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Are XLAs the Key Metric You’re Missing? Part One

My Thoughts on Modern Leadership: Curiosity, Community and Change

Future of Field Service Nashville + IFS Connect Highlights

July 5, 2023 | 20 Mins Read

Konica Minolta’s Remote by Default Mission

July 5, 2023 | 20 Mins Read

Konica Minolta’s Remote by Default Mission

In a session from the Future of Field Service Live Tour stop in Birmingham, UK, Sarah talks with Ged Cranny, Sr. Consultant, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe about how Konica Minolta is stepping up to face the realities of why, when, and how service delivery is evolving by putting in place a remote-by-default approach.

Sarah Nicastro: Ged, welcome.

Ged Cranny: Nice to meet you.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. All right, go ahead and get comfortable. So we're going to talk about Konica Minolta's remote by default mission and plan of attack. So as I mentioned this morning in one of my trends is this idea of how much opportunity there is to really evolve how we're delivering service and what that looks like. So that's what we're going to focus on. Can you tell everyone a little bit more about yourself?

Ged Cranny: Yeah, I'm Ged Cranny. I've worked for Konica Minolta products since I was 17 years old. I saw an advert in the paper and thought, company car, didn't like driving my dad's car. It was in Allegro if you're old enough to remember what one of them is. And came into an industry that stopped me going in the RAF, if I'm honest. Found out that from my view of the world, people were lazy in this sort of organization and loved the fact that I was traveling around the Northeast as a photocopier engineer.

Worked my way up through the company I worked in, which was a dealership and they were bought by a very large American company from Florida and found some wonderful people who saw some good in me. Spent a lot of invested time like your last speaker was talking about. Give me the opportunity to run the UK or to work with the teams within the UK. And then Konica came literally out of the blue and just offered me a job to bring everything into a hub. I think one of your first speakers was talking about buying lots of different companies, but you needed to have a hub to bring everything in.

So my talents in the American company were helping buy companies and bringing them in. So this is what they wanted to use. I believed it was a five-year job and I would do that for five years and go do something else. I managed to last 21 years, 22 years, and I was leaving Konica Minolta and in my six months of leaving, head office in Europe asked me would I become a consultant. I hate the word consultant, but that's the senior consultant that I am now.

My job is to work with the 27 different leaders across Europe and help them with operational performance analytics. And then this IFS project came up and in 2017 I really bought into... We'd had shift left, everybody's had shift left where your accountants have started this thing about it's expensive to have engineers go in the field, let's get rid of lots of engineers by fixing things over the phone. We've had IoT since the '80s, it was a product in the manufacturing area to age the machines really fast so we could see them aging and see what they would look like after five years by all the sensors. And somebody in marketing went, "It should be really good to get the meter readings." So we spent a lot of time doing that. We started to get a little bit brighter. Reporting got a little bit better. So we were able-

Sarah Nicastro: Did you notice how when you said brighter the sun-

Ged Cranny: Did it?

Sarah Nicastro: ... lightened up the whole room?

Ged Cranny: I just thought it was my eyes.

So we were able to start utilizing our data for predictive maintenance. And I've got a really great boss, Andre, and he suddenly came up with this remote by default. About 2017, I was still leader in the UK then. And I really bought into it because it was a story you could talk to. Engineers shift left, they were suspicious. They thought this is getting rid of us.

Remote by default, you started playing to their technical brains, i.e. what can we do? What's the art of possible? And when you started sitting down and talking default, it's not a sort of Brexit 51/49 type vote. It's got to be in my brain, maybe I'm just a bit weird, but 60% plus fixing. We're coming from like 20%, 25%. So how do you sit down with the engineers and say, "What are we going to do? We've got an aging workforce." 2017 my average age of my engineers was 48. I listen in to this call still in the UK and each week somebody is having an anniversary. And generally if you get over 20 years, he's one of our engineers. When you get over 30 years, it's definitely one of our engineers and we're now getting 40 years.

What are you going to do with that talent? They carry huge cases around. They drive around, they go out in the rain. The UK's not the best place for sunshine, so they're out every single day carrying around. So people getting to sort of my age, we've come through the biggest growth in our finance, understanding our financial benefits, house owning. So these guys are going, "Wow, actually I'm going to go and be a grandad. I'm going to walk away because I don't want to do this." But when you start talking about being on a service desk and using their talent and then talking to the new generations in a different way and utilizing different terms, and that's why I'm excited to do this.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's awesome. So it sounds like you're telling me.... Your journey at Konica made me think of the quote, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans." And here you are. So one of the things I want to talk about is when we talk about remote service, I think one of the initial reactions is people tend to think remote only instead of remote first. And that can cause some panic or some trepidation. So can you talk a little bit about, when you say remote by default specifically, what is the aim? What are we looking to accomplish in using remote service?

Ged Cranny: So create the different options that our customers need to interface with us. So not only are our engineers aging, so is our customer base, but also we've got the younger customer base coming through who don't use paper. Funny enough, we use paper. They don't want... They've been brought up in a world where instant fix, so my app doesn't work, instant fix. I think somebody said, "Switch off, switch on, and the world comes back to life again." They're not waiting for somebody to wake up at eight o'clock in the morning, have a service desk and make a call. They want their complaint in there and then. They want somebody to give them a message to say that the engineer is being booked or they want some fixes coming back towards them.

So it's not just about building the desk, changing the attitude. It's about working with your customers and understand your customers' attitude. I always warn people, as my son was growing up, I realized when he was about 16 that when he got to 40, as a printing business, we had a problem. He's 40 next week. So you suddenly start to, all the things that I could see him doing, no paper, instant, wants to fix, wasn't interested in having thousands of CDs about the house. He wanted everything on his Pod. He wanted to be able to access it and if them access points weren't there, he wanted instant fix. Didn't expect what was happening in the world, how many servers were creating this and how much CO2 he was creating. He just wanted it.

That's the thing that we have to start. We have to start with how do you interface with your aging population? How would you with the late '80s, '90s people and definitely, definitely how would you interface with the 2000s? Because they're now arriving in the workplace. They're not the influencers, but they will be in 10 years' time. So start thinking now about how them people interact. If you've got children and they're finishing university now, start watching what they're doing. Start understanding how they're interacting with the world because they interact differently than I interact with the world, but you've got to create the opportunity for all these pieces.

So when I say about remote first, we found out that let's get our desks. Have we got them right? No, not yet. We've got to get our knowledge bases. Well, when you start talking about knowledge bases, the first thing our accountants did was go, "How many people can we get rid of? Because we've got a knowledge base.? And I went, "You can't." So if you've got 10 people on the desk, the 10 people on the desk have still got to work. But we need to take four of them to teach the baby to understand, to get it into junior school, to get it into senior school, to get it to university. And when it gets to university, guess what? Its thirst for knowledge doesn't reduce, it actually gets bigger, but so does the need to teach it. So as much as you think that you will replace people, I think you'll create new rules and different ways of working.

And then we also found out that... I work for a manufacturer, Konica Minolta. The factories output products that deliver, if I'm talking about the print side, they deliver print. The service organization delivers outcomes. So they're two different things. So talking back to the factories and definitely the change in the customer attitude with the pandemic, i.e. the biosecurity, we don't want people onsite, opened the doors for us to be able to go back to Japan and say, "Look, it's great. Your products are fantastic. They're well-made, but we need to have more customer interaction. The customer wants more interaction and we have to be able to support that."

And now what's come out of all of this is smart hands. Somebody was talking in one of the meetings I was in about you bring more diversity by bringing the smart hands piece, then you bring more enlightenment to everybody so that we can be more diverse. And instead of just sticking with let's have white males as our engineers, we suddenly sit around and say, wait a minute. 25% of most of the engineering jobs, if you break it down, are actually technical. The rest of it is getting ready, being prepared. Understand your customer, talk to your customer, listen and all the tools. Not being funny, and I might just get stones thrown at me as some people have already threatened, but the female population are 10 times better than the male population at doing that. And I'm not being sexist. If I get thrown off-stage, do it now.

Sarah Nicastro: I mean, I'm not going to throw you off-stage for saying that. No, I think it's a good point. And in one of the breakout sessions, we also had some different discussions about how when we start thinking about how service delivery is changing, we can start to think about the creation of new roles and then that can broaden the types of people that ultimately we can have working in the organization. Can we talk a little bit, Ged, I want to talk about what are the technological components to this, right? So when you think about how you're enabling the workforce differently, how are you doing that? What combination of things are you using for the remote by default? And then let's talk a little bit more about the impact on customers and the impact on the organization.

Ged Cranny: Okay. I'll start the journey with the customer, if you don't mind.

Sarah Nicastro: Sure.

Ged Cranny: And then I'll bring it back through to the engineer.

Sarah Nicastro: I can tell, Ged, you're going to start wherever you want to start and that is perfectly fine. This reminds me of Mike Gosling.

Ged Cranny: Go on.

Sarah Nicastro: You're fine. Last year in London, I think I probably only had to ask you one question, and then a half an hour later I said, "Well, thanks for the break, Mike. That was great."

Ged Cranny: He's actually the person who brought me to come here today.

Sarah Nicastro: Well, there you go. Yeah.

Ged Cranny: I enjoyed that session so well.

You've got all of your portals, but your portals that you built early, which we did, were built about what we wanted and not what the customer wanted. So we've had to address the portals and how the portals interface with different people, and that's an ongoing process. Then we had to link the knowledge bases and we had lots of different knowledge bases from lots of different countries with lots of different ways of interpreting it. So we've needed people to sit there and start to make them knowledge bases. We've bought tools. So we bought a ticketing tool because the need for our IT services was completely different from the print services and it was a multiple level jobs. So we might have five days or even three months of work with multiple touch points. And the SAP system couldn't do it.

So we'd already invested in a ticketing tool. That ticketing tool allows us then to start breaking out from there and making the service desk more transparent, more open, and with more flexibility to do different parts, but also link our desks, our portals, our knowledge bases together. The discussions with IT were hilarious, if you've got a sense of humor, but everybody's going in different lines. So we had a different project going, which was called SPSC, and that was literally aligning all the different areas of which would be the master system where we would make data lakes. And as much as it all sounds mad to you at the present moment in time, because it did to me as a techie, sitting with the IT people, they've hidden places, they've got your databases in one place, got your knowledge pools in another place, and then trying to bring all that work together and then link it to the cloud was really, really difficult.

And then it became really obvious we needed a field service enablement tool that absolutely delivered 100%. Because if the desks were going to interrogate, whether by looking into the back of the machines with the predictive maintenance, whether they did it by talking to the customer, whether the customer had gone through our knowledge bases and then got sick and wanted to get an engineer there, we had to be better than 85% right, which in service organizations, 85% right, that's okay. It's not in the world we live in anymore. So we found IFS and we linked that and we started a process by getting 27 different countries to align their processes. That's why I have a sense of humor, if I'm honest.

Sarah Nicastro: I bet.

Ged Cranny: It's not like America where everybody speaks the same language. When they get angry, everybody reverts to their language. I'm sure I heard my name a few times with derogatory words coming into it, but we managed to get a bunch of advocates to agree that this was the process we would work. We used that to go out and we invited 15 different companies to come and see us. Of that, we took five through to RFI and we found the tool, or we feel we found the tool that will deliver for the long term. The difficulty I found: culture eats technology or even strategy for breakfast.

So we spent five months on the interfaces. We spent three weeks talking in pandemic over teams to people about the changes, the effects that this would have on the team. And when we launched, everything was fine. We missed the middle management, we didn't get the middle management piece. And I think it was said by our last person on the stand was if you middle management's not there, they don't push. So somebody pushes back, somebody sees his push, but somebody pushes back, somebody pushes back.

So again, sit down, take the time, listen to what's being said about understanding what the people do for a living. The tool will deliver how the tool wants to win and how you set it to win. So think about your SLAs, think about how it fits right back in that journey to the service desk, to the remote by default and what you're going to do, what's your outputs, how is it going to work? So we linked IFS to SAP, SAP links to ServiceNow for the ticketing tool. And then we've got the portals through ServiceNow, but everything revolves around SAP within our business.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. I had a podcast maybe a couple of months ago with a woman who is a neuroscientist, and we were talking about the neuroscience of change management and it was really interesting and I was just thinking about how you said the culture part and how that's often the toughest part and then the focus on middle management. But one of the points she made that I really, really liked is simple, but it's just that we have to remember that resistance to change, it's like a physiological response. So the point being it's not abnormal, it's not uncommon, it's not even avoidable really. You can mitigate it, you can minimize it, but you have to expect that because that's just kind of human response. So I think that sometimes when you're introducing a big change and you get that initial resistance, you can panic or feel like, are we doing the wrong thing, or get frustrated that that response is coming and let that cloud how you work through it. But really we need to remember that that's just very, very normal and plan for that and help people get to the other side of that.

Ged Cranny: I think when you do your testing, you do your testing in a laboratory, four or five incidents, 20 incidents. When you're opening up and the full day comes and I go to somewhere I don't like to go to, I heard it last year in London and it was something that resonated in my small brain was if they don't like going to King's Cross, tell them they're going to King's Cross. Sorry. And the reason being is you've got to stick to the targets that you set, but people have got to understand the why of what you're trying to achieve. And as much as we spoke about the system of giving one call at a time and the benefits of giving one call at a time, you're going to go here, but we're going to work you home, which the system did.

