, we have to measure the gap and work in real how we can decrease this gap in order to be real in front of our customers. Most of us and most of my participants working in a busy organization from process perspective, we have very sophisticated process, a lot of milestone, a lot of buy-in, a lot of approvals, a lot of key stakeholders to obtain the buy-in according to DOE. From your perspective, how we can compromise or at least make the balance between the internal customization and external personalization in front of customers. By the end of the day, Mr. Customer needs personalization experience. And. At the same time, we have a lot of challenges regarding internal processes, a lot of approval cycles. We need to review and validate and back to subject matter experts in order to obtain the approval. How we can implement a balance considering Mr. Customer experience and his personalization perspective or needs.

Sarah: Great question. So when you think about it, offering a personalized experience to every single customer is not a scalable business practice, right? So that being said, to your point, part of customers' expectations is they want the experience to feel personalized. They don't want to feel like one of thousands or millions. They want to feel unique and important. So I think a big part of this, honestly, is in communication. It's in understanding how the sales process is different in this landscape, like this outcomes-based landscape versus a more transactional business model of the past so what I mean by that is you can really personalize a customer's experience quite a bit just based on speaking in a value narrative instead of in a transactional narrative. That being said, of course, they're going to expect some choice, like some real personalization behind that. And I think most companies have the best success in sort of creating almost templatized personalization. So essentially, you have a core solution, but you have some different offerings on top of that, that customers can select from. Okay, so it offers that personalized feel. But in reality, they are choosing from some things that you would already sort of expect them to find important. A lot of this comes down to when you get into the outcomes-based service conversation, it becomes really important to understand your customer personas. So if you're selling into different industries or different environments, different size organizations, once you can sort of understand the commonalities of what's important to them, you can create these options based on things that you know they will find important, but they're choosing from. So then they're... Feeling a sense of autonomy and personalization, but you're able to plan as an organization for most of what they're going to select.

Hany: Another point regarding to internal perspective, any organization has three legs, people, process, and application. So from your perspective, from your point of view, how we can implement smart integration criteria to rely on services to reach a successful balance between people perspective, process perspective, and application perspective?

Sarah: I think the people part is always the hardest. I think because anytime you're trying to align those three or you're trying to make changes to the process or to the application, the people part is where the challenges will lie. So I think for me, it sort of comes back to the change management, giving people a voice, listening to feedback, making sure that communication is very strong and any sort of change or alignment that's taking place, they understand the cause of and also understand how it can benefit them. I think of those three things, people will always be the toughest to stay ahead of.

Speaker: Sure, there is a common challenges and roadblocks for us during the implementing this transformation, service transformation. So what are the common challenges that we might face and how we can overcome it?

Sarah: I talked about the mindset shift and the change management. A couple notes on that just before I talk about another thing is we need to be conscious of the fact that while most leaders within service businesses understand that we have a shortage of talent, and if anything, we need to become more efficient because we can't bring in talent at the pace we need to there is still this fear within frontline workers of the technology. I think they still see it as a potential risk to their livelihoods. So even though that fear might seem misplaced to us, we need to be putting them at ease. We need to be celebrating not just achievement, but effort. And we need to be really considering how we're communicating change, et cetera. I would say the other big stumbling block, like if I think about introducing new technology to transform service is it always seems easier than it's going to be because there inevitably will be processes that need changed, things that need to be addressed. So try and have realistic expectations and try and find a partner who will help you have realistic expectations. And then depending on what you're doing, there's sort of a data readiness consideration, particularly when you think about leveraging AI. It's something that's in every headline everywhere with good reason, but if companies aren't at a point where they have done a good job of building their data infrastructure, it can seem a lot easier to just put in place than it is. So I would say those are some of the challenges to be prepared for.

Speaker: How important is employee engagement or let them buy in during the service transformation process to be engaged and to keep them in the comfort zone and keeping them engaged?

Sarah: I would say it's critical because I mentioned back when I sort of came into this space and I saw that shift from cost center to profit center. Soon after that, companies started really focusing on customer experience. So service organizations, once they recognized that service was a path to differentiation, to revenue, they started really focusing on customer experience and trying to better understand what their customers valued, how they felt about their service experience, etc. I think if we're being honest, I think we sort of did that at the detriment of our employee experience and our employee engagement. We focused so much on the customer that we really overlooked the connection of those two things. So in field service specifically, the technician that is going into a customer location to provide service is often the most frequent face-to-face interaction that a customer has with the brand. They really are representing the company and the brand. And so if you have someone going to do that who is unhappy, not engaged, not empowered, you can imagine that they're not going to deliver a great customer experience. So it's very, very important for us to acknowledge the connection between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. And the other thing I would say is it's important to acknowledge that connection. It's important to make it a priority in the business, not just during a transformation, especially during a transformation, but really all of the time. We need to be able to make sure that our employees feel valued. They're adequately recognized for their contribution. They have a good relationship with their line manager. They are able to understand their potential for career advancement and so on and so on. In a time of transformation, I think one of the most important things is to make them feel a part of it from very early on. So when you sort of identify whatever the need for transformation is. Getting together sort of a key stakeholder group, including different functions of the business, different layers of responsibility where everyone feels represented. And having them contribute to the selection of the technology, the refinement of the solution, and then ultimately the deployment of the solution. So that they feel that they're a part of the change versus the change happening to them.

Speaker: How can an organization make a balance or what is the balance needed between for agility and flexibility from our side and with the need for stability and reliability during the service transformation?

Sarah: Yeah, so I think there's definitely a need for both, obviously. If I think about this from a technology standpoint, one of the things that can get very complex is that there's so many tools available today that can provide different capabilities, different benefits. What we have to keep in mind is that I think that reliability, that solid capability, I think comes from having a good core solution that you're using, whatever you use to have everyone have visibility into what's going on within the business, have access to customer history, to knowledge that they might need to conduct their jobs. Something that really acts as a source of truth for the organization to run off of. That's really important for that sort of consistency. Everyone sees the same information. Everyone can access the same information. It's updated in real time, et cetera. When we start to want to achieve some of these different things we've talked about today. Okay, we could use IoT to have access to analytics on our equipment, and then we could apply machine learning and AI to that to predict failures, and then we could use augmented reality so that technicians can talk to one another, et cetera. If we start to bolt too many things on, we start to introduce a lot of potential failure points. So one of the things that's important to balance is benefiting from the sophistication of technology, but also making sure that you aren't creating more complexity than you need, because each point of complexity starts to bring with it a potential for a breakdown in communication or a potential failure. I would say the other thing is true in terms of the flexibility standpoint. So we need to be looking for, and I don't know the technicality of everyone on the call, but 10, 15 years ago, when a company deployed a service management solution, it was done often on premise and typically would then be in place for 10, 15, 20 plus years. With the evolution of the technology and now a lot more cloud-based solutions, that practice is very outdated. And what happens is you end up putting a solution in place that meets the needs of the business at that particular time but the needs of the business change. So you need to be seeking technology that can allow those business changes without a significant investment, meaning time, money, energy, effort, etc. to upgrade all of the time. All right. So there's ways to do that that allow you to have more agility built into the system you're using to manage your operations so that as the way you need to deliver service evolves, or as your customer expectations evolve, you can build that in instead of essentially starting over. So that's kind of the best way I guess I can answer that right now. It's both are very, very important. But in a lot of ways, there are less odds with one another than you might

Speaker: think. When it comes to your past experience with organizations, what do you think are the best practices or steps that an organization can take to begin this service transformation journey?

Sarah: I would say this, have internal alignment on what the role of and potential for services in the business and what you're aiming to achieve. Have a really good understanding of what's important to your customers. And like we talked about earlier, sort of use that to then assess where you are today versus where you need to be. Assuming that there will be a need for technology, I would say always make sure that you are asking for customer case studies and customer references from any technology provider that you are assessing. Make sure you're looking at things like their longevity in the market, their financial stability. You have a lot of smaller players that will pop up and go away. And that can be a real headache if you invest in a solution that then a few years later is out of support. And then, as I mentioned, involve your workforce early on in the process to make them feel a part of it. And also, it's not just like a change management trick to make them feel a part of it. We also need to respect the fact that our frontline employees that are engaging with customers on a day-to-day basis often have a far better understanding of what the needs actually are than managers that sit layers and layers and layers above. So it's not just sort of an exercise to placate them and to make them feel part of the journey. They really can contribute significantly to helping you achieve the best outcome. But involve them early and all the way through. And then the last thing I would say is, when I was asked earlier about how do we know if we need to be transforming, everyone does. So be prepared to go right into a practice of continual innovation. So there is no finish line anymore. Like this is something that is ongoing for every business.

Hany: Unfortunately, we reached it to the end of today's session. So I would like to have final comment from you, Sarah, in order to close the session.

Sarah: Yeah, well, I mean, you put me on the spot there. I've said a lot, you know, I think get excited about the potential, I think would be my biggest piece of advice. Oftentimes it's because there's so much or because the pace of change is so fast, it can be overwhelming, but the only difference between a challenge and an opportunity is your perspective. So think about it as an opportunity and be excited about the ability to contribute. If you have other questions, Hany, feel free to give out my email and I appreciate having you.

Hany: My pleasure having you, Sarah, and for all participants, don't forget the service business is a people business. So we have to do believe the future is still very human.

Episode 270

In this solo episode of the Unscripted Podcast, host Sarah Nicastro recaps the Future of Field Service Live event in Cologne, Germany, highlighting key insights from experts at Rolls Royce Power Systems, TOMRA Recycling, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Electrolux on industry innovation, strategic vision, talent diversity, and service transformation. The conference emphasized the importance of attracting and retaining talent while maximizing existing resources to drive efficiency and innovation in the field service industry.

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Sarah: I had someone who was a first-time attendee say how much they appreciated feeling comforted by the fact that they often feel these challenges are unique to their business. And then coming and hearing from everyone, you know, they were comforted by realizing that across these industries and even across geographies, we had a lot of different areas in the room. There are people at different parts of the journey, but everyone is sort of navigating the same challenges.

Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. This is gonna be a quick one and it's gonna be a solo one. I am on my way home from our Future of Field Service live event in Cologne, Germany. But as I always do, I wanted to record a quick solo episode and share with everyone a bit of a recap of yesterday's event.

So as I mentioned, we were in Cologne. This is our third Future of Field Service live event in Germany, but first time in the city of Cologne. It was a great day, great location on the Rhine, and we had a wonderful line-up of speakers. So we started the day with a bit of the lay of the land and my state of the industry overview. Our first speaker was Joern Lindstaedt, who is the Vice President for Global Customer Service at Rolls-Royce Power Systems. Now Joern is in the Power Systems group, but he has been with Rolls-Royce for over 18 years, and he's worked in different divisions in that time. So he has a lot of knowledge about the company's history in servitization. Rolls-Royce is known for its innovative hour-by-the-hour offering. In many ways, I think was the originator of the servitization concept. But in his division today, the Power Systems division, they are still working on servitizing that part of the business and figuring out what makes sense for an advanced services offering in the Power Systems space. So he talked about some of his historical knowledge, having worked in the aviation part of the business, but also how that applies to the way that the Power Systems business is transforming today and the idea of continual innovation. So he had some wonderful insights. He talked a lot about important considerations, some of the things that you have to balance, and some of the pragmatic steps that it takes to sort of work through that advanced services journey. And it was a really great conversation. A big part of it, obviously, tied in with talent and figuring out how to offer more flexibility to talent because that's what everyone wants. We also talked about how the servitization journey really hinges on the ability to execute service flawlessly. And so a lot of those considerations. So it was a great session, very knowledgeable person and a really good conversation.

Next up, we had Clinten van der Merwe. I'm sure I didn't say that correctly. Clinten, I'm sorry. Who is the head of global service and project management at TOMRA Recycling. So Clinten spoke about the importance of thinking big and specifically how to set a compelling strategic vision for service. So I really love this session because Clinten also has a lot of experience in service. He's been in his role at TOMRA for just two years. And so he's coming into the organization to do a lot of this innovation. And he talked about the necessity of really thinking outside of the box, of really pushing boundaries, of really working to shift legacy mindset. And he also, though, talked about how, you have to think also about how to give that to folks in bite-sized chunks if it's something that is going to be a bit overwhelming for them. So we talked about the importance of thinking big, but then he also talked about how he has set his strategy in a way that is aggressive, but attainable and inspiring, but relatable, which I just loved. He talked about the fact that he had a quite intense, 10-year vision. He calls that his North Star. That is what he's focused on in 10 years. But from the perspective of sharing his strategy within the organization, he has a five-year vision and then a strategy year by year. So talking about thinking big, but when you're communicating that vision to someone, being able to make sure that it's digestible and it isn't too overwhelming, etc. Part of his vision for 2035 is that field technicians will be able to work, I think he said, from their laptop in a coffee shop with flip-flops on. And I love that he's thinking that way because he's really thinking about what's possible and what would help the industry and be more appealing to new waves of talent. We also talked a lot in that session about the importance of storytelling and what that looks like communicating, a strategy and a vision to different stakeholders. So that was another really great session.

We took a little break for lunch. And then in the afternoon, our first session was with Daniel Trabel, who is the director of field service for EMEA at Thermo Fisher Scientific. You may recognize Daniel's name because he was on the podcast not too long ago. And we had a session talking about how to modernize the field service talent approach to drive greater diversity and impact. This made a lot of sense because talent came up in both conversations in our morning sessions. And so Daniel was able to really put a lot of context to why diversity is so important, not just because we're struggling with talent or we need to find new ways to find new talent, but because of the value it brings to the business. And then he was able to share some of the specific steps Thermo has taken to review and reshape job postings, to even redefine and reconfigure service roles to create opportunities for people that didn't have certain certifications and also people that wanted more flexible work structure and not as much travel and how that's helped them to make service more attractive to candidates that maybe wouldn't have been interested in it before, how it's allowed them to bring more women into field service and then work to advance those women throughout the ranks of the organization. So some really good specifics about how they did that, how it's impacted their business, how they're now expanding that focus outside of just service and what the future might hold and some of the forward-looking things that we could be thinking about to take this forward. I really, really loved this session because it gave such good specific advice to folks, because I think I even said as we were kicking things off, a lot of organizations are very cognizant of the talent challenge. They are very quick to complain a lot about it. Not nearly as many are doing what Thermo has done, which is really accept the reality and get very, very creative on what to do differently. So I think it's just a wonderful story to show what's possible when you just essentially stop making excuses and start forcing yourself to adapt and think differently. It was also interesting, because there was a woman in the audience who is a field service engineer, and she was able to weigh in and contribute to the conversation as well, which was just serendipitous and really cool.

