Using AI to Unlock Potential While Protecting the Human Experience

Episode 313

In this episode of UNSCRIPTED, Sarah Nicastro sits down with Faisal Hoque, serial entrepreneur, business strategist, and bestselling author, to explore the delicate balance between AI advancement and human potential. From distinguishing consumer AI from enterprise initiatives to understanding the concept of regenerative leadership, this conversation tackles how organizations can harness AI's power while preserving what makes us uniquely human.

What You'll Learn:

- Why distinguishing between consumer AI and enterprise initiatives is crucial for business success

- How to approach AI adoption through the "Open and Care" framework for balancing innovation with humanity

- The concept of "reverse innovation" and why not all technological advancement equals progress

- How leaders can embrace "regenerative leadership" to help workforces evolve alongside AI

- Why empathy and mindfulness are essential guardrails for responsible AI implementation

- The importance of maintaining neutrality between AI optimism and pessimism to make informed decisions

- How to preserve human creativity and purpose while leveraging AI's capabilities

- Why establishing governance frameworks for AI is crucial before widespread adoption

- The critical balance between using AI as a tool versus allowing it to replace human expertise

- How to approach AI implementation with a "do no harm" principle while maximizing opportunities

[00:00] Intro: Balancing AI and Humanity with Faisal Hoque

[04:19] Why Enterprise AI Differs from Consumer Applications

[16:17] The Open and Care Framework: Finding Balance in AI Adoption

[21:16] Personalization and Choice in AI Implementation

[34:39] Understanding Reverse Innovation and Its Impact

[41:25] Regenerative Leadership in the AI Era

[43:56] Empathy, Mindfulness and Responsible AI Development

[46:10] Final Thoughts: Do No Harm, Create Better Futures

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Episode 312

Host Sarah Nicastro sits down with Berend Booms, Head of EAM Insights at IFS Ultimo, to explore the evolving landscape of Enterprise Asset Management and its critical role in service transformation. Berend and Sarah also discuss their mentee/mentor relationship as well as share honest insights about a topic they bond over: balancing professional ambitions with family life.

In this episode:

[00:00] Welcome to Unscripted with Berend Booms

[06:16] Why EAM Matters for Service Organizations

[15:08] Top Trends in Enterprise Asset Management

[19:57] Sustainability's Evolution from Afterthought to Driver

[25:32] Bridging the Generation Gap in Today's Workforce

[36:33] Work-Life Balance: A Leader's Perspective

[41:18] Finding Balance Through Intentional Choices

[48:53] Key Takeaways: Balancing Business & Life

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Episode 311

In this solo episode, Sarah provides a brief update on Future of Field Service events for 2025 plus a sneak peek into a few other exciting things in the works!

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Episode 310

In this episode of UNSCRIPTED, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Amer Iqbal, a sought-after speaker who has spent the last 20 years leading innovation at some of the world’s top companies including as the Head of Digital Transformation, APAC at Meta and Director of Digital Strategy & Innovation at Deloitte Digital. Amer joins Sarah to discuss some of the themes from his upcoming book, The 5 Ways to Innovate.

What You'll Learn:

- How the "Five Ways to Innovate" framework helps to systematically drive innovation success

- Why traditional companies should embrace startup methodologies while leveraging their established strengths

- The three-pillar approach to AI implementation: efficiency, growth, and transformation

- How to balance invested vs. divested innovation strategies based on organizational characteristics

- Why customer-centric innovation must extend beyond user experience to product development and business models

- The New York Times transformation case study: maintaining core values while revolutionizing delivery methods

- How to overcome the "we've always done it this way" mindset while respecting organizational legacy

- Why innovation success requires systematic approaches rather than isolated initiatives

This episode provides practical insights for service leaders looking to transform their organizations while maintaining their core strengths, with specific emphasis on balancing traditional business values with modern innovation approaches.

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Episode 309

In this episode of UNSCRIPTED, host Sarah Nicastro sits down with Michael Potts, Executive Vice President at ACCO Engineered Systems, to explore strategic 'big bets' in talent acquisition and retention. From prioritizing cultural fit over quick hires, to embracing disruptive change and investing in emotional intelligence training, Michael shares how ACCO's $2B business is leading rather than following industry evolution. Whether you're struggling with recruitment challenges or seeking to build a more resilient service culture, this conversation offers actionable insights on creating an environment where top talent wants to stay. Tune in to discover why challenging the status quo might be your best strategy for long-term success.

What You'll Learn:

- How to prioritize cultural fit over immediate staffing needs and why running lean is sometimes better than hiring wrong

- The power of committee-style interviews and creating safe spaces for honest feedback in talent assessment

- Why disrupting rather than following is crucial for industry leadership, even when it means some attrition

- How to balance traditional "promote from within" approaches with bringing in outside perspective

- The importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) training in developing stronger leaders and teams

- Why career progression needs rethinking to match modern workforce expectations and desires

- How to maintain the human touch while embracing technological advancement and automation

- The critical balance between driving efficiency and investing in people-centric approaches to service excellence

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also, subscribe to our newsletter right here.

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Transcript:

[00:00:11] Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to get an inside look at ACCO's strategic big bets to win the talent war. I am joined today by Michael Potts, who is the Executive Vice President at ACCO Engineered Systems. Michael, welcome to the podcast!

[00:00:35] Michael: Thank you, Sarah. Appreciate you having me on.

[00:00:39] Sarah: Yeah. I'm thrilled to have you. So, before we get into the conversation of today, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your role, and ACCO's business.

[00:00:51] Michael: Okay. I've been in this industry, the HVAC construction industry, for about twenty-eight years. I'm the Executive Vice President of ACCO Engineered Systems. We have offices in eight states across the Western United States, and we're a $2B-plus company. And I have roughly 550 service vans on the on the road every day. I run the service division of our of our company. So, we're made up of service, controls, and construction.

[00:01:38] Sarah: Okay. Great. , and how long have you been with ACCO?

[00:01:44] Michael: I've been with ACCO twelve years now.

[00:01:46] Sarah: Okay. Yeah. I knew it was quite some time, but I didn't think it was the whole 28. Okay.

[00:01:53] Michael: No. No. And, interesting thing, we have we have a lot of longevity at ACCO. I'm still considered one of the new people after twelve years. And, so that that's a testament to our to our culture, I believe.

[00:02:10] Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely. So, Michael and I had a call a couple of weeks back, talking about doing this podcast together, brainstorming ideas, you know, the way that we usually do. And we landed on this talent discussion because there were a lot of paths that kept taking us back to some of the opinions you have, some of the things about the approach that ACCO is taking around this, and, you know, that ties in with culture, leadership, you know, a lot of different aspects. So, we're going to talk through some of those during our conversation today. But to start, we're talking about some of these big bets. Right? And so, I think this is great. It's a great conversation to have because what I get frustrated by seeing is organizations and leaders who are not taking big enough bets when it comes to what's going on in the talent landscape. They're either just way too complacent within the organization or they're hoping that things are going to go back to the good old days, you know, whatever it is. And so, I really enjoyed talking about some of these more strategic opinions and these big bets that that you're betting on to make progress in this area. So, one of the first that you shared with me is you said you would rather run short of optimal efficiency than hire people you know are not a good fit for the business. Can you explain can you explain this a bit?

[00:04:03] Michael: Well, I believe that an employee/company relationship is exactly that. It's a relationship. If we're accepting people into our organization that don't fit into the role and aren't going to excel in the position that we were trying to place them, they're going to fail. And as a leader in our organization, if people around me are failing, I take that personally, and that's a reflection of myself. So, I would rather run lean in in our groups, whether it's our field teams, our sales teams, or our operations teams, and wait to find the right people that are going to fit those roles than to hire people just because we need bodies. Whether it's a dispatcher or a regional vice president, it doesn't matter. I you have the wrong person in in the role, you know, you're not going to get the efficiencies that you're that you're striving for. So, being patient, being selective. I will say prior to the pandemic, we were just trying to hire bodies and get people in the door. And I feel like our business suffered a little bit because of that. And then the pandemic hit. We had to lay a lot of people off, and it got me thinking about, you know, we have to change our approach when it comes to recruiting and hiring people. Now that doesn't mean that you let your business go backwards because you're being selective. That just means be patient. There are a lot of really good people out there that will fit your needs. You just have to put in the work. You have to put in the work to find the right people.

[00:06:18] Sarah: That's what I was just going to say. You know, the call for patience is spot on, but you're not just being patient and then waiting for the right people to come to you. You're being patient and you're being proactive in how you're changing your approach to get more of those right people to you, which we're going to talk more about. So, it's both. It's being patient, but it's also being open to, okay, how do we need to change? What do we need to change? You know? What how has the dynamics changed, and how do we adjust? Right?

[00:06:56] Michael: Correct. Correct. And ACCO, we're an employee-owned company. So, I'm challenging everyone in our in our organization. We should all be recruiting, every single day. It doesn't matter where you're at in the organization. We should always be looking for that next quality person to bring into the group.

[00:07:21] Sarah: Yeah. And when we think about the service part of this conversation, you know, you were talking about this principle applies for you whether you're talking about service or sales or operations. But, I mean, really, not only service, but any role in any organization that would be customer facing. There's a real opportunity cost of just bringing in bodies, you know, in terms of how that can affect the customer experience if they're not actually the right fit and they're not invested in, you know, the brand and the experience you want to portray as an organization. Right? So, I think that's another side of it is, I think sometimes because the talent landscape is very challenging today, there can almost be this air of desperation to your point of just bringing in bodies, bringing in bodies. Right? And I can understand where that comes from, but just how you have that realization, it's kind of a Band-Aid on a bigger problem. And it's a Band-Aid on doing the work the organization needs to do to bring in more of those right people.

[00:08:47] Michael: I think it could actually be a detriment to the organization because you're diluting the product that you're putting out if you don't have the right people in the right chairs.

[00:08:58] Sarah: Mhmm. And potentially poisoning the culture. Right? If you have people that, you know, don't want to be there or don't care about the work they're doing, the people that you have that do care and do work hard. You know? It's not a good addition to the overall morale and team feel to have those types of people filling in those spots.

[00:09:35] Michael: Absolutely. And my take on hiring is, I don't want somebody to come to work for ACCO that is just looking for a job. I want somebody to come to work for ACCO that's looking for a career, and then we can help build their career. That's the focus that we're taking now, and that's kind of a departure from where we were, you know, five years ago.

[00:10:04] Sarah: Yeah. So, you know, when I asked you about some of the traits that you're looking for when you're looking for the right fit, you talked about work ethic, integrity, willingness to learn, and they all make sense. My question is, what have you found works in assessing those things when you are finding the right people? Because all of those traits make sense that you would want them, but I think they can also be hard to accurately assess. So, what have you learned in, you know, the evaluation process of how you try and get a good feel for if someone does have these traits and will ultimately be an asset to the business?

[00:10:56] Michael: Well, I believe, you know, traditionally, when we're interviewing people, we go through a list of questions. And, you know, HR provides the list of questions, and you have to you have to check all the boxes. My approach to it, and I believe most of my leadership team's approach to it is I would rather sit down with a candidate and have a conversation with them and not necessarily go through a list of questions. One of the things that we've done is, we're trying to do more, how would you phrase it, I guess, committee type interviews. So three or four ACCO leaders can get a better feel for an individual. And when we come out of those interviews, you know, everyone has a different take on what they heard. So that's been pretty successful. And having a safe place for sharing the opinions of what we've learned in the interview is paramount to success. If other leaders aren't comfortable going against mine or another leader's opinion, then it's not a good solution to finding the right people. S, that comes back to culture. My take is if a person has work ethic, integrity, willing to learn, you know, wanting growth in their career, we can teach all the technical side of the business. Those are some of the things that are hard to teach. And, if I can find somebody with those traits, it's really easy to get them to progress in their career and be a be a successful employee at ACCO.

[00:13:12] Sarah: Yeah. And, you know, even that piece in and of itself, right, it's an evolution. I mean, going back probably ten years, you didn't have to do that. You probably could find people that had these traits and had some of the technical skill you already needed them to have, and, you know, you just put them in place. And I think that's where what I mentioned earlier is, you know, some companies are having a really hard time adapting to what this looks like today because they haven't figured out, okay. Well, we just have to do more work. You know? We have to try harder to find the right fit, and then we also have to do the work to train them up on, you know, the technical aspects. But there's just no way around it. Right? It's a good point that, you know, those things are more a priority and the technical piece is more easily taught. And you can put a training program in place. You can put an apprenticeship or a mentorship in place to make sure that you feel those employees are getting to where they need to technically. It's a lot harder to instill some of these traits in into people. Right? So, it makes sense why you would be seeking those over the experience or the technical aptitude.

[00:14:35] Michael: Absolutely. You know, our customers' requirements are changing almost daily. So, it's not just the company needs different types of employees. The customers are demanding more of service companies, so the service companies have to demand something different of the employees. And technology, while it is wonderful and has helped us advance, it's also put more pressures on our employees that maybe are in the forefront of our management skill sets.

[00:15:20] Michael: So, we have to understand that, you know, with technology, our employees are behaving different because our customers are behaving different. So, the end result is the company has to behave differently. And that's kind of what we're going through right now is an evolution of how we're interacting with our employees based on what our customers' needs are.

[00:15:45] Sarah: Mhmm. What would you say are is the biggest or a couple of the biggest shifts in what the customers are expecting?

[00:15:54] Michael: In the in the HVAC service industry, ride share apps are you know, that's everyone expects it now. Home delivery companies are setting expectations for individuals which are translating into what the customer needs are. So, that's really driving our customer experience or customer's expectation of their experience. And, and then, you know, that relates back to what the employee's experience is. That's the, kind of the genesis of the customer's changes.

[00:16:41] Sarah: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So, we talked about how you are what you're sort of prioritizing in looking for new talent and then how you're assessing that. What are you doing to ensure that ACCO is giving these new employees an experience and a company culture that they will, you know, want to be a part of, want to apply those traits to?

[00:17:13] Michael: Well, I think it starts with the top down. It's a leadership thing. And, personally, I have to live the culture that I'm expecting from the people around me.

[00:17:30] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:17:30] Michael: So, I think setting the example from the top down, that's how you drive the cultural changes. I spoke about a safe space for the managers to share their opinions, and I think that works throughout the whole company.

[00:17:48] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:17:49] Michael: You know, you have to have a place where people are allowed to share their opinions with leadership, or you're not going to be able to drive that culture. So, the ability to drive conversation through the whole company, that that's our culture.

[00:18:14] Michael: Our CEO to our dispatchers, there's this ability to have conversations across the organization, so I think that really helps set the tone for a new employee coming into the organization. Peer-to-peer contact. People that are in the organization and have some longevity, know what the expectations are. If we can pair them up with a new employee, then they show them the ACCO way, if you will. So I think there's quite a few things that would set the culture and set the experience for a new employee. We're working hard on all of those things.

[00:19:07] Sarah: Yeah, that's really good. And so, the second big bet I want to talk about is, we talked about betting on change. And, you know, you saying that you have to make these strategic bets on changing the approach, changing the expectation, changing, you know, the business, whatever it is that the customers are demanding that today's landscape demands. You have to figure out how to adapt to that, but you also said that, when you're betting on change, you know that it will bring some attrition. So, in a talent landscape that is already challenging, why is it important for you to take that risk of changing things in a way that could lead to attrition?

[00:20:08] Michael: If we don't continue to change with our customers' needs…Now, we don't want to have change for change's sake.

[00:20:16] Sarah: Sure.

[00:20:16] Michael: It's really driven by customer needs, and technology plays a role into it as well. But if we don't continue to get better and improve our processes and procedures and improve the customer's experience, then we're going to be left behind because our competition's doing the same thing every single day. As an employee, a lot of times people get set in their ways, and, you know, we've always done it that way. Why can't we continue to do it that way? Well, that's not going to get us to where we need to be. So, we have to continue to change, and sometimes that does lead to heartburn for long term employees. And, you know, my expectation was x, and now we're moving in y direction. And we as leaders have to be disciplined enough to go, here's the end goal. This is what I'm trying to get to. And, you know, maybe we've lost a couple people along the way, but we have to be disciplined enough to continue to drive to that goal.

[00:21:31] Sarah: Mhmm. Yeah. Now one example you shared with me is that someone made a statement to you when ACCO was deploying IFS for service management that it would lose 50% of its technicians, and you lost two. So, I'm curious, you know, how you effectively closed the gap of risk in that example, from what that initial statement was to what the reality ended up being.

[00:22:05] Michael: Transparency and getting employee buy in. We really brought the field leadership in when we were developing the mobile piece of the IFS platform.

[00:22:20] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:22:21] Michael: We brought them in and basically asked what their needs are and why and help us develop this tool for all of our technicians. Granted, we were much smaller then, but that it did come back to me that we're going to lose half of our technicians if we have that kind of oversight. And doing their time in a live environment, they're not going to buy into that. So, we did bring the field leadership in, said, what are the must haves for the field teams? How can you guys be involved in the development of the of the mobile? And I think that really helped stop some of the noise that was out there. You know, there's a lot of rumors when you're deploying a new software or you're providing any change in an organization. And if you can dispel those rumors by getting people involved, I think that really was the catalyst for our retention of our field teams.

[00:23:35] Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely. And, I mean, you know, the two people that that you did lose, you know, you can't not evolve as an organization just to appease people who don't want to change the way that they're working or aren't willing, you know, to change how they're working. Because, to your point, it's not change for change's sake. It's change to keep pace with what the customers need. It's change to keep pace with what the technological environment is. It's changed to keep pace with, you know, the talent landscape and needing to do things differently. Right? But I do think that's quite impressive that somebody said half, and it ended up being two. That's a pretty good success rate to go back with. So, the third big bet that I want to talk about is your commitment to drive, not follow. So, to disrupt rather than being disrupted. There's a lot of risk, but also a relative ease to following. Right? What, knowing that, what makes driving the charge worth it in your opinion?

[00:24:56] Michael: I'm really passionate about our industry. The HVAC and plumbing service space has a lot of really, really talented people in it. It's provided a very comfortable lifestyle for my family. ACCO's one of the largest mechanical contractors in the country. I believe that we owe it to our industry to drive the industry as opposed to following someone that's, you know, sixteenth of our size to drive the industry. So, I look at it as I want to do what's right for the industry. There are a lot of small businesses that are starting up every single day that that are looking for ways to grow and build their business, and I want to be the example of that across the country. You know, my goal is if ACCO does something on the West Coast, I want our East Coast competitors and peers to go, why did ACCO do that? We should look into that.