What the system did also was it sent them at eight o'clock in the morning to somewhere maybe an hour and a half away because it was already working for the last call of the day. And what happened was that you had a culture of actually I get my first call, I'm going to pick three different incidences. I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm going to do it in the order I want to do it. And actually I'm going to take the kids to school. Our break-fix starts at eight o'clock. By 11 o'clock, 70% is in there. 70% of our work is break-fix. So with two and four-hour response times, guess what? You've got to be rolling towards these things and you've got to be thinking really, really quickly. So the fact that these people were suddenly being a little bit more stricter, they realized and the realization, they never calculated that realization until it became 100% of their jobs. And I think even doing it slowly wouldn't help.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So just to recap here, you knew going into this that remote by default means to solve as many issues as you can remotely and to have technicians as informed as possible when they do need to go onsite, but that you were not going to resolve every issue remotely. It's just a matter of not wasting trips to go out and basically diagnose or to do things that could be done remotely. So that's one part of this. And then you put IFS in place to make sure that the work you are doing onsite is optimized. I know you mentioned that with the nature of Konica's business, this was sort of something that you knew at some point was going to become necessary. You needed to take that inefficiency out and maximize productivity. How would you describe the impact to customers of the remote by default approach?

Ged Cranny: Before pandemic, because of the way the contracts were, because of the way for 20, 30, 40 years, we've dealt with our customers, quite often you would get, "My contract says you will come to site. I'm not interested in helping." It changed very, very quickly.

Sarah Nicastro: During the pandemic.

Ged Cranny: It actually changed just... As the pandemic started, I was explaining to somebody earlier on today, offices were being shut because somebody came into the office, they had COVID, so they had to shut the office down and anybody who was in the office had to go and self-isolate because there were the rules. So people suddenly realized about the biosecurity of their offices. And so the attitude changed. So it was more, "We don't want an engineer to come to site, we want you to fix it. What can you do?" And we've had all of the IoT, we just didn't use it. We didn't have the tools in the background to use it.

So as I said, as we came through 2010, 2015, we started to build the data mining, the data lakes to be able to start doing predictive maintenance, to start being able to predict where we needed to put parts around the UK so we don't have thousands and thousands or millions and millions worth of pounds worth of parts just sitting in the back house. So putting them in the right places. So it's aligning all of these different things. But then it was some of the bigger companies, they were really ready to embrace these sort of things. And the smaller companies were very much, "My contract says this." We do a lot with government and it was very much, "Our contract says this because that's the ABC that we play to." Then playbooks have been changed. And the more that we have our quality meetings with people, the more we've shown them the benefits of what we've been doing, the more we're able to expand on that and show them that, look, actually this is a different way, it's a better way. And we're going to put smart hands.

So we would send an engineer from Germany to one of our security camera systems to change a modem. As bad as I was an engineer, even I can change a modem. So how much fun would it be if you organized the IFS tool to be able to organize the specialist in the desk, the engineer, smart hands, to go onto the site, save the flight from Germany, me to work in, I'll say York for you because you'll know where that is. Me to do a job in York, which is 30 miles for me to drive. I arrive onsite, the system tells the specialist I'm arriving onsite, the specialist then helps me. Legally I've had all of the training that keeps me legal, but then the specialist is able to see what's happening and then he will complete the job. I'm just the smart hands onsite.

Again, it brings in more enablement, it brings in different ways of thinking. It brings in different ways we can train people. And it also brings in the opportunity that we can have more of a gig workforce because that's a big area we've not tapped into, which is the gig workforce. And that's something we put into our tender with all of the people who came for the field enablement was the ability at some point in the future to be able to tap into that gig economy.

Sarah Nicastro: A couple of points I just wanted to come back to real quick before we wrap up is, so we talked this morning about organizations that are on the servitization journey or are delivering outcomes. This idea of how much is remote versus how much onsite doesn't necessarily matter because it's just the outcome. Companies though that aren't delivering outcomes, that are still delivering service, whether that's through contract or whatever the arrangement is, can sometimes be deterred by that objection of, no, the contract says you'll be here. So that's what it is.

And again, I think we need to think about how to shift that conversation to a value-based conversation. And we don't necessarily naturally do that because the conversation has always been a time and materials conversation. But I think there's just as much argument for organizations, any organization to leverage this technology. I think we need to get more comfortable pushing back to, well, would you prefer resolution in 30 minutes or in X amount of hours or days? Again, the same way we talked about in the servitization session, maybe you lead with the companies, to your point, that are more open to that and focus on those first and worry about some others later.

The other point of that though is you mentioned the business review sessions. One way we need to remember to offset less time onsite is by more insight, more information. So it can't just be that the value you provide becomes less visible. It's less visible in terms of a technician being there. But you need to then take the data of here's how many failures were avoided, here's how many issues were handled remotely, here's what that equates to in terms of uptime of your equipment, et cetera. Give them back the insight that represents the value that you used to accomplish by sending someone onsite. So I think it's just, again, thinking about how we shift that narrative and the different ways to represent remote value in a way that will resonate. Because we know that it's there, it's just a matter of its new and it's different.

Ged, last question is, what do you think... Well, I have a couple more, but we only have time for one. I'm going to ask you two though. What's the biggest lesson you've learned so far and where do you see this going in the future? So what do you think the future is of remote by default for Konica?

Ged Cranny: First one, biggest issue, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And spend-

Sarah Nicastro: I would've bet you would say that.

Ged Cranny: Yeah, I think you would. Spend more time. You can speak to people and they will nod their heads, especially in a large group because everybody else is not in their head. So 90% of people will nod their heads. Explain to people what the changes would be, but the why and what the benefits are. But not just the benefits to the company, the benefits to them, but also the negatives of if you don't and what problems that brings. But also if it brings opportunities, try and bring the opportunities to the front. What is it? What does it mean to Konica Minolta and where do we go?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So what do you think of the future of remote by default, what does that look like for Konica? What will happen next?

Ged Cranny: We will start getting the portals and the first point of contact to the customers a lot better using the new tools that are available with the IoT that we have back to their machine. So linking the IoT from their machine back into the conversation, linking it into the AI that's talking to the partner, if it's beyond them, back into the desk. But learning and feeding that back in. We are working on harmonizing three desks across the world, but not taking out the local desks. So we've got the local desk linked for nine till five, but then what we're going to do is we're going to make sure that the global desks take on more of, I think somebody called it the boring work, where you push the red button and you push the red button. So all the automated work is going to go into three desks so that we can do 24 hour, seven days a week, 365 days a year. That's where I see it.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Exciting stuff.

Ged Cranny: Hopefully.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you for coming and sharing with us.

Ged Cranny: Sorry for talking too much.

Sarah Nicastro: Appreciate it.

Ged Cranny: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you.

Ged Cranny: Sorry, I talk too much.

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Live Tour 2023: Düsseldorf Highlights

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Live Tour 2023: Düsseldorf Highlights

Sarah shares a synopsis of the topics discussed at the Future of Field Service Live Tour 2023 stop in Düsseldorf on June 21st.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today I'm going to be sharing with you a bit of a recap and summary of the fifth out of six Future of Field Service live tour of events for 2023, which we just wrapped, which was in Dusseldorf, Germany. I can't believe that five out of the six events have passed in sort of a flurry of activity and look forward to our sixth and final event, which will be in Stockholm on October 10th, but had a great time in Germany and a really good lineup of speakers, really good attendance and very engaged audience. So let me share with you a little bit of what went on.

So the first session we had of the day was a session on embracing the power of remote capabilities to create modern service delivery models. This was with Nina Li, who is the senior director for Global Enterprise Operations Center at Johnson Controls. So Nina talked a lot about some of the changes that Johnson Controls has made in centralizing its remote capabilities to really start to dig into creating synergy in the customer experience and in the service delivery model of how remote is used, how it compliments and ties in with field service capabilities from a global standpoint. So it was really interesting to hear how they're looking at this, what they've done. She talked about the fact that these centralized remote centers give service technicians some really good opportunity to kind of start a new phase of their careers. That's where a lot of those employees are coming from.

She talked about how to, well, first we talked about why remote is so, so important for Johnson Controls, how it impacts the future of the organization in terms of just being effective and also working within the context of today's talent realities and then also how it impacts both Johnson Controls and its customers in terms of sustainability initiatives and the benefits that exist on both sides.

So we also talked about how teams are interfacing with one another and how the company is working to make sure that the service experience is seamless for customers. We talked about some of the misconceptions that arise when we talk about remote so employees being fearful that it will replace their jobs and customers objecting to the idea of people being onsite or visible less and how Johnson Controls is mitigating those things. And Nina said at the end of the session in response to a question from the audience, the reality is if you're not investing in remote and figuring out what this looks like for your organization, you may very well be out of business in a couple of years. And I think that's a really good point. This is an area of immense opportunity for service organizations and I think it's very much the way of the future. So that's a very good piece of advice to heed.

Next up, we had a session on bringing service into the DNA of a historically product-centric business with Lucas Rigotto, who is the Chief Service officer at GEA. And Lucas shared a lot what his journey at GEA has looked like so far. He's been there for around nine months, and how big of a mindset shift it is to really ensure that service is top of mind and has a voice in an organization that traditionally has been very, very product focused. So he talked about the huge potential that service holds for GEA and the realization of that potential at the top, how important that is to be able to really undertake the change that he is leading within the organization. And really, we talked a lot about how that type of mindset shift and evolution is such a people-centric thing.

So Lucas spoke a lot about how he is spending time with teams, how he is making leaders all the way down to frontline employees feel a part of the shift that's going on. We talked about how incorporating service into a company's DNA does not have to mean that you omit or overlook or deprioritize your product legacy. It's simply a matter of complimenting that and really just talked about some of the things that are challenging, but also some of the things that he is very excited about.

We broke out for some great round table discussions on some of those topics. And then in the afternoon we had our next interview session was on embracing the full potential of cloud-based customer service. That was with Razvan Nanciu, who is the General Manager of CSSD at KYOCERA Document Solutions Europe. So Razvan really talked again about this idea of eliminating silos within the customer experience and looking at service holistically to make sure that functions are working together, to make sure that the customer experience is again, seamless, intuitive, that companies are getting insights that are valuable to them as a part of the overall value proposition. He talked a lot about sort of the commercial side and what goes into considering how you sell service when service is evolving significantly for an organization, making sure that teams are educated and equipped to have those value-based conversations.

And I think another important point that Razvan made is that there are so, so, so many technological capabilities that are really ready today to be leveraged and that it's important to start with a strong foundation, which KYOCERA did with IFS, but also to be pushing to avoid complacency, to continue to leverage automation capabilities, AI capabilities, to continue to refine internally how effective and efficient you are and externally, continuing to evaluate how you can grow and expand your value proposition and continue to get close and stay close to your customers.

Next up, we had a session on how a predictive approach to spare parts boosts service efficiency with Ivo Siebers, who is the Senior Vice President for Global Logistics at TK Elevator. So some of you may remember that Ivo was not too long ago on the podcast and talked about this project that TK Elevator has undertaken around spare part business excellence. But I think it was a really interesting conversation, obviously sharing what they have done in terms of using predictive capabilities and automation and really making the most of today's technologies in terms of its spare parts business. But there were a lot of elements of this conversation that could be applied to any area of the service business where you're looking to increase automation, become more predictive, really reduce manual efforts. So TK Elevator's story around its spare part business excellence project is really impressive. Before this project technicians had parts available for about 20% of cases, and with the new system and really just being in the early stages of the new system, they're already at 80% availability. So very impressive.

Ivo spoke about some of the elements that maybe surprised him a bit on the journey. So the idea of individuals, humans tend to maybe overshoot on how well optimized we think things are versus the reality, how important data integrity is when you're looking at anything related to predictive analytics. Also, the idea of, again, change management. So he also spoke about facing the emotions from some team members that if they're going in a predictive path, would that impact jobs. I think this is a recurring theme that we need to be very aware of because we sort of spoke at the event that as leaders in this space who know the realities of the talent gap, that's not really even crossing a lot of minds, but for people on the frontline who feel that maybe their knowledge or skills will become redundant if they don't have that reassurance that they are still needed in even a different capacity, that can be quite concerning.

Our last interview session was on balancing today's business needs with preparation for the future, which was with Helge Bruemmer, who is the Global Field Service Manager for Global Service Operations at Alfa Laval. And what we talked about here is really the tight rope that all service leaders walk between meeting the present day needs of the business, including putting out fires that would impact customer experience, hitting business metrics and quarterly annual goals with also looking ahead and putting time into innovation, transformation, service evolution, et cetera.

So Helge shared some of thoughts on how and why that is so challenging and also maybe some of the things that we need to consider to do things differently. So whether that's having a team dedicated to the longer term or making sure that people have the time and ability to look longer term, making sure we're focusing enough. One of his points was on not only the talent topic, but on continual improvement of talent training development. So it was a really good conversation that I think everyone in the room related to because to some degree everyone's walking that tightrope.

We had a couple more round table discussions in the afternoon and then a quick summary and some cocktails and networking. It was a great day. I have been a little bit rundown with all of the travel, all of the events, but this was such a wonderful note to press pause on.

I feel like I repeat this a lot, but some of the feedback I heard is that people just feel so much less alone when they're in a room of their peers and understand that others face the same or very similar challenges. People comment on how much they have in common and how surprising that is when they're in a room with people that are in very different industries of their own. People told me that they were inspired by points that were made, attitudes people presented, thoughts that people shared, and I've said this before, but I just feel so thankful to be in a position to bring folks together. To me, that's what it's all about. I enjoy writing articles and recording podcasts, but there's nothing about what I do that I love more than building community and helping people in similar roles come together in ways that they can stay in touch and help one another. So it was a great event from that perspective and greatly appreciate our five wonderful speakers and everyone that joined and made the day a success.

As I mentioned at the beginning, we only have one event left for 2023, which is in Stockholm, October 10th. So if you are in the Nordics or can get there for that event, go ahead and head to the website to register. I'm sure it will be wonderful. You can also register for the Future of Field Service Insider so that you are getting the latest content delivered to your inbox every other week. Make sure that you can peruse the articles and podcasts and stay up to date on anything relevant to you.