The last interview session of the day was with Jelle Coppens, who is Product Domain Expert for Service and Repair at Electrolux. And we talked in that session about the ways that Electrolux is working to maximize service resource utilization. I liked how this session fit in because, again, when we think about, you know, the challenges field service organizations have today to meet customer demands, we talk a lot about needing to bring in new talent, needing to train talent up, needing to retain talent. We don't talk as much about the areas where we may be underutilizing, drastically sometimes underutilizing the talent that we do have. So this was a really good look at how Electrolux has embarked on service transformation journey to make sure that they have that visibility, that they're able to maximize utilization, minimize idle time. But we also talked about the need to balance that with not just trying to wring every last ounce of productivity out of a person, making sure we keep in mind that the technicians are people, they need to have work-life balance, we need to be thinking about how we balance those things, but certainly thinking about, from the perspective of how we use technology to work smarter and make sure that we are complementing all of our efforts from the perspective of innovation and strategy and modernizing our talent approach with the very pragmatic practices of making sure we have those foundational systems in place where we don't have these significant inefficiencies in our processes and we're making sure that we're working smart. We talked in some of the breakout sessions.

So after Jelle's session, we had some roundtable discussions and AI came up a lot. Some people were saying they're sick of hearing about it. Others were talking about, you know, wanting to see how people are using it. So there was conversations on that continuum. But we talked about the fact that, you know, number one, as Electrolux is doing, you need to really find the ways to make sure that you have that solid system and processes in place that you can build upon, and then Jelle spoke about how, you know, not only is the company using IFS's AI-powered planning and scheduling optimization engine, but they have a lot of plans for the future about how they can layer in different areas of automation through different parts of the workflow and basically continue to expand on that concept of utilizing resources while working smart, etc.

So we ended the day after those roundtable discussions with some drinks and networking. We were fortunate to have beautiful weather in Cologne, and it was a great day. I enjoyed myself as I always do. I had someone who was a first-time attendee say how much they appreciated feeling comforted by the fact that they often feel these challenges are unique to their business. And then coming and hearing from everyone, you know, they were comforted by realizing that across these industries, and even across geographies, we had a lot of different areas in the room. There are people at different parts of the journey, but everyone is sort of navigating the same challenges. I also had someone who has come to all three events we've done in Germany who said he was a little nervous that it would be repetitive and was very pleasantly surprised that with the content, he was able to see the progression of concepts and themes over that time and see how people really are, you know, maybe not super rapidly, but working to evolve and keep pace with the change that is happening. So I really appreciated that feedback. I really appreciate having these opportunities to, you know, not only meet with these folks in person myself, but to allow them this space to come together and see people scanning each other's LinkedIn profiles and saying, let's catch up. I want to hear more about this. I think the woman field service engineer got a few job offers, throughout the day. So there's a lot of value that comes from getting together in these ways. So it was a great event. It's the last one for a bit. So I'm going to focus on spending some time with my family and just doing my weekly work from home. But we did recently launch the future of field service standout 50 leadership awards, which I'm really excited about. And we will continue to share about nominations are open until July 15th and at the next event, which will take place alongside IFS unleashed, we will be announcing our first ever top 50. So very excited about that and also excited to have a bit of a break. So as always, you can find information on the awards and everything else we have going on at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast was published in partnership with IFS. To learn more at ifs.com. And as always, thank you for listening.

In countless conversations, podcast interviews, and event sessions I’ve heard the same phrase: “Service is, and always will be, a people business.” I agree wholeheartedly, but I think it’s interesting to ponder what exactly does this mean?

This statement seems to surface among a few common themes – one is when discussing advancements in technology. Almost as a reminder of the importance of human connection and the power of our frontline workforce. Another common point in conversation where this phrase arises is in seizing the full potential of service; determining how best to honor, protect, and leverage the relationship the service provider has with customers.

When I ponder what the phrase means, there are a few things that quickly come to mind:

The impact of people on creating brand perception and customer experience and loyalty. We know that the service workforce is often the most prominent face of the brand for customers, and that position holds a lot of power. Sure, the worker is there to “get a job done,” but in reality, when they are properly enabled and empowered, they do so much more. They build relationships that foster customer satisfaction and create goodwill for the inevitable moments that things might not go smoothly. They are the epitome of the term “trusted advisor;” a term that many can try to capitalize on and exploit, but only those really making the effort can achieve. There are aspects of the daily job that can be automated to make things easier and smoother, even certain service tasks that could be eliminated, and roles may change to where service execution becomes increasingly remote and so on. But I think, fundamentally, the humanity that exists in this relationship and the nuance to it that only people can create will remain, even if its form morphs and evolves.
The potential of people to uncover new service opportunities and aid in business transformation. The companies who don’t recognize the wealth of knowledge that exists at the frontline to lead their business to the next phases of success are truly missing the boat. We talk about the importance of customer intimacy and the need to truly understand a customers’ business; who better to do so than the service technician? When we are able to consider how they can take part in innovation rather than being solely at the receiving end, we can unlock a new source of valuable perspective to help influence what’s valuable to customers and therefore how our service can grow and expand. We can use predictive analytics to understand trends and to infer a lot about how customers use our products and what they may find value in or need, but, again, the relationships and interactions that service is built upon are a treasure trove of perspective that can’t be found anywhere else.
The unique way people complement digital capabilities. Data is powerful and AI is bringing to service a new wave of intelligence that holds tremendous appeal and potential, but when the phrase “service is a people business” is spoken in this context, it’s to remind us that those capabilities are most impactful when used alongside the power of people. There’s so much debate about at what point AI will replace humans, I think we remind ourselves and each other of the people nature of service to reinforce the fact that we must balance our focus on and investment in technology with our continued and amplified focus on and investment in our people. This doesn’t mean roles and duties won’t change, but we need to work to define what can and shouldn’t be automated and shape that into what the future of service will look like, and how it will remain a people business.
The irrefutable, irreplaceable importance of human connection. In all of these ways, and more, there’s just something about human connection. This comes up at every Future of Field Service event we host; there’s nothing like coming together face-to-face to share with each other, learn from one another, and feel less alone in the world. It can be hard to articulate or summarize, but we as humans are meant to engage with one another; and while in service what that engagement looks like may take new shapes in the next era, there will always be a certain part of the experience that can only be delivered by people.

What would you add to my list? How are you thinking about ensuring we protect the power of people while working to innovate and keep pace with digital capabilities? I’d love to hear from you!

Episode 269

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Corrie Prunuske, former President of CoolSys, for a conversation around her experiences as a woman advancing her career in service, the importance of sponsors and how they differ from mentors, the differences between diverse and inclusive, and much more.

Corrie is an experienced executive general manager and growth leader with a proven track record of delivering exceptional results. With over 28 years of leadership experience at Johnson Controls, she excels in sales and operational strategy execution. Corrie is deeply passionate about developing people to achieve their full potential.

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Full Show Notes

Sarah - 00:00:39:

Hello, welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Unscripted Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to get an inside look at a woman service leader's journey from surviving to thriving to giving back. I'm thrilled to have with me today, Corrie Prunuske, who is the former president of CoolSys. Corrie, welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast.

Corrie - 00:01:17:

Hi, thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me today. I'm excited to be here.

Sarah - 00:01:21:

So I had the opportunity to hear Corrie speak at this year's Field Service Palm Springs event. I really loved your keynote because you were really just sharing your story, but in a way where you could point back to certain things that people could take something away from. So I really enjoyed it. We're going to sort of re-emphasize some of those points today, but get into some other things as well. So it should be a great chat. But before we get into my questions for you. Can you just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your background, anything you want to share?

Corrie - 00:01:59:

Oh, thanks, Sarah. Yeah. I mean, like, first of all, I'm a mother of four. My husband and I, we have a blended family. So we have two kids that I got for free when I married him, which was awesome. And then I have mine too. And they are perfect stairsteps. So they're all now adults. The oldest is 21. The youngest is 18. And this fall, we have four kids in collage. So, that's what I do with my personal life is raising those kids together with my husband and their other parents. But I'm also a leader and I've led in large organizations over the years. And I think that, you know, you lead a family, you lead friend groups and you lead at work. And so many roles that I fill, being a mother, number one, but all the other things that I do in my life help me with being a leader.

Sarah - 00:02:49:

Yeah, often you learn things in those different realms of your life that really can help you in the others. There's these lessons that I think particularly with parenting, there's a lot of things you can take and apply to other parts of your life because it forces you to grow so much as a person and, you know, expand your thinking, but also learn new skills and all of that good stuff. Most recently, you were the president of CoolSys, but as you said, you have been a leader in other organizations as well, and we're going to get into some of that. During your presentation at Palm Springs, you broke your story into these three parts. I want to talk a bit about each of those, and the first was getting in and surviving. Can you share a bit about that and tell us a little bit about your early career?

Corrie - 00:03:37:

Thanks, Sarah. I've been 30 years now in the HVAC and R industry. I worked at Johnson Controls for 28 years, and I worked at CoolSys for nearly two years. Gives you kind of perspective on where I am. But when I got out of college, I had an engineering degree, an electrical engineering degree, and I was really just looking for a job. And I was actually getting married. My fiancee already had a job, had been working for a year in Schenectady, New York. I drew a 60-mile circle around that and applied for any job that was in that circle. And actually, Johnson Controls was on campus as a recruiter, and I got the opportunity to meet with them. And they had an office in Albany, New York, which was in that 60-mile radius. I was an application engineer. Actually, I think the first interview as sales engineer, I ended up in an application engineer job. But it was really important to me in that first job to be called an engineer. I worked so hard on my degree, and I just really didn't want to give up the title. I was like, okay, that checks that box. And then the salary was right in the range, that I wanted to be in. And for me, it was get your foot in the door and then see what happens. But I promise you, I never thought that I was going to spend 28 years there. I really just was looking for a job and looking for a way to support myself and be able to do the things that I wanted to do. And I'm thrilled that I actually was lucky enough to get that opportunity and then to make the most of it. So I started in the Albany, New York branch. I was an application engineer. I spent a lot of time on construction sites. In those early years, I would eventually project engineer, which meant even more time on construction sites. And for me, it was a really good experience. I know most people are like, oh, as a woman, you worked on construction sites. That must have been really hard. And I got to tell you, I was treated really, really well in my early career. I really feel like the people that I had around me, I had a mentor, somebody who had been there a long time. He was actually an electrician by trade, but he had moved his way up into a project engineer role. A great mentor, huge fan. I was 21 years old or whatever. It started right. And here's this big guy. And he taught me so much and was so willing to give back to me. And I really appreciated that. And I think it helped really accelerate my ability to learn my new job. And the other thing that was a piece of my early career is that I was very computer literate. I had grown up actually, even for my generation, probably a little bit more computer literate than most because I grew up in a household. My dad was an engineer and we had computers in the household very early before most people did. And so I learned computer skills really early. And so now my kids just make fun of me because I can't even get through my iPhone and figure out how to turn the settings on and off. But back then I was pretty good. And I got to do a lot of things. They would send me to the advanced training on different subjects. So I got an opportunity to meet a lot of people, to get to know what was possible in the organization, which I think I didn't know. I wouldn't have known if I hadn't had those skills. I also applied for a job that had no business applying for about three years into my career. And there was... There's a job called the Area Quality Assurance Manager. And I had met the guy who had filled that role, who was moving on to something else. And he had come by our office and I would always work with him because he was responsible for the LAN, all right, the Local Area Network. And so I would help him out with those things. So I really wanted to do that job. And it was one of those jobs that people don't really know what it was. And in every different area, which is like a geographic distinction, every area, there was one of these folks, but they did it differently. Okay, you're responsible for the technology, you're responsible for training the people, and you're responsible for doing process improvement. And I really wanted the job. And it took me a while to convince them that I was the right person for this job, but eventually I got it. And my husband and I moved to Connecticut to take on that role. And it was really my first big break and really exciting. But what was concerning is I walked, basically said, yes, I'm going to take this job. The guy who hired me called me, I don't even know if it was 48 hours later and said, hey, just want to let you know, I'm leaving. I'm going to Pennsylvania and they're going to bring in somebody else to Connecticut to take on this role. And I was like, oh boy, well, let's see what happens here. And I have to tell you, I got so lucky with that. And it's the thing about luck. I mean, I think about this a lot. And I was really lucky to get this particular leader at this particular time in his career and in my career. But I also worked really, really hard to be prepared for that moment. And so, you know, I think that that's what they say, you know, luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. And this was one of those. So new leader, new to a GM role and really trying to make his mark. And I got the opportunity to be a part of his team and to learn from him. And it was just a fantastic experience.

Sarah - 00:08:28:

Very good. You said in your session that you were always confident, but you adjusted yourself to fit in or assimilate, even if not consciously. Can you share an example of how so?