[00:26:13] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:26:14] Michael: That's my goal, and it and it really comes from a place of giving back to our industry. But also, you know, making the industry better. That's the goal.

[00:26:27] Sarah: Yeah. I love it. One of the areas that we talked about is this idea of career longevity. So this is one that you said you're really working through knowing that things need to change but working with HR and thinking about the best ways to evolve approach. So, I mean, I know this is something that you're in the midst of, but in this area specifically, what do you think disruption could look like?

[00:27:01] Michael: Well, I believe that he next generation of employees need different things than the current generation of employees. As a company, we have to adapt to what those needs are, and, you know, that in itself could be a disruption in our in our industry. We, as a company, are looking at how we interact with people coming into the industry. How we speak to them has to be different. How we engage them, and our expectations of them has to be different. We had an employee in an interview and share their expectation of, I'm going to work for ACCO for two years. Being an employee owner doesn't really matter to me. It doesn't pay my rent today. That's a long-term play. I'm going to be at ACCO for two years. I'm going to leverage what I learned. I'm going to go to the next company and use that, learn something there, and I'm going to go to the next company. The days of employees working for one company for forty years, I believe those are gone with this next generation of people coming into our industry. So as an organization, we have to adapt to that. If we don't adapt to that, our expectations are going to be different than our employees' expectations, and that's not going to be good for either.

[00:28:48] Sarah: Yeah. I just had a conversation last week with a gentleman, Ken, who leads technical support at Makino. And we had a really interesting conversation around this point specifically because we were also talking about some of the ways the talent landscape has changed, particularly after COVID. And, you know, he was saying that they did a lot of work to, make sure that what they're paying people in all roles is fair. But he said, you know, pretty much no business can just double everyone's pay and maintain economic viability. Right? So, he said, we have to look for other needs to meet. And for them, he was saying, because the entire organization across functions really appreciates the experience that field engineers have coming up, like the customer interactions they have, the skill sets that that requires, they were very open to looking for all these ways to create these career paths, not just the traditional, you know, engineer to this, to manager, you know, but throughout the organization. So, to give people a lot of options of we're not asking you to stay in one place for five years. We're saying, you know, you come in, you do this role, and then here's all these different paths that you can take to progress in different ways, different levels, you know, etcetera. And I thought that was smart because we know that people want to see that opportunity for growth, that opportunity for progression. But I also really liked how they came together as a business to appreciate how those field engineers can fill roles in, you know, a variety of different functions, not just in the service silo, if you will.

[00:30:48] Michael: We need to look at career progression as a big priority to younger people, and I completely understand that. But that's not the only driver for young people. It's, you know, how does the company feel about the environment?

[00:31:12] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:31:13] Michael: How do they feel about flex time, working from home?

[00:31:17] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:31:18] Michael: You know, vacations, those kinds of things. There are a lot of factors that go into how we interact with this next generation of employees. And I again, I think if we fall back on, well, we've always done it this way, then then we're going to be suffering as an industry, not just as a company. So yeah. We have to be mindful and open to new conversations.

[00:31:50] Sarah: Absolutely. That's such a great point. Be open to it. And, also, you know, keep in mind knowledge is power. Right? Like you said, the biggest risk is that the employees want an experience that ACCO doesn't understand and isn't taking the time to get to know. If you're asking the questions, what's important to you, what matters to you, what would keep you here, it does it's there isn't a wrong answer. Right? I mean, I think sometimes people don't ask because they don't want to know, but ignorance is not bliss. Knowledge is power. If you're asking the question, that's what allows you then to come together as a leadership team and get creative and say, hey, listen, this is what we're hearing. What do we need to do to meet this need or this need? Or, you know, what can we address? How can we address it? It's just too many organizations, I think, are avoiding that conversation instead of, you know, seeking that understanding and then really figuring out, okay. Well, here's what they want and what they need. Now let's put our thinking caps on and really, you know, break the mold. You know? We're not going to go back to what we were doing before COVID. We need to create something brand new.

[00:33:06] Michael: From a leadership perspective, if you're not asking those questions and getting the answers, how are you going to set clear expectations for the people that work in your business? And if you're not setting clear expectations for the people in your business, then you're failing as a leader.

[00:33:23] Sarah: Absolutely. Yeah, it's really interesting. So, the fourth big bet that we spoke about is bringing outside leaders in. So, we talked about the fact that this is a big deal in a company that has been in business for ninety years and has traditionally promoted from within and still does. Okay? So the goal is not to move away from doing that, but talk about why you're thinking about the right balance and what the benefit is in bringing some outside talent in.

[00:34:00] Michael: Well, I'm glad that you touched on that we're not getting away from this homegrown methodology because that's been success that we've had a lot of success from that. But the experiences that you bring, that people have from other companies that you can bring into an organization that's as established as ACCO, ninety years in business. I think you bring new ideas and new ways to evolve as an organization. I mean, I've been here for twelve years, and I feel like I'm losing some of my creativity because I'm caught in this system. That I'm not challenging the status quo like I used to. So that outside influence, I think, is important to the growth of a company. So we're trying to be better at finding the right people external, through all of our organization, as well as develop people. We talked about career paths, you know, building that career path for that next leader. But the way our business is evolving, you don't always have time to wait for that evolution of the next manager, next leader, or next salesperson, or next field technician even. So you do have to you do have to look external, and it's an it's a balancing act.

[00:35:50] Sarah: Yeah. For sure. Now another area we talked about related to leadership is, you know, something that that has been coming up more in conversations, which is that, in field service historically there's been a lot of progression from field technician to supervisor to director to manager and on up. Right? And in some instances, that's great. In other instances, it's sort of a formulaic way to keep people and also reward people that are doing a good job without necessarily considering whether they would be good leaders. Right? So, you know, sometimes we're putting people in these positions without really asking them if they want to lead people, understanding if they have those people leader skills and if they would be good at that. How are you handling that at ACCO?

[00:37:01] Michael: Well, we're trying to put the people in the right seats. Right? The right people in the right seats. And from a leadership perspective, you have to lead from the right place, and you have to want to be a steward of growing the team around you. Not a lot of people have that ability to prop the people around them up. So just because in the past we said, okay, this is the career progression. Here's where you're going to go, whether it's in the field or in the office. We have to make sure people are moving their career forward for the right reasons. And, if we are moving people forward in their career that don't have that dedication and the ability to build their teams and prop the people up around them, then we're just getting managers out of people. And I'm looking for leaders in my organization. So, I think it has to come from the right place. Again, I keep going back to the safe space of accountability in our organization. And, if we have a bad leader, it comes back to the culture. Like a bad employee can wreck the culture, so can a bad leader, probably more so. What’s the saying? People don't leave companies; they leave bad managers or bad leaders. That's the, you know, that's kind of the root thought behind that concept for me.

[00:39:06] Sarah: Yeah. And you don't want to be doing all of this work to get the right people in and then have them, you know, leave because you're not also reflecting as people progress internally. Are they right for this? Is this what they really want? Etcetera. Again, it's just another way of reflecting back on what has been the historical norm or the traditional process and thinking, okay. Well, is this what's right still, and is this what's right in every situation, or do we need to think about something different? On the topic of people skills, you mentioned that ACCO encourages all of its employees to take EQ training. Can you talk a little bit about that - how it's offered, the value it brings, that sort of thing?

[00:39:59] Michael: So, in my group last year we started the EQ training. The emotional intelligence, I think is a very big part of finding the right people, having the right people in the right seats. When I started down this emotional intelligence path, my perception was I'm going to learn tools to figure out how I communicate with you better. And what I found was it's not external; it's not an opportunity to look externally and figure out how the person sitting across the desk from you is reacting. It's really your behavior and how you react to the situations around you. So that was eye opening to me. I started with our leadership team. We went through an EQ workshop. We broke off and did cohorts that would work together with a consultant for a year. And we've had a lot of success with providing those tools to individuals in our organization.

[00:41:20] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:41:21] Michael: One of the one of the side benefits that I didn't foresee was, you know, people are going back to their work places and sharing their experience and the tools that they're learning with their peers in the organization that maybe haven't gone through the emotional intelligence workshop.

[00:41:42] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:41:42] Michael: So now we have a demand for people wanting to go through the workshop and wanting to be in the cohorts, and I think it's really helped with how we communicate as an organization. I'm really excited to continue the process and get everybody in in our service business through the workshop and a lot of them in the cohorts because we're seeing the value. Just in the way that our employees are interacting with not only our customers, but with one another.

[00:42:21] Sarah: Yeah. Well, it's interesting some of the things that you've been saying in this conversation. You know, I can tell that certainly from a leadership team perspective, there's been some effort put into this. But I think, you know, it's just it's an area I would love to see more companies investing in and really, you know, prioritizing because of the impact it has. And to your point, it's, you know, it's clearly allowed the leadership team to communicate well with one another and create those relationships where, like you said, you can have a panel interview, and afterwards, you can come together, and you can disagree, and you can challenge each other, and you can work through it and come up with what you feel is, you know, a good outcome. Allowing employees to communicate better with one another, wonderful. Allowing employees to communicate better with your customers. And it's not only about communication. Right? That's the other thing. You're encouraging people to become more curious, right, which helps people just understand others better and understand themselves better, have more tolerance for differences of opinion, you know, all of these things. And, you know, I think when we chatted, you also mentioned it's helping people in their personal lives too. Some of the people that have gone through this, you know, they're finding themselves applying it at home. And it's impacting them even beyond the workplace and just as human beings, which I think is, again, coming back to, you know, what do employees today want? They want to be seen as people. They want to be, you know, treated and valued as human beings, not just as a line on a spreadsheet or an asset. You know? And it's just another wonderful example of how you create that culture within the organization where, you're investing in them knowing that that investment pays off within but also beyond the business. So, I think it's a really great initiative.

[00:44:32] Michael: Yeah. It definitely fills my cup when I when I go around our organization and, you know, people pull me aside and say, hey. My relationship with my spouse or my children has improved because of this workshop or the cohort that I'm going through. Those are the things that I think are the most impactful for me personally. That’s what drives me. We're actually having our next EQ workshop next week and our CEO is going to attend it with us. So, it's starting to get some legs through our organization. From that, we've actually, some of the people that have gone through the EQ workshop have now started an initiative, a mental health workshop initiative. So, we've just had our first workshop for mental health, and we're going to have a couple more this year. So, it's kind of getting some legs and expanding across our organization, which is really a positive thing, I believe.

[00:45:46] Sarah: Yeah. I agree. I wanted to ask, you know, it's impossible not to think about the ways that technology will continue to change the way we work in in all industries. And, I'm curious how you see AI and more automation playing a role in sort of addressing these talent challenges and also how ACCO will keep pursuing its drive, not follow position in the industry?

[00:46:30] Michael: You know, failure to adapt to new technologies and new needs of our customers, if you're not going to adapt to it, you're going to be left behind. So, you know, my main focus is to be the leader in our industry. We have to we have to research, we have to invest in the new technologies, but we also have to be mindful of what does that mean for our employees. So, again, like all of this, it's a balancing act of, you know, do you go and try and automate every aspect of your business? Well, what we found is, you know, there's no substitute for having a person pick up the phone and answer a question for a customer. So, while we want to be more efficient, we still have to have that personal touch. We're a very, very large service business, but I believe our customers in all of our markets feel like we're still, you know, a mom-and-pop shop, and that's what we're striving towards is that customer experience while continuing to grow and automate and be more efficient. It's just a tough balance, and we want to stay on the forefront. Partnering with companies like IFS and some of our other partners have helped us kind of stay ahead of the pack, I believe. And, you know, that's where we see it going. Yeah. The other part about it is being strategic also and looking into the future and going, hey, where are we going to be in five years? You know, AI is this big buzzword. I don't think anybody can tell us accurately where AI is going to be in five years. So, using that as kind of our barometer, you know. We're trying to plan five, ten years out, but we know that there's going to be some, disruption or some pivots that we're going to have to make along the way. We have to stay nimble enough to be able to pivot when we need to.

[00:48:57] Sarah: Mhmm. For sure. I was smiling to myself because it wasn't intentional that the EQ and the AI question were next to each other, but it does represent that balance. Right? You want to think about, great, where else do we need to automate? How else can we drive efficiency? But you know there are limits to that, and you're putting equal emphasis on how do we empower our people? How do we invest in our people? How do we make sure that, you know, they get at least equal attention. Right? And I think that's such as an important reminder. Michael, I have to say, you know, I really appreciated today's conversation and our earlier conversation. When we were brainstorming for this, there was a number of ways, in trying to understand your mindset and what we were going to talk about that I challenged you, and you took that just in stride. And I think, you know, you said something earlier. You said, when you were talking about how the leadership team has created a safe space of accountability, that terminology in and of itself is so telling because in too many organizations, accountability can feel like conflict, you know, especially when it's rooted in okay, well, we have a disagreement. You know? We sat on this panel. We interviewed this candidate. I didn't like them. You like them. To challenge each other in those ways, in all of those ways, and do so in a way that you would refer to as a safe space, I think, is very telling of your approach and the company's approach and the effort that you've put into creating the culture that you have. And I you said something to me during our prep call that I've quoted numerous times in the past couple weeks. You said, I see myself as a leader that is here to challenge the status quo. How could I possibly do that if I don't allow people to challenge me? And I just really, really liked that point. And I think, there's all of these I call them old school, which is that's not meant to represent age. It's just mentality wise. These old school leadership styles that are very authoritative, very focused on controlling things, very focused on being the smartest person in the room all the time and having all the answers. And it's, in my opinion, so outdated and also so at odds with winning the talent war, if you ask me. And I just really wanted to say, like, to talk to you and to hear your mindset and not only yours, but ACCO's, you know, culture and what you're creating was just really, really refreshing. So, I genuinely appreciate it and enjoyed having these talks.

[00:52:07] Michael: Well, thank you for that. You know, the fact that you're utilizing that and having conversations with other people about what we spoke about, that's how I give back to the industry, and that's what I'm trying to do, as a company. So, thank you for that.

[00:52:30] Sarah: Yeah. Well, keep leading the charge and I hope to have you back at some point to talk about other things in the future. And thank you for being here.

[00:52:41] Michael: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sarah, for having me on. I appreciate it.

[00:52:44] Sarah: Absolutely. 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. And as always, thank you for listening!

Episode 308

In this heartfelt episode of UNSCRIPTED, host Sarah Nicastro sits down with Ged Cranny, Senior Consultant with Konica Minolta's International Service Business, as he reflects on his remarkable 45-year journey in field service on the cusp of retirement. From navigating the evolution of service from cost center to strategic advantage, to insights on balancing technological innovation with human connection, Ged shares candid perspectives on leadership, diversity, and the enduring importance of customer relationships. Whether you're a seasoned service leader or rising through the ranks, this conversation offers valuable wisdom on building successful service organizations while maintaining the 'family feel' that makes field service special.

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Watch the episode here:

Transcript:

[00:00:11] Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. I am joined by a good friend today, mister Ged Cranny, who is going to share with us some of the hard-earned wisdom that he has gathered over an extensive career in field service. Ged is currently Senior Consultant for Konica Minolta's International Service business. He's been with Konica Minolta since 1999 and was himself a field service engineer before that. We're going to talk about some of those things. But, Ged, you are set to retire in just a few weeks' time, which is a momentous occasion. And so, thank you for agreeing to celebrate that by coming on the podcast and having a talk with me. And, welcome!

[00:01:07] Ged: No problem. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:01:09] Sarah: Absolutely. So, before we get into our discussion for today, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself. Anything you want to share about you, your background? You know, we're going to talk a little bit about your early career and some of the things you've learned along the way, but what else should folks know about Ged before we dig in?

[00:01:36] Ged: I grew up in a place called Middlesbrough, which is in the Northeast of England. And it's a steel and chemical town, so it's built on the furnaces of the steel making and the salt underneath that created the chemical plants along the river. It's a little bit out of the way, so as the chemicals and the steel industry reduced, obviously, the job market became a little bit harder, and people tend to move away from where I live to get work. You know? Example is my son lives in London. He's never worked in Middlesbrough, went away to university, and never came home. Oh, he does come home now and then to see me, but, obviously, not to work. I'm married to Dee and we met each other when she was working at the company I worked at. So, she left for a while, and then we bumped into each other again. And she offered me free food to go to a wedding with her, just as friends, and the free food was really nice. So, I decided that she was really nice. We got together, and we've been together now, I think we've got our 40th wedding anniversary coming up in just over just under two years. I left school to sweep up on the steelworks. At 16 years old, I left four months before everybody else left because a job came. And as I said, jobs were hard to get. So, my dad had already I come from a very traditional family, so my paperwork was always open before I got home. And my dad found out I had a job, and he'd already rang the school and told them I wouldn't be coming back. So, I start I came home on the set Friday night, started on the Monday. And I'm not joking. They taught us how to sweep up on a steelwork, which is a hilarious thing if you ever been in a steelwork. I left there, and you're going to laugh now because I'm really shy in the background. Outside of work, I have two personalities, a work personality and an outside of work. And I'm actually quite shy outside of work. And I didn't talk to people. So, unless I was on a football pitch or a sports pitch, I was really quiet. And so, I went to into retail just so I'd learn to talk to people. Plus, I wanted to learn to drive, which needed me not to be on shifts so I could work during let's say, drive during the day, sorry. Work during the day and get my driving lessons on the weekend. I passed my driving test. I saw an advert for a printer engineer job and saw this thing, magic words, you get a free car. So, I lied in the interview that I didn't just want a car, and, I got the job, in print in 1978, in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, and it's been the best thing ever. I've been all over the world. It's really good. So probably talk about that as we go.

[00:04:37] Sarah: Yeah. But,

[00:04:37] Ged: , yeah, it's cool.

[00:04:38] Sarah: It's so funny.

[00:04:39] Ged: That's true. I love sport.

[00:04:41] Sarah: Yeah. All sports?

[00:04:44] Ged: Actually, I like watching different types of sports because I like to see the dynamic of the team, and I think the dynamic of the team comes into the dynamic of work, and that's one of the things that I hold. There's a little secret a lot of people won't know about me is, and I have been honest with people who do know me close to me, is I'm actually dyslexic. So, the reason my dad wanted me out of school was I wasn't going to do many exams.