The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at IFS.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Live Tour 2023: Minneapolis Highlights

June 21, 2023 | 8 Mins Read

Live Tour 2023: Minneapolis Highlights

Sarah shares a synopsis of the topics discussed at the Future of Field Service Live Tour 2023 stop in Minneapolis on June 15th.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. I cannot promise you the highest quality podcast that you have ever watched or listened to. I am recording this at the United Club in Chicago and it is busy and loud, and I'm probably informing some people around me about field service and educating them on things they might not be aware of, but we're just going to make it work.

So I am on my way home from Minneapolis. Just a couple of hours ago, we wrapped the Future of Field Service Live Tour, Minneapolis edition, and wanted to do a recap of today's event. By the time you are hearing this or listening to this, we will actually be doing the Dusseldorf event the day that this will come out. And that is our last event for the spring/summer months. We have our Stockholm event in the fall.

So today's event in Minneapolis was another great event. I know I say that every time, but for me, one of the things I love about doing these events is every location has a unique lineup of speakers, which means even though the format is similar from city to city, the content is very different and that, obviously, as the person that's doing the interviews, keeps me interested and engaged and really just makes every event different and exciting. And I've said this before, but being able to bring people together to learn from one another, and it came up again at today's event, just to feel that folks are not alone in the challenges that they face is a great thing to be able to do. So grateful for that.

So today's speakers, we were joined by Dr. Elizabeth Moran, who spoke about the neuroscience of change management. And Dr. Moran was on the podcast. I'm going to see if I can find the episode. I should have looked it up before I started recording, but I didn't. But she was on the podcast talking about these five elements of neuroscience that factor into change leadership, and she was able to join us at the event, which was amazing. And obviously, change management, change leadership, is something that comes up in so many conversations that I have.

And so we talked about the five elements that she shared on the podcast, but she was able to also host two of our breakout sessions where the attendees got to talk to her a bit more and do some almost live coaching, really, talked through some different challenges and examples that they're having where she could really work with them on those specific things, give some suggestions, some feedback. So it was great that she was able to come, and it was really cool to be able to see some of those concepts that we had talked about on the podcast come to life in a way that was related to the people that were there and the things that they are up against.

So if you haven't listened to the podcast that she was on, that is episode 200, so certainly check that out and have a listen. I think the concepts that she covers are in her book, Forward, and that's a content that is well worth the time to have a look at. And so Elizabeth was our first speaker of the day, talking about that neuroscience of change management topic and then doing some breakout sessions with people and getting into some of the specifics. So that was great.

Our second speaker of the day was Jorge Mejia of Tetra Pak, and Jorge joined to... It was a great follow-up to Elizabeth's session because Jorge was talking about some of the lessons learned in digital transformation. So Tetra Pak is in the midst of a really significant, large, global service transformation that has some different phases, different aspects, that the company has various goals in place for leading up to 2030. And part of that is the implementation of IFS, so field service management planning and scheduling optimization, to create a global standard for service operations and to bring about a lot of positive change.

However, it's a significant change in the way Tetra Pak is asking its field teams to work and just service operations overall, really. And so Jorge spoke about this idea that when they kicked off the project initially, everyone looked at it, as I think people commonly do with digital transformation, as an IT project. And Jorge gave a lot of specifics around his really big learning, which is that it really shouldn't be approached as an IT project, but rather a people project with an IT component, so essentially picking up on a lot of the themes that came up in Elizabeth's first session around change and how people react to doing things differently and really sharing the experience that Tetra Pak had in taking this solution-centric approach and then realizing once they got going that they really needed to prioritize the people aspect and put people first.

Sorry, I know I am distracted, but as I mentioned, I'm at the United Club, and they have a Robbot bus machine that's going around to collect or move dirty dishes. I've just never seen that before, so apologies for my distraction.

Okay, so Jorge shared that and that was wonderful and really brought almost like a case study to some of the points that Elizabeth mentioned in the first session. And Jorge gave a lot of detail on how they recognized that the mentality they had about the project needed to shift and what they did to go back and put a lot more people centricity around the project that they have underway and how in a very significantly positive way that has changed the trajectory of their transformation. So that was great.

Next up, we had Robb Origer from Sleep Number, and Robb, before he joined Sleep Number, I think about three, three and a half years ago, he was at Dish for quite a few years, so he has really quite a well-rounded set of experiences in service. And what he spoke about is how the contrast between those two businesses in the sense of the maturity of their field service organizations and just how he is taking a lot of the experiences he had at Dish and things that he was able to do there and looking at the commonalities of how a company like Sleep Number might benefit from, not doing the same things because they're very different businesses, but bringing his knowledge in to really look at increasing differentiation through service, which traditionally, Sleep Number has been really focused on the differentiation they create through the retail experience, so how service can augment that. And we talked a bit about what that looks like in terms of focusing on customer experience, but also making sure that you're balancing that with the realities of the business and operational efficiency and all of those things. So great conversation, as well.

Next, we had Matt Ganus with Whirlpool, so also talking about service differentiation. Whirlpool, though, does that through exclusively independent service providers, so they do not have their own on staff field technicians. They work exclusively with independent service providers. And we had a really good conversation about how a lot of companies that have some hesitation about that should realize that that model does not need to mean, or shouldn't mean, hands off. And so Matt spoke about how they put time, money, effort, resource, thinking, into creating really mutually beneficial partnerships where the service providers are bringing regional expertise and customer loyalty and relationships to the table.

And Whirlpool is creating some really good training and enablement and soft-skills training and product expertise and resources and governance and things like that so that they can work together to achieve success. And Whirlpool has had a really good track record of doing that with this exclusively independent model without sacrificing the customer experience, the brand perception, any of those things. So Whirlpool was on the podcast speaking a bit about this topic previously. That's episode 207 if you want to go have a listen to that. But Matt also hosted some breakout sessions and answered a lot of questions people had about how to create those positive working relationships with independent providers and gave a lot of detail around what they're doing there. So that was great, as well.

And last but not least, we had Gyner Ozgul, who is the President and COO of Smart Care Equipment Solutions, talking about the tenants of scalable service success. So Gyner spoke at last year's U.S. Future of Field Service event about their service transformation and implementation of, again, IFS as their foundational system. Now that they have that underway and that transformation is, I don't want to say behind them because there's always a transformation, but they have that work done, he talked about how they're building upon that foundation. He talked about his focus on company culture and talent development and what that looks like in today's landscape. And finally, he talked a bit about how after the tumultuous times of the pandemic, now that Smart Care has reached a level of stability, what he does as a leader to really not get complacent and to continue to focus on continuous improvement, not only with their technology, but with their people and teams and culture, et cetera. So another great conversation.

We had some breakout discussions throughout the day, as well, and there was some really good points shared there related to everything from how do we make our frontline workers feel more respected and appreciated and acknowledged, to how do we make them feel more connected to their colleagues and their peers for those that are really quite isolated by the nature of not coming into an office, et cetera. We talked about how the frontline role could change over the next few years and what that might mean with the incorporation of more remote service, more automation, more artificial intelligence, and things like that. We also talked about recruiting, of course, and retention and those types of topics, as well. So it was a great day of discussions and connection and community, which is something you know is near and dear to me. So really appreciated the five amazing speakers that we had, as well as everyone that joined us. So thank you.

And if you missed it, go back and check out Elizabeth on podcast 200 and Whirlpool on podcast 207. Also keep an eye out here on the Future of Field Service platform as we release some of the sessions from our Live Tour events, and hopefully, you can join us for an event in the future.

So thank you for listening. You can learn more at futureoffieldservice.com. Be sure to sign up for the Future of Field Service Insider so you can stay up to date on all of the latest content. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Debunking the Myths that Impede Workplace Inclusion

June 14, 2023 | 31 Mins Read

Debunking the Myths that Impede Workplace Inclusion

Sarah welcomes back Mita Mallick, corporate change-maker and Chief Diversity Officer at Carta who is soon to release her first book: Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be having a discussion to debunk the myths that are impeding workplace inclusion. Really excited for today's chat, and really excited to welcome back to the Future of Field Service podcast, Mita Mallick. Hi, Mita.

Mita Mallick: Hi, Sarah. Thanks for having me back.

Sarah Nicastro: Of course.

Mita Mallick: I'm a second-time guest. Very excited.

Sarah Nicastro: Uh-huh, that's right. You're part of the club now.

Mita Mallick: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: Mita was on this podcast in a former episode. I should have looked at what number. I did look, it's number 68. Okay. So, we're in the, I don't know, 200s.

Mita Mallick: Wow.

Sarah Nicastro: So, it's been a while ago, and we had a really great conversation at the time talking about having courageous conversations on race. But if you missed Mita's first appearance, let me tell you a little bit about her. She is a corporate changemaker, whose passion for inclusive storytelling led her to become Chief Diversity Officer and also to write her first book, which is what we are going to be talking quite a bit about today. That book is forthcoming and it is titled Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace. So, that is very exciting.

Before we get into it, is there anything about you that you want to share that I didn't cover in that very, very quick little bio introduction?

Mita Mallick: You covered almost everything, except for the most important thing we talk about, which is our children, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Yes.

Mita Mallick: Biggest job we have is raising kind and inclusive human beings. So, biggest job I have is parenting.

Sarah Nicastro: Yep.

Mita Mallick: Jay, who's 10 going on 20. Priya, who's eight going on 18. I remember when we talked, it was right during the pandemic. We were…

Sarah Nicastro: We were in the throes of it.

Mita Mallick: Yes. So, I just have a memory of us talking during that time. Very vivid One. Very vivid one.

Sarah Nicastro: On the brink of absolutely losing it.

Mita Mallick: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: Here we are a couple years later, we were-

Mita Mallick: Yes, we're still here.

Sarah Nicastro: ... maybe still losing it, but we're here. Okay.

Mita Mallick: We're still here.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. At the time, when you were on... You were with Unilever, right?

Mita Mallick: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: You've only had one change since. To Carta, is that correct?

Mita Mallick: Yeah, I'm still with Carta. Yeah. I did what a lot of people did, which was change jobs during the pandemic. For me, it was a big job. That was lots of lessons learned. But I believe I had started writing the book before we did that first podcast. I wrote this book four years ago. I'm losing track of time now, but it's been certainly a labor of love to finish it, and then also to get it published.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think the conversation we had in episode 68, having courageous conversations about race, certainly related to what we're going to talk about today, and all kind of part of that. I know that you are very passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion. While it is not my role, like it is yours, it's also something that I feel very strongly about. And so, I think the work you're doing to not only make these conversations front and center, but to get into some of the things that people shy away from, I think is just so important. So, thrilled to chat.

The book that you wrote four years ago, that's going to soon be coming out into the world, I love... It says, "The premise of the book is to say all the quiet parts out loud of what holds us back from making meaningful progress in inclusivity work." I just love that. I always say cut the BS, let's get to-

Mita Mallick: Let's get into it.

Sarah Nicastro: ... let's discuss what is everyone not saying? What's really going on? I think it's so important to have someone be brave in initiating some of those uncomfortable conversations.

Mita Mallick: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: You've been passionate about these things for a long time. You've been in roles where this has been a part of your professional life also for a long time. What led you to the point where you felt you needed to put this in book form and get it out into the world?

Mita Mallick: There's a lot of great books about diversity, equity, inclusion, and leadership out in the marketplace. Like you said, I wanted to say the quiet parts out loud. I felt like there were myths and stories we were holding onto that stop us from making meaningful progress, because we just believe these things are true and they hold us back. I guess I'll use your language, let's cut through the BS, let's talk about what's really happening, because we can't change what we won't discuss. If you're not going to talk about the tough thing, the hard thing, whether that's at home or at work, how are you going to actually see progress happen? You won't, because you're keeping it undercover, keeping it hidden.

And I think about our conversation, that's one of my myths in the book. One of the myths in the book is, it's time to have some courageous conversations on race. Let's ask employees of color to lead them. I think about our conversation, I think about so many conversations I've had over the years, which is the culmination of this book. It's the culmination of all of my expertise and things that I've experienced, or witnessed, or led, or conversations I've had with thought leaders like yourself. So, I thought, let me write it all down.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Mita Mallick: Let me write it all down and share it with the world, and I know it's going to have big impact, and I'm really excited for that.

Sarah Nicastro: That's awesome. This wasn't on our outline, but I often throw curveballs in here.

Mita Mallick: Of course.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm just curious, how often do... I know this book is specifically gearing these conversations toward what we need to talk about in the workplace, which obviously is relevant for our listeners, but I'm also curious, because I'm thinking about it from the perspective of being a mom. How often do these topics come up in your conversations with your children?

Mita Mallick: All the time.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Because I feel like-

Mita Mallick: Even if you don't realize it, even if you don't realize it.

Sarah Nicastro: .... you're trying to, you said at the beginning, to raise kind-

Mita Mallick: Inclusive human beings.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes.

Mita Mallick: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: Then you have to undo so much of what have existed and-

Mita Mallick: You have to. I'll give you an example. I mean, we'll talk about this as we get more into the details of Reimagine Inclusion, but for anyone who has little people in their life, we have to be careful about the language we use. So, when my kids start to say things like, "Oh, this kid, Mita, in my class is..." Let me start again, "This kid, Mita, in my class is kind of funny, strange, weird, awkward, unusual, different. I don't really like them." Okay, let's get into that. Because when we start to perceive difference, whether we realize it or not, we start to create distance. We start to other, we start to stereotype. Stereotype becomes the gateway to hate. Really watch for that language. And I watch for it, too, because I might be saying something really innocently, "Oh, Sarah is just so awkward and weird. Ha ha ha." Okay, but what do I really mean by that?

Sarah Nicastro: Right.