Corrie - 00:08:39:

Yeah. I mean, look, early on, I think the biggest thing is when you're a woman, I don't even know if this still happens today. I certainly would call it out if I saw it. But everybody seems to feel very comfortable with asking you when you're going to have kids. Like, oh, when are you going to have kids? And I was really conscious about this because I knew that there was a stigma around women leaving the workplace when they had kids. And so I would always say, oh, I'm never going to have kids. That was one thing. In fact, even on a construction site once, I was there with the project manager for the GC and his trailer and with a couple of the guys. And he says, oh, yeah, we had a girl once too, but she had a kid and left. And so I was very conscious of that. But I was also, I fitted well with men. I mean, I always had. I was an engineer in college and I worked on an engineering degree. But really since high school, I'd always had a lot of male friends and had been in STEM classes. So I always got along really well with men, but I really did have a very domestic side to me. But I was very careful about not bringing those things up. And examples of that are my absolute passion in life, if you ask me, is food and cooking. I love to cook. I like to do things that most people didn't do in the 90s, like canning vegetables. I did those things before. That's way before COVID when everybody picked it up. But those types of things, making bread, doing those things, crafting around the house, that type of thing. And I was very careful not to talk about that part of my life. I always talked about other things that I did. Going out for a bike ride, going on a hike, going and doing things that made me just neutral, right? And not reminding them of my differences. And so I think about that a lot. And I don't think I did it... I don't know that I was totally conscious of what I was doing, but I really feel like I was leaving a part of myself behind. Now, anybody that works with me, I mean, they know that my passion is cooking. It's also a passion of many men now. So it's a much different conversation. And I've even several male colleagues over the years, I swap recipes with and all of that. But back then, I was really careful about that. I just didn't want to seem different. And I don't want to remind them that, hey, she's a woman, remember? Like, oh, yeah, she's a girl, right? I don't want them to think that way. I wanted them to think about me as just the same as them.

Sarah - 00:10:54:

Yeah. And so this brought us to a point of the difference between diverse and inclusive, right? And so what do you feel like leaders need to understand about that distinction? And where do you think some today are still getting it wrong?

Corrie - 00:11:12:

Yeah, I still think it's very common today. I think that when you look at successful women, there's probably in most organizations that are male-dominated, you'll find that they have a lot of the same characteristics of successful men. And I say that with a caveat because when you look at successful men, I think they have a wide variety of personality types. And I noticed that like introverted males were doing, did okay in, they could actually get into very high leadership roles and many of them quite successful. But when you looked at women, it was always the extroverted women. Like the introverted women were not, they weren't climbing. There's things that were just not. And I think that still goes on today. I think there is still a lot of women out there who are successful in these male dominated industries that find themselves assimilating rather than really being themselves. And I think that it's encouraged too because the guys feel really comfortable. I mean, when you don't care when they swear and you'll sit down and drink a beer with them, you'll talk about, the football game that just happened, all those things make them comfortable too, which is, I think is part of coming halfway. But I do think that it does limit the actual inclusion. And I think for many people, so this is just a woman's experience, but for people of color, for LGBTQ, they feel like they have to repress a part of themselves. In that case, it's like the core, like there's this core that they're not able to show. And I think that it's very disappointing. And I think that as leaders, we have to be able to recognize that, you know what, I see that person as different. And I know that it's not what I'm used to seeing in a diverse workplace. Maybe they have a lot of piercings or tattoos or blue hair. They're different, right? And maybe we feel like, okay, is that professional? Well, you have to drop that. I think that's where we can get better is allowing people to be more of themselves, still professional looking. I do think that there are standards that have to be in place, but folks should be able to bring their whole selves and be able to be who they are. I had a friend in the LGBTQ community, years ago before anybody even talked about it, right? And stood up in a meeting and introduced himself and everybody had introduced himself. I'm married, I've got four kids and three dogs. And he introduced himself and he said he had a partner and they had dogs. And I thought it was so brave. And I've been friends with this man for a very long time. But in that time, that was a standout thing to do. And I think that that's where we have to be very comfortable so that people can really bring their whole selves to work. You get so much more out of people when you're able to do that.

Sarah - 00:13:41:

Yeah. No, that makes sense. I always say that the focus is often on diversity, but inclusion is the benefit of diversity, right? So the focus needs to be on inclusion, not diversity, because diversity on its own isn't doing anything for anyone if it's not an inclusive environment. That is really important.

Corrie - 00:14:05:

Well, people don't stay. I mean, that's the reality. You can have a diversity program, and I've seen it. You bring them in. You get people in the door. You can set rules around, hey, you have to interview at least one diverse candidate for this role in the final round, or you can make sure that you're going out to places where you would find more diverse people, society, women, engineers, NASB, these organizations where you would find those folks. But if you bring them in and then you don't make an environment where they can be successful, they're going to go somewhere else. And guess what? They're in high demand. And so they'll find a place where they'll fit in. And I just think that that's diversity. Yes, you do have to do some of those things to break some biases. I agree that those are good strategies for breaking biases, but those strategies don't work if you don't have an environment where people feel like they can succeed and where they don't see people that look like them and have their similar backgrounds and that they can relate to.

Sarah - 00:15:00:

Yeah. I think, too, you know, you said they'll go somewhere they can be successful, which is true, but also they'll go somewhere they can be themselves. Right. And it isn't necessarily always about fitting in, but about being welcome. We don't need to have a huge group of people just like us because, again, then we're not working toward the real value of diversity. But we need to create environments where differences are welcome and you don't feel like you have to be like everyone else to be comfortable. I think just

Corrie - 00:15:34:

a little nuance there, I would say to me is, you do have to make some effort to meet people in the middle. I really think that that's important. Like we can't just expect that folks, first of all, understand our perspective at all. And sometimes you have to make effort. And I do feel like that is why I probably made more effort than maybe was necessary or should be necessary, but to meet that middle ground. But I think that we as leaders have a responsibility to recognize when people are doing that and make sure that we're pulling them in and finding out what truly is underneath that person. Yeah. I think that's the key.

Sarah - 00:16:14:

Makes sense. I know you said that you had a really positive. Set of experiences in your early career. But when you think about like the surviving piece, getting in and surviving. Is there anything you would note as what felt most challenging?

Corrie - 00:16:35:

Yeah, I think that for me, it was always a surprise that either I was one, that I had an engineering degree or two, that I was smart. It always made me feel awkward because it's the same thing as saying, oh, you're really good at math for a girl. What does that mean? You know, those were the kinds of things I heard in my childhood. Oh, you're a good at math or a girl. I think that's what was a little bit hard early career wise is that I felt like a bit of a novelty. And some ways I'd benefited from that for sure. I'm not going to deny that because it got me some attention that probably wouldn't have happened if I wasn't female. But I do feel like it was, oh, they're always so surprised. There's such low expectations. I think that bothered me. And still today, I find that, you know, reminding people that it shouldn't be a surprise that these people are smart or they know their job or that they've been around for a while or that they have a big career just because they're blonde or just because they're female or they're Black or they're Hispanic. I think that's part of the struggle as someone who is underrepresented in the industries that I've worked in. I think that that's the thing that is most bothersome to me and probably was the most challenging. And I think that as a young person, you come in there like, you know, these guys are going to try and shake you and everything. It is a challenge when you're faced with it and you have to overcome that. And I think as you get older, you start to say, okay, well, my accomplishments speak for myself. Like, I don't need to prove anything now. But it still bothers me when people are surprised that I have a big job or my husband stays home and took care of our kids. Like, that was the way we worked with our family. And it's always a surprise that he would do that and refer to him as lucky, they refer to me as a surprise that I was able to do that.

Sarah - 00:00:39:

Corrie - 00:01:17:

Hi, thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me today. I'm excited to be here.

Sarah - 00:01:21:

Corrie - 00:01:59:

Sarah - 00:02:49:

Corrie - 00:03:37:

Sarah - 00:08:28:

Very good. You said in your session that you were always confident, but you adjusted yourself to fit in or assimilate, even if not consciously. Can you share an example of how so?

Corrie - 00:08:39:

Sarah - 00:10:54:

Corrie - 00:11:12:

Sarah - 00:13:41:

Corrie - 00:14:05:

Sarah - 00:15:00:

Corrie - 00:15:34:

Sarah - 00:16:14:

Corrie - 00:16:35:

Sarah - 00:18:20:

Yeah. And those comments tell a lot. I travel a lot. I get a lot of comments about that. It is interesting the layers of assumptions or gender norms or bias that are really, really deeply embedded that we have to continue to question and push back on. To your point, without being combative, like I get what you're saying about meeting people halfway, but there's a fine line between you don't want to tolerate or exacerbate things that are really outdated, unnecessary, inaccurate. Unfortunately, it's a reality that particularly as a woman, if you stand up to it, then you can be seen as abrasive or argumentative. Do you know what I mean?

Corrie - 00:19:07:

That's right. Oh, I've been caught on those things.

Sarah - 00:19:09:

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. In a lot of ways. And it is tricky. For sure. The next phase that you talked about was your thriving and advancing phase. Talk a bit about that.

Corrie - 00:19:19:

This part of my career is I, you know, I got this big opportunity that I talked about. First promotion. It was a big deal. And I got this new leader. And it just really turned out to be a great experience. And first of all, he was brilliant and just a really excellent, excellent leader. He had proven himself as a sales manager. This was his first time as a general manager. I was new in this role that we got to define really for ourselves. And he really took the opportunity to help and mentor me, not only be my boss, but also to mentor me. He encouraged me to go get my MBA. He was working on his MBA. He said, you know, I should go get an MBA. I think it would really help you. And did that nights and weekends working on my MBA. And then he also he pulled me in to a lot of opportunities that some things that I probably wouldn't have known about. In that role and most of the places that people serve that role. He let me help with the strategy and really help set the strategy for the business, which is still very young. A young person was just an incredible opportunity. He was an incredible boss. He was not there that long. He actually left, didn't leave the company, but moved to her, to the next big role for him. And then we moved apart. I moved to Milwaukee to take on a job here. And he would eventually come to Milwaukee. And actually, I would work for someone who worked for him. And I was working part-time. Little known fact about my career. I actually worked part-time for four years, which was a real novelty at the time when I did it. My kids were little. I worked part-time. And I was ready to come back full-time. Yeah, I was done working on Project Word. I was ready to get back on the train of career advancement. I was ready to get back into things that I love to do. And so I called him up and I said, hey, do you have anything for me? Because I really I'm ready to get back on the track. I'm ready for a director role. And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, I've got the perfect job for you. I didn't think you know, I didn't think you wanted you were ready to come back. He says, you're ready. I got it. This job is exactly what you did in Albany or in Connecticut. But what I need you to do is for this business, which Connecticut was a $50 million business. And this is $2 billion. So, you know, not a big deal. Just he made it sound really easy. And so I took the job. And again, just a fantastic opportunity. So started with what the job was. And really, it was a tenuous improvement, similar to the quality manager. But I did that for a little while. Built out the program from scratch for our business. And then actually expanded my role to take on more businesses within the company. Working with the Latin America team, which was such a great opportunity. And then he got me mentoring with his VP of Ops. And I spent a lot of time with him. You know, was in meetings. Again, this is where it's so deliberate when you want to. And this is something it's not like it only happens for diverse people or women. I mean, that's what men did for men over the years just naturally, right? Invited them to meetings that they didn't necessarily belong in. Giving them an opportunity to have voice. And that's, again, what both of these men did for me was brought me along to things. Showed me information. Asked me what I would do. Talked about what the steps were. I got the opportunity to really learn what those jobs were. And that job was my next job. I want that VP of Ops job. And that's what happened. And then, you know, continued to move through different parts of the business. Getting opportunities for bigger teams. I was primarily, you know, early career and more of an influencer role. At some points, I had some small teams. But for the most part, I was in just more of an influencer role. And in these jobs, I had real responsibility. Real P&L responsibility. Real large downlines of people who were working for me. And it was wonderful to be able to have that opportunity. And to be able to do so many different jobs at one company. That was the other thing. That was great. But I will tell you, all of those moves, even once my primary sponsor was moved into another business, but still part of the overall leadership team of Johnson Controls, he still sponsored me through those moves. And recommended me. And what helps me today, recommended me. Has recommended me for many jobs. And has provided support as well as I've moved through transitions. When I transitioned out of Johnson Controls, a big change was there to help me through that transition. And really understand what I needed to do to be successful. And I just, that to me was, I say this, I do owe my career to him. I really do. If he hadn't, again, we talked about that intersection of preparation and opportunity. I'm not saying I didn't do hard work or I wasn't smart. Yeah, you can have all of those things. You can work hard. You can be smart. You can have all the right education. You can read all the right books. All of those things. But if you don't have an opportunity that is put in front of you, you won't get there. And he helped to put those opportunities in front of me. And I feel like I made the most of them every single time. I really tried to make the most of it. But he did. He put those opportunities in front of me. And so I say I owe my career to him. And it's not... He would totally deny it. Just so you know. He would say the opposite. But to me, it really takes being really deliberate. And he was super deliberate about what he was doing for me. And I will tell you, he was mentored and sponsored by someone who did that for him. And I wasn't the only person that he did this for. There's a countless number of leaders out in the world. And field services today that owe their careers to this man. Yeah.

Sarah - 00:24:43:

Can you talk a little bit about what made him such an impactful sponsor and how that would be different than him being a mentor?

Corrie - 00:24:54:

I think of the function of a mentor, like they can help you. Yeah, I talked about Ralph in my early, early career. I mean, he showed me what the job was. He taught me how to do the job. He also helped me with the political landscape of the organization. Mentors can help you with what is your job and how do you do it. They can help you with the political landscape of an organization. They can help you with development planning around how to get to the next role that you want. I think those are probably the primary functions of a mentor. When you think about a sponsor, a sponsor is when you're not in the room, the sponsor's talking about you. That's a totally different thing. That means they have to know your work. If you mentor someone, you can say, yes, I've mentored this person. I see they have a lot of potential. But if you haven't actually seen their work, you haven't actually worked with them, the totally different situation. When you've worked with them and you know what they can do, you have the ability to sponsor them. So I think that what he did for me is he knew my work as well as knew who I was as a person and was able to be that person in the room when I wasn't there. And I've had many of these folks in my life. It wasn't just one, but they were there and they said, hey, I know that she can do this job because I've seen her do this, this, and this. And when people make assumptions, which happens to everyone, but particularly about women, about their ability to relocate, what their obligations are to their children, all of those things that people make assumptions are, well, she's got four kids. And even if that wasn't the case, that's not really a point here. She gets to decide if this is the right job for her or not. We don't decide that for her. So I think that those are some of the things that he did. And he also was realistic with me around what I could do and when it was time and when it wasn't time. And those conversations were harder than the conversations about, hey, this is this great thing that you should go do. There were also conversations like, I know you want it, but you need to do these things before you can have it. And I think that being realistic about that is also super important.