[00:05:09] Ged: I learned very, very quickly, it's not it’s not a bad thing. It's actually a talent. Yeah. I see the world differently. And especially when I go into management, I definitely see the world differently. I would sit in a room thinking, am I the only idiot in this room who can see this is easy? I'm not saying that.

[00:05:28] Sarah: I don't know if we've talked about this before.

[00:05:30] Ged: Yeah. Yeah. It's a diverse thing to have in a room. You know? We talk about diversity, but let's not just talk about, gender diversity, nationality. Let's talk about thinking types as well. Because, you know, as I said, you know, I see numbers. Somebody was joking the other day, I was talking to a new guy, and he walked through the door, and he said, has he hit with any numbers? And the guy said, he's just said something to me, and he just went whiz, whiz, whiz, whiz through the numbers. And he said, we would sit in a PowerPoint presentation. It'd be 20 slides. And on near 19, it says stop. Doesn't match with eight number eight. And he said, all he says is he sees patterns. He doesn't see numbers. He sees patterns. And you'd go back to number eight, and the number was wrong. And we'd also say, I go, how'd you do it? And he says, well, can't you do it? So, it's I'm not saying everybody has the same thing and that everybody has the same way. But I also because I was in a galactic way, classed as stupid. Remember I've got a brother. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I've got a brother whom NASA came and picked up and took to America. So, you know, all my teachers expected me to be version two, you know, of him, I. E. One play one better, and I could play football. And I think that helped in the management thing.

[00:07:01] Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely. That's really interesting. So, one thing I want to say really quick is we did a podcast a while back with a gentleman from Phillips named Tristan Lavender all about neurodiversity. And to your point about, you know, diversity is very important, and we know that, but it isn't, you know, any one thing. I mean, that's what makes it diversity. Right? And we need to think about the ways that people are wired differently and what that means in terms of, you know, one, what superpowers that gives. But also, what accommodations we need to make, in terms of, you know, eliminating bias.

[00:07:45] Ged: and making them be included.

[00:07:45] Sarah: and able to thrive in in a work environment. So it's a really good episode to check out if anyone's interested in that. The other thing I was going to say is, I get asked a lot, like, how did you get into field service? And I'm like, well, I, like, happened into it. I mean, I don't know. And it's always funny when I talk to people about how they got it. You know, to you, it was a free car. Right? Like, that was the hook. And then here you are all of these years later, absolutely love it. And there is something so special about it, but it's something that, like, it's hard to describe to someone that hasn't been in it. And it's even harder to, I think, paint a picture of if someone doesn't understand what the world of service is. , so the way we all sort of serendipitously end up here, but then fall in love with it, I just think is really interesting. So, let's go back, Ged, to you started in your first role as a service engineer back in 1978. So, I want to ask you two questions. One is, what is, I mean, I'm sure there's many, many things that have changed, but what is one thing that's changed that you wish hadn't changed since then?

[00:09:08] Ged: I think that it was more of a family that I came into.

[00:09:15] Ged: So, I spent fourteen years with these people. I actually shut the branch down. It was my first ever round of redundancy. So it was really, really hard, but the company who made me do it realized that, you know, if you're going to train somebody how to do this, you've got to give them the hardest one to do first, I think. But it was that sense of a family. And I know we all talk about these silos and things like this. But there wasn't a silo. You know, I had my badge as engineer. People had their badges as administration. People had their badges as sales. But we all mucked in together. You know, give you an example, our office was a real outlier office. We decided we were a tax dodge because nobody ever came to see us. And we decided the building was really bad, so we all chipped some of our money in, and we spent our weekend cleaning the place, and we painted it over many weekends. And when people came down from head office, we had the nicest office. And it was because it was it was it was our togetherness. It was our family. When you get into that corporate, it becomes faster. It becomes regimented. People have the guards up at the doors and such like. And service are the ones who want to open the doors. You know? If you serve, there's a there's a clue in what we do. It's that team mentality. You know, I go back to the sports thing. It's about that collaborative. It's about this team mentality. So, we would always come out, and I take that from where I was. So that's one of the things I feel that's been lost. You know, we didn't just go to work. You know, I was in at work at 07:00 in the morning because I like being at work, because it's part of family. I was in at work at 07:00, eight o'clock at night. I think when I came in 1999 to Konica, it was the first time that I had a weekend off. I hadn't been on holiday since '78. It was ingrained into me, Saturdays, Sundays. If we needed to work, we worked. I've seen me I've seen me in the office at 02:00 in the morning in the before Konica Minolta and back in the office by six, seven o'clock because we had something big going. So, yeah, I think I think that's one thing that I would say it was bad. It is missing. But you try and recreate it in your teams. I'll try and make sure that was happening in teams. One thing that I don't miss is health and safety was, a word. You know, my second week, so the second Thursday, I rolled the car off. If we'd have been wearing seat belts in them days, and if you'd had headrests, I'd be dead. In fact, I didn't have seat belts and headrests. I ended up in the boot of the car. The window smashed down. I went out the back window, but the car had stopped by the time I went out the back window. So, I literally just fell out, and guess what? I worked overtime that night.

[00:12:17] Sarah: Wow.

[00:12:19] Ged: I still remember it. And now I worked overtime the night after. So, the health and safety side of things was, you know, let's go and get a beer. You survived it. Let's go with it. And I think nowadays, to be real thinking about, wait a minute. You know? Why are we putting somebody in a car? So whenever I got anybody new in the business, especially trainees, even as fast as driving, just they didn't get a car until they spent a few days out with us with them driving and us taking them to the worst places you could possibly take them and telling them how to get through certain you don't have these things in America called roundabouts.

[00:12:53] Sarah: We do have some, Ged, just not as many. Yes.

[00:12:57] Ged: Not as many. So, we have these things, you know, multiple. So you take them out and you do that. And one of the things, it sits in in the back of there. I don't want somebody having the experience that I had. Yeah. So, yeah, health and safety would be a negative to that as well.

[00:13:10] Sarah: Yeah. Now what is a change, a major change, that you've been thrilled to see?

[00:13:18] Ged: Service coming from being not spoke about in the sale to being right front and center. Service turned into a profit center. So very much, you know, I have to blame the Americans for this because two American companies started buying up in my industry, in the nineties, and then we were profit centers. And one of the eye openers was the fact I went to Florida. I was really lucky. I went out to Florida as one of the managers, and I met the CEO of the business. Whole business came out. He was having a fat break, and he came around the car and started talking to us. And he went, you guys are the most important. Now words are words. But he flew to a UK to a board meeting, and he heard that we were on a training course. And everybody was cleaning the place as you would because the new boss is coming, and he's going to be in the head office. And I heard the commotion in the reception because we were just off reception. And he said, are my service guys here? And they went, yes. So through there. And the first people he came to see was us. He came and sat down with us, and it was the whole group, not just the 14 of us. And he sat down. He'd remembered all of the 14 guys who'd been over there, their names, whether somebody was in his ear telling us telling him, okay. But he said that, and it lifted the team. It he told us we were going to be profit centers. He told us we were going to be front center of the business, and he and he lived to that. And yeah, I've sat in meetings now where sales have struggled talking to a customer, and you started talking service and the customer has bought because of service, and that's cool. That's a big change for me.

[00:15:05] Sarah: It is.

[00:15:05] Ged: Yeah. And we never go back in the box.

[00:15:08] Sarah: That's right. What is one thing about field service that you wish more people understood?

[00:15:18] Ged: I think I think to be perfectly truthful, it's more complex. So people are just saying it's, yeah, let's get a screwdriver out or let's you know, you're an engineer. So this is what's really upset me about the fact that in ’94 or ‘95, I went to America and saw female engineers. And came back; I won't tell you what my manager said to me at the time when I told him that I wanted female engineers in the UK. You’d probably turned me off right at this moment in time for not fighting hard enough. But, trying to sell that engineering isn't just for white males.. It's for it's not just for people who've been to university. Actually, some of the dyslexic who never get there have got the brain and the wider brain to be able to do what they need to do. But, again, I'll give you an example of something. And this on this was only 2012/2013. Sent my guys (and when I say guys, you know, it's like that's my just wording for people, male, female as well). But I sent my guys to a university/college, the two things together, recruitment show.

[00:16:58] Ged: And at the end of day one, I dropped in, and I said, nobody's coming to that stand. Couple of feet will come just to nick badges. I said, okay. What are you telling them? We can't get them into the stand. And then I looked at the stand, and I looked at the late HR lady, and I went, this says, male. Doesn't say anything female. But I said, right. Service is about speaking to people. It's about empathy. And I went, not being funny, out of the male and female. Right? Men are secondary. Second massively. It's about being able to use your brain because it's about there's mathematics in it. Alright? Not being funny, there's no difference. And I said, actually, most of the ladies I know are as good at myself, not better, than most of the girls I know. And I went, it's about organizing, being disciplined. It's about, you know, getting out on a morning, getting in the car on a cold day when you do and you don't want to do something. And I said, anybody can do that. We can train that. That's a trained habit. I went, why is this not more written? So that somebody comes on. So, we rewrote it on the evening, and we were giving out flyers, which basically said, do you like talking to people? Do you like Solving people's problems? I do you like, you know, being organized with self-discipline, doing, you know, doing what you need and delivering? And suddenly, we got more diversity coming towards us. Now okay. One of the big questions, how many lady engineers do you have? Not many. It's so suddenly pushed away. So, we had to restart the stories. But what I like to see is there are more diverse people coming into our business, and the fact that it should be open to all because it's not just one skill, and everybody sees it as one skill.

[00:19:01] Sarah: Yeah. It’s about so much more.

[00:19:01] Ged: No turn the screwdriver, lefty, turn the screwdriver, righty. That's not how it works.

[00:19:08] Ged: Logical fixing. I think an engineer's job with the screwdriver in his hand, we've done it on training courses, and it always ends up with a maxim of 25%. Seventy-five % is that problem solving, thinking. It's that it's that getting yourself disciplined. It's about customer and looking after customer.

[00:19:27] Sarah: Yeah. No. That's a really good point. Now here's another one. So, the pace of change has picked up tremendously since you first entered the world of service. So what is your view on, you know, the importance of innovation and how companies and leaders need to stay relevant and stay competitive?

[00:20:02] Ged: Can I come at that from a slightly different angle?

[00:20:04] Sarah: Sure. Of course.

[00:20:07] Ged: Right. I keep hearing people telling me about solutions. And they usually link that to software. And, you know, I work in a company where we sell solutions. But when I asked you know, in the past when I've asked people, and I said, okay. It's a solution. To what? So my thing I would say is build your strategy on where your business needs to be to be profitable. Build a strategy where you can put yourself separate from your competitors without hurting your profitability, but excelling in front of your customers. You know? Always look to excel in front of your customers. That's the key. You know? Often, it might be slightly less today. But if you measure over ten, fifteen-year period, it'll be greater because, actually, then customers become loyal, then customers stay, then customers become trusted with you. And I think too many people buy a piece of software and think that it's the solution. Now we just move on to the next problem.

[00:21:19] Ged: It's got to be an enabler and an accelerator in your strategy.

[00:21:25] Ged: So whenever I'm talking to someone, I always go back and say, what's your strategy? What are you trying to achieve? Okay. So where's the hole that this software solution is going to fit? And I think that's the bit. You know, innovation is great. Innovation just to be trending. It's dangerous to your customers. It's dangerous to your employees. It's dangerous to your profit line.

[00:21:57] Sarah: Yeah. I agree and I think that's a really good point. And I think when it comes to, if I understood you correctly, like, when it comes to how to stay relevant, stay competitive, you're saying, like, that needs to be centered around customers. Right? I mean, what do customers need? What you know, we just chatted about this a little bit before we started recording, but, you know, your observations early on of how what customers needed was shifting, right, and getting ahead of that. So it isn't just about, you know, keeping pace technologically. I mean, that's obviously completely different today than it was, you know, even ten years ago. Right? But it it's about staying close to your customers and those relationships and understanding, you know, what their challenges are.

[00:22:56] Ged: So, the most important thing, Sarah, is to understand is where does your product fit in your customer's journey and their customer's journey? Because if it doesn't fit, at some point, you become irrelevant to that customer.

[00:23:09] Sarah: Right.

[00:23:10] Ged: Right. So, you know, I joke with people now that we don't sell printers. We sell digital input and digital output devices. So I have this theory in life. It's probably wrong, but it works for me. And that is that there's four or five different types of customers. I actually read something the other week that somebody else has said the similar sort of thing, and they were talking about the different, you know, the sixties children, the eighties children, the yeah. The ones since 2020, and saying that they want to be spoke to differently, but there's also that culture fight in between them all inside your own businesses and inside businesses. If you're not relevant to your customers, it doesn't work. So each one of them wants to use paper in a different way, but you can't suddenly turn around to, right, we are a digital company. So if you don't if you want to deal with us, then you've got to come in digitally. Well, great. But customers have a choice. Unless you're working with the government, pretty much you have a choice. So give the customers that choice. So if somebody wants to come in analog, scan it in your machine. It becomes digital in your systems. When the customer needs that to come out, then it's safe. It goes back through the machine. It goes into analog, post it to the customer, how the customer wants it. It can actually send it electronically, but store it differently, all the different things. So, you know, just silly word. It's a digital input, an output device. And people are, like, looked at us like we were crazy six, seven years ago, and we were saying, well, you know, don't say print that that, say, digital input. It's loud. Right? How would you do that? Well, because people, you know, have this bad thing about we kill trees. And we don't, actually, because trees are planted so that they're, , the food for the machines and, you know, recycle paper and such. But the most important thing is you're reacting to where your customer is And your customer's journey. So where are they on their digitization, as everybody calls it? Where are they on their eco? Where are they, and where are their customers? Where are the niggles? And how do they process, and how do you fit into that? And that's the most important thing. Start to understand which piece of the jigsaw you fit and how important you are to that business. Because the more you understand that, the more you can give to your customer, the more that you give to your employees to make them excel in front of your customer. And that's the most that's really important, allowing your employees to in to perform really well in front of the customer. That's a manager's job, help your person perform to their best.

[00:25:53] Sarah: Absolutely.

[00:25:54] Ged: Does that answer the question? Or was it bit too offside?

[00:25:56] Sarah: No. It is. It does. And, actually, you just said, you know, it's a manager's job to allow your people to succeed. Right? And that brings me to another point, which is, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say service is a is a people business, you know, I would, I would be rich.

[00:26:20] Ged: You'd be rich.

[00:26:21] Sarah: And I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, I really, really do. So I'm interested you know, we are in and expanding into the AI era. Right? And I don't think that will change the fundamental truth that service is a people business, but it will change what that looks like. Right? And so what are your thoughts on how we continue to prioritize people and humanity in parallel with, you know, that technological innovation?

[00:27:00] Ged: I probably go back to what I've just said, which is speak to your customers. Not all your customers want to talk to a bot. You know, I get you know, again, I have a mobile phone like everybody else in the world. I've been with my mobile phone company for, like, fifteen, twenty years, same one. Not because I'm lazy, but because, you know, when somebody gives me good service, that's fine. But I got into a loop with the bot the other day, and it got really annoying. And I'm digital. I'm a very digital person. Right. Yeah. I was so angry at the end of it. I actually was so

[00:27:42] Sarah: you can just feel your blood pressure rise. You know? It's crazy.

[00:27:46] Ged: Just kept answering stupider and stupider questions. But if you're going to do these things, test it yourself.

[00:27:57] Ged: And don't just test it today and go, right, sign it off. Keep testing it. Keep knocking on the door. Have reviews of what you're doing and how you're interacting with your customer. Go and see your customers and sit in front of them. Do you use our portal? Yes. I do. Or, no. I don't. I don't use the portal because it's annoying. Right? Okay. Why is it annoying? You know, the whole idea of this is to make it 24/7 easy for you to use. You know? It's more profitable. It helps us to be more profitable. But I think if you're going to set these things up at this moment, don't just set it up because it's going to make you more profit. Make it so that it makes your customer journey better. Make it so that it makes your engineer journey better. Make it so that it makes, you know, people's interaction with your department better so they want to come more. They want to they think you as a trusted adviser. Because remember, the more you use the bots, they become your trusted adviser. And if they're stupid, no good. Remember, it's always said when I was growing up, the first sale is won by sales. Thereafter, it's service. Salesman just walks in. Yes. He'll have some negotiation to do, and he'll tell you that it was the best thing in the world. But after that, it's the service. Now I've had customers over the years who I had some who literally rang up as I came to Konica and basically went, you didn't tell us you were leaving. And I went, I'm not allowed to. And I went, but we're allowed to write to you and tell you we're coming. And, and I went, you are allowed to write to them, but I'm not allowed to take you. People buy from people.

[00:29:42] Ged: So remember that. With the automation, make it make the feeling that your customer isn't on a boat ride in Disney, that they're going to get splashed at the end of it. Make them feel like it's, you know, the ingots ding gets ride or ingots ride. And it's going to be really exciting at the end. And there's a shop at the end. I wouldn't sell them more.

[00:30:08] Sarah: Yeah. Well and to your point earlier, you know, technology is an enabler. And, you know, one of the things that, I think is exciting about where we are right now and, you know, this is, again, we were chatting about this before we got on. Right? The journey that Konica is on with IFS to, you know, automate a lot of things without taking away from the importance that the people are playing. That's the thing that's exciting to me is there's so many opportunities within field service to apply these tools in a way that truly is helpful. Not saying it's easy and it's not different, but it's, you know, it's not taking away from, you know, the special role that the hand plays. It's taking away a lot of the inefficiency or, you know, unnecessary stuff around it so that they can do what they do well when it makes sense. Right? So I think that has to be the focus. Right? It's not, you know, how much can we get rid of or how much can we replace, but how much smarter can we work. Right? And that's they're very different things.

[00:31:21] Ged: I think to be perfectly truthful, so one of one of our things has been a remote by default. Before COVID, 2017/2018, I know we were talking about it, and it's starting to accelerate. We've had the IoT in our machines for since the eighties.

[00:31:39] Ged: But really bringing it together, bringing the tools together. But that brings a different type of problem.