Mita Mallick: Is she awkward and weird? Listen, we're all a little bit weird. So, what is it I'm trying to say? And what am I role-modeling to my children? And watch for that. I say to my kids, "Well, no, let's not use that language. What are you really trying to say?" "Well, she upset me in school today." "Okay, well, then you should tell her that she upset you in school today. Let's not start labeling people." This work starts at home and it starts early on.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think in terms of not shying away from things that can be uncomfortable, right?

Mita Mallick: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: Like having courageous conversations. My mother-in-law not too, too long ago, kind of questioned me. She's like, "I feel like you're too honest with the kids." And I'm like, "Okay, well, I don't know if there is such a thing is too honest." They have to learn this stuff somehow, and it's better they learn things from us that we can get into with them when they ask hard questions; not just avoid it and then have them pick up whatever else might be someone's perception or stereotype, et cetera. So it's just really interesting.

Okay. So, how do you find the courage to say out loud some of the things that people tend to keep quiet about? That make people uncomfortable, the conversations they shy away from. What kind of gives you the courage to put it out there, to speak about it? How do you find that?

Mita Mallick: I think it's grown in me over time. I've had so many painful workplace experiences. We've all had. I've had painful life experiences, painful work experiences, and I don't want any of our children to go through the things that I did. The world has changed a lot. Yes, progress is slow, but it's very different from when I was born and raised in the US and how I'm raising my children, and I'm happy for that.

And by sharing all of these things, I really want stories to inspire, to move people and then really ultimately get them to act in a different way. And so, I am now at a place in my life where I do have power. I do have a different level of privilege, right, than others, and there's a responsibility with that. There's a responsibility to really say those things out loud. And they're uncomfortable. They're not comfortable. But I do think because you've gotten to know me, the way in which I try to reach and teach people is not to shame or demonize or to blame or to point fingers, but to say, "Let's unpack this together, and let's try to move each other on our journeys to be more inclusive leaders."

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and I think that's an important distinction. Because number one, if you were trying to shame people, you're not going to be as effective as you want to be and know you can be. But two, there's a lot of this. I don't know how you would put a percentage to it, but there's certainly maliciousness that exists, right? But there's a lot of this that's just unconscious. It's just really deeply embedded in how people were raised. So that doesn't make it less harmful, but putting shame to that doesn't help someone want to think or do differently, and so I think that's a really good point as well.

So, the book debunks 13 Myths, and while I wish we had time to go through all of them, we don't, and also we want people to read the book. So I kind of hand selected a few that I think would be particularly interesting to our audience, and we will sort of start there. Okay?

Mita Mallick: Awesome.

Sarah Nicastro: So the first is in the book, I believe, myth number four, and it's, "I'm all for diverse talent as long as they're good."

Mita Mallick: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: So let's talk about this.

Mita Mallick: Yes, let's talk about this. Please don't call me a diversity hire. I earned this seat. I deserve this seat. And so that myth really goes to how we have different standards for different people. And Sarah, throughout Reimagine Inclusion, I really get leaders to try to self-reflect. Because here's the thing: A lot of companies have systems and processes in place to help with creating inclusive and equitable cultures. And yet, at the end of the day, it's all about the leader. It's all about Mita and how she shows up to work. And if I can't interrupt my bias, it's going to be a different result that actually might go against the system or the process.

And so, when we say things like, "I'm all for diverse talent, as long as they're good," would we ever say, "I'm all for non-diverse talent as long as they're good?" And so, one of the exercises I take leaders through is, let's say that you hired me, Sarah, to do a really difficult leadership role in turning around a failed business; didn't work out for all the reasons we might get into; I move on to my next opportunity. Would it make you less likely to hire a woman of color into that role? Because I was the first woman of color you'd ever appointed to lead a division?

But what if I was a white man? I'm going to pick on Jim. I don't know a Jim, but let's say it was Jim. Jim and I had the same story. You appointed him to lead a business that was failing and he couldn't turn it around, and for all the reasons we don't need to get into, he ends up moving on. Does it make you less reluctant to hire another white man?

And so, those are the things we have to ask ourselves. And as I say, the beautiful part of the human brain is that you can have your thought in your head and no one can hear it. Although someone told me the other day, AI actually can now map to thoughts and jeez, come up with it. I'm like, "Oh God, forget that." Let's keep AI out of this. Let's just say no one can hear my thought, so I'm going to hold onto this and I'm going to interrogate it and I'm going to really question what I'm thinking. And then, as a result of questioning it, what I say next and what I do next will be different because I interrogated it.

Also, the other thing I talk about in that myth is really busting the pipeline myth. I think the global pandemic has really showed us that we have access to diverse pipelines across the globe. And so, I talk about working with individuals in the state of Vermont, which in the US is one of the whitest states, statistically speaking. And very clearly, a leader years ago saying, "I want to bring in a Black talent to lead this division. This is my intent. I want to build a diverse slate." That's a really good intent to say, "I want to change the composition of my team, and I want to build a diverse slate to help get there." Awesome. "I will pay for no relocation. I'm going to pay below market standards for the job, and the role needs to be in Vermont full-time."

Okay, so what does that already do? We've created a pipeline issue unknowingly, and then it's like, "Well, recruiting couldn't get me any candidates." But look at the standards you set from the start? You didn't allow. You can say you want a diverse slate, but you didn't allow for your team to help you build that, because you internally set up all these obstacles.

And then the final thing I'll leave you with is also just thinking about how we do interview processes, and I'll give you an example of when we don't have equitable standards for an interview process. Let's say I'm interviewing you, and I'm like, "Oh, I didn't know you went to Stanford. You played lacrosse? Oh my God, wait, you also summered in Cape Cod growing up?" Okay. All of a sudden in the interview process, we discover all these things about each other, and I really start to like you. And because I like you, I just am like, "I don't need for Sarah to go through any more rounds. Let's just move over to the final stage." But then I meet Jim. Something about Jim makes me uncomfortable and it can't put my finger on it. And so instead, what I do is put Jim through three more rounds, versus Sarah, who really just leapt to the end and Sarah just got the offer.

I always say on my own podcast with Dee C. Marshall, Brown Table Talk, we say, "Facts, not feelings. Facts, not feelings." So in the interview debrief, someone says, "Why is Sarah such a great candidate? I just really liked her. We had so much in common." And then it's like, okay, you didn't ask her any of the interview questions. You actually don't know about her experience, because the whole time you were talking about Stanford and lacrosse and where you summered as a child. You don't even get into the meat of what she does in the experience, and so those are some of the examples and discussion I have in that myth.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So the interview, the equitable, equitable interview process makes sense to me, but going back to the Vermont example. I guess I have two questions, which is, one, is that narrowing intentional. I guess without it being a real example, it's hard to say yes or no. But then also, what are the checks and balances then? Is it just the person writing the job description, reflecting on themselves? Or what should be the next step where someone says, "Hm, you're kind of creating an unrealistic expectation here?"

Mita Mallick: I go back to what you said at the beginning of this conversation. I like to believe, I talk a lot about this in Reimagine Inclusion, intent versus impact. Most people in the workplace, I believe, have positive intent and they don't know how their impact lands. There are the Harvey Weinsteins and the Matt Lauers who make headlines, who deserve to seek redemption and move on from their workplaces. But I would say most people I work with don't operate from that place of having really negative intent, and so perhaps with this leader in the example I gave in Vermont, the leader's intent actually is positive in the beginning and says, "I want a diverse slate. I want to change the composition of my team." But then, the intent doesn't match the impact, because then they start thinking about their own needs, which is perhaps their need for control, that they need to be sitting in Vermont; perhaps the fact that they have a tight budget, so they don't want to pay for relocation or a competitive market.

So that's where sometimes I think to what you're saying, perhaps the barriers are intentional, and sometimes they're unintentional. Because sometimes with our intent, Sarah, we focus more on ourselves than the other side of the equation, which is the impact. Right? We have positive intent, but I also want to make sure that intent is good for Mita, that it works for Mita. I want to make sure, okay, Sarah's going to be positively impacted, but Mita needs to be as well, so let me center myself in the intent piece of it.

So that's the first piece. I think you have a great question about the job description and really making sure that when you're writing it, you don't need a hundred cooks in the kitchen, but making sure cross-functional partners, peers, other leaders, get their eyes on it to see what is it that you're asking of this individual. And then making sure, again, when you're in the interview process, go back to the job description. "Well, Mita doesn't have that skillset." "Okay. Did we ask her that in the job description?" "No, we didn't." "Yes, check we did." Or, is it something she can grow into? Because oftentimes, I think what you're saying is when you have a vague job description and you're not very clear on what you're looking for, that also things get muddied in the process, then you can't really evaluate candidates fairly and equitably.

And the last thing I'll say is, one of the things I talk about in this myth is it's not recruiting's job to find talent. It's all of our jobs. So if you were a leader, always be out for talent. And if you're always getting to know talent, from communities that you don't identify with, it gives you the space to get to know people without judging them versus a job description. Right? Because if you get to know me and my talents, and there's a chief marketing officer role, you might be like, "Well, Mita hasn't done marketing for a while. But oh my God, actually, she's an amazing marketer. She hasn't done it for a while, so I want to actually put her up for this job."

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That makes sense. I like the point you made about not having very vague descriptions, because going back to the fact versus feelings, if it's vague, it leaves so much more room for feeling, right?

Mita Mallick: It does. Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: Because then you don't have as much fact to base things off of.

Mita Mallick: Love that. Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Yeah.

Mita Mallick: Hundred percent.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. So the next one is number five. "We protect the A-holes because our businesses wouldn't run without them."

Mita Mallick: Yes, yes, yes. How many times have we seen this in our careers? I've lost count.

Sarah Nicastro: A lot.

Mita Mallick: One of the things I, and this again goes back to a lot of companies, especially big public companies, private companies, have systems and processes in place. But we make exceptions.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's really easy to find loopholes, too.

Mita Mallick: Find the loopholes.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Mita Mallick: One of the things I say, Sarah, let's say I'm working for you. Here's how I would coach you. You have a toxic leader on your team. How many people need to leave? How much hurt or harm does this person have to cause for you to say, "I'm walking away from Mita?" How much is your personal relationship with Mita more important to you than the impact she's having on the company? Are you really listening to all the feedback? If Mita has had five women of color resign under her in the last two weeks, at what point do you say, "I need to have a discussion about what's happening on this team?"

And, those are some of the things. What cost is you as a leader? Are you going to protect this one person versus protecting the company? Because here's the thing: We always set up in our mind, it's the employee versus the company. Employees are the company. They're one and the same. The company doesn't exist with that employees. And I just find it fascinating, having done this work for many years now is like, "We will protect one person at all costs." And part of what I would also say to leaders, and I coach them, is succession planning is so key. Because of Mita, and I've heard this, I don't know how many times, "Mita is indispensable. Can't do this job without Mita. The business won't run without her." Okay, really? Is, really, Mita doing all the work, or is she just taking credit for everyone else on the team?

Or, let's step into this space of, let's pretend Mita resigns tomorrow. What would the world look like? Do you know who's going to take over? That's the scary part. Because when we haven't done the work and the planning and the preparation, all of a sudden people become indispensable. And unfortunately, nobody's indispensable, particularly toxic leaders. Where there's smoke, there's fire. That's what I'll say, Sarah. Where there's smoke, there's fire, and so also watching for those patterns at work are really important.

Sarah Nicastro: This is such a fascinating one to me, because like I said, yes, there's always processes, right? And there's supposed to be systems in place to avoid this. But there are so many loopholes and there's so much room for feeling to get in the way of any objectivity for someone that maybe has a relationship. Or maybe doesn't have a relationship, but the reality inconveniences them in some way to just brush it off and say like, "Oh, okay. Well, yeah, but we've talked about it so it'll be fine or whatever." There's so many versions of how people get away with doing things that are harming the culture, the morale of the people around them, individual people that end up leaving the company because they don't want to fight the fight, all of that.

Mita Mallick: I think you said it beautifully at the beginning. You asked me about bravery and courage. Leadership takes bravery. What if we worked together for 30 years? I came to your son's wedding; you came to my daughter's wedding; we've done softball together; we've traveled together; we've built this business together. You're the president, and you start hearing rumblings of me bullying, of me harassing, and it's hard for you to hear it because you feel like you know me in a different context, and you can make 25 excuses of, "That's not the Mita I know. That's not how she shows up for me." And so there's bravery and courage to say, "But there is evidence of this individual, this leader, Mita, harming so many people." I need to sit and listen to this, and I need to take action.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think this one intrigues me. Okay. All right. But we don't have time to just-

Mita Mallick: Yeah, I know. She's like, let's move it along.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, so the next one is number seven, "We need more people of color in leadership. Let's launch a mentorship program."

Mita Mallick: Yes. Drum roll, please. I have been over-mentored and under-sponsored in my career. I'll say that again: Over-mentored and under-sponsored in my career. And every time I say that, some people will come after me. I have had so many amazing mentors. I wouldn't be here, you wouldn't have invited me on this podcast; I'm here today because I continue to have great mentorship.

But here's the thing: Mentors are not the same as sponsors. When you think about a mentor, they could give me career advice. You and I could be peer mentors for each other, talking about how to do podcasts, giving me advice about work, all sorts of things. Sponsors are typically going to be someone who's two levels above you in an organization. They have access to big budget, P&L, they're in the room when the doors are closed and people are talking about your career. And yes, people are talking about your career and doors are closed. I never really realized this when I first started in corporate America. They have access to the C-suite. They might be in the C-suite. They know about roles that are coming up that haven't been listed, special projects, assignments.

And so, the question is, who's advocating for your career other than yourself? And your boss isn't always going to be advocating for you. I've had some great bosses and not-so-great bosses. So that's why career sponsorship is different than mentorship, because a career sponsor is actively helping you advance in your career. I feel like, God, so many times in my career, it's like, let's have the employee resource group launch a mentorship program. Let's talk to HR, let's do a mentorship program. Let's match some people.