Sarah - 00:26:52:

Yeah. You talked about. That person's impact, when you think about the preparation and the hard work on your side, what do you point to in terms of what within yourself helped you be able to meet that opportunity and continue to progress?

Corrie - 00:27:09:

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is that early career, being willing to do just about anything anybody asks you to do, right? And I think that you do an early career, there's a lot of things that come up. Training, there's opportunities like this quality assurance manager, but then also when we went through the Six Sigma program, I said, well, sign me up. I want to do it. And when I took on the continuous improvement manager role that he helped me with later, I remember talking to one of my colleagues as at the copy machine. I'm like, oh, I think I'm going to take on this role. And he says, oh, it's just a fad. He says, I wouldn't do that. It's just kind of like, well, I don't really have anything to lose, right? So I kind of, you know what? I think I'll take it on. And all of those things over the years, being willing to kind of do things that are maybe a little bit risky and a little bit more uncomfortable is certainly part of my personality. I'm willing to try something new. I like to try new things. That was good. I think also just working hard. I talk to young folks as they're coming out a lot about you've got to put in the hours. I put in a lot of hours. When I was an application engineer, I wasn't paid hourly. I had a salary. But I put in a lot of hours. And I did it for me because I wanted to learn. And I knew I was slow. Like I knew I was new and I needed to learn these things. And I put in a ton of hours. And I put in a lot of hours outside of the office in every job that I've had around reading books around leadership, going through articles, learning more, and bringing something to the table. And I think that those are things and having a voice, too. And I think that that was Sheryl Sandberg and the lean in. And I know there's controversy around that. But what she tells women to do is to speak up when you're in the room. And if you get a seat at the table, say something. Don't just sit there. You know, it's something that I did and that the successful women that saw around me did as well is when you find something. Even if you're not sure if it's relevant, find something to engage in the conversation because you're not there to just sit there. You're there to be a part of the conversation. And I was very bold as a young person. I was very bold about those types of things.

Sarah - 00:29:15:

The third part of your journey that you talked about is giving back. What does this mean to you and what has it looked like so far?

Corrie - 00:29:23:

Yeah, I think the first opportunity for giving back for me was they started a women's resource network at Johnson Controls and they asked for mentors as part of that program. And I was thinking, I need a mentor. And then I'm reading description that says, hey, you have to have 10 years of experience and this is what a mentor looks like. I'm like, wait, well, I have all that. I guess I can be a mentor, right? And it was my first time really formally being somebody's mentor and it was a great experience. I mean, it was more of a, hey, how do you work the political landscape? And it wasn't even how do you do your job? Because this person was in a totally different function than I didn't know. But it was more around, how do I deal with my boss? How do I deal with these challenges that I'm having? Also, how do I balance out my work and my life and all of those things? But it was a great experience for me. And I think realizing sometimes I think we sell ourselves short as women. We don't think about, oh, well, I'm ready to do this, right? We think we need more time. And that was the first opportunity for me to be a mentor. And then people would come up to me and say, hey, you're in this job. Will you help mentor this person? I have a young woman on my team. She's struggling. She needs help. I don't know what to do, right? Male bosses primarily, which meant a lot to me because first of all, they recognize they have a gap in how they're dealing with it and they need support and ask you need to do that. I have mentored many women over the years. And I will tell you sometimes those as you get older, those relationships can reverse too. And I have people that I mentored years ago, that now they act as it's so mutual and always was, but it is now it's more, sometimes I need them. Hey, what do you think about this? Right? I need your mentorship. I had a good friend and colleague, somebody I mentored just, we were texting back and forth last night and it was just exactly what I needed. I was just like, I need a little bit of a boost. And they can provide that as well. For the mentor, you get as much out of it as the mentee. We also, we launched together with several of my other female colleagues and our sponsor, we launched the Women's Field Resource Network, which was new. So Johnson & Jules had it, the headquarters had this resource network, but they didn't have a field, a Women's Field Network. And so we launched that and got that going and worked with those teams. I've done leadership classes for women in the organization. Anytime somebody asked me to come and talk to their team, if it was about my business or it was about my career, I always said yes and found the time. And I do that having opportunities even like this with you. This is meaningful to me. And so that's the kind of thing that I think you have to give back. You also have to be deliberate too about recognizing women and pulling them up. I also did that. And sometimes people look at you like, well, wait, how did that happen? Because I thought, wait, well, she's been getting ready for this job for years. We've been working together and getting her ready. It's like the most logical step, right? Those things, being very deliberate about that and pulling other women up, other people of color, a very big part of what I've done over the years. Now, look, I will tell you, it's not enough. I wish that I could do more. And I've made mistakes along the way too. I mean, I don't think that I've always recognized the abilities of every person that you see. I'm not as imperfect as anyone else. It is a very important part of who I am.

Sarah - 00:32:38:

Yeah. No, I love that. And I think it's good to acknowledge that it hasn't been enough, but also those, I don't want to say small acts because they're not small, but those individual efforts, if everyone's doing them collectively add up to something big. And the second thing is, I think it's also very humble to own that you haven't been perfect in your mission to give back. One, that's human, but two, I mean, doing it imperfectly is better than not doing it at all.

Corrie - 00:33:09:

And being able to recognize

Sarah - 00:33:11:

when you have fumbled and learn from it and fix it and do better the next time is all anyone could ask. I think that's great.

Corrie - 00:33:21:

One of those things, you don't even necessarily have to fully act. Just being there sometimes is enough. And I talked about that in my speech as well, the power of representation. Sometimes just being there and being good at your job is enough for someone to say, wow, I can do that, because I see that there's a woman there that is doing the job that I want. And I didn't think that was possible because over the years, all I've ever seen is bad. So the power of representation, I think it's just a really important part of that. You don't have to necessarily act to be representative, right? You can just be really good at your job and it does help for people to see that there's someone who can do it too.

Sarah - 00:34:02:

Yeah, absolutely. You said, ask for what you want. And when you get it, make the most of it and give back along the way. I love that statement. And my question is, what advice do you have for people, specifically women, on how best to ask for what you want?

Corrie - 00:34:19:

I will tell you, I learned this from my father. My father used to say, if you don't ask, you don't get. But he would always say that to me. You need to go ask for this. It can be off-putting to people sometimes, right? It's like, whoa, wait. And I remember this was in college. I was working in the computer labs and I wanted to be a supervisor in the computer lab. They had an opening. And I went to my boss and I said, I really would like to be a supervisor in lab. And he goes. Oh, he says, well, I guess I would have preferred to ask you to be a supervisor in the lab rather than you ask and say, well, my dad always said, you don't ask, you don't get, right? I always remember that. And I try not to make that a limit me. I think you have to ask for it. I asked for the first promotion. I asked for a job I had no business applying for, found a path to get there. I asked to get out of the game. I asked to get back in the game. And I would say up until probably, I would say, you know, getting into like that first VP of ops role, every one of those was an ask. Everything that I got was an ask. And then I asked to do something more. And then we found something out in a different part of the business that I got to go do, which was really cool. And I think when you hear about the careers of others, sometimes it's like, well, I never asked for a thing. I just got recognized and pulled up. I really think if you are underrepresented in the organization, you're going to have to ask and you can't expect to be just recognized and pulled up. It will happen, for some people, it will. I might, as a woman, I might recognize another woman that I see has potential. Or as a man, I might see that. Or if you're African-American, you might say, okay, well, I see that person. But you might not see the people across. And so I just think that it's important that we ask for what we want. And then once you get it, you can't regret what you asked for. You got to be there. You got to show up and you got to perform. And that's how you show, hey, this was the right decision. And I'm not saying it always has to work out perfectly. But you have to make the effort. It's not if you're given an opportunity, ask for an opportunity, you're given an opportunity, you've earned it. Now you've got to continue to earn it along the way.

Sarah - 00:36:19:

That's what I was thinking when you were saying that. I was thinking, we don't have time to get into, some of the things that I'm appreciating so much about what you're saying, because it's reminding me of points in my own journey that I have been bold and outspoken and I've asked for what I wanted or needed or felt was fair and have had really hard conversations. And I think the one thing is, I think that it's not always welcome, but I think that there is a growing percentage of individuals and cultures where it is welcome. One, it's okay to be uncomfortable. Like, it might not be welcome, but to your point, when he said that to you and you said, well, my dad said the moment of discomfort that ultimately got you where you wanted to go, right? So that's one. But the second thing is, I think if you really hit a wall, go somewhere else. That's not the only path. And there are more and more people that are understanding that it's important to speak up and speak out. And advocate for yourself. That being said, I was going to say the point you made, which is. Don't ask for things you can't handle or aren't ready for or aren't willing to take on because-

Corrie - 00:37:35:

That's right.

Sarah - 00:37:35:

That's when you make a fool of yourself. Like you said, doesn't need to be perfect. Doesn't mean you have it all figured out. It doesn't mean that you are 1000% qualified, et cetera, et cetera. But it means that. If you're going to take that risk, be ready to back it up with the work that is going to prove that you were worth it. What would you say about the importance of authenticity?

Corrie - 00:38:00:

Well, I think that goes back to that assimilation versus, you know, really true inclusion and being your authentic self is a part of that. But I think it's also like you can't be somewhat different at work than you are at home. Some people do. I mean, I know people who do this. They're very different at work than they are at home. But it's not you're never going to be as effective as somebody who is who they are at work or at home. And I have many friends that cross that work boundary right over the years. And I am the same person. You always have a filter when you're at work. You have to have a filter, right, of some of the things that you can and can't do. But I mean, I am that same person I am at home and took time. It wasn't on day one. I told you I assimilated, right? I am that person. And people know who I really am. And that's the power of what you can do to lead a team that believes that you are telling them the truth and believes you're being authentic is super powerful. They will follow you. They will follow you anywhere. The biggest compliment that I've ever received is that I was an authentic leader and that I made a difference because of that, because I care. I am who I am. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I am absolutely feel that you have to truly care for the people that work for you in order for your business to be successful. And to me, that is authenticity for me. Are there things that I would do if I wasn't in corporate America? I don't know. I mean, would I dye my hair blue? I might. Would I dress like a rocker? I don't know. But I think for the most part, I'm a pretty authentic person. And I think that people need to need to understand that if they do that. People will follow them and will listen to them and will believe even if they aren't sure. It helps to take the uncertainty out because, look, if she's telling me this, I know she truly believes it and she cares enough that she's going to have my back. And I think that's probably the second biggest compliment I ever got as a leader was when one of my employees told me that I felt like I had the freedom to fail when I worked for you because I knew you had my back. And of course, didn't fail because she's amazing. But she felt she was willing to take risks. And I will tell you, that's how I was as well as I knew that I had someone who was going to be there if I needed support or I needed help, I could go and ask, right? And it wasn't going to be embarrassment or like I wasn't doing my job. And that is powerful stuff. It really is. And to have experienced it and to give it back is powerful stuff.

Sarah - 00:40:34:

Yeah. Speaking of powerful stuff, what about the power of saying no?

Corrie - 00:40:39:

Look, there are things that, you know, in the world of ask, and sometimes you get asked to do things. There are times that I talked a lot about being willing to take risks and do things that maybe other people weren't interested in. There are some times where you get asked to do a job and it is not right for you. And this happened to me mid-career. I had a leader, very well-respected leader, asked me to do a job on his team. I had just finished our accelerated leader development program. I was, you know, ready for the next move. And that move was not right for me. And I appreciated him asking me. He had kind of heard, hey, I was good. I don't know exactly why he thought I would be good at that particular job, but it just wasn't the right move for me. It wasn't, first of all, it wasn't on the right path. And it also wasn't something that, it wasn't something that helped me to build out any part of my skill set that I didn't already have. And it probably wasn't in a strength area where I could have really like blown it out of the water right I didn't really feel like it was that that's how much of a disconnect there was to the point that I was even questioning did he read my resume you know and it was an honor to be asked I mean such a great leader and I still tons of respect for him today but it wasn't right for me and I said no and I talked to my friend in HR and I said hey you know I told him no and she looked at me said are you crazy? She said, nobody's ever told him no before. And I said well, It wasn't right for me. I appreciate the opportunity, but it wasn't right for me. Now, those things, sometimes saying no to the wrong opportunity, yeah, can have implications. But if it did, like you said, you just go somewhere else, right? I mean, there's always a place that wants you.

Sarah - 00:42:14:

It's part of being authentic, right? Because you're being true to yourself. You know that it's not right. You're not going to do something just because of X, Y, or Z reasons. You're going to stay true to who you are. And I think the other thing, at least I've found, again, not universally, but there are people who have always been told yes, that when they have someone willing to respectfully and with reason say no, they respect that more because they're not often challenged. And I think whether it's a job offer or. Something you're working on strategy-wise or whatever it is, if you can get comfortable enough in your skin to speak your mind, to your point, that's where people start to notice your value, right? If you sit back and say like, oh, well, no one tells him no, so I'll just nod my head and smile. He might've been taking a bath, but he was like, good for her.

Corrie - 00:43:12:

And I think the other thing is like, you talked about make sure you have the capacity to do whatever you ask to do, right? Also, if you say yes to everything and then you're not effective at anything, that's really bad too. And I think that you have to think about that and things that you're doing inside and outside of work is how much can you really handle and be really good at? Because if you're kind of good at 10 things at a time, that might not be quite as good as being really super good at these three high priorities. And so I think that's a part of learning how to say no, which is really, really hard when you want to make your mark.

Sarah - 00:43:50:

I want to close with one final question, but two parts to it. Okay, so I want you to close with your best piece of advice. Number one, for a person just starting out in their career, particularly someone who is in any minority group, the advice you would give them. And then the second would be for a leader looking to have a more positive impact on the talent coming into their organization, particularly as it relates to inclusiveness and sponsorship and things like that that we've talked about today.