[00:31:46] Ged: Because we talked earlier, how would you get people in the service? You know? How would you get that diversity in the service? How would you get people to come to service? And, you know, it's hard. When I talk to people across all industries, everybody says, yeah, everyone wants to go and sit and play with a computer. Nobody wants to be an engineer, because the first thing they think of, they're going to have dirty hands. It's going to be horrible. They're going to be cold. They're going to be in a field. There's lots of different types of engineering to think about. And where we've got all these people, you know, the average age is growing in all the industry, all the people I talk to. So let's get that knowledge. You know? I'll be honest. At twenty years old, I decided I didn't want to be carrying a tool case around When I was 60. And so I was going into management, and these people are getting to the fifties. It's a hard job. It's hard work. It's hard labor. Now bring that and start now taking the knowledge that then we can use to in enhance the world of our engineers For our customers as well. So, the bots actually talk to them sensibly, and it gives them the right information for the people who want to just look up the information.

[00:32:57] Ged: And it makes sure that it enhances what they do. So we changed the name of a of a scheduler to an exception handler And then sat down and said, right. Okay. Your job is not just to go, oh, somebody's shouting at me today, so I'm just going to make this call better. What we say turn around and say, right. Why is somebody shouting at you? Why did this call get to a point where, contractually, the customer's not happy with us? Why is it capacity? Is it, you know, we missed it. The system's not set up right. The algorithm's not right. If we set if we fix it today, we fix it for a hundred days, two hundred days. And now people are starting to see the benefit of what they're doing. They're getting more excited about that. Yes. It frees up time, but then when that time frees up, guess what? They're starting to do things in the shift left piece and And then using customer skills for more complex problems that the bots can't solve and things like this so that we then become proactive with the customers. And are we there? No. We're on a journey. Will we ever get there? I hope not, because I want that journey to continue forever. Because different types of customers will, as we said earlier, will come in with different types of needs. We'll hopefully break into different types of markets, which ask us for different and more complex fixes. We can use our knowledge of the past with landed with tools to give the service of the future. And I think this still needs human knowledge. This still needs the right things. If you just go for cuts straight away, yeah, your accountant's going to be happy. But five, six years' time, you're going to be walking a tightrope.

[00:34:45] Sarah: Yeah. For sure. I agree. Okay. Two more questions. The next one is, what is one lesson you've learned in your career the hard way?

[00:35:10] Ged: I think it is you're never as clever as you think you are, and always try and learn. Don't just sit with your peer group and learn. Go and sit with customers. Go and sit with engineers. Go and sit with people's departments that work with you and tell them how your department reflects because it's how you reflect. And I think however good you think you've got, get somebody that can tell you you're not as good as you think you are And be willing to take that on board. I think years ago, I when I was hiding the dyslexia and things, I would get grumpy and defensive. So I think my learning thing is not to get grumpy and defensive when somebody tells me that I'm ugly. You know, if one person tells me I'm ugly, laugh at it. If two people tell me I'm ugly, start thinking I'm ugly. When the third person tells me, well, maybe I'm ugly to them, maybe there's somebody else in the world. You know? Fiona waiting for me.

[00:36:21] Sarah: Yeah, it makes me think I just had a conversation with someone recently, and I thought this was such a good point. You know? He said that, I’m someone who thinks that a big part of my job is challenging the status quo, but I can't do that if I don't welcome people to challenge me. You know? And, I thought that was really smart. Right? It takes, I think, time and confidence to get to a point where you're comfortable with that. But ultimately, you know, you are better when you can reflect on those points. So yeah. Okay. And last one, can you share one of your proudest moments?

[00:37:30] Ged: Yeah. It's going to sound weird this, but I left The UK two days before the COVID shutdown. And I left my team because I moved from the business to the hit the HQ in Germany, and they thrived in the COVID, which was the hardest time ever.

[00:37:57] Ged: You know, I was in workshops with different people from different companies talking about how frightened everybody was. They thrived. They grew, but they're doing a fantastic job. They took me out the other night. I'll be honest. They took me out the last Tuesday night to say goodbye six years after I left them. Five, six years, sorry, after I left them. And, I told them the proudest moment was seeing them thrive in probably the hardest time I've ever seen for service, come out the other side, battered, beaten. They kept all the engineers. They kept the customers, they've started to grow the customers again, and they're doing a great job. And their thinking styles have changed, and I just told them that there's no prouder moment than seeing your team go to a higher level than you could have ever taken them, and they did it by themselves. So that's the proudest moment.

[00:38:55] Sarah: Well, that is that is a really good moment, Ged, but, also, you played a role in that. They were able to do that without you, but that's in part because of the impact you had had, undoubtedly. So, you know, it's like it's probably similar to watching your child, you know, excel at something and feeling like they're doing it on their own. You know, and you played a part in that foundation. But, you know, the pride you have in watching them apply it. Right? And, yeah.

[00:39:37] Ged: Most important most important thing, you know, is team. It is it is you know, if my engineers hadn't turned up to work each day, I had 84 at this peak, I think, about 84,000 printers to go and fix. Trust me. That's the day they could bring the white jacket. They put my arms around my back, fasten it really tight, and put me in a nice padded room because it's not going to happen. These guys put themselves out. We had this thing called the beast in the east in the UK a few years ago. That was the first time we'd ever shut service down in the time. So some of the engineers, one of them had an off road, really good off road car. So he rang the engineers, and they drove to a hospital because they knew the hospitals were under pressure. They stayed all day, and they were actually helping with patients, moving patients about, helping the people in the place. They stayed on the hospital, and the hospital rang me two days later to say, your engineers were fantastic. I said, no. No. My engineers were off the road. And they went, no. No. No. Your engineers came to our hospital because they knew our staff would be down. They helped with fixed there were some printers that were down, so they fixed the printers. And then what they did was they made sure they helped ground the hospital.

[00:41:00] Ged: And I just went, wow.

[00:41:02] Sarah: That's awesome.

[00:41:03] Ged: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's to me, that's that there were moments where I just sat there and just went, you're the luckiest guy in the world. You are the luckiest guy in the world. And, genuinely, I've met some great people along the way. You included. Mike, who you're going to talk to later. But I met some great people. There are things in people you don't want, but there's a lot of good things in people. You take them and things from them. And, you know, I've been really lucky. I've had some great people mentor me. I've had some great people just chat with me and keep me going. And I've had some unbelievable, unbelievable people work with me, work for me, and just excel in front of the customers. So that's the proudest moment.

[00:41:48] Ged: Oh my god. I'm gushing.

[00:41:50] Sarah: Well, Ged, listen, it has been an absolute honor, , not only to have this conversation with you, but to get to know you , to spend time with you, to become friends. And, you know, I know that you have some fun adventures planned and you and Dee are going to enjoy some travels and some good times. But I also know that you'll be around the service community. You couldn't stay away if you tried. And so, you know, we'll certainly stay in touch, and , I have a feeling you'll appear again on the podcast at some point. So, thank you very, very much for everything, honestly.

[00:42:35] Ged: No problem at all. Thank you. Thank you for this chat and thank you for all the support over the time.

[00:42:39] Sarah: Absolutely. Alright, Ged, okay. So, 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!

Episode 307

Sarah sits down with Jason Anthoine, a veteran of internal communications with 35 years of experience, to unpack the critical balance between high-tech and high-touch communication, discuss how to leverage internal influencers effectively, and reveal why many leaders unconsciously 'under-lead.' Together, they:

• Explore why now is a critical time for organizations to reimagine their approach to employee experience, particularly in the wake of pandemic-driven workplace changes

• Discuss the three pillars of effective employee engagement: inform, involve, and inspire - examining how these elements work together to create meaningful workplace connections

• Examine the crucial balance between high-tech and high-touch communication approaches, emphasizing the importance of personal interaction in maintaining employee engagement

• Analyze the unique challenges of keeping field service teams connected to company culture, particularly when they spend significant time at customer sites

• Consider the power of small, consistent actions in building trust and engagement, from handwritten notes to personal check-ins, versus relying solely on large corporate initiatives

• Explore the concept of internal influencers and their impact on organizational culture, including how to identify and effectively collaborate with these key team members

• Address the phenomenon of "under-leading" and discuss how leaders can stay connected to their teams' needs by maintaining empathy and remembering their own early career experiences

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also, subscribe to our newsletter right here.

Watch the episode here:

Transcript:

[00:00:05] Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we are going to be answering the question, is it time to reimagine your approach to employee experience? I would say spoiler alert, for many, it is. But we'll get into all of that. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Jason Anthoine, who has thirty-five years of experience in internal communications, employee engagement, and culture change, and is here today to share some of the insights that he has gleaned with us. So, Jason, welcome to the podcast!

[00:00:47] Jason: Great. Thank you so much, Sarah. I'm so pleased to be here.

[00:00:50] Sarah: Yeah. Pleased to have you. So, before we get into the matter at hand, tell everyone a little bit more about yourself. Anything you want to share about you, the work you do, your background, anything like that.

[00:01:03] Jason: Okay. Great. Well, a lot of people ask, you know, how did you even get into in well, first of all, what is internal comms? Then secondly, how did you even get into that? And it's kind of a, you know, pure story. I grew up in a very small town in Middle Georgia, and my dad worked at the school bus factory, and my mom was a secretary at the bank. And when I was a kid, they'd come home from work and talk about work just like all parents do. And I think most kids are like, I don't even know what they're talking about. Who cares? But I would just listen to them, you know? What works? What's not working? What leader did they like? What leader they didn't like? Changes that they would make if they were in charge and all that kind of stuff. And it, you know, it just kinda stuck with me. And, you know, when I went to college at University of Georgia, majored in public relations and then graduated on a Saturday, moved to Atlanta on a Sunday, and first job on Monday was doing the employee newsletter at a bank. And that is about thirty-five and a half years ago, and I'm still doing employee communications. I like it a lot better than some of the other aspects of communications because, you know, things that I say or do or have other leaders say or do, I can see an immediate impact from those things. Other times, you know, external communications and PR and marketing and stuff, you know, it takes a little, you know, difficult math to come to that same conclusion. But with this other stuff, I mean, you could just see it immediately. So, it's just in me it's just in me, and I don't know how to get it out of me. So as my old boss used to say, if you can't fix it, feature it. So, I've just been featuring it for thirty-five years now.

[00:02:45] Sarah: Excellent. Now what has changed is how you're going about that. So, you mentioned, you know, when you finished your degree and you went to work, you were doing internal comms for different organizations. If LinkedIn is correct, the last role you had doing that was for Newell Brands as the vice president of corporate communications, and that came to a close in early 2018. And since then, you have been working with organizations, so doing consultancy around communications and also around this idea of employee experience and evolving cultures by creating better forms of communication with teams and, of course, everything that comes from that. So, very cool trajectory. So, we're going to get into some of the advice you have based on the work you do. But let's talk first about, you know, why now is such an important time for organizations and leaders to be reimagining what they're offering in terms of employee experience.

[00:04:16] Jason: Yeah. Wow. That's such a huge thing. And, you know, to me, first of all, I mean, isn't every day a good time to be better? So that’s one reason. Yeah. That's one reason why now. The second reason, though, is a little bit bigger than that, and everybody listening will certainly be nodding their heads. Like, it just feels like the dynamic at work has changed. It has been changing, and then, you know, they put a turbo on it when the pandemic came.

[00:04:44] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:04:45] Jason: It just completely sort of turned everything upside down. And, you know, you were talking about some work I had done, you know, at Newell and things like that. I distinctly remember almost all the conversations that I would ever have in my career prior to the pandemic was around why we ought to do more communications and what is that going to get us if we do it. And then the pandemic happened, and all of a sudden, we don't have to have conversations about why anymore. I think, you know, everybody, for the most part, had to go home. Leaders were, you know, leading town halls from their breakfast room tables. Like, everything was completely different, compared to how it was before that. And I think because of that, leaders especially, you know, had their own sort of hands-on experience about what this internal comms and employee experience stuff is all about, which changed their mindset. Which was fantastic timing because all of their employees also changed their mindset about the relationship with work and where I do work and, you know , what I expect from work. And a lot of that is influenced by their lives away from work, particularly around comms channels. So, think about, you know, your own employees when they're not at work. There are billions of people on all these social media platforms. That's who they are. They're your employees. And so, they're used to those types of things. And so, when they come back into work, that's their expectation. So, you know, we used to be able to get away with not meeting that. Now, you know, with turnover being what it is and people have different choices, you got to do everything you can to sort of meet those expectations. And so, if there was ever a time to sort of reimagine what we're doing to, you know, inform, involve, and inspire these folks, then now's the time to do it. Because they're voting with their feet for the most part. And if they're not really getting what they want from this organization, they're going to go find one that they can get that from.

[00:06:53] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Now it's interesting, Jason, when, you know, when you talk about comms, it you know, internal comms, employee comms. Mhmm. The first thing that comes to mind for me is the inform piece. When you talk then about employee experience, that's when I start to bring into the fold the involve and inspire piece. And I think they're all very important. So, inform, involve, inspire. Can you talk about why each of those are important, you know, and how they work together? And, also, is there a commonality in where companies tend to fall short?

[00:07:37] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question, particularly around inform, because I think a lot of people, you know, when they think of internal communications, they think of, you know, the communications that are coming out of corporate or headquarters that somebody else is sending. And, you know, I call that sort of the big C, the capital C, Communications.

[00:07:58] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:07:58] Jason: and in most organizations, that should be around 10%. No more than 10% really of the communications that are going on inside a workplace. The other part of that is the lowercase c, communications, which is everything else. Leaders to leaders, leaders to their teams, teams to each other. And all of that represents, you know, at least 90% of the communications that's going on in the organization. So, a lot of times, companies will say, well, you know, we're communicating from the corporate level. And so, me as a leader or a manager way down in the middle somewhere, I don't have to do any of that because, you know, the Corp Comms team is doing that for me. And, yeah, the Corp Comms team is probably doing 10% of what needs to be done, but you, leaders, and all everyone else in the organization are responsible for that 90%. And all of that creates sort of this communications cloud around the organization so that communications are happening, not necessarily just by corp comms, but from everybody in the organization. So, it's a culture of communications. And the natural extension of, once you've really strengthened those relationships through communications, then it naturally leads to having people want to be more involved and figuring out how to inspire them to do those things. And all of those combined, I think, are what sort of makes up what we call employee experience. And, you know, if you look at all the survey data around why people like work and what happens if they decide to leave and things like that, most of their answers, you know, pay is maybe eight, nine, 10, if it's in the top 10. For most people, it is something around their experience at work. And a lot of those things fall under that inform, involve, and inspire. So if you want to have that kind of culture that you want with low turnover and high engagement and things like that that are important, then you really need to just continue to focus on inform, involve, and inspire because all the things that they list that they want are made up in those three areas.

[00:10:14] Sarah: Yeah. There's a couple of things that come to mind here. Right? One is, I think sometimes companies make the mistake of thinking that if they do a good job informing, the inspire piece will follow without considering the involve. And I think that can be a huge mistake because people want to feel a part of, you know, what's going on. They want to feel that they're, you know, contributing to the big picture. They want to see how their individual roles play a part. They want to feel that their voice matters. Right? So, if we asse that if we, as a big c or a little c, just do a really good job of informing everyone, then they'll feel inspired.

[00:11:04] Jason: Mhmm.

[00:11:04] Sarah: You know, you can really miss the mark if you don't consider that involve piece. , and, you know, I was also thinking about some of the distinctions between looking at this from sort of a programmatic perspective. Right? And, like, what are the different mechanisms that we use to inform, involve, inspire as a big c and a little c. Right?

[00:11:32] Jason: Mhmm. Sure.

[00:11:34] Sarah: But also from the leadership/EQ perspective. Right? Because, again, I've seen examples where organizations have a great program for communications, and they have, you know, they're diversifying the channels they use. They're welcoming feedback. They're encouraging leaders to do one on ones, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But then it falls short at the leadership level because maybe those leaders, you know, don't have the right training or skills or that sort of thing to then execute well that, you know, they're a part of that 90%. Right? And so, you know, sometimes the disconnect between really good intent at the at the executive leadership level and creating a program for all of this then fall short in execution if you are relying on leaders who don't get it, don't buy into it, or just don't have the skills to deliver. So, what thoughts do you have there?

[00:12:51] Jason: That that's absolutely right. And I would add another thing to that, which is the time. You know? Mhmm. There's so much piled on leaders' plates. I don't care if you're an executive leader or you're a frontline supervisor. You know? There are tons of expectations, and when people, you know, like the comms team come to you and go, hey we need you to do this kind of stuff. You're like, okay. When? Like, look at all this other stuff, that's part of my quote “day job.” You know, when am I going to have time to do these kinds of things? And I think, you know, to your point, sometimes they don't have the skills, and so the comms team might say, okay, we'll help you. Here's some talking points, which is fine. But most of the time, they don't necessarily need the content. They need the confidence.

[00:13:38] Jason: And when they, in their minds, think about, alright, we're like, what are CEOs that I know who communicate, they immediately think of these rock star CEOs and, you know, in the media and people who are doing TED Talks, and they're like, I don't that's not me. I can't do those kinds of things. Well, the good news is 99% of the entire world is exactly the same way. Mhmm. So, there's none of your employees who are expecting you to be a rock star or some TED Talk level communicator.

[00:14:07] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:14:07] Jason: They're just expecting you to be yourself. And you will get all kinds of bonus points just for trying. Just for trying, you know, trying to do it, trying to meet them where they are, trying, you know, to make it. You will get all kinds of credit just by doing that. And then I think too, you know, to your point around, how does that sometimes sort of, you know, if it's programmatic at the top and then it starts to fall apart the more the execution happens, you know, as it goes down through the organization, some of that, you know, obviously is with managers and leaders and supervisors that are in the middle, but some of that is also on the employees. Mhmm. You know? You know how it is. Everybody on this podcast knows how it is. How many times do you have to tell people to sign up for their benefits, and then on the last hour of the last day, there are people who go, I didn't get any of that information. Well, sure you did. Mhmm. Sure, you did. You got it. And, you know so a lot of times, employees themselves aren't open to being communicated with for a variety of reasons. I'm mad. I'm broke. I don't like my job. I don't like my you know, whatever. There are a thousand things. And so it just takes, you know, everybody sort of shifting that mindset and reimagining things so that, like we said earlier, just creating this culture of communication so that tiny incremental steps can be made that over time, you know, make a huge difference, but not all at once because you don't have the capacity or the resources or the skills or the time to do any of that stuff. But chipping away at it is the best way to execute it no matter how big and programmatic the initiative might feel.