It's like, no, that is not necessarily how a person's going to advance their career. I'm not saying that they won't. But I'm saying sponsorship, it's much more game-changing. Because you have people with power and privilege in the organization taking an interest in other individuals and actively saying they're going to help them advance their career.

Sarah, one of the things I think about is when I started my career in marketing, there was never a point in my career when someone early on sat me down and said, "If you want to be a chief marketing officer, here are the four things you need to do in the next few years. Here are the assignments you need. Here are the people you need behind you." No one sat me down to help me think about my career in that way. I just was kind of plugging along, "Okay, let me do this. Let me apply for this. Okay, maybe not do..." I didn't know, and I didn't grow up with parents who had done a marketing track in a corporate company, so I didn't have many people to help me figure it out.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. It's almost like sponsorship is mentorship with a lot more skin in the game. On their behalf, right?

Mita Mallick: It is. You have social capital, political capital.

Sarah Nicastro: Because it's like, mentorship almost gives the illusion of like, "Well, I can give you some good advice, but it's up to you what you do with it." It's also sort of the out of, "Well, we tried to mentor exactly this group of people, but they just didn't really do anything with it." So it's a very unbalanced-

Mita Mallick: I actually love how you just said that.

Sarah Nicastro: ... relationship. It's then if you say, "Okay, you're not mentoring this person, you're sponsoring them. So we expect you will work with them to help them achieve X, Y, and Z." Not, "It's on them, if you just give them a few words."

Mita Mallick: Absolutely. And I'll just say, if we're in an organization and you're my sponsor, I have to show up delivering value. You're not just going to sponsor me because I can have a sponsor. But I will continue to deliver value. I'll put points on the board. I will show you what I'm doing on my team and my part of the organization that can benefit you and also help you in your career. Right? Because here's the thing. Number one job of leadership is to create more leaders. And so, when you think about this idea of sponsorship, if you are going to sponsor, let's say, five women of color, and you have a goal as a C-Suite executive that you're going to help get them to the bench for the C-suite, that's your legacy. That's part of you being a great leader. People are going to look at you and be like, "Look at Sarah. It's amazing. Look at the talent that she helps sponsor, and look at their trajectory." It honestly then becomes reflection on you as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Right. Yeah, that's really interesting. Okay. All right, so the next one is number eight. "Of course, we support women. We just extended maternity leave."

Mita Mallick: Yes. Oh, you're picking some good ones. Oh, they're all good, all 13, but these are good.

So, this is the notion that all women want to become mothers, and it actually ties back to a lot of the cultural stereotypes, the gender norms we grew up with in our homes. This idea that we extended maternity leave is enough for mothers that we check the box. And if you want to create an inclusive workplace for mothers, how much more work it takes.

I mean, you look at what's happened since the global pandemic. There are so many mothers who still can't get back into the workforce. They can't afford to in the US. It is a devastating what's happened to representation of women in the workforce in the US. And I'm surprised not enough people are screaming about it. I'm actually just exhausted from, I've lost my voice. Honestly, this data is alarming and startling.

It also, in this myth, I talk about gendered ageism. Women are never the right age. We're too young or we're too old. It's like that one year where we had the perfect moment, right? But gendered ageism shows up at the workplace a lot. It is about, "Mita looking too young or sounding too young," or, "I don't know if I'd put her in front of a customer or send her to that meeting," to "Mita doesn't have enough energy. I don't know if she could keep up with the pace here. It's really intense. She might be too slow for this place." You're like, "Huh?" Jokes about whether you're tech-savvy, whether you're on TikTok all the time. The intergenerational bias is real.

And so, those are also the things that we don't talk enough about in our workplaces, and it seems like it's the opposite for men on some level. Men aging doesn't seem to really, I don't know if it impacts their career as much. The research doesn't show that. Research shows that women over 50 have had a really incredible time getting back into the workforce since the pandemic, and so those are the conversations we have to talk about. We continue to hold men and women to different standards in our workplaces.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I was just thinking of an example of a courageous conversation. Or maybe not conversation, but objection. I was at an event at the end of April, and there was a gentleman there who was doing LinkedIn live interviews, and he asked me to come on, and so it was not at all scripted planned, nothing like that. But I had just moderated a panel discussion on women in service and creating more diversity, et cetera. And so that was kind of what the conversation centered on. But then he said, "Yeah, we really need more women leaders. Because women, they have that nurturing, motherly instinct, and we need..." And I'm like, "Ugh."

So it took me a second because I'm like, "Phew." This doesn't sit right with me, but we're on a live interview, and I'm trying to think in real time. I just said, I was like, "Listen, I think we need to be careful here because we're putting this nurturing, motherly label on women at large, and there's plenty of amazing women leaders that do not have or want to have a family like that." They're not one and the same. That does not absolutely make them good, and it does not make them not good. So that's not why we need more women at work.

Mita Mallick: No, absolutely. We need more kind and empathetic leaders, period.

Sarah Nicastro: And then the interview ended shortly after that.

Mita Mallick: So you're like, okay. Well, that's amazing. I'm glad you, that's not easy, so that's courage and action to interrupt bias on the spot.

Sarah Nicastro: It's the same thing you said. As much as I can, I try really hard to... It wasn't coming from a place of judgment or, like you said, shame. It was just, if you don't point it out, he wouldn't have thought about it.

Mita Mallick: Yes.

Sarah Nicastro: But I agree. I think the double standards, if you want to call it that, of women and men is absolutely crazy still in 2023. And while I certainly am a fan of supporting women who do choose to have a family and want to juggle that, because I myself have, in no way is that representative of women everywhere, and that shouldn't be the focus. So yes, I love that one as well.

Mita Mallick: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think the point, too, about at least in our space, the people that listen to this podcast are constantly talking about talent shortages. We can't find enough people. You had a huge group of women that were forced to leave the workforce during the pandemic. We should be talking about that more. We should be doing more to look for... That's a whole talent pool that exists, that we could potentially find room and roles for if we put some effort behind it.

Mita Mallick: Absolutely, and don't ask about what the resume gap was. It was called the Pandemic. It was called the pandemic.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Honestly, even if you do have women that took some time off, I would say assess them based on their ability, not on-

Mita Mallick: Assess them on their last experience. In the last few years, there's a lot of different reasons why people have taken leave. Focus on what they did most recently and their skills and what they bring to the table.

Sarah Nicastro: And again, if you have a rigorous and effective enough interview process, then you shouldn't need to be so concerned about where they were six weeks ago. Right?

Mita Mallick: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: So, good. Okay, last one for today. Myth number nine, "These DEI efforts don't benefit me. My voice as a white man doesn't count anymore."

Mita Mallick: Yes. So I think there's two sides to this coin. The white men that I've worked with in my life, many of them do express that they have at some point feel shamed, named, blamed, demonized. And we talked about earlier, there are men in the headlines who have behaved badly; that's not all men, and they deserve to seek redemption and move on.

So in my role as the Chief Diversity Officer, if white men come to me asking questions, I have the space to answer those questions with grace and kindness, and to help educate and teach. And at the same time, white men listening need to understand that they do have a place in this work, because the world of work for everyone can't change without them. We need them there.

And so in that myth, I do talk about the business case for diversity, which is tired and old, I know, but it's still important. I believe inclusion's a driver of the business. You need diversity of representation in your workforce to come up with ideas you wouldn't have even dreamed of, innovation you wouldn't have dreamed of, serving communities who you've never reached. How are you going to do that if you don't have access to those lived experiences? In the US alone, we're sitting anywhere between 3.3 and 5 trillion dollars of spending power with the multicultural consumer, so anyone who says right now, "There's not growth out there," you're not looking in the right places. There's growth to be had.

And I also, in this myth, leave a very, very long action list of things that men can be doing to show up. Interrupting bias in the moment, taking parental leave and role modeling and taking all of it. If you're going to be asked to be on a podcast or panel, ask to see what other guests have been, and especially if you're on a panel and it's all white men, give up your spot, make recommendations. Are you paying your teams fairly and equitably? Don't wait for HR to do it. It's your job. So if you're shocked that women are paid less than men, oh my God, okay, great. Is that happening on your team? And you don't realize it. It's not HR's job; it's your job to look at the data and go talk to HR and say, "Hey, help me with this. I'm looking, I'm seeing this discrepancy."

So there's so many ways. And I think especially for white men in leadership roles, I asked them, "What do you want your legacy to be?" Right? "How do you want to leave this company different than you found it? And you have, gosh, so much power to do that. And it also reflects back on you as a leader and the impact you've made." So it's win-win for everyone.

Sarah Nicastro: I think, too, whenever someone has an emotional response to, like this statement, "My voice doesn't count anymore." Yeah, there's probably some percentage of that that comes from ego, but I think more so, it's fear-based. Well, what if all of this new diverse talent is actually better than me? And I guess what I think about that is your legacy will be so much bigger and more impactful and positive if you're a part of that change than if you resist it.

Mita Mallick: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: So, it's going to happen whether any individual leader helps or hinders it. So you might as well see the value and play a part in something positive instead of being the one that's resistant.

Mita Mallick: So you're saying don't resist; be part of it.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Mita Mallick: Don't resist. Be part of it. Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: Exactly, and part of the way they can do that is to read the other myths.

But real quick, one more last question and then we'll tell everyone where to find the book. What do you think sets apart leaders and organizations who are willing to do the work to improve inclusivity, create a positive culture, and those who are really lagging behind?

Mita Mallick: It's really all about whether your employees will stay or leave, to be honest. I mean, if we go back to what is inclusion; for me, what is inclusion? Inclusion is feeling that I'm valued, recognized, and seen at work in all the small and big ways that matter. And if you do that for me, Sarah, as a leader, that is the biggest retention tool. And I'm not going to walk away. Maybe for a hundred thousand. But certainly not for 10, 20. But no, there's no price to that.

As I talk about at the beginning of Reimagine Inclusion, I've been chasing inclusion all my life. And so when I find a place where I feel valued, seen and heard, you can't put a price on that. I'm not going to risk that to go somewhere else. And so that's really what it comes down to, and you will start to see a bifurcation in the market when it's an employee's choice. People will want to be like, "I've heard this was a great place to work. I've heard Sarah's an amazing manager. I know what their values are, and they stand for them, and they put them publicly on Instagram and they stand behind them. They don't slide back on them when it gets tough."

And so those are the things. And then the organizations that are silent, complicit. "We don't talk about these things. We don't have a DEI team," like Coinbase that went a few years ago. "We don't talk about politics." And I say to everybody, really interesting. When leaders say, "We don't talk about politics here." And I say, "Okay, it's the lens in which you view that is political. It's a lens of privilege. Because if I talk to my Asian friends, they wouldn't say that xenophobia is political. It's human rights. And anti-LGBTQ legislation, Black Lives Matter, antisemitism, Islamophobia, the hurt and harm physically that's being caused to historically marginalized communities, it's human rights.

Sarah Nicastro: And not taking a stand is taking a stand. Yeah, for sure.

Mita Mallick: Violence is complicit.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, absolutely. I think that's really well put, and I think that the people as individuals and the companies that are out there, seen, heard having such good impact in this topic, it's not because they feel they have to be doing it, but because they really truly understand what you said, which is DEI is tied to how well we can innovate, how well we can meet the needs of our customers who are diverse. So there's this understanding of how important it is and belief in it. And I-

Mita Mallick: It's the center of the business. It's core.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely.

Mita Mallick: I see what you're saying.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, and I love that you're doing what you're doing to help more people see that.

Lastly, tell everyone when and where they can find the book.

Mita Mallick: Please pre-order on Amazon today: Reimagine Inclusion: Debunking 13 Myths to Transform Your Workplace. It's coming out October 3rd, but pre-orders matter a lot, so if you've enjoyed this conversation, Sarah, thank you so much. Please go check out the book.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. Okay, so Reimagine Inclusion. Mita, M-I-T-A; Mallik with two Ls, M-A-L-L-I-C-K. Look it up on Amazon. Get your pre-orders in, and all the best with the book. I'm so happy to have you back. Thank you for coming again, and I love talking with you.

Mita Mallick: Thanks for the impact you're making with your podcast. I so appreciate you. Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you. You can learn more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. Be sure to subscribe to the Insider and signup for the next live tour. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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RICOH’s Mindset Meets Toolset Approach to Remote Service

Sarah welcomes Darren Elmore, GM of Service for RICOH New Zealand to discuss the major changes he sees in service delivery and how the company has embraced the possibilities of remote service.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we are going to be getting an inside look or listen at Ricoh's mindset meets toolset approach to remote service. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Darren Elmore, who is the General Manager of Service for Ricoh, New Zealand. Darren, welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast.

Darren Elmore: Thank you, Sarah. I'm glad to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Great to have you. I had the lovely opportunity to hear Darren speak a couple of weeks ago, it feels longer than that, at Field Service Palm Springs. As I alluded to on social media for those of you that follow regularly, I was hoping to have him on here to talk a little bit more about some of the thoughts that he shared at the event. So thrilled to have you. Before we get into all of that, just tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Darren Elmore: Okay, where to start? I guess like as you said, I am Darren, my current role is GM of Service at Ricoh, New Zealand. But you may pick up by the accent, I'm definitely not a native Kiwi. We immigrated out here from the UK back in 2005, so it's been about 18 years we've been out here now. But I suppose by, I think about the career then, it's about 25 years I suppose we'd call it the technology industry. And that's pretty much been with Ricoh and within the print industry, but all of that time. So I've held quite a few different roles over that period, but it's predominantly been in service starting off as a field service engineer and just taking on different roles as I've got to the level of the GM role that I'm in now. So it's been a fun ride so far.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. And when you were in Palms, was it your first time in Palm Springs?