Corrie - 00:44:25:

Yeah, I think for up-and-coming people, my advice has been pretty much the same throughout my career. I mean, the first thing is that you have to work hard. And I know that sounds simple or maybe even a little bit patronized, but it's true. Like you have to put the work in. You have got to work hard, got to spend the hours. You've got to take the time and you're going to be out of balance early career. For most people, this is a good time to be out of balance because you don't have as many responsibilities as you do as you get into mid-career. Early on, you've got to put in the work and you have to put in the work. Not only you have to put in the work on the work that you do, but you have to put in the work on the social aspect of work as well. You have to meet people. You have to put yourself out there. You have to get involved in things that might be a little bit outside of what your core competency is when you came out of school. You've got to do those things. And if you do that and you take a little bit of risk, then you're going to get to that intersection of luck and opportunity. I really believe that. If you put yourself out there, you get to know more people. If you know more people, there's more opportunity for those folks to cross your path and help you with your career.

Sarah - 00:45:31:

If I reflect back on my younger years, also do the work on yourself, right? So while you're doing the work, learn from it. What lights you up? What makes you excited? What do you feel you're doing where you are proud of the impact you're making? What things stress you out in a way that isn't normal stress, but maybe an inclination that this isn't something that is going to fulfill me? Or what are you confident about what do you need to build confidence in? Things like that, right? Because in those early phases, you're learning about the environment and you're learning about how to progress, but you're also in, you're learning so much about who you are as a person and what your unique value is. And the more you can... Take note of those things to hone in on what... Unique skills and qualities you bring, the more success you can have, you know, looking for those opportunities to be bold and to ask for what you want with confidence.

Corrie - 00:46:36:

Yeah, I think that's, and I, you know, talked about early being computer savvy. I mean, when I first walked to the office at Albany, my boss would type up a memo in what was called WordPad before Microsoft Word, right? He'd type up this memo and then he would print it out and give it to the admin and she would type it on letterhead. It was on the computer. It could have been printed on letterhead, but it was like, it was one of those things, or they could, she, we had email. He could have emailed it. He could have walked it over with a disc. Like there were so many different ways you could have done this other than, you know, something that was complete. And those were the kinds of things that I thought, well. That was obvious to me, but it was something I could bring to the table and help to get that office to be more efficient. So I do think that's important, even those little learnings help you. And I did do a lot of, and I'm sure you did too early on, is you do a lot of reading and a lot of classes, the cubby classes and those types of things that really help you get a little bit more introspective about yourself and being willing to have 360s and take the feedback and know who you are. I certainly know what my key weaknesses were when I started and what I've worked on, and what anchors I've gotten in my boat on those things, and what things I still have to every day be conscious about, right? Because we're all human.

Sarah - 00:47:50:

Yeah. Great.

Corrie - 00:47:51:

We asked about readers and what they can do. And I think the biggest act of being very deliberate is, and this is people of color, women, but also men or people who just have a little different personality style. You've got more than likely the people you've surrounded yourself with are super smart. But typically when you're in a meeting with say, 6 to 10 people, there's probably the boss and maybe two other people that are really contributing to the conversation. And as a leader, pulling the rest of the team out and into the conversation and being very deliberate about that. And also recognizing when someone is getting stepped on and they're not being heard, right? And if you really want to create an inclusive environment overall for all of your employees, regardless of what their status is or what their background is. Is really making sure that you're pulling people out and it takes effort and it is exhausting sometimes because you're trying to get through something. You're trying to get to an, you want to get to the end, right? You're in this meeting. You want to get to the end. You want to get to the conclusion and you've got all these things on your plate that you're trying to work through, but you've got to do that. And if you can't do it, you need to tell one of those people that's always speaking up in the room to help you with it. And that will help as well. I've actually had people do that for me to say, hey, can you make sure that we're drawing? So-and-so, because I know they have something to say. And so to me, if I had to give like, I mean, if it was one thing that you could do differently today that you're not doing, it's that it's really pulling people in. And when you see it happening, if you're a peer or a leader, make sure that you're saying, hey, wait a second. I think that person had something to say, or I think, you know, you cut them off.

Sarah - 00:49:30:

Or just what do you think, right? You know, maybe they're not getting cut off, but they're fearful of speaking up and you can encourage that. Yeah.

Corrie - 00:49:38:

Yeah.

Sarah - 00:49:38:

Really good advice. Corrie, thank you so much. This is been wonderful. I really appreciate you coming and sharing more about your personal journey, but also extracting some of those insights that others can take and learn from. Thank you so much for spending some time with me.

Corrie - 00:49:55:

Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to chatting again. I want to hear your story too.

Sarah - 00:50:00:

That would be great.

Corrie - 00:50:01:

All right. All right. Take care.

Sarah - 00:50:03:

Corrie - 00:19:07:

That's right. Oh, I've been caught on those things.

Sarah - 00:19:09:

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. In a lot of ways. And it is tricky. For sure. The next phase that you talked about was your thriving and advancing phase. Talk a bit about that.

Corrie - 00:19:19:

Sarah - 00:24:43:

Can you talk a little bit about what made him such an impactful sponsor and how that would be different than him being a mentor?

Corrie - 00:24:54:

Sarah - 00:26:52:

Corrie - 00:27:09:

Sarah - 00:29:15:

The third part of your journey that you talked about is giving back. What does this mean to you and what has it looked like so far?

Corrie - 00:29:23:

Sarah - 00:32:38:

Corrie - 00:33:09:

And being able to recognize

Sarah - 00:33:11:

when you have fumbled and learn from it and fix it and do better the next time is all anyone could ask. I think that's great.

Corrie - 00:33:21:

Sarah - 00:34:02:

Corrie - 00:34:19:

Sarah - 00:36:19:

Corrie - 00:37:35:

That's right.

Sarah - 00:37:35:

Corrie - 00:38:00:

Sarah - 00:40:34:

Yeah. Speaking of powerful stuff, what about the power of saying no?

Corrie - 00:40:39:

Sarah - 00:42:14:

Corrie - 00:43:12:

Sarah - 00:43:50:

Corrie - 00:44:25:

Sarah - 00:45:31:

Corrie - 00:46:36:

Sarah - 00:47:50:

Yeah. Great.

Corrie - 00:47:51:

Sarah - 00:49:30:

Or just what do you think, right? You know, maybe they're not getting cut off, but they're fearful of speaking up and you can encourage that. Yeah.

Corrie - 00:49:38:

Yeah.

Sarah - 00:49:38:

Corrie - 00:49:55:

Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to chatting again. I want to hear your story too.

Sarah - 00:50:00:

That would be great.

Corrie - 00:50:01:

All right. All right. Take care.

Sarah - 00:50:03:

You too. You can find more by visiting the home of the UNSCRIPTED podcast at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

Last week we announced Future of Field Service’s Stand Out 50 Leadership Awards, and I couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity to acknowledge and recognize some of the amazing individuals leading their service organizations, teams, and customers to success. For more than 16 years I’ve been fortunate to speak with service leaders on nearly a daily basis, for articles, events, and podcasts, and those interactions have given me a tremendous appreciation for the tall task they have taken on.

All service leaders work incredibly hard, in my opinion, so what makes a leader stand out? There are, of course, many things that could set a leader apart which is why nominations will allow for an explanation of how each leader is going above and beyond to make an impact. With that said, when I think of what makes a service leader stand out, there are a few things that quickly come to mind:

They don’t sacrifice innovation to meet immediate needs. It’s a balancing act, for sure – but stand out leaders have found the formula for balancing today’s business needs with reserving time, energy, and resources to create the business of tomorrow. They aren’t short sighted, they see the potential of service, and they work toward the long-term strategy while maintaining today’s successful business.
They evangelize the importance of service within their businesses. They have conviction around service’s unique ability to create differentiation, build customer loyalty, offer a brand experience like none other, and grow revenue – and they work tirelessly to ensure this conviction is understood and ultimately shared across the business.
They are bold. They think outside of the box; they free themselves from the confines of the status quo. They challenge “the way it’s always been done,” to look for ways to do it better, or do it altogether differently. They aren’t afraid to share wild ideas or to fail forward, and they empower their teams to do the same. They know that creating the future of service demands leaders who will carve a new path, and they are up for the job.
They put their teams first, because they care and because they know doing so will create the best customer experience. They recognize the immense knowledge of the frontline workforce and the impact those teams have on the customer, and they know that doing everything they can to enable, empower, and nurture their teams will pay dividends when it comes to employee engagement and retention, customer outcomes and, ultimately, business success.
They prioritize customer intimacy. They know that innovation must happen from the outside-in, and to advance services in any meaningful way requires not only a deep understanding of a customers wants and needs, but also of their business. They find multiple avenues to listen and take action on customer input and feedback and ensure their teams do the same.
They harness the power of modern technology. They realize that in today’s service landscape, it is essential to work smarter not harder. They are embracing sophisticated capabilities in a practical way, looking for opportunities to optimize the use of their resources, excel at meeting (or even anticipate) customer needs, and adopt capabilities that reduce unnecessary waiting, travel, and inefficiencies.
They focus on creating inclusive environments. They aren’t interested in increasing diversity as a check-box exercise, but they truly value having a range of experiences, skills, opinions, and perspectives on their team – and they know the best way to benefit from a diverse team is to create an inclusive environment that welcomes the voice of all, celebrates contributions, and works together toward a common goal.
They are authentic. They know that being genuine and empathetic is needed to connect with their teams as human beings and to form relationships that are mutually beneficial. They find ways to show up as their whole selves at work that feel honest, comfortable, and valuable.
They are humble. They know that the days of the leader being the smartest person in the room are a thing of the past; success in today’s landscape requires a team of individuals skilled in different areas who come together to solve problems and realize opportunities. They focus on curating and amplifying skilled teams, being sure to provide leadership but never taking individual credit for collective wins.
They are continually learning and growing. They know that as fast as the business changes, they must evolve too. They find ways to expand their knowledge, mindset, and viewpoints to stay relevant and impactful – in their industries and in their leadership roles.

What would you add to this list? I’m curious! I’m also hopeful you’ll take a few moments to nominate a service leader you feel stands out. This could be someone who has led you who you feel had a massive impact, someone on your team you feel has tremendous potential, or a peer you see working hard to advance their industry; nominate whomever you feel is deserving here: https://www.futureoffieldservice.com/stand-out-50/

Nominations close on July 15^th and then judges will deliberate. Judges include myself, Dot Mynahan who spent more than 30 years in service leadership at Otis Elevator, John Carroll of The Service Council, and Tim Baines of The Advanced Services Group. The Stand Out 50 will be officially announced as Future of Field Service Live joins forces with IFS Unleashed in Orlando this October. It will be a celebration not to be missed!

Episode 268

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro shares an overview of the first Future of Field Service Live event of 2024, which took place in Stockholm on May 21st. Sarah talks about her interviews with Frank Gregoire from Miele, Roy Dockery, author of The Art of Leading, and Darian Ari. The main subjects of the conversations included the evolving role of service in organizations, field service leadership, technology, and change management.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Sarah: When you think about all sorts of things that make people unique, whether it's age or background or area of specialty, etc., there are different preferences in communication and different communication styles that we need to consider. And from a leadership perspective, how do we make sure that we're being effective in our leadership? With so much sort of variety in what works for people.

Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. As you can tell, I am solo today. We just wrapped the Future of Field Service live event in Stockholm. It was the first event in the series this year, and it went really, really well, I thought I would record a solo episode today and give you all a summary of what was discussed at the event, some of the highlights, et cetera.

So the event took place at Volvo Studios in the center of Stockholm. And ever since we started doing these events in 2022, we've always tried to select venues that are a little bit unique, a different setting than you might expect for a thought leadership event or a conference, that sort of thing, and we do that because we want people to have a day away from the norm. We try and pick spaces that have a little bit of creativity, and can help inspire people to feel energized and excited to connect with one another. And Volvo Studio didn't disappoint. The team always does a wonderful job of finding really neat venues in every city that we visit. This is our third Future of Field live event, in Stockholm. So it's a challenge for them when we've already used some of the cool venues in a city to keep finding them. But they did a wonderful job. It was a really unique setting and a very nice space. It worked really well for the structure of the event.

So we had three speakers for the Stockholm event that were participating in interview-based sessions. So we started the day with an introduction and me providing sort of state of the industry. So some of the major themes, macro themes that I see in my conversations with people on daily, weekly basis, some of the things that seem to be coming up from leaders across industries in different areas of the world. So I talked about five trends that I see and just sort of gave my overview of those. And then we had our first interview session, which was with Frank Gregoire, who is with Miele. And Frank is in his role with Miele currently, but he's worked for other organizations in service leadership roles for quite a long time. So he has a lot of experience looking at some of the shifts that have taken place, not only from the perspective of his current role, but the perspective of some of the other organizations he's been a part of. So what we talked about is sort of his reflection on the role services playing in organizations and what that means in terms of as a leader needing to balance meeting demands of today's business while knowing that he has a responsibility to be shaping the future of the company today. So we talked about some of the changes he's anticipating in use of technology, in how service is delivered, in what that means in terms of what the skill set needs to be of the frontline workforce, and how he needs to be both taking care of what needs to happen in each of those areas for the way the business is structured today, while also working toward the plan and taking steps toward the plan of what that will look like, because so many of those areas are significantly different. So it was an interesting conversation. And I think it's one that is very important because most service leaders can appreciate that need for balance. But one of the things we talked about is that it is really challenging to continue to protect the time, and energy that you need to do sort of the forward-thinking or the strategic planning and not just get consumed by the day-to-day needs of the business in the moment. So, he talked about how he does that and acknowledged that it is a challenge, but talked about how he sort of tries to protect his time and make sure that he continues to prioritize that forward-thinking strategic view because it is so incredibly important.