[00:15:49] Sarah: Yeah. So, the next thing I want to talk about, Jason, is you talk about the need to balance high-tech and high touch.

[00:15:59] Jason: Mhmm.

[00:16:00] Sarah: Okay? So, can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:16:04] Jason: Yeah. So, you know, back on the theme of programmatic sort of big c communications, most of that, where possible, is usually delivered with high-tech platforms: emails, intranets, apps, digital signage, you know, you name it. Everybody who kind of has access to those things gets delivered information and communications that way, which is fine. You know, that's a fast way. And for the people who are connected, you know, it's an easy way to reach them. But for those who aren't connected, you know, you don't have an email address. You can't get on the Internet. The only time you really have to look at anything is when you're at home and you certainly, you know, don't have access or a VPN or anything like that that maybe some of the other people have. And so, you know, after a while and for particular audiences, those high-tech platforms start to kind of fuzz out a little bit. And so, the supplement for those things is more of a high touch, kind of old school approach.

[00:17:05] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:17:06] Jason: Particularly if you have frontline employees who aren't digitally connected.

[00:17:12] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:17:12] Jason: They don't have access to any of that stuff. They only have access to you. So now you become the channel. You become the platform. And so, there's all kinds of benefit to, you know, holding those shift change meetings, making sure that, you know, people who aren't digitally connected are included in conversations and, you know, idea sessions and things like that. Mhmm. All of that field start it is what sort of puts some meat on the involve and inspire part.

[00:17:42] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:17:43] Jason: Because as good as these platforms are and as, you know, good as some of the content is that that's coming out from a big c perspective, all of that just feels rational. That's just a rational approach. But hans are also emotional, and so this high touch approach to supplement all that stuff is kind of what gets you over that hurdle because now you're meeting them where they are as hans, Hans to hans communicating and building relationships. And then when you rely on those high-tech platforms too much, it just it starts to feel just kind of cold and check a box kinda thing.

[00:18:20] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:18:21] Jason: And I don't mind getting that stuff from corporate, but I want my peers. I want my boss. I want other people to translate that and tell me what they feel about that. And I want to tell them what I feel about that. So, there's more to it than just delivering it over a platform. Mhmm.

[00:18:37] Sarah: Yeah. You use the word rational. I was thinking the word impersonal. Right? It goes back to the inform piece. It's a great way to stay informed. It's, you know, the news, the headlines. Here's what you need to know. Right? But it's not it's not personal. It's not the context of, okay, and here's what this means to you in your role. And, also, let me listen to what you think. Let me answer the questions that you have. Let me listen to your feedback. Right? And, you know, when we think about a lot of the folks that listen to this podcast, you know, they're leading field service teams. And those people, they I would say almost all of them are digitally connected. But, again, even so, if that's the only communication they're getting, it is very impersonal. Right? And the other thing to consider is that in different situations, those people may never come to an office. They may come to an office infrequently. They may just start and end their days from home. Right? Or they might be on the road a lot. And so, there are people that you know, they might not be disconnected from a digital perspective. But if we're not careful, they can become disconnected from the company culture and from…

[00:20:02] Jason: 100%.

[00:20:04] Sarah: The idea of staying engaged and being involved. Right? I was at an event in in our industry, Field Service Europe last fall, and I attended a great panel discussion with three different leaders. So, three different industries, three different regions, all talking about the absolute criticality of, as a leader, investing time in one on ones. And as much as possible, making an effort to see your people at in person at some not for every one on one, you know, but at some regular interval. I've also had another leader on here who talked about, his name is Venkata, he's with a company called Bruker Nano, and he will say that it is an expense to the business, but he invests every year in bringing their field teams together

[00:21:05] Jason: That's right.

[00:21:05] Sarah: For the sole purpose of just spending time with one another. Because it's so important in building that sense of community and making them feel part of a team that it pays dividends in their engagement and things like that. So, I think that reminder is really important. And, you know, going back to what you said at the beginning about, like, all of the different things that sort of shifted during the pandemic, we know that people want to feel part of something. And them getting an alert on their employee app or getting an email once a month is not enough to make that happen.

[00:21:52] Jason: Absolutely not. You know?

[00:21:53] Sarah: We have to figure out how to do those high touch bits. Yeah.

[00:22:02] Jason: Yeah. And you use the right word too, like, invest. It's an investment. Like, it costs money to build a culture, to build relationships with people. That is an expense. It definitely is, but it's more of an investment than it is an expenditure.

[00:22:16] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:22:17] Jason: And it, you know, it pays dividends that everybody has a very hard time measuring. But where it shows up in is in all the other KPIs that the organization is measuring. It shows up in quality. It shows up in safety. It shows up in on time delivery. It shows up in customer experience. It shows up in all the things that matter for the organization. And so, any time spent, you know, investing in better relationships to make those things better are quantifiable, and they do show up, and they show up where they matter the most, which is on those dashboards, which are attached to the bottom line. Yeah. And I think the other point you brought up, especially for field service, I'm sure there's a lot of you who are listening who truly have field service people who are on-site at customers and client organizations and things. And there's a lot of surveys that show that the more time that they spend on customer sites, the more they begin to identify with that culture.

[00:23:13] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:23:14] Jason: That culture, you know? And so, a, that shows you it is possible, and b, it is also imperative that you do as much as you can so that they continue to identify with your culture. Because if you've got that if it's defined and it's great and it's strong, that's an opportunity for them to be a brand ambassador for your company at the client's culture. And then it also sort of lowers the chance that you might accidentally lose them to the client because now I feel like I have a stronger bond with these people than I do for the ones who are paying me. You know?

[00:23:50] Sarah: It's interesting you say that, Jason. So, I want to also bring up another example. I did a podcast last year sometime with a gentleman, Marco Hugo Gutierrez, who works for Tetra Pak and he leads services in in Europe. And Tetra Pak underwent this big initiative to really kind of understand the sentiment of their field teams. They really wanted to understand, you know, how engaged are these people, what makes them feel engaged, what doesn't, etcetera. And one of the biggest findings for them to action from that research was that they found their technicians felt closer to their customers than they did Tetra Pak. They felt more a part of that culture than they did Tetra Pak. And Marco said, of course, that's great. We want them to love our customers. We want them to, you know, build those relationships. But Sure. We also have to have that with them. You know? It's so important for us to invest in making them feel that they are part of our culture that you know. And they can share that, but not that they're not getting that from us. And so it's interesting that you bring that up, and that is a huge risk for field teams. And that can manifest in a lot of different ways. Obviously, one is, you know, losing those employees to a customer potentially. But even just, you know, how much opportunity cost there is in not empowering those employees to, like you said, kind of be that brand ambassador in a stronger way. Right?

[00:25:43] Jason: Because that that strengthens the customer relationship. They're hiring you for a whole lot of reasons, and it's that delivery that really is the cherry on top. And then over time, that becomes why they're hiring you. You're yes. You're doing all the things that are on the SOW, but it's that chemistry.

[00:26:02] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:26:02] Jason: And how that gets delivered, that becomes the very definition of the company's brand. Yeah. And so, you want that to be as strong as it can possibly be and you want those people to, you know, love their customers, but not so much that they become one. You know?

[00:26:17] Sarah: I want to go back - you know, we were talking about sort of the investment of this high touch approach, whatever that looks like. I know leaders that they define certain time. They go on the road, they visit all of their teams. They make sure they see them in person. I talked about Venkata who brings everyone to a central location to spend time together, whatever that looks like. So those are examples that they are relatively time consuming, they are relatively expensive, and I'm not saying that those investments of time and money do not pay off; I believe they do. However, I also wanted to make the point that sometimes very simple things can also have a tremendous impact. Right? You know, just thinking about, okay. Well, maybe doing an off-site every year is not feasible for me as a leader in the organization I'm in. But I could set aside a half an hour every week to call, you know, ten of eight of my technicians and thank them for something very specific they've done that week. I could commit to writing five handwritten thank you notes every week. I could you know, these different things. It sometimes, we overlook those simple things because we're focused on, should we be doing the big things? And if we can't, are we kind of, you know, just out of luck? Right? The Tetra Pak findings, you know, the satisfaction in those relationships came from this feeling the technician had of being able to go there and solve a problem and be appreciated by the customer for doing that. And so, there are a lot of different ways we can show appreciation and recognition that are on a whole continuum of however much continua of however much time and money you have to invest. So, I wanted to point that out as well that it doesn't have to be a grand thing every time. The little things make a huge impact.

[00:28:23] Jason: In fact, I think from my perspective and based on conversations I've had with literally thousands of employees, it the little things matter even more. Like, the bigger it is, the more it feels like a corporate initiative that's been budgeted and, you know, it just has a different feel to not that people don't appreciate it, but they see it for what it is. Versus, like, what you just described, a handwritten note or, you know, I'm going to set aside thirty minutes, you know, every week or every day or whatever the right timing is for your schedule to have a conversation with my team that isn't about what you're doing, it's about how you're doing.

[00:28:59] Sarah: Yep.

[00:28:59] Jason: And then that that those are the types of things that that build stronger bonds because at the end of the day, all this stuff we're talking about is a trust exercise. Mhmm. And so, your culture, your results, you know, everything that you measure there from a workplace perspective, all of that is built around trust. And even the little things you do are deposit into that trust bank account with your team.

[00:29:24] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:29:25] Jason: And they add up over time. And lord knows, at some point, somebody's going to write a check against that account, and you don't want it to bounce. So, the more of those deposits you can keep putting in there, even the little stuff, you know, it matters. It matters, especially to your employees.

[00:29:40] Sarah: Another really good, specific example someone shared is, they're in an executive leadership role, and it's just so happens that, you know, in in that role, they're always getting company merch. So, zip ups, hats, polos, chargers, whatever, all this different stuff. And he said, like, I have so much of it already. I can't even use it all. So rather than letting it pile up in the corner of my office, I just send it out to my employees with a note. I just pass it along to them. And I thought, like, that's it's such an easy little thing.

[00:30:18] Jason: That's right.

[00:30:19] Sarah: But it's again, a really actionable example of something that doesn't take a lot. You know? Another person pointed out, they like to do a gift card for the person to take their family to dinner because, you know, they said, like, often it's nice to share that with the person's family, that they're appreciated and things like that. So, there are so many ways to do it.

[00:30:46] Jason: There really are. Like, I'm reaching over right now on my desk and, like, look at this. This is just a stack of nice notes that I have received, and people are like, oh, gosh. You got all those in the last two weeks? Nope. Some of these are 15 years old.

[00:30:59] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:30:59] Jason: I have moved these from job to job to desk to desk, and now they're on this desk. And every now and then, I just like to go through there and read what people had to say and remember that I made a difference. And so, if you think that that stuff doesn't matter, go think about your own little special box that you have or your special folder. It is full of stuff like that. Those aren't $5,000,000 corporate initiatives. Those are ten minutes that somebody took and wrote a personalized note to you that made, you know, a world of difference to you.

[00:31:28] Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely. Now and I want to come back to sort of this point we've been talking about is when we when we do this well, you know, we create that trust. We create these relationships that are very impactful. You talk about the fact that often there are these companies' internal influencers that remain a very untapped resource. And you refer to them as the ones everyone goes to for the meeting after the meeting, which is a really good point.

[00:32:05] Jason: Yep.

[00:32:05] Sarah: So how can leaders do a better job of identifying who those internal influencers are and finding ways to, you know, create alliances with them or, you know, better working relationships so that they're leveraging that resource in a helpful, positive, natural way?

[00:32:31] Jason: Absolutely. And the best way to find this out and, you know, there's formal ways and informal ways. You don't have to spend any money to find it out. The best way to find it out is to ask your own employees who they go to for the meeting after the meeting. You know? Not in a threatening way or any other kind of way, which is like, you know, I tell you all stuff and then y'all go and talk about it. Who do you talk to? They'll tell you; you know. And for some leaders, there's a little bit of jealousy in there and it can feel also a little bit threatening if they're going to, you know, somebody else on your team and you think, oh my gosh, that person is going to end up taking my job. But no. That's not how it is. The they employees identify a relationship with a leader or manager as different from a relationship with an influencer. Once not better or worse, they're different. I come to my leader manager for certain kinds of things. I go to my influencer for other kinds of things. I need both just like in our personal lives. Different kind of relationships with different kind of people. And so it's important to understand who those people are because they're influencers, and they can influence things in a good way, and they can also influence things in a not so good way. Usually, it's in a good way because the research that I've looked at is that most of these people, HR might call them, you know, high potential folks, but they're not necessarily on the high potential list because HR doesn't know who they are. But they I would call them high potentials because they are super engaged just by default. They were just wired that way. It's hard to create these kinds of folks like but they just come fully loaded already like that. And so, they read all the stuff. They listen to all the stuff. They distill it. They think about it. You know, work is them and their work, and it and that's just a fountain of knowledge for all these people that they're influencing. And the important part about that is that in most organizations of any size and in any industry, about 12% of the workforce is what we would consider to be leaders, and they can only directly influence 50% of the rest of the employees. 50%. As opposed to these influencers who are typically 3% of the workforce, and they can directly influence 90%. So that tells me one important thing. Whoever it is out there that's relying on cascades, stop doing that. Because the leaders from the CEO all the way down to the frontline supervisor can't reach as many people as the influencers can. So, once we know who these influencers are, we can rely on them to help, quote, cascade this stuff. Because they're more trusted. They're more believable. They're going to, you know, use weekend words to describe things, and sometimes, you know, others use weekday words to describe things. And it's just it's going to put a turbo on the things that you're doing. The other reason why it's important is that if one of those influencer leaves on their own or asked to, whoever they're influencing is 90% more likely to also leave and almost immediately with the thinking being, well, gosh, Sarah knows everything. And if she's not here anymore, why on earth would I stay? Right? And so, it's just important to know who they are. It also depends on your culture. If you have the kind of culture where that might create, you know, some friction or whatever, then just know it and treat them with kid gloves. They're already influencing. Now you just know that they are. And you could just leave it like it is. In other cultures, you can celebrate them. They're now champions or change or catalyst people or, you know, you want to put a group together and call them something. In some cultures, that's fine. But in others, you know, for sure, the fight club is not talk about fight club, and that might apply for your culture as well. But either way, now we know who they are. We are and that they're influencing, and what can we do to make sure that they stay as plugged in as possible without it becoming like a second job for them? Because, truthfully, they're already doing it. They're already influencing. So, you don't need to do anything else, really, to make them super influencers. They're already as influential as they're going to be. And the more you make them that, I think the less trustworthy they are because then it starts to feel like they're a corporate mouthpiece.

[00:36:58] Sarah: Right.

[00:36:58] Jason: And they're not. They don't want that to be that.

[00:37:01] Sarah: Yeah. I think that's important. I was thinking about how to articulate this thought while you were saying that. I mean, I think it like you said, it's important for it to be organic. I think it's also important to not allow it to become a situation where you're, like, paying them off. And I don't mean that in reality. Like,

[00:37:20] Jason: we're not out of the way.

[00:37:21] Sarah: Saying, like, it can't be manipulative. Right? Like, it can't be, like, they're being they can be leveraged where it makes sense for a mutually beneficial purpose, but they can't be used in a way that is manipulative either to them or the employees that they're influencing. Right?

[00:37:42] Jason: Right.

[00:37:42] Sarah: But you see this sometimes in, you know, our realm, and you reference this with you know, if you have a change coming along and you know that there are some influencers in, you know, your structure, you can work with them proactively to say, Hey, I'd like to involve you in this upfront. I'd like to get your feedback on it. And I would like to, you know, have you help us find the right ways to communicate this change to the teams because you're plugged into them. You know what will resonate, what won't, etcetera. And that's a very wise and appropriate use of

[00:38:24] Jason: Totally natural and organic. You would do that. Even if you didn't know, you know, you would that's something you wouldn't naturally normally do. So that makes total sense. It's very organic. It feels organic. Yeah.

[00:38:35] Sarah: You mentioned in your content that leaders have a natural tendency to under lead. So, what does that mean?

[00:38:46] Jason: It's such a strange concept to me. And if I can ever figure this out, this will be the book that I that I write or have AI write for me. The idea is, like, just whoever's listening, just, like, think of your first job. Alright? Whatever that was. It doesn't even matter. Flipping burgers or McDonald's. I don't care. Whatever the first job was, you were there and then there were, like, 15 layers of leaders above you all the way up to the CEO. And so, you're just doing your thing, and you're observing decisions and personalities and, you know, things that happen in the organization. And at some point, because we all do this, you know what? If I ever get to be up there, I'm not going to do things like that. I'm going to do things my way. And then lo and behold, after fifteen or twenty years, those people are up there, and they continue to do the same thing. So, at the so my question is then at what point in your career do you lose touch with reality? Because it happens, and it happens quite a lot. Not for everybody, but for a lot of people. And when it happens, that's when it feels like these folks are underleading. And I which means they're not informing. They're not involving. They're not inspiring. They're not, you know, being more high touch than high-tech. And it's a mystery to me because they all used to be people on their teams. Age wise, role wise, whatever. They all everybody used to be those people. And when they were those people, they wanted those things. And now that they are the people who can give those things, they're not.

[00:40:27] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:40:28] Jason: And that feels like for at least in a lot of those areas, a conscious decision. And so, however you felt when you weren't getting what you needed early in your career, that's how your team now feels. So, if you want to sort of get over this underleading concept, then the easiest thing to me is to remember what it was like when you were them.

[00:40:52] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:40:53] Jason: Remember what it was like when you were them. Like, you're getting so much of this corporate swag and you're just throwing it in a closet somewhere because, you know, I don't need yet another pullover. Some of the people out there have never been given a pullover anywhere they worked, you know. And you were like that too when you first started out. Imagine how much that would mean to you. Do those type just put yourself. It's that EQ. It's that empathy. It's that, you know. I understand other people, and so what can you do to constantly think about how it used to be for you when you were them so that you can be what you wanted your own boss to be back then? You know?