Darren Elmore: It was, yes.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay.

Darren Elmore: First time on the West Coast as well, so yeah, that was really good fun.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yes. Good. Well yes, when we chatted after your session, I said, "Did you came from New Zealand?" I think Maureen said it's the furthest they've had a speaker travel so far. So yeah. That's exciting. Hopefully you had a chance to enjoy it a bit. So we're going to get into some of the details of Ricoh's approach to remote first service. But before we do that, when you were opening your session, you talked about some of these, you said reasons, which is a nicer way to put it. I say excuses, but some of the things that companies often say or convince themselves of when they are not innovating and one of those, so I recapped those in an article last week. Sorry for the interruption. I recapped those in an article that I shared on social media last week. So we won't go through all of them, but one of them was around the fact that innovation can feel risky and it can feel risky to the business and all of the different people within the business, but it can also feel risky for an individual leader.

I really like this point a lot because you hear all these quotes, "No risk, no reward", or there's one, I don't know who said it, but it's "Only he who risks is truly free", which I really like. "Good things don't come from your comfort zone", all of these things. But they're all great words that don't necessarily do justice to the emotion behind embracing the real risks. So I was just wondering if you could speak to how you as a leader approach that? How do you work through the emotions that come with taking risk and how do you think it's impacted your career?

Darren Elmore: Yeah, well first off, I think it was important to address that as part of the talk in Palm Springs. I think it's one of those things you're trying to get across a message to a group of people, but potentially at the back of the head is like, "What does this mean for me and my reputation?" It's all well and good, the fact that you've done it, but if it fails, what does that mean? So I guess what I first want to do is explain the difference in what I call small eye innovation and big eye innovation. If you think of small eye innovation as just those incremental changes that we make and still they're absolutely essential for that just continuous improvement that we all still need to do. But then the big eye innovation is I suppose more reserve or I suppose the riskier projects.

Another one's that are more likely to produce that disruptive change that I spoke about as well and deliver it's accelerated growth for the organization because essentially that's what we're trying to do, but that's only if they succeed. And I guess this is where that whole idea around personal reputational risk comes in and it really brings me back. I did a master's in commercialization and entrepreneurship probably about five, six years ago now. And vividly, I still remember one of the articles that we were asked to read and it was a HBR article and it was a Wharton professor, George Estee was his name. And it was titled, "Is It Real? Can We Win? Is It Worth It?" And it was a real good article that just spoke about managing risk within an innovation portfolio. And so for me it really resonated with me and I did a lot more research around that. And it was really about how you minimize the risk in big eye innovation.

And so really it's about taking calculated risks. So for me, when a project, what we've delivered sort of first starts to grow length a little bit, it's about doing as much groundwork as possible before hitting the go button. It's about doing your research and really just trying to minimize the risk of failure because I think, as I said, if it's successful, the organization wins. If it fails, it's probably the person who loses. And that's really about your own personal brand and your reputation that you're putting on the line. So for me that was a real big factor in whether we actually do something or not. I mean, yes, it's about doing the research and really understanding whether this is something that will work, but it's also, I suppose about understanding what the risk is to yourself if it doesn't, and try and find that balance between the two as to whether it is something that you're really willing to, I suppose, put your reputation on the line by minimizing that risk as much as possible for it to be the success.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, no, I think that's really, really interesting. And I think the idea of minimizing risk by taking, not only taking the proper preparations, but doing the research and going into it, knowing as much as you can about different challenges that might occur, et cetera, is really smart. I think one point that's come up in some of my previous conversations is if you're looking at upper case eye innovation, you can't mitigate the risk, you cannot get rid of it. I see a lot of companies that are innovating but hedging bets when it comes to they don't want to go all in, right? They're trying to figure out how to curb that risk. And then you're putting yourself in the lowercase eye category essentially. I mean, you can't get the same outcome without that risk. And I think that's true from an organizational standpoint and also as individual leaders. You really have to be willing to place some bets on yourself in areas that you believe strongly in that can have an impact on the business. Yeah, so I think that's--

Darren Elmore: Definitely, it's almost part of the role of any leadership position. I mean, yes, we're talking about service leadership, but across any organization you're kind of in that role to make some of those big bets and let's say it's doing as much as you can to ensure that you are just minimizing that business as much as possible.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it's interesting. I had an interview for another podcast a couple of days ago and I was talking to someone who is an author, has experience in the industry, has a consulting firm, et cetera, and he was very, very firm on the point that he believes innovation is a science, not an art. I have a really hard time agreeing with that fully. I'm not saying it's both, I think, right? But I think like anything it's not that cut and dry because I think a lot of it is maybe as we're talking through this and I'm thinking you can create the formulaic part in terms of how you want to approach innovation as a business, but you can't put a formula on the individuals that play a role or the leaders to commit to that process to have the courage to see that through. That's where I feel like a lot of the art is because it's about some of those human characteristics and that sort of thing. I don't think you can just plug anyone into that role and they'll succeed in carrying that through.

Darren Elmore: I'd agree. I think there's a component of it that is teachable. I think there is skillset that can be taught, but I'm also a firm believer that it actually comes as part of the culture of the organization. If you've got a leadership team that will support people in taking risks, and even if there is failure, as long as we are learning from failure and still moving forward, that also plays a big part I think, in the mentality of people about whether they're willing to take risk or not.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I think that going back to what I mentioned earlier about seeing companies or hearing about companies that are really looking to hedge bets, part of that is the culture, and getting more comfortable with, like you said, it's about strategic risk and it's not about just throwing caution to the wind and making irrational or irresponsible decisions. It needs to be very calculated, very strategic, but when it's done that way, it's important and maybe even essential for businesses to be doing today so.

Darren Elmore: It's getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the journey that you've taken. And so Ricoh has adopted a remote first approach. So just tell us a little bit about how the journey started, where you're at today, what's sort of the lay of the land?

Darren Elmore: Sure. Yeah. So I think as I've said before, I mean really this started probably four years ago now, kind of sitting in my office. I look across the contact center here and it's a blended contact center. So we've got principal teams and cloud support teams as well. And really it was kind of just looking at the resolution boards for our IT support team and it must have been a little bit of envy when you're looking at these guys and seeing around about 80% of all their service tickets are being resolved remotely. And that's a lot more to do with the products and services that they're supporting as opposed to ourselves in the print industry, which is obviously very asset heavy. But it really did start me thinking about what were the opportunities for ourselves on the print side to be able to emulate at least some of what they were doing in our IT services supporting.

At that time we were probably resolving about 25% of all our EM service requests remotely, which was still a fair number I think at the time, but I think it was something that we always thought we could do more. It was good, but it wasn't great. So like I said, that got us to thinking about how we could make some changes and just prior to COVID we'd started to look at even how we measure and incentivize our field service engineers. Could we get them to be looking at doing more remotely? They've got a lot of tacit knowledge in their heads and a lot of time you dispatch them to a job, they could pretty much look at it and go, "Oh, that model, that machine with that particular problem. I know what that is before I even look at it." So we started to encourage some different behaviors there about. Well, if you're pretty sure you know what it is and it's not something that requires physical adjustment or a part to be replaced, how about talking to the customer and see if we can resolve it over the phone?

So we'd started that path already and that's when COVID kind of hit. And as we know, it kind of changed not just the way that we work, but the world that we live in pretty much. And really then it was the feedback from the customers at the time was, "Hey, we've got this problem but we really don't want it to send anybody to site at the moment. Can you help?" I think that really for us then was the catalyst for the big change of the mindset that we really wanted to be able to talk internally and go, "This is what our customers are actually expecting of us now. This is probably the best opportunity that we'll get to really align with both our customer needs and our business requirements as well." And so it was during COVID that I really started to ramp up the tool set side of things as well.

So we needed a tool set that would be able to deliver in a remote first world. And so that really was, I suppose what's got us to the point where we are today and it's almost a massive paradigm shift from where we were, I suppose before we started this journey. It was just built into our industry. Customer makes contact, we dispatch an engineer, engineer goes to site, fix the machine. So to almost turn that upside down and go, "Well, actually we're going to start doing this very different." Those are definitely a few conversations about what if this doesn't work? So these are the things we've had to consider, but we definitely felt that that was the right time to actually really jump into it and really kick in. So we've just wrapped up FY 22 and so we've gone from where we were pre COVID at 25% of remote resolution.

We've just finished off the year of 42%. So we're seeing an increase of 17% over the last four years, which is fairly significant and we're still starting to see that move the dial just a little bit further. Even in the start of now at year '23, we're sitting around 47% year to date so far. So like I said, way back in the day we set this goal of probably not achieving what the IT support team were. I don't think that was ever going to be something that could be possible, but we've got a number in mind of 50% to see if we can get there and we're in touching distance now and so maybe we can get there and go beyond as well. But it's definitely, as you said, it is about how we bring the people on that journey and really start to talk to them about the mindset and the approach of how we actually interact with customers today, what the expectations are from our customers, and how do we get the two to meet together and use a relevant technology tool set to be able to execute on that as well.

Sarah Nicastro: So can you talk a little bit about the importance of that mindset/toolset balance?

Darren Elmore: Yeah, totally. So for me, this has been the biggest part of the change. And so I really believe they hold equal importance. You can create an amazing tool set for the teams to use, but if you're not talking them through what it is we're trying to achieve and probably more importantly the why of what we're doing, then you simply won't get the behavioral changes that you want to see and it just makes it a real struggle to actually execute on that strategy. So I think if I just put it simply that the mindset has to come before the tool set if you want the buy-in from the teams that are going to be using the tools, otherwise you are just investing in a tool set that metaphorically, it's just going to count the dust and you won't get the take-up that you need. Yeah, that's why I honestly believe that you can't do one without the other either is equal as each other.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I think you would say, or maybe did say during your session that from a mindset perspective, COVID really fast-tracked that. Is that accurate?

Darren Elmore: Oh, most definitely. Most definitely. And like I say, what's the saying about how the crisis comes opportunity and I think for us, we had a little bit of time when we went into that first lockdown to really start to think at that time obviously everybody was pretty much working from home. There was only essential businesses that we were still providing services to. And so it really gave us that opportunity to hit the reset button and accelerate what it was that we were already starting to think about maybe six, 12 months prior to that. And so yeah, we just had to see that as the time for us to really turn our sport model upside down and really shake things up and yeah, as we talk about some calculated risks, but really think that paid off for us customers as well.

Sarah Nicastro: So for a company listening to this that for whatever reason didn't sort of take that opportunity presented by those conditions to put something like this in place but wants to do so now, can you share any advice on either side, the mindset side or the tool set side that you've learned that people could keep in mind as they're going down this path?

Darren Elmore: I think on the tool set side, it's definitely a case of take off the blinkers. I think if you look only within your own industry as to what's going on, you are quite limited in understanding what the possibilities are. I think you really have to cast the net wide and look across all service industries because you'll see things that go. I can see what they're doing there. Doesn't work exactly in our industry, but that's adaptable for something that we could do. It just gives you a greater breadth of understanding of what is available. So I think the first thing is don't limit yourself to what you know. On the mindset, definitely. I think that is such an important piece to ensure that the messages are getting down to those who are doing the work. At the end of the day, they are the most important people, they will be delivering the strategy for you.

So that is the absolute key part of the mindset change is the communication piece. It has to be clear, it has to be understood and it has to be accepted by those who are doing the role. So huge fan of Simon Singh and finding purpose and why into a lot of the things that we're doing, especially when it comes around to change and how we go through change management. And so getting the buy-in and the understanding of why we're making changes is really the thing for me that gives you not just the acceptance, but I think also from the field service teams and remote resolution teams who are doing the work. The understanding that what this is adding not just to the business but also to the customers and also to themselves. It's the triple win the way that we've approached it.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I always think about when we talk about remote service or even automation in other forms, to some degree I think it tends to cause or can cause fear among the frontline that well, if they're trying to turn all of these visits to remote visits, then what does that mean for my job? I think it's an important point to think about because I mean for most organizations today, they don't have enough field workers, so there's not enough labor to go around to do the work that needs to be done. So no one should really be fearing for their job.

It doesn't mean that what it looks like day to day may not evolve or change, but I don't think many organizations are in a situation today where they're looking to increase automation or increase remote resolution so that they can get rid of a percentage of their workforce. They're doing it so that they can work smarter and be able to take on more work with the talent that is available them today. So I think that's one of the points of concern that might cause some resistance or some emotion that companies need to be sure to address with people.

Darren Elmore: Yeah, I mean we're in a position at the moment where we've got different pillars of our business that are growing at huge rate. So around our connecting collaborate, our cloud services, our meeting room technology. So for us as well it's allowing us to take on some of the support elements for these other business units as well and saying we've already got the labor in place, we're working in a way that's different, so maybe even what those other teams think we do at the moment. So it gives them an insight into the possibilities that we can do adjacency services internally as well, which has the added benefit of demonstrating to our field service teams that there's a wider scope of products and services that we can cross scale upscale and get you guys thinking a little bit differently about your careers as well. So these are all the things that have come out as a result of some of the actions that were taken. So it's been hugely positive across the whole business, really.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Now I know that mean it's still a fairly new journey for you and for Ricoh, but you're further along certainly than some if not many. I do think that adopting a remote first approach is something that presents a lot of potential to organizations to really, like I said before, just work smarter, you shared some of the results that you've seen so far and it's significant. So if you think about where do you see this heading for Ricoh and for others in the industry over the next one to three years. How do you view the potential that exists with remote capabilities?