So that was our morning interview session. We then broke out into groups for some roundtable discussions. And actually before we did that, we had an icebreaker session. Where everyone in the room had an opportunity to introduce themselves and answer to one of a few questions that sparked some interesting tidbits of information about the folks that we were in attendance with. Then we broke out into roundtable discussions. We had lunch. In the afternoon, we had two additional interviews. So some of you, if you listen to the podcast regularly or have read our content, or attend other industry events in the United States. You would likely be familiar with Roy Dockery, who recently wrote the book, The Art of Leading and has served in different service leadership roles himself in the industry, most recently with Flock Safety. Roy joined us for the Stockholm event and shared with the audience some of the principles of leadership that he wrote about in the book, The Art of Leading. So we talked about the role of love in leadership. We talked about authenticity, empathy. But we also had him give some examples of how those principles are used in ways that can be challenging. So we talked about some examples of having hard conversations and what that looks like through the lens of empathy and authenticity, etc. So how those things can be applied even when you're doing things that are very difficult, like letting someone go. So he talked through some real-world examples around that. We talked a bit about concepts around needing to change the way a lot of organizations think about and conduct their recruiting and hiring practices. Obviously, also from a retention standpoint, how we nurture talent and how we help talent move into leadership roles and progress through their careers. So Roy shared a lot of great insights around those topics. We also touched a bit on diversity and inclusion, specifically the inclusion piece and the criticality of that and some of maybe the missteps that leaders or organizations can fall into.

So that was a great discussion. And then we were joined by our next interview was with Darian Ari, who is leading the Nordics business for Global Connect. And Darian has actually shared that he's 26. So he's been put into a senior leadership position at a very young age, there was an opportunity where they had some turnover was in the business, and they asked him to step up. And he shared a bit about what it is like to be a young leader and be bringing certainly a fresh perspective to things in terms of company decisions. And things like that. But also, I guess some of the pros and cons for him that come along with that. He also shared that when he took that role, he needed to recruit his frontline workforce. And so he took a different approach than the company had historically, we talked about the fact that if we're hiring based on experience, the talent is getting harder and harder to find if we're only looking for experienced folks. So, he talked about how he got very involved in the recruiting process and did a lot of the reviewing of CVs himself. And he met with a lot of candidates that the company may not have historically considered. And he, as he put it, took some bets on his team, giving people an opportunity where he saw something within them from a behavior standpoint or a skill standpoint, even though they didn't necessarily have the experience or even the educational background, that the company would have typically sought for those roles. And so he talked about sort of, the way that those employees have responded in, in terms of really, feeling committed to helping him succeed, because he was willing to give them a chance. And it was a really interesting conversation. We also talked about the importance of onboarding and enablement with that workforce because they were brought into the business in a way that hadn't been the traditional approach. We talked about empowerment and we talked about the importance of execution in service and some of the aspects that are important in executing. So we talked about the use of technology. We talked about, the onboarding, the training, how the one-on-one relationship with team members and mentoring has factored in, and things like that. So it was really interesting to hear his perspective and to have that conversation.

We broke out again into roundtables. And I think looking back on the roundtable sessions that I participated in, both in the morning and the afternoon, there were quite a few different conversations that sort of... Came up. One of the themes seemed to be around the importance of communication and also understanding that as we are able to grow a more and more diverse workforce, when you think about all sorts of things that make people unique, whether it's age or background or area of specialty, et cetera, that there are different preferences in communication and different communication styles that we need to consider. And from a leadership perspective, how do we make sure that we're being effective in our leadership? With so much sort of variety in what works for people. Another theme that came up was around change management, which always is a topic. But we had a lot of conversations about with the increase in use of technologies that are automating manual processes that are, whether that's more early stage automation or whether that's more advanced use cases incorporating AI and things like that, anytime we're doing that, there's a response. There can be resistance. There can be fear of that change. And we talked about different strategies for overcoming that, different ways to get teams on board, different things that have worked when we are introducing new technology or continually innovating with the technology we have like we need to be in today's landscape. So that was another theme. Those were some of the things that stand out.

There were some great discussions that happened throughout the day. At the end, we had sort of a summary session where we looked back. We actually had a live illustrator documenting the themes that were discussed throughout the day. So we shared that graphic. We talked about some of the key highlights. And I shared some of the things that stood out to me. Some of the other folks shared some of the things that stood out to them. And then we ended the day with a nice networking session. It's always one of my favorite parts of the day, not only because my stage work is done and I can sort of take a deep breath, but more so because it's really fulfilling to see the different people in the room that are local to the area we're in that haven't met before. But are so excited to become connected with one another. So there were people exchanging business cards, connecting on LinkedIn, exchanging phone numbers who are excited about the opportunity that they have after the event to, continue to help each other navigate some the challenges and opportunities that they're working through. So there was an attendee who I had been in touch with prior to the event. And she said, I'm so glad I came because I really felt like a lot of the challenges I'm having were unique to us. And now I see that everyone in the room is somewhere in the journey also and sharing in a lot of those challenges. And that sounds very simple, but it's something that. I think can be really powerful about having these events is people can come and certainly get inspired with different ideas and have these nuggets of information they can take back and put to work within their organizations. But also that feeling of recognizing that no one has it all figured out and everyone's somewhere in the journey, I think, can be really comforting for people. And that always makes me happy when that's a piece of feedback. So it was a great day.

We have our next event coming up on June 13th in Cologne, Germany. So if you are in or near that area and you would like to join us, the agenda for that event, we have four interview sessions, also the roundtables taking place. And I think it will be a wonderful event. So we'd love to see you there if that is a possibility. You can find all of the information that you would need to find to view the agenda and register to join us at futureoffieldservice.com. These events are free to attend because they are sponsored by IFS, which makes it possible for us to do this without charging people to come and participate. So we're able to offer a day of connection and community and some really wonderful content without a ticket for admission. So that's an amazing thing. So have a look at the website and register to join us if you can. As always, the podcast is sponsored by IFS. And you can find more at ifs.com. Thank you for listening.

I recently recorded a podcast with Stuart Thompson, President of Electrification Service Division at ABB, to discuss how the company is using augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) for its field service operations.

We've been talking about using AR and/or virtual reality (VR) for service for a while now, but until the COVID-19 pandemic take-up of the technology seemed slow. While it seemed there were some viable use cases for field service, factors such as connectivity, cost, and change management kept adoption minimal. Things changed when the pandemic forced everyone to look for some type of remote technology for just about everything, including troubleshooting and training. A lot of companies quickly began experimenting with AR and VR for service and other industrial applications, and four years later we are starting to see the fruits of that experimentation.

When you consider some of the AR-related items in the news, I think they tie in well with that pandemic-inspired push to use AR/VR, as well as what ABB had to say about it.

While we normally think about AR/VR for service, it can be used in a lot of other applications that touch service, even peripherally, including computer aided design (CAD). A lot of manufacturers are trying to tie their service data back into the design process so insights from the field can help improve future product designs. One of the companies leading that charge has been Siemens, which (among other things) sells CAD software. The company just demonstrated a VR-based system developed with Sony that will allow engineers and designers to actually do some of their design work using AR and VR.

The other story was about a hydraulic pump manufacturer called Permco that faced a lot of challenges during the pandemic. The company's pumps require hand assembly at the factory, and new hires typically went through a lengthy in-person training process to learn how to build the pumps. The pandemic made that type of training impossible, but a software developer working for the company came up with a fix – a VR solution that lets trainees learn to assemble pumps using a headset, internally developed software, and data from their CAD models. New employees can assemble pumps hundreds of times in VR before they ever touch the physical pump. They’re even adding haptic gloves, so trainees can “feel” the parts they are working with.

AR Aids in Labor Challenges

While that's an assembly application, you can pretty easily see how that type of system could help under-staffed service companies make repair training faster and less labor-intensive. Even if using AR/VR at a job site might not be a workable solution for service techs, virtual repair training could be a big boost for an industry that doesn't have enough seasoned technicians to go around when it comes to on-the-job training/mentoring.

Which brings me back to ABB. Like Permco, the company turned to augmented reality because COVID made some in-person activities impossible. According to Stuart, a large project in China that required complex remote training was what finally pushed ABB to deploy AR into the field. After looking for some wearable devices that were practical for technicians to use, they shipped the units to China to help with training.

“[The] Chinese engineers were already trained in basic electrical infrastructure and systems. However, they might not have had the deep domain expertise on the particular piece of equipment they were working on,” he said. “We could then through wearable devices project onto the equipment and we could have engineers sitting in the U.S. … guiding them verbally and visually on the priorities and what to do and what not to do. [T]hey were able to communicate in English and then the tools were translated into Chinese for the field engineers.”

A short time later, they were able to do the same thing by connecting technicians in Germany with their counterparts working in a mine in Chile. “People were open to using it because they had no other choice at that point in time,” he said. “And we usually find in times of crisis like this, technology can move extremely quickly and people become much more open and adapt to using it.”

For service, of course, deploying AR for training technicians or helping remote techs work through a problem can represent a major change in workflow for organizations. But if it means saving several days of travel and/or struggling with translators when every minute of downtime counts, the investment is going to be worth it for a lot of companies.

We covered a lot of ground during our conversation (including how ABB is using artificial intelligence along with AR), so you should check out the entire podcast.

Have you found any good, practical uses for AR/VR in service? I would love to hear about them.

Episode 267

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Scott Mautz, author of The Mentally Strong Leader and founder and CEO of Profound Performance, a keynote, training, and coaching company. Scott is a former Procter & Gamble executive who successfully ran four of the company’s largest multi-billion dollar businesses. He has been named a "CEO Thought-leader" by The Chief Executives Guild and a "Top 50 Leadership Innovator" by Inc.com.

Scott shares his strategies for building mental strength and overcoming challenges as a leader. He also explores topics such as self-regulation, the "static trap," self-doubt, imposter syndrome, navigating stress, as well as the importance of creating habits that support mental strength, providing tools and frameworks for building resilience.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Watch the Video Here

Full Show Notes

Scott: When you have a title like the mentally strong leader, I've found that people hear the combination of the words mentally and strongly like, oh, that's interesting. I haven't heard that combination of words. What does that mean? What exactly does mental strength mean? Well, here's what it means. Mental strength is the ability to regulate your emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors productively. Despite circumstances, even in the face of adversity. As I like to say, it's how you manage internally, Sarah, so that you can lead externally. And here's the thing. I think your listeners would intuitively understand that if they want to succeed at work and in life, you have to be able to self-regulate emotions and thoughts and behaviors, productive outcomes. We know that, but the thing is, Sarah, it's really hard to do that. It's really hard to do that. But if you can build the habits that increase your mental strength, which we're going to talk more about, I have learned over time that it's actually how you train your brain for achievement.

Sarah: Hello, welcome to the Unscripted Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Unscripted Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be talking about building mental strength as a leader. May, as you probably know, is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I'm excited for this conversation today and to be talking about such an important topic. I'm thrilled to welcome to the podcast Scott Mautz, who is the author of The Mentally Strong Leader. Scott is the founder and CEO of Profound Performance, a keynote training and coaching company. He is a former Procter & Gamble executive who successfully ran four of the company's largest multi-billion dollar businesses. Also the multiple award-winning author of three other books, it looks like, and has been named CEO Thought Leader by the Chief Executives Guild and a top 50 leadership innovator by Inc.com. That's a mouthful, Scott. Welcome to the podcast.

Scott: Glad to be here. That guy sounds kind of cool. I can't wait to meet him.

Sarah: Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking with him. Wonderful. So that was obviously quite the bio. But before we dig into today's topic, Scott, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself in your own words.

Scott: Yeah, sure. I grew up in corporate America, spent over three decades there. And it was the constant study of me watching what makes great leaders great and why achievers achieve that led me to talk about what we're going to have a nice chat about today that really led me to say, you know, I really have to share what I've learned with the world. And even so much so that I ultimately decided to take the leap of faith and leave the corporate world to, you know, broaden my platform for making a difference with the written and the spoken word and to become a researcher and author. And it's kind of led me to where I am today at the pinnacle of being able to talk to you here today.

Sarah: Yeah, well, that's excellent. Okay, so you say that mentally strong leader pushes their team and themselves to something exceptional, through something challenging in a way that makes everyone feel something special and that mental strength is the leadership superpower of our time. So can you talk a bit about those statements and how that thinking prompted you to write this new book?

Scott: Yeah, I will. I'll even dip a little bit into some research behind the book too, briefly, if that'll be of service to you, Sarah, and your listeners. So I'll start just, you know, with a really crisp definition, if you will. You know, when you have a title like The Mentally Strong Leader, I found that people hear the combination of the words mentally and strongly like, oh, that's interesting. I haven't heard that combination of words. What does that mean? What exactly does mental strength mean? Well, here's what it means. Mental strength is the ability to regulate your emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors productively, despite circumstances, even in the face of adversity. As I like to say, it's how you manage internally, Sarah, so that you can lead externally. And here's the thing. I think your listeners would intuitively understand that if they want to succeed at work and in life, you have to be able to self-regulate emotions and thoughts and behaviors, productive outcomes. We know that, but the thing is, Sarah, it's really hard to do that. It's really hard to do that. But if you can build the habits that increase your mental strength, which we're going to talk more about, I have learned over time that it's actually how you train your brain for achievement. And I'll explain with a quick piece of research and tell you how that leads to the superpower statement you're asking about. I've been doing research on this for a very, very long time. One piece of research that really stuck out that I conducted, I asked over 3,000 executives, Sarah, one central question in one particular study. Thinking of the highest achieving organizations you've ever been a part of that overcame the most obstacles, what were the attributes of the key leader in that organization at that time? And over 91% of respondents, 91.3, I think it was, to be precise, all had the same response, Sarah. They described, even though they didn't know that they were describing this at the time. They described mentally strong leaders that flex six mental muscles in particular, fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal-focusing, the ability to stay, you know, focused on your goals, and the ability to message positively to the troops, not getting drawn down into negative garble and keeping a presence to your intent and quality and integrity to being in the moment. And I really started to understand, Sarah, looking back myself on all the organizations, that I was in that achieved the most despite all the obstacles we went through, it really became clear to me that, wow, mental strength is the differentiator. It's the secret sauce. It's the cheat code to achievement. It's what led me to really believe that, especially in today's chaotic work world, where there's so much opportunity to be distracted and to have doubt creep into your life. It's what makes me believe right down to the core of my fiber that mental strength is the leadership superpower of our time.

Sarah: Mm-hmm. Okay. All right. I'm excited to hear more. Now, there's a term that I saw that I'm hoping you can explain to everyone and talk a little bit about why it's important to avoid, which is the static trap.