[00:41:32] Sarah: Yeah. What you're saying just made me think of an experience I had last year. I went to visit a leader who is very well respected in our space, James Mylett. He works currently for Schneider Electric and is in Texas. I had never been to their offices and so I got there and checked in, and he, you know, met me in the lobby. And we stopped and grabbed a coffee, and he said, should we sit over here in this little area and I said, sure. You know, we sat down. We had a bit of a chat, and then he was going to give me a tour. And we're walking around, and I said, well, where is your office? And he said, I don't have one. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he's like, I don't like to sit in an office because I feel like that disconnects me from people. Like, I would rather just, depending on what I'm working on, I'll either sit in a conference room for a bit or I'll sit out in an open working space, but I it just helps me stay more connected to the culture and what's going on. And I thought

[00:42:41] Jason: Yeah.

[00:42:41] Sarah: So, you're an SVP at a massive company, and a lot of people I would say most people in that role have a corner office. You know, that they might even only work in one day a week, one day a month sometimes. Right?

[00:42:58] Jason: Yeah.

[00:42:58] Sarah: Not him. Just doesn't have one at all. Yeah. And I'm like, that's

[00:43:02] Jason: That's amazing.

[00:43:02] Sarah: But it it's a really good example of one part of what you're saying, which is, I think, like, keep grounded in, you know, the humanity of it all. Right? I think the other thing that happens that it's more on, like, the company culture, the corporate culture part is I think people are put in really unfortunate situations. You know? A lot of times they end up having to, for lack of a better term, sell out to take those roles. You know? So, you have this passion when you're among the

[00:43:40] Jason: Sure.

[00:43:41] Sarah: team that, I would never do that. You know? And then you start making tradeoffs that lend themselves to that. And I think it's tough because you can criticize that. You know? But it happens in a way that it's really hard to pick apart. But I do think I do think that there is a shift in company culture because I think that this whole employee experience topic is becoming so important

[00:44:11] Jason: Mhmm.

[00:44:12] Sarah: At such a scale that companies are really grappling with, you know, some of those historical practices and dynamics and really having to dig in and change. And I think as that shift continues, it puts those leaders in a better position to challenge the status quo. But the reality historically is

[00:44:37] Jason: Mhmm.

[00:44:38] Sarah: The people that really challenge the status quo, even appropriately and where it rightfully should be challenged, aren't the people giving the senior leadership roles because they want a team of yes men that will, you know, take those orders. So, there is a part of that dynamic that comes into play. So, I'm just saying that because I think sometimes leaders get put in positions where they do remember what it's like. And there's a certain part of that they can control within how they treat people, the little things they could do, etcetera.

[00:45:18] Jason: Sure.

[00:45:19] Sarah: If they're working against a pressure that is really at odds with the change they would like to see, I'm excited because I think there is a growing groundswell, if you will, of people who will push back and positive things that will come from that. And not only that, but companies that are recognizing those dynamics aren't working anymore anyway. Right? So, let's change it from the top as well. You see both. Right? So, I think that's a good thing, but it's a very interesting point to bring up.

[00:45:51] Jason: Well, it takes a ton of courage. And, you know, on that example that you gave about, you know, some leader who's trying to kind of push those boundaries and then, you know, ends up, you know, getting kicked to the curb. They end up becoming the startup CEO that's very disruptive and is doing thing different, and they're the ones speaking at TEDx. So, they're the ones that are on the cover of all the magazines.

[00:46:11] Sarah: And they're helping this groundswell too. Do you know what I mean? Because it's people that, you know, fundamentally don't believe any longer that profit comes at the expense of people. Right? Like, that we can do both. We can treat people well, and we can have a good working culture, and we can make a lot of money. They're not

[00:46:33] Jason: There's a lot of data that shows that. Yeah. There's a ton of data that shows that. You know? Some of the most profitable companies are the ones that are spending the most in these areas, which

[00:46:42] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:46:42] Jason: Doesn't sound, you know, like that math would add up that way. But there I mean, there's company after company that, you know, that we can use in as examples like that. And then I think the other thing too is that transition if there's if you're trying to think that way for your organization, to me, the easiest way that I use to kind of explain that to my own clients is this is something you are already doing, and it's called customer experience.

[00:47:09] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:47:10] Jason: And so, in most organizations, you know, marketing owns a relationship and sales on the transaction, and the two of them, you know, are ultimately responsible for customer experience. So, what does employ experience look like? Typically, HR and IT kind of own the transactions for employees, but who owns the relationship?

[00:47:32] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:47:33] Jason: That's an opportunity for the all the leaders. Leaders and managers have to own that relationship. And then when they're like, well, I'm not quite sure how we would go about doing that. Well, just look at everything that you've done to drive better customer experience and all those initiatives And just substitute the word employee for customer, and that just gives you an easy way to start thinking about it that's less risky because the organization inherently understands the customer experience side of things that people have been doing for twenty plus years now. We're just going to take that same thing and apply it under here, and that feels less risky and less scary.

[00:48:12] Sarah: Mhmm. Yeah. Very interesting stuff, Jason. I appreciate you coming on and sharing. If you would like to connect with Jason, easiest place is LinkedIn?

[00:48:26] Jason: Absolutely. I'm on LinkedIn. My website is JasonAnthoine.com. And on both of those places, you can find my own podcast, which is called Riding Shotgun. And the whole idea behind that is I've been riding shotgun with leaders, you know, my whole career. Come ride shotgun gun with me on each episode and learn some things that I've learned from doing that. No more than five or six minutes, you're in, you're out, you're on with your day.

[00:48:52] Sarah: I love it. Awesome. Alright, everyone. Check it out. Thank you, Jason. Appreciate it.

[00:48:57] Jason: Thank you, Sarah. I really appreciate it.

[00:48:59] Sarah: 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!

Episode 306

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro shares what’s on the hearts and minds of the Future of Field Service community when it comes to International Women’s Day 2025 and its theme to #AccelerateAction.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also, subscribe to our newsletter right here.

Watch the episode here:

Episode Transcript:

Sarah Nicastro (00:04):

Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today's episode is the International Women's Day 2025 episode, and I'm going to be sharing with you contributions from the Future of Field Service community. International Women's Day this year is on March 8th, and according to the website, International Women's Day has been around for over a hundred years, as have many of the issues still impacting women's advancement since 1911. International Women's Day belongs to all who care about women's equality.” Each year, international Women's Day sets a theme for the year, and this year's theme is #AccelerateAction. So as I thought about how best to cover International Women's Day this year, there was a lot on my mind, certainly creating content around the topic wasn't in question, it was just a matter of how best to do. So I became very curious what is on the hearts and minds of the community.

(01:23):

There is a lot going on in the world right now, and it made me really ponder a bit more what everyone's thinking and feeling versus in the past years, sometimes we've just featured a specific woman's story. Other times we've done different topical things. This year just feels a bit different, and so I was really curious how the community might be feeling. So I posed the question on LinkedIn and had some great response, some people that were more than willing to share their opinions and feelings about some different prompts that I asked them to comment on, as well as welcoming them to share anything and everything that is on their mind. So I'm going to share some of those thoughts with you, along with some of my own, in today's podcast. I did edit a bit because I didn't want this episode to be too, too long, but I plan to release sort of an extended article on this topic, including everyone's full input around the date as well.

(02:50):

So keep an eye out for that. But for now, let's get started. I tried to categorize this input into some different themes that we're going to talk through together, and the first is that while we have come a long way, it's indisputable that there's still so far to go and biases stand in the way of making the progress that we need. So Catherine Coulter Wood, who is the Senior Manager for Service Optimization and Transformation at Compugen weighed in on this point. She said, “gender equality in the workplace has really come a long way, but women still face real challenges in STEM, particularly I see a lot of capability bias. The results of this bias are hiring disparities, leadership inequality and more. But the why is that there is an unconscious hiring of men over women or of promoting men over women to leadership roles.

(03:53):

At its core, there is a capability bias. There are many historical and societal reasons which have created this unconscious and sometimes very conscious belief that men are more intelligent or capable than women, particularly in areas of stem. Multiple studies and ample testimonies of people's lived experiences show that when there are two candidates with the same qualifications, credentials and experience, the man is generally viewed as more capable. This is an area where we can accelerate action.” Catherine suggests determining a way to make capability bias more visible so that we can critically analyze how to change it and measure progress. So when we think about biases and how we start accelerating action to identifying those and overcoming them, representation and visibility become very important. We need to see examples of that capability bias being proved false. Chantelle King, who is Managing Partner at Woola says, “we need to accelerate action in industries that have historically been male dominated, especially in trades operations and leadership roles.

(05:14):

Representation matters and we need to actively encourage and support more women in these spaces through mentorship, sponsorship, and leadership development programs.” Alyce Peterson, who is the Product Marketing Manager at ServicePro by MSI data says she's heard from many women, other women in the service space at industry events across the country that agree fully that women need more visibility. And this is impossible to dispute if you simply attend one of these events like I have for the last many, many years. Again, going back to the earlier point that Catherine made, there has been progress, but there is still a long way to go. I remember at one of my first field service events, I was one of two or three women out of a couple of hundred at the entire event, and that ratio has certainly grown, but it is nowhere near equal.

(06:24):

Alyce says, “we need more women in leadership and for others to help pass the torch. There are so many ways to get women not only a seat at the table, but also to become deeply integrated leaders into their organizations.” When it comes to how we get there, allyship is critical and came up quite a bit in people's responses. Carolyn Haggstrom Markland, who is the Managing Director and Vice President for Customer Services in the Nordics at Vattenfall points out that with intent, allyship doesn't have to be hard. She says, “for me, from a personal point of view, what's been most impactful in terms of support has been allyship, and I try to pay that forward as often as I can. It's not hard. Just be mindful of sharing your space and putting people forward within your networks.” Jayda Nance, who is the Delivery Project Executive Leader for AI Development and Innovation for Client Experience at IBM shares an important reminder that there is no allyship without action.

(07:39):

She says, “allyship is more than acknowledgement. It's action. It's men stepping into women's worlds, not as saviors, but as advocates. Too often society assigns women the easy tasks mistaking consideration for fragility, but we don't want saving. We want opportunity, a voice, a seat at the table with a steak. I've been fortunate to work with men who have spoken my name in rooms I wasn't in advocated for me when it mattered and celebrated my accomplishments publicly. The hard truth. Sometimes things happen simply because a man said so that's the reality. And while we work toward a future where all voices carry equal weight, we must also recognize the opportunity within this dynamic. Behind many accomplished men are women who played a pivotal role in their success. So lift us up with you when you rise, bring us along. That is allyship, that is impact.” Chantel of Woola echoes that allyship, especially from men is impactful saying, “having male allies who actively space for women in discussions advocate for their advancement and push back against biases has been incredibly impactful.

(09:04):

Leadership needs to be intentional about fostering inclusion.” KM Manickam, who is a Customer Support Manager at BD said he's focused on doing just that. He said, “One impactful way I've supported a woman at work was by advocating for her during performance reviews and promotion discussions by highlighting her achievements and contributions, I helped ensure she received the recognition and opportunities she deserved.” When you think about what he's saying, this person he's referring to, these were her achievements, they were her contributions, the recognition was deserved. But the reality is sometimes despite all of that, it still won't happen if allies aren't taking the initiative to be conscious of looking for the people around them that are in marginalized groups that need that allyship and making it a priority to essentially just share the realities of the hard work that they're doing. Another incredibly important mechanism for change is the many ways that women are supporting women.

(10:22):

This is near and dear to my heart and it came up in many of the responses which I absolutely loved. So the first example of that is from Danielle Waterworth, who is the Vice President for North America AG Dealer and Customer Support and the Global Vice President for Parts and Service AG Maintenance and Services Development at CNH. These long titles are incredibly challenging, but I think I'm doing okay. Danielle says, “while I have learned and enjoyed working for all of my prior leaders, I have found the relationship with my first female executive to be different in that she sees things in a different lens. Our relationship has grown to be open and reciprocal where we do not bullshit one another. We are transparent when we are disappointed in the other's opinion or work and we are open with one another when it comes to growth and leadership.

(11:19):

Also, when I have a problem, it is her problem too. Having a leader that you trust to be truthful and that has your back is something all should have. But especially women helping another woman as they know how to balance the various aspects or jobs that our life entails from employee to wife, to mother to friend and volunteer, but do not question how or if you will be successful still in accomplishing what they expect of you.” So they know the juggling act and know that regardless of what might come up, your ability to be successful and accomplish what you need to is not in question. And I can understand how much comfort there is in that. To have a relationship with someone who understands what you are trying to balance and has confidence in you, that no matter what all of that is, no matter what hurdles might come up, you have what it takes to get the job done.

(12:27):

Erica Marois, who is the Senior Manager for Content and Community at Informa says, “I was fortunate to have many other women take me under their wing in my twenties and gently nudge me out of my comfort zone while also championing my work. I didn't realize it at the time, but they were planting the seeds of confidence I needed to grow both personally and professionally. Society loves to pit women against each other, but when we take it upon ourselves to offer support, kindness and understanding to others, those small acts can make a huge difference. Give other women a seat at the table by speaking positively about their work and contributions even when they are not in the room. It's such an easy way to pay it forward.” This is such an important point because this really comes back to this idea of a scarcity mentality or a mentality of abundance, right?

(13:22):

And this concept that if we as women lift other women up, are we risking what we could be achieving? And it's such foolish thinking and really holds us back from our own true and full value because we're all on this earth to help other people. And hearing these examples of women supporting other women just shows you how much more impact you can have when you expand your lens beyond your own struggle, your own challenges, your own journey and look around you for other women to lift up. There's what's the saying, this isn't pie. There's a piece for everyone. And so looking for those opportunities to speak positively about your coworkers, to showcase their accomplishments, to offer your support or your mentorship or sponsorship, these are all actions of allyship and they can be done by men for women. They can also be done by women for other women, and they should be.

(14:42):

And it's really great to see that they are. So I loved hearing that while allyship and the one-to-one mentor examples are incredibly powerful, the respondents also pointed out how much value there is to be found in community. Dot Mynahan, who is the Senior Director for Safety and Workforce Development at National Elevator Industry, Inc. stresses the role of employee resource groups as one important form of community. She says, “I think there's a need to accelerate action around employee resource groups. There's a great guidance document assembled by 16 state AGs called Multi-State Guidance concerning diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility employment initiatives that stresses the important of employee resource groups providing an inclusive and supportive space where employees of particular backgrounds or common experiences feel value and heard According to the document, ‘When employees feel that their identity is recognized and supported within the organization, they're more likely to stay long-term.’ Dot has been on the podcast before when she was with Otis Elevator and she was responsible for starting Otis’s Women's Employee Resource Group, I believe called Forward and it has had an incredible impact on the organization.

(16:11):

So I understand why she's passionate about bringing up the value of these groups, and I've also seen many other examples of how these employee resource groups can have a great impact. And also to point out, I think with hers and others, it's not only a space for women to come and be in community, it is also a space for allies to come and to understand what the challenges and opportunities are to better understand how they can support the women that are in these groups. So very good point. From Dot. Alyce from ServicePro touches on the good that can come from making time for in-person engagements. She says, “onsite networking events, workshops and discussions are not just nice-to-haves. They're crucial for women to have the space to be heard and connect in such large rooms. Some of these women invite you to be mentored, be on boards, attend other events, speak in other ways.

(17:13):

The networking is invaluable.” I think this is another very good point that sometimes it can be very helpful to step out of your own bubble, whether that is connecting with more folks on LinkedIn, whether that is attending an industry event or a women women-focused event. There are some of those as well. Getting out there and getting the perspective of other people who are in similar and different circumstances can be very helpful. And again, that's where a lot of these connections can be made that gives women the opportunity to support other women and allies, the opportunity to support women as well. So these points have all been very helpful to illustrate some of the ways that we could think about accelerating action, which is the theme for this year. But there is a lot in question up for debate and at stake at the moment, particularly in the United States with a YouTube video recently published by the White House claiming ‘DEI is Dead Under the Trump Administration.’

(18:29):

It is concerning to say the least, what could happen to the pace of progress we've made not only with women's equality but diversity and inclusion of all kinds. This is a touchy subject of course, but it is something that I could not create this podcast without bringing up because in the conversations I have on a day-to-day basis with service leaders in different parts of the world, I have been asked certainly weekly if not more frequently since the change in leadership about what all has been going on. And there is a lot of impact not only in the United States but in other places coming from some of the decisions that are being made and some of the debate and hesitancy and changes in policy that it is triggering around DEI. So it wasn't something that I could not bring up. You can also understand though it is a topic where some of the respondents preferred to remain anonymous.

(19:48):

One saying, “Of late, I have been so frustrated by the fact that DEI initiatives have been undermined even before the current administration by what is perceived as having swung over to the other extreme where they see women being appointed for more leadership roles over men in a given organization, for example, and thereby the constant assumption that she got hired because she is a woman. I do understand that in a micro situation, one may perceive that as being unfair, but I also believe that if we don't change things today, then we will never get to the point of equity. We have suffered through decades of being undermined at the workplace due to stereotypical expectations from women. And the action to change needs to come. Now it's not just good and fair for women, but also better to prepare humankind for a future where all segments of society are represented and in fact utilized optimally.”

(20:51):

Another person weighed in saying, “I'm very worried about how this administration's policies will undo so much of the progress we've made in recent years. Their stance on DEI is alarming and the sweeping RTO mandates are impacting so many of the women that I know. Covid was a tipping point for the family structure in the US and for the first time we started to see moms and dads share the load more evenly. It feels like all of that is in jeopardy now and women are left to figure out how to make it all work. I expect that we'll see a lot of women pushed out of work in the years ahead, which is deeply sad to me.” Caroline of Vattenfall, who did not request to be named anonymously, is based in Stockholm, I believe, says she's getting a lot of questions from her organization about the developments in the United States.

(21:44):

And her thoughts are, “I get questions from my organization about the developments in the US when it comes to DEI at large and what it means for us. And if this means we're going to change something in the way we do things here, and the clear answer is no, nothing will change other than that, we will prioritize our DEI agenda even higher. We do this because we truly believe in it. Equal rights and opportunities are a core belief and not something will change just because the wind blows in another direction.” So while what is currently happening is unsettling to say the least, when it comes to the topic of today's podcast, accelerating action around women, Carolyn's stance must be the stance. Organizations that have committed to DEI because they genuinely and firmly believe in the value of a diverse, inclusive, and fairly treated workforce must continue to take steps to create just that in all the ways. We're speaking today about women because this is an International Women's Day podcast, but that statement is across the board.