Darren Elmore: Honestly, Sarah, I think we're right at the precipice of some amazing things at the moment. I think with what we're seeing, the exponential rise of AI large language models, then I think it's the opportunity is not just for remote resolution, but also for customer led self-service journeys to really be improved and it's going to provide both service providers and customers with a level of support that I don't think we've ever seen before. So yeah, I think I truly believe this is probably the most exciting time to be involved in service right now. There's so much change taking place and so many opportunities for organizations who really just want to challenge the status quo, challenge themselves, challenge their own organizations and just begin shifting some of those really long held paradigms of what service traditional looks like. So yeah, I think we're in certain amazing time right now for where the possibilities are for service support to go and that definitely includes remote first as a service strategy.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I agree. You mentioned earlier the increase that you've seen in remote resolution and you shared some additional thoughts at the event around, not thoughts, data at the event around how that translates into savings for Ricoh and what that looks like, which is really significant. But the other thing you touched on is that there's a sustainability component to this as well. So this is something that I think today people don't talk about as much as the impact to the bottom line or the impact on customer experience, et cetera, but I think that conversation will continue to become more and more important. So is that something that factored into this decision or is it something that's just sort of an added bonus? How do you look at that sustainability piece?

Darren Elmore: I think it crosses a little bit of both. It was a known entity that it would have an impact on our sustainable credentials, but I guess it's also been a nice to have as well. Ricoh globally is a very sustainable organization. It's committed to a 63% production in direct greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 when compared I think to the 2015 levels. And so by us reducing the number of onsite service visits that we complete, we're actively contributing to this goal as well. So I think the environmental credentials that come with this are definitely something that we speak about internally and it's also a really good piece for us to talk about externally to not just our customers, but potential customers as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So we've talked about the sustainability piece, we've obviously from a customer perspective, they're getting faster resolution when you're able to help them remotely. And then we talked about the increase in remote resolution. Is there anything else that we should talk about from the standpoint of what you've achieved so far?

Darren Elmore: Definitely, I think one of the things that we're missing at the moment is the customer satisfaction. We've seen some amazing results in our CSAT scores as well. We conduct surveys, post completion of the service request. And in the free text field, we've had some really good comments. I remember one not too long ago where we had an end user saying how great it was that they felt they were part of the solution, they were able to actually take part in the resolution, made them feel like you got a typical person when they weren't really. But again, that's us leveraging off the tool set and technology that we're able to do things that five years ago just weren't possible. So yeah, we're definitely seeing, you've mentioned it's an increase in our device uptime, so we're optimizing productivity for customers as well. And like I say, when we're getting the feedback where they're actually enjoying being part of the solution as well, then that's a huge bonus.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. It's always good when you're getting positive comments in the freeform section, right? Okay. So you mentioned Darren at the end of your session in Palm Springs, you said, "As a sales organization, our CEO has never talked more about service than he does today." And I wanted to ask you about that because I'm curious why do you feel that is and what does that tell you about the business today?

Darren Elmore: I think many organizations across a lot of different industries, at Ricoh we operate in on the print side in a very commoditized market. So it's less about the product and much more now about, I suppose, service that's being delivered and how that becomes the differentiator.

So I really believe that then the onus is on service leaders to demonstrate both internally and externally that they have the opportunity to be the difference and promote service in a way that just maybe hasn't been thought of before. So I guess we've almost kind of come full circles as the way to do this is to take those calculated risks, look at how within your organization you can deliver the big eye innovation and these are the things that will capture the attention of those at the top when we start to talk about, "Well, here's something different that you may have not seen before." And it starts then to have some service led conversations inside the company, which then helps with our sales teams as well, famous customer, did you know? And that's something that again, is a differentiator so we can start to lead with things that are a little bit different as opposed to the product itself.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, yeah, it's really cool. To look at the progression and seeing service organizations struggle to feel that they even have a voice within the organization to it being something that you say the CEO has never talked more about, it's a really cool progression and certainly representative of the opportunity that exists so. Now you mentioned you started as field technician and now you're the GM of service for the organization. So what would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned in your own journey?

Darren Elmore: I think for myself, having I suppose done the job, if you like being there, done that at the front lines, and for me, it's just about being really clear in the communications around our strategy. We've got to have a healthy innovation pipeline and just bring your people on the journey with you. But I think definitely what I've learned over time as well, it's about not settling, but just good enough. What's that saying about if you shoot for the moon and even if you miss your land amongst the stars, we've got to be looking to aim high. So I think once you kind of promoted that high performance culture within the division or within the organization, you really get people thinking differently as well. I think that that's what leads to some of those, what if kind of conversations and having the ability to think about it and go, "Yeah, we could do that," is something that you need to take on. So yeah, I think that's it. Just about being clear in what it's that you wanting to achieve, make sure it's communicated really well and aim for themselves.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And to the point you made earlier when we were talking about the tool set part, you mentioned the importance of looking outside of your own industry. I think that's also important when you think about innovation and just these thinking big and different ideas, different food for thought. You shouldn't just be looking to what is our direct competition doing and how can we one up them by an inch. You know what I mean? You should be looking outside of your own competitive set for those new ideas and those what if could we, you know what I mean? Those are conversations that they shouldn't just be shot down, they should be embraced and you never know what you might come up with if you as a leader and encourage your teams to think outside of the box and to bring those ideas in. I think that's a really good point.

Darren Elmore: Yeah. There's a great example I can give you there again. Here, our national carrier in New Zealand now on global scale. It's a very small airline, but they win lots of awards. And when I was studying, no, again, what makes them different? When they were looking at innovation, they weren't looking within the airline industry about what's new and what's the best. They were looking at organizations like Disney and the best hotel chains in the world, but then it was all about not the flight, it's about the customer experience. And so where do you go to find out where's a really good customer experience, hotels and theme parks?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Darren Elmore: That's the job. So yeah, I think that's a great example of looking outside your industry to see what is going on and what it is we want to achieve, but don't get blinkered by the industry that you live in.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, really good stuff. All right, Darren, well I appreciate you coming on and sharing with us. So thank you for that. It was a pleasure to meet you in Palm Springs. Pleasure to have you on the podcast and I hope to stay in touch.

Darren Elmore: Sarah, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Now it's always great to have conversations with people who are passionate about both service and innovation, so I've really enjoyed this time. So yeah, thank you for asking me to join you on the Future of Field Service Podcasts.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. Thank you. You can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for the Future of Field Service Insiders so that every other week you will have our latest content delivered to your inbox. You can also take a look at the remaining events we have left on the 2023 Future of Field Service live tour schedule, and register for the one nearest you. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Live Tour 2023: Paris Highlights

Sarah shares a synopsis of the topics discussed at the Future of Field Service Live Tour 2023 stop in Paris on May 24th.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro.

I am coming to you from Paris. We just wrapped our third stop on the Future of Field Service live tour for 2023 in Paris. We had a great day yesterday, a wonderful lineup of speakers. We had a smaller group with us at this event, which was really nice because everyone had an opportunity to really engage with one another, get to meet one another, have some really good breakout conversations in addition to our interview sessions, and I think people really enjoyed that opportunity. I had one person tell me that it felt like we created a Field Service family in Paris, which was really nice to hear. So, I just want to share some of the highlights of the sessions yesterday, what came up at the event, and some of the points that I thought were really interesting.

So, our first session of the day was with Sebastien Garric, who is the Director of Service for France at GEA Group. And Sebastian joined to talk about GEA's service transformation and three major components of that, which is the importance of mindset, customer centricity, and the role that plays, and also remembering to prioritize and continually work on operational efficiency. So, GEA is a manufacturer who, like many, is seeing the massive opportunity to focus more on service within its value proposition. But obviously for a company that has a strong manufacturing history, that's where the importance of the mindset shift and the change management comes in.

One of my favorite things that Sebastien said is advice someone gave him in his career, which is that we should welcome problems and look at them as opportunities rather than a nuisance or something to avoid. And I think that that's a really good point, and one that particularly when you think about some of the major topics in service today that we often refer to as challenges, they are indeed opportunities for companies to get a bit more creative and innovate, and I love that attitude. So that was great. Next up, we had Ravichandra Kshirasagar, who is the Vice President for Digital Buildings and Global Commercial at Schneider Electric.

So Ravichandra joined me to talk about how Schneider is re-imagining the role of the field technician for 2025, 2030 and beyond. So we started our conversation really talking about how he manages his time to be sure that he's meeting the present day needs of the business, but also carving out this time and making sure his teams are carving out time to think about what will 2025 look like, which as he mentioned will be here before we know it, but also 2030 and really starting to put some steps in place today to be preparing for how quickly things are changing and what that will look like.

So obviously he's in charge of digital, and Schneider is really, really focused on helping its customers achieve more sustainable buildings. And they have a really exciting and I think compelling mission for their workforce to be a part of. But internally, we talked a lot about how the field technician's role will change based on technologies that are available for increased automation and a lot more remote service, as well as as the organization continues to look at outcomes that can provide to its customers, how that might change some of the roles that have traditionally been filled by one field technician. So one of the things that I really liked that Ravichandra brought up is that they've actually not too long ago changed the name from field technician to service technician. That seems like such a small thing, but when you think about this idea of leveraging more automation and more remote capabilities, it's thinking ahead a bit about the fact that that role soon or even in some areas today, will not be completely a field role.

So we may have people that split time between an office or even working from home and then going onsite part of the time. So I think simple shifts like that, they sound like, "Oh yeah, totally." They require a lot of thinking ahead and also thinking about what is representative of the role today, what will fit into the future. So we had some really good conversations about how they're thinking of the evolution of that role. And I think that that initial step of changing the name from field technician to service technician, Ravichandra also spoke about how from a digital perspective, as the volume of data that they are collecting and using with their customers increases, they've had to bring in a lot more analysts to really work with that data and make it insightful for the employees that are interacting with customers and for the customers themselves, which we know will certainly be an increasing need as well.

So really great conversation, really good insight into how we can both focus on what we need to be doing today, but also be thinking ahead because we know things are moving quite rapidly. The next session was with Marie Cobessi, who is the Director of Aftersales Service Projects and Transformation at Fnac Darty. So Marie is responsible for essentially determining in service which transformational projects the company will prioritize and decide to take on, and then making sure that they are achieving those objectives in a way that aligns with the strategy for each. So one of the things Marie brought up that I think everyone loved, again, quite simple in nature, but incredibly effective and impactful. Marie spoke about the process that they use for the prioritization of transformation projects, which they refer to as the four Cs. So the first C is customers, the second C is employees, but the French word for employee starts with C.

The third is cost, and the fourth is carbon footprint. So those are the different pillars that the company looks at every time it's evaluating which transformation projects to prioritize its investment and time in next. And I saw a lot of people taking notes and thinking like, "Oh yeah, that's great." And also some folks that shared which of those they sort of currently tend to focus on and why it might be important to take a look at all of those. So Darty not long ago introduced a subscription model to its customers for service. So the company services all sorts of different home appliances. And traditionally that's been done on a warranty basis or I believe also on a per repair basis. And so moving to this subscription model has led to a lot of growth for the organization. And Marie also talked about how to navigate that, but it's a value proposition that has positively impacted the customer base, the organization.

And then we did talk quite a bit about the impact that it's had on carbon footprint, on the ability to extend the lifecycle of products and therefore reduce waste and improve reuse and remanufacturing, things like that. She talked about the focus that the organization has on continuing to evolve from a customer experience perspective, but also from a employee perspective, some of the areas of opportunity that they have to further improve the tools and processes that the field technicians use so that it makes their daily lives a bit easier. And then she also spoke about the program that they have in place, an initiative that they've put in place to bring in new technicians to put them into a training program and to use that as a way to increase their talent pool. And then Marie and I also had a good conversation about her being a woman in service.

So we had two female speakers at the Sydney event, but both, one was an author, one was a consultant, so not necessarily service leaders themselves. Marie was the first woman on stage from that perspective. So that's kind of representative of where the industry is. And so we talked about what that has meant for her. She actually spoke about how she sees that as a positive thing and how in her mind, one of the things that we need to do to get more gender diversity in the industry is to make sure that we're showing and showcasing the ability to have work-life balance. And we talked a little bit about what that means and what that might look like, and it was a great conversation. Next up, we had a session with Jan van Veen, who is the Founder and Managing Director of moreMomentum, which is a community for service organizations in the manufacturing space specifically.

And Jan and I spoke about the gap that lies between the potential of service innovation and some of the reality of where we are today. So we talked a bit about what to prioritize and how, exactly far should we be looking ahead. For organizations that are thinking more about incremental innovation, what could that look like? For companies that want to focus more on disruptive innovation what should that look like? We talked about some of the differences between focusing on digital transformation, service transformation, and business transformation. And Jan brought up some great points, I think challenged me on some of my thinking, which I really enjoyed because as I mentioned to the audience, I really love having the opportunity to learn in these conversations as well. So that was really nice, and we were able to speak with some of the folks in the crowd about those points and compare notes and have a good discussion.

So that was really cool. And the last session of the day was with Emmanuelle Duchesne and Stephane Dabas, who are both from Culligan. So Emmanuel is the customer service director, and Stephan is the IT director at Culligan. So that session was really talking about how to create a productive and collaborative business and IT partnership that can deliver on the customer and employee focused objectives. So it was a really fun session because I didn't realize that Emmanuelle and Stephane had worked together for over a decade, and they have a really fun rapport and relationship. So I joked with them after saying it was kind of like a old married couple. They were finishing each other's sentences. They were kind of poking fun at one another. It was really fun.

But they had some really good perspective on what the relationship or really lack thereof between the business and IT looked like when they started with Culligan 10, 12 years ago and how it's evolved over time, why it's evolved and what it needs to look like today, and the recognition that these technology initiatives really need to be business led and what a productive relationship looks like in their organization. So we talked about the importance of building trust. Obviously we talked about the prioritization of needs. We talked about business case. We talked about how to navigate differences of opinion. We talked about the fact that Culligan is a highly acquisitive business, so they're often bringing in other organizations to their IT ecosystem. And we spoke about what that looks like and how they determine the path as they bring those companies on to what technology to leverage, et cetera. One of the things that came out of that session that again, I think everyone enjoyed is that Emmanuel shared that they have what they call a CX day where they have every function of the business.