Scott: Ah, yes. The static trap, it has to do with the fortitude muscle, right? And I think if you and I sat down, Sarah, and brainstormed all the things you need to do and the habits you need to build to be able to build up your fortitude muscle, we could come up with a lot of pretty obvious things. One thing that's not so obvious that's in the book, The Mentally Strong Leader, a tool that you can build, is to avoid the static trap, which is this. It has to do with problem-solving. And if you think about it, you have to be able to solve problems really well. It's inherent in being resilient because the very nature of having to be resilient, you have to overcome problems. But there's a big problem in problem-solving called the static trap, which is this. Our research has shown us that people can tend to be static, first of all, meaning they deny that a problem exists. They push it off on someone else. They do nothing about it. They say, oh, that's not really an issue. Until what? Until the problem can no longer be ignored. Then they move from being static to creating static around the problem, denying even then that, okay, but it's not really that big of an issue. I didn't really cause it. Making excuses for why the problem exists, and pointing fingers at other people. So even though they've admitted the problem exists, they move to the third phase of the trap, which is they were being static, then they're creating static around the problem. Now they remain static by not doing still, not moving fast enough, and getting into action mode to take action and do something about the problem that exists. And you overcome that, of course, by being able to recognize the signs of problem denial and moving quickly to admission in action mode instead. And I go into depth in The Mentally Strong Leader about how exactly to do that. But avoiding the static trap is not something that we often think of or even know that it exists, but it's very, very real. And it gets in the way of us building our fortitude muscle.

Sarah: Now, what do you think it is that causes that initial static?

Scott: Yeah, I think it's, we are so busy, we're so inundated. And as I say, I think it's not just that I think, you know, I have the data that shows us there's more and more opportunity than ever, Sarah, for us to feel distracted. And, you know, ever since the invention of devices, that doesn't help any, right? And then all the chaos that's happening in the world and the amount of self-doubt that creeps into our lives now and into our work world, into our personal world, it creates this paralysis in us where sometimes it's easier to default to being static than to actually tackle the problem from the beginning. And psychology shows us, we make the incorrect conclusion that our resilience will increase by ignoring a problem. Because we don't have to face it. The energy doesn't go to trying to face it. So we're going to reserve that energy for when things get really bad. But of course, what happens, the problem gets blown out of proportion. And by the time you move past being static about it, the amount of energy you actually have to put into addressing it has exponentially increased. And it actually rapidly decreases your fortitude and resilience. I think that's really why we remain static for far too long.

Sarah: Yeah. I wonder too, if part of it is fear.

Scott: Oh, sure.

Sarah: Yeah. That's interesting. Now let's talk about, you know, you mentioned self-doubt.

Scott: Yeah.

Sarah: Can we talk about how leaders can work on eliminating negative self-talk or that inner chatter and the need for approval-seeking?

Scott: Yeah, let's talk about that on a couple of fronts. In The Mentally Strong Leader, there's a whole chapter on building your confidence muscle, remembering that you know, the six mental muscles of mental strength are fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal-focusing, and the ability to positively message to the troops. And in the chapter, I go deep on the confidence muscle. And I talk about two really important tools, two things we need to do, which are, first of all, monitor your relationship with doubt, and then also monitor your relationship with yourself. And I'll explain both of those because they get to what you're talking about, Sarah. Think about those words for a second. I'm asking the listener to monitor their relationship with doubt. That assumes that a relationship must exist. And I can guarantee you, regardless of the listener out there, Sarah, it does exist. The definition of confidence is not the absence of doubt. We all have doubt in our heads. And even the most confident people that I interviewed for this book could tell me... It's not that doubt doesn't exist. They've just gotten very good at managing their relationship with doubt. And I talk in the book about the doubt continuum, how you can go all the way from actually being overconfident on one end of the continuum, which isn't great, all the way over to being paralyzed by fear, to your point earlier, Sarah, which isn't great. And in between, the truth lies in trying to, you know, really try to be perfectly confident or at least embrace healthy doubt along the way by knowing that you're never going to know everything. And that you have to believe in your ability to figure things out along the way as you go. Now, as you must also monitor your relationship with doubt, you have to monitor your relationship with yourself. There's also a tool in The Mentally Strong Leader called the self-acceptance scale. It goes all the way from being self-accepting completely, self-love, self-worth, and self-appreciation, all the way to the other side, which is imposter syndrome, which isn't good. And then there are all kinds of variations in between where our confidence slowly wanes as our self-regulation of our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors wanes and our confidence starts to decrease. So we start from a place of, you know, self-accepting, and then we can start to seek approval, chasing approval instead of authenticity. Then it gets a little bit worse. Then we start comparing to others, forgetting that the only comparison that matters is to who we were yesterday, whether or not we're becoming a better version of ourselves. Slowly, self-regulation breaks down more. We move farther to the right of the scale, where our self-acceptance just collides even more. And we're starting to engage in negative inner chatter, which I'll come back to in just a second. It gets even worse. Then we could start to move along that scale towards where we actually believe we're not enough. And I want to ensure your listeners, if you're watching this anywhere on YouTube, or if you're just listening, I want you to look into the camera right now and hear me when I say this. You are enough. You don't have to take on everything by yourself. And we can continue to move along that self-accepted scale in the negative side all the way to imposter syndrome. And to your question, where I find in that scale, you know, we want to be self-accepting. That's the idea. Self-regulate our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors and stop the degradation of our confidence along that scale. Where a lot of people sit happens to be right in the middle, which is negative inner chatter. And you're asking about that. I always encourage people, and I talk about this as one of the over 50 plus tools in the book, The Mentally Strong Leader, to help you build habits to become mentally stronger. I talk about one tool called taking a self-compassion break tool, which is simply this. It's three steps with a pre-step. When you find yourself beating yourself up, first of all, you have to get better at catching yourself in the moment when you're doing that, which is something I still work on. You know, I teach this stuff, Sarah, and I still have to work at catching myself when I'm beating myself up. Then you go into step one, which is just in that moment you catch yourself doing it, stop beating yourself up for beating yourself up. Step two. Instead, in that moment, talk to yourself like a friend in need. If a friend came up to you and clearly needed compassion and was telling you a story where they're clearly looking for compassion, you wouldn't interrupt them five minutes in and say, hey, I've heard your story and I've come to the conclusion that you're a complete loser, right? You wouldn't talk to your friend in need that way. So how would you talk to yourself that way? And then the third step in that self-compassion break is to remember the 90-10 rule, which is simply this. 90-10 is a ratio, a formula for how you should value yourself, which should be 90% based on self-worth, self-appreciation, self-love, 10% on assigned worth, and what other people think of you. And people often say to me, but Scott, you'd be teaching the 100-0 rule, that 100% of how you value yourself should be based only on what you think and never on what anyone else thinks. I think that's an interesting theory, but in concept, it doesn't really work. We all need that occasional slice, Sarah, of external validation to tell us that we're worthy and worthwhile, valued and valuable. The problem arises when we allow that 10% to become 70, 80, 90, 100% of how we value ourselves. The problem arises when we begin to chase approval instead of authenticity when we focus on winning love rather than giving love.

Sarah: So you mentioned on that continuum, the far end is imposter syndrome.

Scott: Yes.

Sarah: So can you talk about, you know, we know that's real and can be really tough. Can you talk about what can be done when someone's at that extreme to kind of, you know, get out of that thinking and, you know, shift the focus back to somewhere more positive?

Scott: Yeah, imposter syndrome, so we're all on the same page, Sarah. It's when you downplay your accomplishments and your worth, you doubt your intellect and your skills, and you can even discount, totally, your expertise and your experience. And in The Mentally Strong Leader, one of the 50 tools I talk about there helps you to stop imposter syndrome with multiple steps. And I'll share very quickly a few of the key steps. One, one of the most important things is you first have to, and this is the obvious one, you have to own your accomplishments. You really have to ask yourself, where am I underestimating and underappreciating myself? Where, if I'm honest, am I assigning too much credit to other things, to luck, to external factors? You can play defense attorney here, meaning imagine you were on trial to defend why you are where you are today. What would your lawyer say in defense of you of how you got there? That's what you have to do in this first step, you know, is really own your accomplishments. You know, I've learned over the years studying this, though, that that could still produce the yeah, but the response, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah: It can also be really hard.

Scott: It could be.

Sarah: I mean, I'm really bad at this.

Scott: Yes.

Sarah: I'm not even sure. I mean, you know, I have some ideas, right? But we won't get into all of that. But I find that very difficult for myself. I find it difficult to be objective. I find it difficult to articulate.

Scott: Yes.

Sarah: You know, even when there are areas I can identify like it's really challenging for me to kind of, you know, put those into proper thoughts, words, et cetera.

Scott: Yes. And that's why it doesn't stop at step one, because you're absolutely right, sir. That difficulty leads you to say quite often, yeah, but. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes. I did accomplish this, but fill in the blank with a thousand other reasons why we might convince ourselves we don't deserve what we're getting. So you can also move to step two, which is to be open to imposter discomfort, but absolutely closed to imposter thoughts. And here's what I mean by that. It's called acceptance in psychology circles. It's the best way I can put it is to say like, so let's say you're about to take on, you're going to lead a team. You've just been promoted and you're going to lead a team now, you know, somewhere within the service business. You know, you've been blessed with the opportunity to lead a new service team. You're brand new in the role. And you're starting to feel imposter syndrome kicking in. Well, rather than having doubts about whether or not you can really lead the team, you have to be okay with just letting that doubt sit in the background, allowing you to focus on how to do that job best, not if you can do that job. And at the same time, so that's that imposter discomfort. You learn to be okay with letting it sit there because it's okay. It all happens to all of us. But the difference is you don't let imposter thoughts take over. Discomfort is one thing. Thoughts is another thing. You think of them almost as a detached bubble from your brain sitting out there and you know that. You can imagine they came from somebody else, an unfair critic. And you know that those thoughts are not trying to help you in your life. So why would you take them seriously? This takes you into the third step where you can think of your value and your values rather than your valuation. And here's what I mean. First of all, especially when you're struggling, Sarah, with owning your accomplishments, it's really helpful sometimes to reach out and talk to people and find out what am I really good at. What value do I really bring to the earth? And they can be a confirming source for you. And even for you to say really, truly. What unique skills, strengths, perspectives, and values do I bring to the earth? Number one, and not focus on valuation. What other people are thinking that you bring to the pile? Then the second part, half of that, also goes back to your values. What do you stand for? What's important to you? Are you living those values every day? And if you're not, can you increase that? And the important part about that is when impostor feelings are booing you from the cheap seats, your values are sitting right in the front row cheering you on in your life, reminding you that no matter what anyone thinks about what you've accomplished including yourself. If you're staying true to your values you're living true to what matters to you and that's an accomplishment that is really worth something. And I've found that that can also help people get past the very, very difficult thing called imposter syndrome.

Sarah: Yeah. Now, I don't have any research on this handy, but I feel like there is research that indicates that imposter syndrome is more common in women than men.

Scott: Yeah.

Sarah: Do you know if that's true?

Scott: It is.

Sarah: Yeah.

Scott: That is true.

Sarah: So it's interesting because obviously I said, you know, I've struggled with that myself. But what's interesting is when I interview leaders on the podcast, it's become very apparent to me that men are more likely to take credit for their accomplishments openly, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying they shouldn't. But when I ask women about their accomplishments, their career progression, et cetera. Almost, always, they will point to something outside of themselves, some external luck.

Scott: Yes.

Sarah: I've been fortunate. I had a really good support system. I owe it all to, you know, this person who saw something in me, et cetera. And it's been very interesting to observe that. I bring this up because I think that it's something it would be helpful for everyone to be aware of that man or woman. I mean, it doesn't matter. I'm just pointing out the fact that I see it more on women. You know, when you notice someone doing that, don't underestimate the importance of stopping them and saying, well, yeah, you know, I'm sure that your boss was really supportive, but I think you're doing yourself a discredit by not owning what it took for you to do X or Y or Z. It's actually been really interesting because I've started framing the question when I ask women. And instead of saying, what do you think helped get you from here to here or helped you do this thing? I will say what internal characteristics helped you, and what external factors helped you. Then it forces them to reflect and own, you know, that. And so, you know, I think it's just really interesting that those thought processes exist and can be stronger in some people than others. But also to think about, just as human beings, how we can help one another, you know, focus on, like you said, not our valuation. It's not me saying what I think of what you've done, but how can we encourage people to reflect on their value and, you know, what they bring into the world?

Scott: Yeah, that's a fantastic point, Sarah. And I want to build on it very briefly if I can. I do something similar as well, the kind of internal-external thing. I phrased that question a little bit differently, but I do the same type of spirit, not only with women but with anybody that I know is disproportionately suffering from imposter syndrome. And to the spirit of what you're saying, another question that I use as a prompt when I spot someone doing that to themselves, really distancing themselves from what they've really done. I found a very powerful question, and I encourage you to try it and see how it works when you challenge other people. I'll stop them and I'll say, hold on, I want you to really think about this hard. What simply would not have happened if it were not for you? And you really force them to separate what they're imagining in their mind their success came from. And what's helpful about that foil is if they imagine the absence of their existence, if they had to be truthful, it becomes easier to say, well, I know if I wasn't here that that wouldn't happen. And then it becomes easier to draw a tie to the unique value that they brought to the table and it starts to get them out of the mode of assigning credit for everything that happened to external factors. So try that as well. That might be of service to you. I found that to be very helpful.

Sarah: Yeah, I like that. All right. Let's talk about limiting beliefs. So how do these factor into mental strength and how can leaders reframe limiting beliefs?