(23:05):

So I like her perspective. I think that there's always this element of accepting what you can't control, making change and having impact where you can. And I think that each and every company has an opportunity to continue to take the appropriate actions and to accelerate action in whatever ways they can and should in their respective businesses, regardless of what is going on in news headlines or with YouTube videos. So my hope is that many, many people will do just that. And finally, while we navigate what this next phase of accelerating action may look like, those who weighed in also shared reminders of the need for women to believe in themselves, advocate for themselves, and look out for themselves. Jennifer Dye, who is the Director of Power Services, West Region at Schneider Electric says, “I have taken many roles in my career in which I was the first or the only in the room, sometimes simultaneously, some with extreme levels of support from others and some where I knew the ones who wished they'd been chosen for my seat and they had struggles understanding why I was the chosen one.

(24:33):

The latter are who I spent a long time trying to justify my successes to until I reached a point in my career 9and within an incredibly inclusive culture of leaders and company mission) that I finally realized I'm in the room because I deserve to be. I owe nobody my proof of entry and the only one who is allowed to question my worth is me. And, I'm very familiar with imposter syndrome in excess. Once I realized this for myself, it's been a mission of mine to challenge others with this same mentality, inclusive and constantly curious. I think strong cultures, teams, companies, et cetera, have succeeded when they encourage challenging the norm as a form of endearment and crucial to future success, not a limiter to an outcome.” I love this point and I love Jennifer's conviction around doing the work to recognize and own her value.

(25:37):

The most important point to me in what she shares here is that that firm belief in your worth and your right to be in whatever room you're in, in whatever seat you're in, in whatever role you have earned, can exist simultaneously with imposter syndrome and self-doubt, and often does. So those two things can be in parallel, but I would love for more women to get to the point Jennifer has where she keeps them in parallel. Like she says, that I owe nobody my proof of entry and the only one who is allowed to question my worth is me. I absolutely love that. Erica of Informa talks about the importance of setting boundaries. She says, “I used to think I needed to put in more hours and always be available to prove my worth. With age, perspective, and out of necessity as a mom, I've learned that setting boundaries isn't only an act of self-care, but an act that commands respect.

(26:43):

Saying no to the things that don't drive value and protecting my calendar allows me to work more effectively and deliver better results. A mentor once said to me, if you don't set your boundaries, someone else will set them for you. And that's so true.” Chantel of Woola says, “one of the most beneficial actions I've taken as a woman in service and at work is advocating for myself. This includes confidently taking on leadership opportunities, ensuring my contributions are recognized, and making my voice heard in meetings and decision-making processes. I've learned that speaking up even when it feels uncomfortable is crucial for growth and visibility.” I think these are great reminders that there is, again, there are always elements of this equation that we can control and these reminders of working on your own vision of your self-worth, working on your belief in yourself, working on your courage to speak up and speak out, working on your awareness of lifting other women up.

(27:52):

These are all things that as women we can do to help accelerate action. My hope, obviously is that other people will listen and take actions beyond that. So from an ally perspective, from an organizational perspective, making sure that just because DEI is “dead” (in quotes), the efforts around it don't need to be diminished. And more importantly, most importantly, the value of it is still just as valid. So that is what I had to share with you all today for our International Women's Day 2025 podcast. And I will, like I said, put together a piece to run on the website that has everyone's contributions in full because it was very hard for me to decide what to take out for the sake of brevity, but I will do that and share that as well. I appreciate everyone so much that took the time to share their thoughts anonymously and by name. This was very interesting for me to take a pulse of the perspective on this topic of our community. And I know you are all very busy women (and one man!), so I really appreciate you taking the time to weigh in and share. And, also, thank you for listening! You can find more at the home of the UNSCRIPTED podcast by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. And as always, thank you for listening.

Episode 305

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Rob Kalwarowsky, an executive coach, author, and TEDx speaker, to discuss breaking the cycle of toxic leadership. Together, they:

Define six distinct types of destructive leadership, including arrogant/violent, abusive narcissist, ghost manager, messy boss, passive-aggressive, and passive egocentric
Discuss how modern leadership needs are evolving, particularly with younger generations demanding more empathetic and inclusive management styles
Examine the importance of self-leadership and mindset work in becoming a better leader
Highlight the significant gap in leadership training, with 85% of promoted managers receiving no formal training

The conversation emphasizes that while toxic leadership remains prevalent, there are proven paths to creating healthier workplace environments that benefit both employees and organizational performance. Rob shares practical insights for leaders looking to improve their management style and break free from destructive patterns.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also, subscribe to our newsletter right here.

Watch the episode here:

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Rob: I'm not super happy with my job. I saw some of the bullying and the toxicity, and then I've also, you know, worked in and also been a part of, like, hey. You're another consultant. We hired one last week. It was the flavor of the month. Nothing's ever gonna change. And these are the things I saw for ten years, and I started learning well, actually, there's a better way.

[00:01:05] 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, Sara Nicastro. Let's jump in. Welcome to the Unscripted podcast. I'm your host, Sara Nicastro. Today's conversation is going to be around the idea of breaking the cycle of toxic leadership. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Rob Kalwarowsky, who is an executive coach, author, as well as a TEDx and keynote speaker. Rob, welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:41] Rob: Thanks Thanks for having me, Sarah. I'm excited to chop it up with you and with all your leaders out there.

[00:01:47] Sarah: Yeah. Thanks for being here. So toxic leaders, I've encountered a number of them myself, and there's just really no room for them in businesses today. So before we get into to some of our questions, go ahead and share anything you would like about yourself with our listeners. Just give them a bit of background information on you.

[00:02:08] Rob: Yeah. So I'm an MIT mechanical engineer by training. I spent ten years in heavy industry. I started out my career in mining, then I moved into consulting across heavy industries. So I've been to mines, power plants, manufacturing, like across the board there, and then I finished my, at least my engineering career in working in pipelines. And that was actually the reason why I started going into leadership was, one, was I had an experience with a toxic boss in mining immediately out of college. But then when I was doing consulting, I probably went to 50 to 60 different facilities across North America, and I started seeing the same things.

[00:02:58] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:02:59] Rob: And it was this culture well, often it was just the folks that I was going out with. I was going on planned tours. I was looking at equipment. I was doing that kind of work, but I was out there with mechanics, millwrights, technicians, operators, and often, I heard the same stuff. Nobody listens to me before, so I stopped sharing what's going on. I'm not super happy with my job. I saw some of the bullying and the toxicity, and then I've also, you know, worked in and also been a part of, like, hey. You're another consultant. We hired one last week. It was the flavor of the month. Nothing's ever gonna change. And these are the things I saw for ten years, um, I started learning, well, actually there's a better way. And people don't actually have to feel the way I did when I felt had a bad boss, I was depressed. It lasted a long time and I had to really work my way out of it. Mhmm. But people don't have to feel that way and we can, on the other side, which is amazing, so people can feel happier and engaged and we get better work, we get more productive, more profitable, less safety instances, and lower turnover so we can retain great people, get better results, and people are happier and healthier.

[00:04:20] Sarah: Yeah. So when we think about what the leadership, I guess, trends or evolution styles are today and then where we're at within the talent landscape, like, what are some of the forces that have kind of collectively brought us to this point where we're talking so much about how leadership needs to evolve and what effective leadership looks like today?

[00:04:49] Rob: Yes. The biggest thing here, right, is we've seen this shift. One is from Gen Zs, also from some millennials. Like I know you're a millennial, I'm a millennial, right? But it's especially was accelerated during COVID was this element of, I am not working for the paycheck necessarily. I also want other things. Mhmm. And so when Gallup talks about how what five behaviors to engage their people, their five top behaviors are having constant feedback conversations with your manager, focusing on your strengths, which as a manager, it's like you're focusing on your people's strengths.

[00:05:35] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:05:35] Rob: Developing their career and, like, helping them achieve their career goals. Basically being a coach versus being a manager. And, like, that's the way I like to think of it now, which is very different than the classic what we saw in heavy industry or what we still see in some spaces in heavy industry, which is this command and control, very much fear driven space where maybe the boomers didn't mind this. Maybe it came from their parents, which were part of the war, and so the culture kinda sits a little bit differently. Mhmm. But especially now with young younger generations is there's, uh, we're we're just not doing this anymore. Like we'll leave. And that's where we talk a lot about in the manufacturing and in these types of spaces is there's a talent gap and we can actually solve part of that with being a better leader because we'll retain and attract the best talent. Yeah.

[00:06:41] Sarah: Alright. What I wanna talk about next is research has made clear that when leaders focus on emotional intelligence, empathy, inclusion, as you mentioned earlier, people are happier and they thrive in their roles, and it has been evidenced to have a positive impact on company performance as well as retention. So that being said, there are still pockets, whether that's organizations as a whole or individual leaders, who have resistance to the idea of embracing some of these traits? Why do you think that is?

[00:07:19] Rob: With all of my work, I focus a lot with my leaders on psychology. Mhmm. Because, ultimately, if we change our minds, that's how we change our behavior. Mhmm. And what keeps us stuck in these behaviors where we are toxic, often, it's not because we wanna be necessarily. It's because there's a part of us that was created when we were younger that is behaving in these ways. Mhmm. Like, I've done this work for five years. Right? And I've been digging into this for a long time, and I've written a book. I did a TED talk. Like, I have moments where I have, like, yelled at somebody. Mhmm. And I'm not proud of it. I'm not saying it's good. It's definitely not good leadership. Right? We've all had these moments. Right? We've been under a ton of pressure. We're trying to get this worked on. Somebody on our team is like, Rob, I can't come in today, or, like, Rob, like, you're wrong, and you're just like and it hits like this thing. Right? Those are moments where we can learn from that and grow. Mhmm. The other side of it is toxic leadership is more than just that.

[00:08:38] Sarah: I was also thinking, you know, it's good to reinforce that we're all human. Right? And so there are going to be those moments that do occur regardless of how good of a leader you are and how hard you're working on your continual self improvement. When those things happen, it's also an opportunity for repair. Right? This is And so that's it's something that have two young children. Right? So rupture and repair is, like, a thing I commonly remind myself of. Because as a parent, especially, I came from a lot of childhood trauma. So I'm very hard on myself. I'm, like, diligently focused on breaking the cycle, but sometimes that's, like, a lot of pressure and that can cause the opposite. Right? So in those times where I do lose my shit and yell, right, I own it and I apologize. And I tell them that was me not being able to handle my emotions well, not their fault. And I make sure we have that repair. Obviously, that's a a very personal example because I'm talking about parenthood. But my point is when those moments arise in leadership, rather than being frustrated with yourself or embarrassed or fearful of breaching your seniority, there's actually an opportunity there to own the behavior and apologize that can bring you closer to that employee than just letting it go or pretending it didn't happen, etcetera. That's just what came to mind.

[00:10:19] Rob: You're absolutely right. And also for folks out there, like, you will feel frustrated. You will feel shame. This is totally normal. It's nothing like, it's not like when I yelled at somebody, I felt shame or, Sarah, when you yell your kids, like, you're just like, oh, fine, whatever. Right? Like, of course we feel them, right. But it's having the courage to take that and then repair. I mean, you don't have to do it immediately. You could, or you could say something like immediately, well, or like thirty minutes later, hey, Sarah, I'm sorry. Can we talk about it tomorrow or the next day? Right? To give you that time. Right? Right. But it's very much like, I don't want you to think, like, oh, I'll just move on. Right? Like Mhmm. You're human. It's all normal. It's part of the process.

[00:11:07] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:11:08] Rob: Right?

[00:11:09] Sarah: Yeah. So I believe where you were going next when I interrupted you with that thought is to talk about and this is good because this is something I thought of when you were going through your introduction, different types of toxicity. So can we talk about that for a moment?

[00:11:24] Rob: Yes. So the research that I used talks about six different types of destructive leaders, and I like to think of them as archetypes. And when I do psychology or some of the mindset work I do with leaders, I use internal family systems, which is very much, like, you can think of it like you have the devil and the angel on your shoulder or if you've seen Inside Out. Right? It's like these little characters that sit at the control panel of people's minds. Mhmm. And I like to think about these six bad boss types as, like, we have all six of them in our brain. Of course, some will be bigger than others or more vocal than others or they'll lead more often than others, but, ultimately, we need to lead ourselves and them so then we can be the best leader.

[00:12:12] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:12:13] Rob: Right? Now let's talk about, like, what are these six destructive types. So we kinda started off with the two that we think about. When we say, like, what's an asshole boss Mhmm. We think about basically two types. One is the what's known as the arrogant and violent boss, which is your classic like, I like to think of it as like Gordon Ramsay on Hell's Kitchen and someone gives him raw chicken. Mhmm. Right? And it's like he throws it on the ground. He calls them a doughnut. Like, he swears, like, all this stuff. Right? It's actually not super common. So roughly 5.5% of the workforce has a boss like that. What's more common, and you see this a lot in heavy industry as well as you see this a lot. I mean, you're seeing it in politics in The United States and also around the world, is called the abusive narcissist. This is basically very similar. It's all about me. I take credit. I deflect blame. I can make threats against my people, these kind of behaviors. And you can think of this as like Leonardo DiCaprio's role on Wolf of Wall Street, like the Jordan Belfort character, right? Actually, wildly pretty common about, was it 19 something percent, like roughly 20 of folks have a boss like this. Mhmm. What we see, and the research backs this part up, is these type of folks actually are very good at getting up into the higher echelons of organizations. Mhmm. Those are the classic types. So let's start moving into what we see. Actually, some I see this a lot, actually, and they're roughly 15 to 20% of folks experience these on the opposite side. They're called the passive leaders. Mhmm. One is your ghost manager. This is George Costanza sleeping under his desk in Seinfeld. Right? And you see that I see this a lot in heavy industry and I've seen it a lot recently is people don't wanna make decisions. Mhmm. So they defer. Hey. That's upper management's job, or, hey. You're the expert. Why don't you decide? Mhmm. Right? And so I don't have to take accountability. I don't have to take responsibility. I just get to, like, not do. Mhmm. That's the ghost manager.

[00:14:38] Sarah: Okay.

[00:14:39] Rob: One that's kinda similar is called the messy boss. And again, the ghost manager is not out to get you. He's not bullying you. He's not doing these things. It's just like, hey, I'm trying to, like, avoid responsibility. And often that is a psychological thing where it's like either they feel like they don't deserve to be the manager or they feel like if they make a decision and it's wrong, they could get fired or like someone will be upset with them. Right? The messy boss, I think it's just purely they don't have management training. Mhmm. And this is they don't set expectations clearly. They don't set deadlines clearly. They don't give you basically a project plan. It's, hey, Sarah. Can you do this project for me? And then I walk away. Right? This can be folks like, some of it's they don't know how to be good managers. Some of it's just like, I'm wildly busy, and, like, I just go, Sarah, figure this out. Like, I don't have time to think about. Super common, I think, or I've seen it. Right? But it's not like it's again, this is, like, fixable stuff. Mhmm. Right? And, ultimately, if you're a leader and you notice, like, you kinda do these things, it's like just having, like, a structured way, like, literally, like, a project plan template. Mhmm. Or, like, doesn't even have to be that detailed, but sort of like, hey, Sarah. I need this thing done by next Friday. It needs to be in this sort of format. I'm expecting two pages. Just giving some more clarity on it, and that'll fix it really easily. The last two types are they're the combination types. So there's the passive aggressive boss, which, again, it's like I'm nice to your face, but behind your back, I'm being mean to you or I'll say things that are like, yeah, Sarah, that was great. Like, I always talk about Bill Lundberg from Office Space as like your classic passive aggressive boss. Mhmm. And then the final one is your passive egocentric, and this is it's all about Rob, but I'll never tell that to your face. Mhmm. And so I had a boss that literally took a report of mine, took my name off of it, put his name on it, and then sent it up the chain. Mhmm. Right? That's a classic passive egocentric. So those are the six types. And actually, 65% of the workforce experiences a boss that fits into those archetypes.

[00:17:12] Sarah: Yeah. What's interesting so it's interesting to hear all of those. And the thought that came to my mind when we started the conversation is you mentioned some of what you have heard by spending time with frontline employees, which is, like, no one ever listens to me. And that just made me think there's degrees of toxicity that come to mind as someone losing their temper, someone taking credit for work they didn't do. So, you know, something people that are discriminatory toward certain groups of individuals, things that are are pretty significant that, like, I'm not saying that they're always caught and addressed in workplaces today. But there is a degree where, like, you would hope that some of the more flagrant things would get addressed or flagged. But there's a lot of degrees of toxicity below that, some of which can be more malicious or extreme and some that maybe are almost accidental. Right? But, like, someone not feeling heard, I guess my point is, can happen for a number of different reasons. But the outcome of that is not good. Right? I mean, not only are you not getting what could be very valuable feedback from that employee, but they start to just feel disconnected. They start to become frustrated, etcetera, etcetera. So think it's helpful to understand those archetypes and also helpful to remember that, like, when we say toxic, that can take a lot of different shapes, and it can also be at a lot of varying degrees. Right? So can you talk a bit, Rob, about how these different types of toxicity are sort of perpetuated in organizations and sort of how they can persist, if you will?

[00:19:10] Rob: Yeah. So the first thing I just wanna say to folks, right, is it can feel overwhelming. Right? Is like now you're like, oh, I have all these things I have to think about. So where I want you to land, if you're listening to this, is likely somewhere inside of you, you have all six of those leaders or those bad bosses. Right? For you, likely, maybe one to two to three are the ones that really kinda dominate your experience or that you notice that you may come out with. You're not gonna have like, all six of them are not gonna be in your experience. Right? And so it's more about understanding when are the moments where like, for me, I definitely have an element where I'm a ghost manager. And part of that now is I run my own business, So it's like, I'm hiring a, a marketing company. I'm like, do marketing, go away. Right? But it's like, I also need to be more into that. Right? And part of it's my interest, part of it's like what I like to do. Right? But it's like, you can't just do that. Mhmm. I also have moments where I'm on that kind of abusive narcissist side because I have that inside myself against myself. Mhmm. And so it's not always that's an external thing. It's like, Rob, you didn't get more clients. You didn't book a speaking gig this month. What's wrong with you? Like, these type of things, which we all have, a lot of it's just inside our own heads. And so I don't want folks to feel overwhelmed. What I want folks to feel is, like, this is a moment for me to start tuning in to what's going on inside my mind, the voices that I hear, and understand that one is they're not you. It's a part that was created because of a hard time that you had. Mhmm. And as you listen to them and be curious, that's where you can learn to lead them. Mhmm. And so then it's, well, that will switch. That's the first thing I just wanna tell everyone.