Scott: Yes. And of course, you know, in The Mentally Strong Leader, one of the core muscles that we've learned exists as part of mental strength is the boldness muscle. And one of the things that holds us back from being bold, of course, is limiting beliefs that pop up that we grab onto. And they can be deadly, right? Because when you have a limiting belief, they soon become truths, which affects our emotions, our thoughts, and our behaviors. Those behaviors become actions. Those actions become beliefs. Those principles, you know, those beliefs become principles that we act on every day. So you have to break the cycle. And, you know, I encourage people in The Mentally Strong Leader to conduct what I call a belief exchange, where you first of all have to uncover the beliefs holding you back. You know, what resistance are you feeling inside when you think about achieving a goal that you're going after that's important to you? And why do you think that goal is too difficult? You know, uncover the beliefs. You know, what global assumptions are you making? You know, I... I am... Life is... People are... Things like this... What are the global assumptions that you're making that are converting into limiting beliefs? What stories are you telling yourself? What labels are you applying to yourself that aren't true? And I encourage people to just spend some reflective time with those prompts, those questions, and list out their limiting beliefs, and then create an exchange. Then you have to just replace the beliefs holding you back. You know, how did I form this limiting belief once you've identified it? Would people who know you question the validity of that limiting belief? Would super achievers question the validity of your belief, the thing that's holding you back? Was there a time when you didn't believe that limiting belief? You know, what are the consequences if you stick with that limiting belief? These are all prompt questions that can help you to then do an exchange. And it sounds simple, Sarah, but I can't even tell you, I've done workshops where I've seen people being brought to tears by the simple exercise of writing down, using the prompt questions I was just talking about, and I talk about The Mentally Strong Leader, uncovering their limiting beliefs, and then being forced to exchange those beliefs and then write them down on the same index card, draw an arrow and say, I'm no longer going to use that belief. I'm going to exchange it for this empowering belief. And I've seen people brought to tears with just the power of self-awareness and moving closer to self-acceptance when they do that.

Sarah: Yeah, you know, I was second-guessing myself on bringing this up, but see if you can follow me here. And when you started describing that and you said, you know, I am...., life is... that led me to think about internal locus of control versus external locus of control.

Scott: Yes.

Sarah: Which I have to imagine plays a part here in the sense of the mentally strong leader, right? Because in a lot of ways, we're talking about perspective, right? And we've talked some on this podcast about how perspective is the only real difference of whether you're looking at a problem or an opportunity, right? And so, you know, I'm just thinking about people that get stuck in the habit of the external locus of control. You know, this is happening to me.

Scott: Yes.

Sarah: I'm trying to lead change, but I'm in an environment that just, you know, it feels like a lost cause, you know, versus, you know, I can't control all of my external environment, but I can control this. I am able to do this. So is there a sort of a correlation there?

Scott: I think they're 100% is. And just to show, just to build on the specific example you're talking about, Sarah, in one of my keynotes, I do quite a bit of work in the change management space. And one of the most powerful moments in the keynote is when I stop and, you know, we're talking about change and the process of change and why it's so difficult for us. And I stop and I pause and I ask the audience, you know, you have what's called The Change Choice to Make. Are you going to choose to see change as happening to you or for you? And then I have them do an exercise where they list out, when you're acting like change is happening to you, what does that look like? What do those behaviors look like? Okay, great. Well, when I act like that, I catastrophize how bad it's going to be. I worry about how I'll lose part of myself with a change. Okay, now, what happens when change happens to you? And the transformation you see in behaviors and outlook is the epitome of a shift from an external focus to this thing happening to me to an internal lens where it's like, oh, wait a minute. I own how I'm going to think and feel about change. And wouldn't it be so much easier to lead change and thrive with change and live with change if I switched gears to that internal locus? That is a huge part of mental strength, Sarah. So excellent point and an excellent question, especially if mental strength is regulating your emotions, your thoughts, and behaviors to produce productive outcomes. You cannot do that by giving all power to the external factor. It's the opposite in the definition of mental strength.

Sarah: Yeah, that makes sense.

Scott: Excellent point. Excellent point.

Sarah: Thank you. Okay, so I'm going to ask this question from two different perspectives. So, you know, we're talking about these muscles, right, that you cover in the book. And, you know, this idea of building mental strength and navigating negative emotions, maintaining a positive outlook, etc. My first version of the question here is, you know, I understand the importance. There's also a lot, like you mentioned at the beginning, a lot going on in today's landscape, right? So these leaders have, you know, obviously, they have personal lives and there can be any number of things happening there. But even just from the landscape of the work world, you know, there's a ton of change, you know, there's competing priorities, there's demands on demands on demands, et. cetera. So what is your advice on, you know, working on this mental strength in the face of a lot of stress and, you know, competing priorities, et. cetera?

Scott: Yes, there's a tool in The Mentally Strong Leader in the messaging chapter, the messaging muscle, which again is your ability as a leader to not get drawn into negativity, not get sucked into negative environments, and let your temper run away with you or your emotions run away so that you send the wrong negative message to troops. It's about maintaining positivity because people are always watching you as a leader. It's absolutely essential if you want to be mentally strong that you can control that flow of emotions. There's a tool in the book that gets at what you were talking about, Sarah. I call it the redirect rhythm. It really works because it's simple. It's based on a core psychological philosophy of how to control emotions in negative moments. Here's how it works. It's four steps, but once you start to practice it, Sarah, it happens instantaneously. It has to be because this is a tool to help you navigate negative emotions in the moment. Here's how it works, four super easy steps. First, you have to create space and this is what I think most of us intuitively know. It's the old adage of you have to step back and take a breath. We all know that, but here's the psychology of why that's so important because when you step back and take a breath in that moment, when you can feel your heat rising and you say, all right, give me a second to cool down, you take a breath. Psychologically, what happens is you're creating distance from the intensity of that emotion. You're breaking the gravitation pull of that emotion that's dragging you somewhere that you do not want to be. That's why we take a breath. Then when you take a breath, you quickly move into the next step, which is to name the emotion. Ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? When you can name it, you begin to distance yourself from that emotion. It's not you. It's that thing you're feeling, and it begins to lose its hold over you. So for example, let's say you and I are having a discussion, Sarah, and I'm getting very angry with you, although I can't imagine. You see such a lovely person, but I'm getting angry. I don't know because you don't agree with me. And I step back and I say, oh, okay, take a breath. What am I feeling right now? I'm feeling anger. You go to the next, the final two steps where you reassess and you redirect. You reassess. Okay, I'm feeling angry, but what's really happening? What's really happening is that Sarah just has a different point of view than me. She's not right. I'm not right. I need to back off being so passionate about my point of view, and I'm going to redirect. That's the final stage. What's next? What am I going to do about what I'm feeling and how I'm about to react to Sarah? What happens is over time, it becomes automatic. You create space. You name the emotion. You reassess. You redirect quickly, and it becomes a very powerful self-regulation tool to keep you from losing your cool in pretty negative moments.

Sarah: Yeah. Okay. So here's the piece I'm struggling a little bit with if I'm being honest. Okay. So I've been pretty open in my content on the podcast, et cetera, about my own mental health journey. So I have complex PTSD, which can surface in depression, anxiety, ADHD, et cetera. So, you know, there's these principles, applying these principles within, you know, the challenges of, we'll say, normal stress, right?

Scott: Yes, sure.

Sarah: But then, you know, how does this content apply for people that have, you know, some mental health challenges that could make the application of these things more challenging?

Scott: Yeah, here's what I think can help. And, you know, I do want to, you know, state up front that by no means am I, you know, a mental health certified expert. You know, I focus on mental strike. For folks that are really, really, you know, struggling, they should go get the help, need, care, and attention that they deserve and that they need. But I do want to point out that what I know can help anybody who's struggling in any sense of this is it comes back to the fact that it's often the habits that we can create that make some of these behaviors more automatic for us so we don't have to think about it and struggle with it. And I'll give you a few examples. In the book, there's a reason why the subtitle is what it is. And for those of you that can see at home here, you know, it's build the habits to productively regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. In The Mentally Strong Leader, I build habit-building science for the exact reason you're talking about, Sarah, to help make it for people who are really struggling with a variety of mental strength issues. And I build habit-building science in three ways. First of all, you have to understand, and everybody knows this intuitively, that to build a habit, you need repetitions, right? Repetitions come from systems and frameworks that once you ingrain them, it helps make the helpful behavior, you don't have to think about it as much. It becomes more automatic if you will. And that's why all the tools in the book are built on systems or frameworks. Habit-building science rule number one. Rule number two is we often don't start the habits that we really need to help ourselves from a mental strength perspective because we don't know the first small step to take. So for every of the 50 tools in The Mentally Strong Leader, there's a section titled Your First Small Step, as well as a section that gets to the third point of habit-building science, which is what do you do in moments of weakness? So especially for folks who are really having a hard time with some of the aspects of mental strength, there are sections for each tool that tell you when you can feel, for example, your confidence breaking down, or your confidence muscle weakening. You may generally be confident, but you get out of that meeting with a boss and you just don't feel good about yourself because of something they said. What do you do in moments of weakness to get back on track? There's a section for every tool built-in on that as well. So that's a long way to answer your question, which I think could come back to the more you can habitualize behaviors that are really going to help and that you don't have to think about it. They become part of your daily routine. I think it's going to give you a greater and greater chance to truly become mentally stronger.

Sarah: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I wanted to ask that question, just because I think it's important to acknowledge that, you know, practices that might be pretty straightforward and simple for some folks could be a lot more challenging for others. But I think part of it too, is, you know, the goal is progress, not perfection, right? So to your point, you know, not only what do you do in a moment of weakness, but, you know, there might be periods where someone's struggling. And, you know, some of the steps or, you know, the advice just feels too much at the moment, and that's fine, but you can come back to it, right? It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing mentality. It could be something that, you know, you're able to focus on when you can and take a break from, you know if you have a period where it's too challenging. But, you know, to your point, it sounds like so many of the concepts here are really, really helpful. And so I think they could apply to anyone. It's just, that I wanted to be respectful of bringing up the fact that, you know, sometimes there are other factors that could make it harder for people to apply certain principles than others.

Scott: Yeah. And I want to build on that in two ways very quickly, because it's a very important point, Sarah, and thank you for bringing it up, which is I do want your listeners to understand that the opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline of mental strength to work from. We all do. In fact, in the Mentally Strong Leader, there's even a mental strength self-assessment that you take to determine, okay, what's my overall mental strength score? And then you also get a score by muscle, which is your fortitude, confidence, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal focus, and messaging scores. And then it also helps you to figure out, okay, well, which muscles are right for you to work on? Which tools in the book will help you to work on those muscles? And I think that's important, Sarah because it helps you create a customized mental strength training program that's right for you. So you don't have to feel overwhelmed with, wait a minute, is this guy telling me that I got to go in and work on six muscles all the time?

Sarah: And all 50 tools at once.

Scott: All, like absolutely not. You know, when you go to the gym to work on your muscles, I don't think you're going to be able to go in with a plan every day, Sarah, to say, okay, today we got to hit every muscle in the body. I'm going to be here for 12 hours. Wednesday is back day, and Thursday is leg day. So you can create your own customized mental strength training program to pull the levers that are right for you that you need to work on. And again, to remember that the opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline that we can build from.

Sarah: Yeah. And I would imagine too, there could also be, you know, scenarios, situations, circumstances where you might come back and need to focus on a different area, you know, because you're dealing with this certain situation or, you know, maybe you're leading a certain kind of person that is making you feel more challenged with a specific muscle than another, you know? So when you get the book and you look at your baseline, you know, that gives you some context, but you might find yourself in situations where it could be helpful to come back to a different piece and dig into one of the other muscles or some of the other tools.

Scott: Yeah, that's right. It's a menu of options. And I say right up front in the book, there's no expectation you use all the over 50 plus habit muscle-building tools in here. That would be ridiculous. You create your own program. And my dream is to see people, you know, I see them in the airport reading my book and I see about a thousand different stickies coming out the side pages of the parts that are most important to them. And I think that's what you'll be able to do.

Sarah: Yeah. Well, I think it's great that you're passionate about this. I think it's great you've created this resource. You know, we have had different folks come on the podcast and talk about burnout and talk about some of the struggles, right? And I think that to your point, mental strength is not only important but a superpower, right? And I think, you know, to me, I think about not only can it help you be more effective, but I think it's really important to consider the impact that it can have on a work-life blend, right? And being able to get better at navigating these things so that you're not taking it home, or you're not burdened by some unnecessary emotional weight, you know, that you could work on not carrying, right? Because it's more so, you know, just building those muscles and being more confident. So I think any tool that people can leverage to help them feel more confident and feel more adept at navigating these different circumstances it takes ultimately stress away, right? It helps them feel more productive, not just in their impact, but in how they conduct themselves. You know, I like the point you said, it's not about the valuation. It's not about getting good at this so you can give more to the company that you are impacting the bottom line for. It's the value, right? Get good at this so that, you know, being a leader is less taxing on you as a human being, I think that is a good way to look at it.

Scott: Very well said, Sarah. And, you know, I really do believe this. I mean, I really do believe this from the bottom of my heart. All the years I've spent studying mental strength, all the studies that I've done, I could have just put advice in a book and then said, okay, follow the advice and you'll be fine. But I recognize how difficult becoming mentally stronger can be. And it's why I spent the same amount of time understanding how we build habits. And that is the secret sauce in the book, I believe, because if you can habitualize the behaviors that you know in your mind are like, yeah, that makes sense. I should do that. But I don't. If you know how to create those habits, it's like your buddy, your partner right on your side with his or her arm around you, helping you along the way.

Sarah: Absolutely. Scott, can you let folks know where they can find the book so that they can check it out and learn more?

Scott: You can go to scottmautz.com, S-C-O-T-T-M-A-U-T-Z.com to learn about the book, my workshop that goes with it, the keynotes that I give, and all that. And also, I put together a gift for your listeners today, Sarah. If they go to scottmautz.com/mentallystronggift, they can download a free 60-page PDF that includes that mental strength self-assessment that I was talking about. If they want to get started on that, determine the baseline, remembering that we all have a healthy baseline to start from. But you can get that along with a whole bunch of questions and prompts that help you get the most out of the book. You can get that again at scottmautz.com/mentallystronggift, your free 60-page PDF.

Sarah: Excellent. Well, thank you, Scott. We'll make sure that we link both of those things in the show notes so everyone can easily find them. Really appreciate you coming and having this conversation. Enjoyed it and appreciate your insight. Thank you.

Scott: Thank you. Thank you so much. And thanks for your great questions and insight is very helpful for me too. Thank you.

Sarah: Thank you, Scott. You can learn more by visiting the home of the UNSCRIPTED podcast at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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