[00:21:21] Sarah: Yeah. So there's a lot of power and curiosity when you're doing this work, and I'm familiar with this in my personal life. So there can be this tendency when you notice these different patterns or behaviors to be hard on yourself. And just like I said in the parenting example that I shared earlier, that actually not only is it not helpful, but it just makes things worse. Right? So you really have to break the habit of being your self critic and get more curious about okay. Interesting. So, like, I just had this exchange with someone on my team, and I found myself wanting to yell at them. And, I mean, hopefully, you stop it. Right?

[00:22:04] Rob: Yes. It's

[00:22:04] Sarah: still an opportunity to think, like, what about that interaction made me so angry that I almost became that aggressive, toxic boss. Right? So it's not about being mad at yourself for that or being critical of yourself for that. It's about just understanding when those tendencies come up, which to your point then helps you be in better control of them.

[00:22:30] Rob: Yeah. And so it's really just doing, like, root cause analysis on your own mind. Mhmm. And these parts of us, we all have everybody has them. And so it's not that it's like failure modes, right, on a piece of equipment. It's like when the equipment breaks and you're right, Sarah. It's not that we're always going to allow that part to yell at our people. Maybe it's yelling in our mind, and then we're, like, kinda frustrated, so we're just like, yeah, but we know we shouldn't do it, so we're like, yeah. Okay. And then we kinda disconnect. It's like when we dig into where is it coming from, what's it trying to do for us, they're all of these parts are trying to help us in some way. Mhmm. Then that's the switch is as we get curious and we start going down that rabbit hole, and I would totally recommend you get help with this, whether that's you can reach out to me, you can get help in therapy, like whatever that is, it will transform you as a leader as well as you as a parent, as well as you outside of work because this follows us this I'm pointing to my head Mhmm. Follows us everywhere.

[00:23:41] Sarah: Right. Yeah. So you mentioned you don't want people to feel overwhelmed. So what you refer to this as is self leadership. Okay. So what else would you want to share with people about step one, don't get overwhelmed, and work on, I guess, the curiosity piece? But what else is sort of involved in this idea of self leadership?

[00:24:07] Rob: Yeah. The first piece, Sarah, is stepping off this treadmill or this hamster wheel of work. And we get caught up with this because everybody, especially in these industries, it's like produce more with less. Mhmm. Because we gotta deliver higher returns than we did last quarter, so we gotta produce more stuff for less cost. And, like, your pew we while we wanna lay off people or we wanna cut cost or we wanted this or we wanted that. Right? It's this constant demand of I need you to do more, but I'm not even gonna give you the same amount I did last year to do it. If we can take that time and step off, and I'm not even saying like you need to step off and take two weeks off, right? I'm not even saying that. It's like literally take like an hour at lunchtime and just like or go on the weekend to like a park or a river or go for a run or go for a walk or swim or like whatever, go for a bike, whatever you like to do. Right? It's just giving yourself that time to let your brain process what's going on.

[00:25:28] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:25:30] Rob: And that those moments are where you're going to one is you'll get better ideas. So if you need creativity to solve problems, this can help you. Right? But also it's gonna give you time where you'll, you will start to understand and listen in on what's going on in here, in my mind. That's it. Mhmm. I don't like for my clients, when I start working with them, I give them one six minute exercise every day. Mhmm. Six minutes. Mhmm. Everybody listening, you have six minutes, and that's all it takes.

[00:26:05] Sarah: Mhmm. So what do you see as the biggest barriers to people doing this work?

[00:26:13] Rob: It's all the stuff in our own minds. Mhmm. It takes courage to look inwards, and most people, they're caught in the constant doing.

[00:26:24] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:26:25] Rob: And so they don't even realize that there's stuff to be done. And so Doctor. Tasha York has a book called Insight, and in her research, ninety five percent of people think they're self aware when only 12 to 15% of people actually are.

[00:26:41] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:26:42] Rob: Right? And so 80% of folks, they think they know what's going on in their minds as well as in their interactions with others, but they're like mister Bean in the world.

[00:26:57] Sarah: Yeah. I think the other thing that comes into play here, right, is when you think about the pressure that leaders today are under, you know, you talked about the importance of making the time to step away from that. Like, because it's also about regulating your nervous system. Right? If you don't do that, then those toxic parts are far more likely to come out to play. Right? Because you don't have the resilience to recognize those feelings in time to stop them. You can tell I'm speaking from experience. And so it's interesting though because also speaking from experience, it's very easy to confuse reasons and excuses because we're all busy. Right? And some of the leaders in these organizations, to your point, it's not just about being busy. It's also about the pressure. It's also about the profits. It's also about the do more with less. It's also about the constant influx of doom headlines. It's also all of these different things. And you have to give your body and your brain a break from that. Like, it's super, super important. And it's funny because even on this podcast I've been doing this podcast for six years, and I've interviewed leaders before that were like, my whole life changed when I started meditating. And I'd be like, oh, yeah. I need to do that. But I never did. Do you know what I mean? And it was just last year, I attended a retreat in August. And it, like, it really helped me understand the value of doing that and shutting off all of the noise. And to your point, there's value in your role, but there's more importantly value, like, as a human being. Like, we are not on this Earth to just execute, hustle, drive. It's like a toxic system, really, in so many ways.

[00:29:03] Rob: That's the piece, right? There's a Stanford study that it says that the way that companies manage their people accounts for a hundred and twenty thousand deaths per year in The United States and five to eight percent of The US annual health care cost, which makes it the fifth leading cause of death. And it is not just I don't wanna say, like, this was all liters. Right? It's like stress. And then, obviously, high levels of stress lead to cardiovascular, strokes, heart attacks. It leads to major disease like cancer, diabetes, like these things. Mhmm. It also leads to, of course, mental health problems, anxiety, depression, like burnout, these type of things. Right? Right. And so for me, that's part of it. The other part of it is the other side of this. Like, yes, you should do it for your health, your physical and mental health, which will, of course, help you be there for your kids and your family and your friends and all these things. The other side is also, do you want to get promoted? Do you want to work in a job that you like? Do you want to take charge of your career and guide it in the way that you want to? Not how HR wants it, not how you were told that like, I was told, like, my parents, they were like, hey, go to the best college you can, get a stable job, and then, like, basically just, like, ride that out for forty five years. Mhmm. And it's like both of these, the good and the bad, you can have by starting that journey inwards

[00:30:47] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:30:48] Rob: Because you'll find out what you like, or you'll learn strategies on, okay, how do I get promoted? Secret, it's not about working harder. And you all know this because you've seen someone get promoted because they were friends with the boss. Mhmm.

[00:31:05] Sarah: So there's I came across a point in your content that was about a Harvard University research or study on the gap in leadership training. So I'm also curious how this plays a role. Right? Because what we've talked about really so far is, like, a lot of what is within all of us that can cause these toxic archetypes or just toxic behaviors to arise. But how does the gap in leadership training factor in or sort of exacerbate things?

[00:31:42] Rob: Totally. So the Harvard Business Review study says that organizations spend $356,000,000,000 per year, and only 25% of it is effective because it addresses the leader's mindset, which is what we've been talking about this whole episode.

[00:32:02] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:32:02] Rob: If we don't change our minds, we don't change our behaviors. That's fact. Mhmm. I mean, yeah. Okay. I can go to a course, and they can say, Rob, I want you to have a thirty minute meeting with all your staff once every two weeks, and I want you to ask them these five questions, great. But ultimately, in these moments of high pressure, in these moments of you gotta deliver more, which you're always under it, it's you're gonna either forget about that or what usually happens is, yeah, the next week that you leave that seminar, you're gonna do this, and then two, three weeks from now, you're back to what you did before. Mhmm. Because you didn't one is you didn't build the habit or change your mind. The other side of it is this. There's a study from Gartner that says that eighty five percent of people who get promoted into management positions don't get training at all.

[00:33:06] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:33:07] Rob: Yay. Right. But it's like, I don't know about you. I thought about this for a long time. I was like, is there any job that I can think of that hire somebody but doesn't either require them to be trained before or give them training after?

[00:33:30] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:33:31] Rob: Right? Like, my sister worked at a fast food restaurant when she was like in high school and they trained her. This is how you cook a burger and do fries and like this. Right? And it's like as an engineer, it's like I needed to go to college for engineering as well as like spend four years working as an engineer in training before I'm now qualified as a professional engineer. Right? And it's like, oh, well, Sarah, you were doing good as an engineer. Mhmm. Like, you're now managing engineers.

[00:34:01] Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We kinda just throw people into it without equipping them for the job. And I think often without really even attempting to understand if it's a job that they want or will be good at. Yes. Right? And that certainly needs to change. But I think there's there's a lot of value, in my opinion, in both of these things. Right? Like, doing the mindset work because that's so much about better understanding yourself, but also having training to talk about, like like you said, what are the best practices? How often should you be having meetings? How should you be running those meetings? How should you be setting objectives and clear targets and all of these different things? Because there are a lot of individuals that get promoted into these positions that don't have that knowledge or the mindset approach. But all that does is is ramp up the stress level. Right? Because all of a sudden, they're in a job that they feel like they need to know how to do because they've been given the job, but they haven't been given the information on how to do the job well. Right? So that is certainly tough.

[00:35:13] Rob: You're a % right. So leadership is not all just mindset. Right? Of course, you have to do the other stuff. Right? Like, you're a % right, and that's where kind of the combination of both is most effective because one is, okay, now we're unlearning some of the bad boss behaviors that that have been with us for a long time, and we're replacing those with what are the best strategies, how do we build trust, how do we build psychological safety, how do we have meetings, how do we give feedback, How do we how do we how do we? And we're building those habits Mhmm. Which then stay with us.

[00:35:52] Sarah: Right. Yeah. That makes sense. So what happens when a leader is a toxic

[00:36:09] Rob: narcissists, and most of them do not or not open to change. Mhmm. So if anyone out there is listening, you are not one of them because or at least your most dominant archetype is not that because if it was, you wouldn't be listening to this show. So first off, great. Right? But often those folks, the reason or somehow how they end up in front of me is there's a moment where something doesn't work. And so for me, it actually happened with one of my leaders was he was running this massive digital transformation project, and something happened with the team he managed where they were working with another department. He wasn't even in the room. But, basically, there was, like, a disagreement and something happened, and it went up the chain, around, and down onto his head. And then that was the moment where he's like, I need help, and that's when he called me. That's what often happens, right, is the toxic manager well, the arrogant, violent, abusive narcissist types, they don't change until they're forced to change.

[00:37:25] Sarah: Mhmm. Yeah. Which is where it comes back to a conversation about organizations having more ownership over how leaders are contributing or not to the culture that they want to create because there's plenty of examples of where some of these toxic leaders that are very capable of delivering results are just sort of coddled and allowed to do their thing over time, and that's that's a whole separate problem and conversation. But to your point, the company's role can be that catalyst for people realizing they need to dig in and do some of the work. It's

[00:38:11] Rob: both, right? And so the CEO of Novo Nordisk, like, and folks know them, Ozempic, that kind of stuff, he actually came out, I don't know, this might have been six months ago and he said, I am now measuring my leaders on how stressed their teams are. And if more than 10% of their teams are stressed or high stress, like whatever high stress and above, I am now going to, that's the KPI I'm looking at, which is incredible. You also have a great example for folks out there. So Jason Lippert, he's the CEO of Lippert Components, which is, like, $5,000,000,000 in revenue. They're based in Indiana. They make everything from RVs to boats, all these things. He has a whole department of leadership coaches in his company. They do stuff like the dream achievers program, which they put 3,000 of their employees through. Everyone from folks who work on the shop floor to managers and executives.

[00:39:15] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:39:15] Rob: And that program focuses on not, hey, Rob. What do you want as, like, your corporate goal, but, like, what do you want as a person? And he said he came on my leadership show a few years ago, and he said the most common thing he gets from folks that go through that program are they wanna learn how they can buy their first house. And so he gets his finance team to help coach them and teach them personal finance, mortgages, like, all these things Mhmm. So then they can buy their first home. There are leaders that are incredible that are out there. And it you know, it's great when you see it at the CEO level, but you can also find them within a company. Yeah. For sure. And if you're not working for one of them, but you know, hey. There's one in another department, Try to transfer over. Mhmm. Because even for me, like, I was doing a ton of therapy and a ton of internal deep work, but there's a limit when you're in a toxic culture.

[00:40:19] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:40:20] Rob: Because you still gotta armor up to go to work to protect yourself from feeling these ways.

[00:40:25] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:40:26] Rob: And so what that's one thing. Right? Yeah. And if it's really bad, like for me, I attempted suicide once, It's like you gotta choose to get out.

[00:40:37] Sarah: Mhmm.

[00:40:38] Rob: But those are really intense situations. Right? But the biggest thing for folks out there, look, I want you to just is take control of your life and your career. Mhmm. And we've told we've been told all these stories. You should get promoted. You should be a manager. You should be this. You should be that. You said it, Sarah. Some folks like, I've been in leadership programs that I've coached, and some of the folks that in there, they, like, get to the end of the program. They're like, you know what, Rob? I just wanna go back to being an individual contributor. Mhmm. Because you know what? I don't really like, you know, all this that takes to be a good leader. Look. I just wanna, like, I wanna nerd out on this specific piece of technology or this specific piece of equipment or, like, whatever. And it's like, that is an incredibly great outcome. Mhmm.

[00:41:25] Sarah: Yeah. For sure. I mean, that's a very important piece of doing the internal work is, why am I even doing this? Is it because it's what I really want? Or is it because my parents put pressure on me? Or is it because I've told myself that if I don't achieve x, I'm doing something wrong, etcetera? At the end of the day, it can be like you said, it it takes courage, but it but it can also be incredibly powerful to start asking yourself those questions and really understanding the answers because life's too short. Right? If you're not gonna feel fulfilled once you climb the ladder, then why are you doing it? Right? I mean, it's yeah. That's really good really good point. And I like too the examples of the leaders out there that are really thinking about this, in my opinion, in the right way because I think that I love seeing examples of people that are reinforcing the fact that you can treat people well and have a really high performing organization at the same time. I would like to see more of those examples, and I think we will. I mean, I think going back to your point about what happened with COVID and some of the generational shifts, there are just less and less people that are willing to tolerate an environment in which they are treated in a way they know they don't deserve, and that is forcing organizations to make their leaders level up, which I think is a win win. So that's really good stuff. So, Rob, thank you for coming to join and share. Folks can find you on LinkedIn. Correct?

[00:43:01] Rob: You can find me on LinkedIn. Just my name, Rob Kowarowski. Sarah, I'll put it in the podcast notes because I'm sure it's hard to spell.

[00:43:08] Sarah: Yeah. Rob kindly gave me a very nice phonetical type out of here's how to say it, but we will. We'll make sure it'll be in the podcast information. So, yeah, check Rob out on LinkedIn and have a look at his book and the work that he does. And yeah.

[00:43:24] Rob: Yeah. So for the book and for my like, if you wanna check out my coaching or my speaking, like, if you host internal corporate events or you go to conferences, like, I do keynote speaking, you can check out my website. Just robcalvariski.com. So that'll be in podcast notes. And then on my website, if you click on the book tab, you can put in your email to get the first two chapters of my upcoming book for free. So check that out.

[00:43:55] Sarah: Alright. Well, thanks for coming and spending some time with us today, Rob.

[00:43:58] Rob: Thanks for having me, Sarah.

[00:43:59] Sarah: 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.

Episode 304

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Dave Cole, Director of Energy Strategy at Sizewell C, to explore the innovative shared resources model implemented in the UK's nuclear services sector. Together, they:

• Examine how Nuclear Services was created to address talent retention challenges and maximize resource utilization across multiple nuclear power licensees

• Delve into the unique aspects of operating in a highly regulated nuclear environment, including the importance of maintaining long-term technical expertise and regulatory compliance

• Explore the benefits of the shared resources model, including enhanced career paths for employees, improved resource planning capabilities, and increased opportunities for innovation

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Also, subscribe to our newsletter right here.

Watch the episode here:

Episode Highlights:

[00:41:14] The Three Core Behaviors for Successful Shared Resources -

Dave emphasizes three essential behaviors that drive success in shared resource models: collaboration, outcome focus, and curiosity. In highly regulated environments with multiple stakeholders, these behaviors create the foundation for effective resource sharing and innovation. Leaders must actively demonstrate and cultivate these behaviors, moving beyond simply stating them as values. Organizations looking to implement shared resource models should prioritize building a culture where these behaviors are lived daily through consistent actions and engagement. The success of such initiatives depends heavily on genuine commitment to these behaviors at all levels, from leadership to frontline workers.

[00:17:00] The Triple Role Framework for Service Organizations -

Dave outlines three critical functions that define successful service organizations: delivering technical work, maintaining required capabilities, and serving as a technical authority. This framework provides a comprehensive approach to service delivery that goes beyond basic execution. Organizations must balance immediate delivery needs with long-term capability development while also providing strategic guidance and expertise. For service leaders, this means developing structures that support all three functions simultaneously. The framework helps organizations create more value by enabling them to act as true partners rather than just service providers.

[00:27:29] Strategic Resource Planning in Complex Environments -

Dave explains how effective resource planning requires understanding both current needs and future capability requirements across different project lifecycles. Organizations must look beyond simple headcount planning to consider how roles and skills evolve over time. This approach requires maintaining strong relationships with supply chain partners while ensuring internal competency and control. Service organizations should develop comprehensive planning processes that account for both predictable changes and unexpected demands. The key is creating flexibility while maintaining the core capabilities needed for long-term success.

[00:45:58] Prerequisites for Implementing Shared Resource Models -

Dave provides crucial guidance for organizations considering shared resource models by emphasizing the importance of establishing trust and shared goals before implementing commercial arrangements. Organizations should first evaluate whether they have truly unique talent or specialized skills that warrant resource sharing. Leaders must carefully consider market conditions, competitive dynamics, and future technological changes that might affect resource scarcity. This evaluation process should include assessing both the potential benefits and risks of creating interdependent relationships between different business entities. Success depends on building strong foundations of trust and alignment before formalizing resource-sharing arrangements.

Using AI to Unlock Potential While Protecting the Human Experience

Using AI to Unlock Potential While Protecting the Human Experience

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