So finance, HR, I believe every function of the business, spend time with a frontline employee either in their call center or in the field. And the goal of that is to really make sure that everyone understands that customer facing role and what service looks like in practice and has an appreciation for that. And again, this was one of the points that I saw everyone in the room writing notes on. I had a couple of conversations after that session about how impactful that could be, not only from creating that awareness among the different functions of the business, but also in the sense of making those frontline workers feel valued and appreciated and important because you're acknowledging how critical their role is and how you want everyone in the organization to be aware of what they do. So I thought that was such a good takeaway.

We had some breakout sessions where we talked about some of these different topics in small groups, which were really interesting, gave everyone an opportunity to pick each other's brains, get to meet one another. We had some time over lunch and at the end of the day to socialize and network, and all in all, it was a great day. From the UK and Paris events we do plan to try and release as many of the sessions as we can here on the podcast, so that way you'll have an opportunity to hear more of what was shared in detail. So stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, stay connected with us at futureoffieldservice.com. You can sign up for the insider, which will deliver a recap of the latest content to you every other week in your email inbox. We also have three events left in the live tour. We have Minneapolis on June 15th, Dusseldorf June 21st, and Stockholm September 7th. So if you can make it to any of those locations, would love to have you be a part of our community. Events are free to attend for service leaders, and you can view the agendas and register for any of those events on the website. The Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can Learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Live Tour 2023: UK Highlights

Sarah shares a synopsis of the topics discussed at the Future of Field Service Live Tour 2023 stop in Birmingham on May 17^th.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. So we just wrapped the Birmingham Future of Field Service Live Tour event, so our UK event, which is the second of this year, our first event was in Sydney in March. And I realized I did not do a recap podcast for the Sydney event, which is unfortunate, but I'm going to chalk up to the time difference and jet lag and get back to it with the UK event. So this episode is going to be a bit of a recap and some thoughts on some of the key points that came out of this week's UK event. I liked doing these reflection podcasts last year because I thought it was interesting to go back and see what some of the common themes were that came up globally at all of the events.

Hopefully the video, for those of you that are watching this, looks okay and the sound is okay, because I had some travel challenges getting to Europe and ended up not having my luggage. So thankfully I, of course, had my laptop with me in my carryon, but the camera and headphones that I typically use aren't with me, so we'll just make do.

All right, so the UK event, we had a great day of sessions, a combination of interview-based sessions where I welcomed some great speakers to share their stories, their challenges, their lessons learned with the attendees, and then we had time both in the morning and in the afternoon where we broke out into small groups and had some sort of workshop or round table discussions to allow everyone an opportunity to really engage and share some of their own experiences.

The first session we had was with Alec Anderson of Koolmill and Dr. Parikshit Naik of the Advanced Services Group from Aston Business School. The Advanced Services Group, if you aren't familiar, are experts in servitization, and they're actually based in Birmingham, and they work with a variety of companies who are on the servitization or advanced services journey, one of which is Koolmill. Some of you may be familiar with Alec if you listen to the podcast regularly, he was a guest a while back and talked about their journey to servitization, so he shared a bit of that with the audience. Koolmill is in the rice milling industry, and it's quite interesting not only how their equipment is a differentiator, disruptive to the industry in how it is different than traditional milling equipment, but also how the servitization business model, or the as a service model, has been disruptive to the industry.

Some of the things we talked about during that session, one is really how, for companies in manufacturing that have a really deep legacy or history, a lot of times it's the cultural shift, the mindset shift to or around servitization that can be one of the most challenging aspects, or at least one of the earliest challenging aspects, so we talked a bit about that. We of course talked about the different benefits of the ASA service model in Koolmill's example, so we talked about the benefit to the company, we talked about the benefit to its customers, and we talked about the benefit to the environment and how it ties in with sustainability.

We also talked about how companies need to really look at servitization as the continuum that it is and understand that it's not a mission you can embark on and complete quickly, it's something that you really need to plan for over a period of time and really consider the different layers of transition that take place. So the Advanced Services Group is a really good resource in that way because they have a lot of content broken down into what that whole continuum looks like and what some of the biggest considerations are, also some of the most common challenges that organizations make.

So Alec shared some of his own experience, and then Parikshit added to that from the perspective of a lot of the other organizations that the Advanced Services Group works with, and I think really the mindset or the culture shift was a big one, understanding that when you start looking at advanced service offerings, or servitized offerings, you need to realize you're not going to be selling those to the same people that you sold your traditional products and services to, so making sure that you know factor that into your process. Another part of what came up is making sure that you wisely select the first company, or the first couple of companies or customers that you work with on your offering. So how you pilot it, find folks that are a little bit more innovative in their own mindset that you can really partner with to make that offering a success before you start to position it to some of those that are maybe a little bit more skeptical or resistant to change.

So that was the first session. The second session was a conversation with Adam Barrett, who is the Operations Director at Mitie Fire and Security. And Mitie is, like many organizations, facing a lot of challenges related to talent scarcity. They're having a hard time recruiting and retaining field technicians, and they are working on looking at that from the perspective of over the long term, how do they bring more people into the industry, create apprenticeship programs, et cetera. But in the short term, Adam spoke about their need to really focus on maximizing their resource utilization. So they had some pretty inefficient processes in place related to how they scheduled, dispatched, how the technicians ran their daily, weekly, even monthly routes and workload, how information was exchanged, duplication in data entry, and things like that.

So again, it's interesting we tend to think of all of these, what's the latest and greatest things? Everyone wants to know, "How do we use ChatGPT?" But it's important to reflect back and make sure that there aren't some really fundamental inefficiencies taking place in your business, because that can be a really good place to start. So Mitie has deployed the IFS Planning and Scheduling Optimization solution, and Adam of course spoke about the pretty immediate and significant increases in efficiency, reduction in travel, ability to redistribute schedulers and dispatchers, those sorts of things.

But one of the things that I thought was really interesting about his session is he spoke about the impact that planning and scheduling optimization has had on the workforce's emotional wellbeing, and almost from a mental health perspective. He was explaining that the processes that were in place before, there was a lot of, not only a lot of wasted time, which in retrospect was probably quite frustrating for folks, but a lot of back and forth, and sometimes even technicians that would place blame on a scheduler or a dispatcher of, "Well, why would you send me here?" Or, "I don't want to do that job."

And he explained that taking some of that stress away, so taking those one-to-one interactions and opportunity for disagreement away, but also taking away the responsibility on the field technician to really juggle this huge workload where now they're just given one job at a time, it's always the next right job for the overall matrix of their SLAs, et cetera, has really reduced the stress on their employees and also allowed Mitie to give them some flexibility by factoring in to the planning and scheduling optimization solution this employee wants to start their day at this time, this employee wants to make sure that they are back home by this time, the solution can factor all of that in so that they're able to give some flexibility to their employees that has helped with change management.

So if there's an employee that wants to take their kids to school every day and they want to start their day at 9:30, Mitie is very supportive of that and they can factor that into the solution. If there's an employee that wants to be home by a certain time every day, same thing. I thought that was a really interesting and probably under discussed aspect of how we can use that technology to create some value for the employees.

The third speaker that we had was Venkata Reddy Mukku from Bruker Nano. Venkata also was on the podcast not too long ago talking about his commitment to people first leadership, and giving some specifics around how he accomplishes that. So he came to the event to share some of that story with our audience as well. To me it was such an important session because you can tell that there's this divide right now in service organizations where some are really embracing this mentality, they're understanding that we can't only be looking at customer experience, we need to be considering employee experience and making sure that our employees are engaged and satisfied. Not only is that imperative from a recruiting and retention standpoint, but it's truly the only way that we can accomplish the objectives we have to differentiate our business and grow through service.

So there's this group of companies, I think a growing group of companies and leaders, that have recognized that and are working really hard to put actions behind it, and then there's more of an old school group that is still really hanging on to that control type of leadership, how do we ring every last ounce of productivity out of people? Really not looking at people as people, but looking at them as resources or assets, and I think that divide was pretty clear in some of the discussions, at least that I was a part of at the event. And so I think sharing perspectives like Venkata's is so important because I really think he represents a growing group of leaders that are embracing today's realities and really leaning into what modern leadership looks like, and I think the leaders and the organizations that can do that are going to be leaps and bounds ahead of those who are holding onto the way it's always been, so really great session.

Next up was Ged Cranny with Konica Minolta. Jed came to talk about Konica's remote, what they call remote by default mission and how they're putting that in place. So Ged's been with Konica for a long, long time and had a lot of insights to share about how the business has evolved and the necessity for the business in really looking for ways to work smarter. So one of the things we talked about here is this misperception sometimes that when we start talking about remote service, the goal is to move entirely to remote service. With Konica, and with many others, that's not the case, they're not trying to get rid of field service or move to a remote only type of service environment, but they are looking to make sure that they are resolving simple issues remotely, making sure that they're maximizing first time fix, so using remote as a way to make sure that the technician that does need to go on site knows exactly what they're going to do and has any parts, tools, skills that they would need to resolve that issue when they're there.

So really, again, similar to Mitie's stories, taking a lot of those inefficiencies out of the business and just essentially modernizing what their service delivery looks like. So I think it's a journey, Konica is on a journey that a lot of companies either are on or will soon be on, because when you think about the intersection of customer expectations, talent shortages and talent evolution, and the technological capabilities that are quite readily available today, it just doesn't make sense to continue operating in a way where you're going onsite just to triage, and then going back to do a repair, or just not leveraging what's available.

And then the last session of the day was Adam Rodda of Bosch and Russell Masters with Amey, who did a session together with myself on change management. So what are some of the challenges with change management? We know it's important, everyone always says that that's the one area they wish they would've spent more time on, or that's the area where they got off course. If they look back like what's one thing you would do different, change management. But while we know that, it continues to be under prioritized. So we talked a bit about why that is, what some of the challenges are, and we talked about the need to really make employees feel involved, to really listen to employees and take their input and put it to action.

We talked about personalizing the why. We talked about making sure that you are doing pilots and early adopter programs so that you can get some real world input and feedback before you try and roll a solution out to the masses. We talked about leaning into power users and having them help with communicating the change to everyone else. So we talked through those things.

The part of the conversation that stuck out to me the most is really around this idea of we tend to think of, or have historically thought of change management as this project-based or program-based thing. So it's tied to, okay, we have this change coming, we need to make sure we're managing it, and there's this temporary focus put on communicating around that change and getting people to accept it. But in today's landscape, change is really ongoing. It's continuing to amplify, it's continuing to speed up, there's not really a point in sight, or probably in our future, where we're go back to more of a stable or a stagnant type of environment.

So with that being said, I think one of the most important parts of that conversation was around, do we need to stop thinking about it as change management? So stop thinking about it as this temporary thing, or this thing tied to a project, and start thinking more about how the topic itself ties in with leadership and company culture and really a mindset and processes and a culture of agility and flexibility and continual improvement. Because that's really what companies are focusing on today, whether that's through technological innovation, or whether that's through development of their value proposition, it's not really a finish line you're crossing and then taking a break from, it's something that's ongoing. So I think we need to really start redefining how we talk about change and what that looks like within our organizations.

It was a great day, it was at a venue called The Compound in Birmingham, which was a really, really cool space, and big shout out to Joanna Darby and the team that does all of the logistical planning for these events, it was really well put on, I think the attendees enjoyed themselves and enjoyed the ability to take some time away from their daily lives and come together as a community, which is something that I always am happy to see.

So that's a little bit of insight on what happened in our UK event, next up is Paris, and then we have Minneapolis on June 15th, Dusseldorf on June 21st, and Stockholm on September 7th. So if you're able, I hope you'll come and join us for one of the events. If you're not, you can always find content on all of these topics by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. While you're there make sure you sign up for the Future of Field Service INSIDER so that you can get a recap of our content delivered to your inbox every other week. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS, you can learn more by visiting ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Outcome-Driven Innovation

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Outcome-Driven Innovation

Sarah welcomes Tony Ulwick, strategy expert, innovation thought leader, author of Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice and What Customers Want, founder, and CEO at Strategyn, to share why he views innovation as a science.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. We talk a lot on this podcast about outcomes-based service, today we're going to be talking about outcome-driven innovation. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Tony Ulwick, who is a strategy expert, innovation thought leader, author of two books, Jobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice, and What Customers Want, as well as the founder and CEO of Strategyn. Tony, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Tony Ulwick: Sarah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. So anything to add to your bio? Do you want to talk at all about your background, your journey, and any context for folks?

Tony Ulwick: Sure. I think talking about how I started my interest in innovation is interesting because it came out of necessity. I was working for IBM at the time, this was back in the 1980s, and I was part of a team that was going to change the way people did home computing. It was a bit promising, it's a product called the PC junior. The only problem with it is the day after it was introduced, the headlines in The Wall Street Journal read, "The PC junior is a flop." And it was. And it got me really wondering about how a company like IBM, with all its vast resources, could invest in something that turned out to be a flop. And the funny thing was, but not funny, the horrible thing was it took us a year to reconcile that it was a flop, pull it from the market. It was a billion dollar failure.

So we got to be very interested in thinking through, well, how can we avoid this? I didn't realize at the time that this was a problem that existed across every company, I thought it was an isolated incident, but it's not, of course. And I've spent my career working through better ways to innovate and creating an innovation process that would help you conceptualize products that you know are going to win in the market before you start developing them instead of finding out after you launched them that they failed.

Sarah Nicastro: It's interesting though, a lot of the conversations that I take part in or hear around innovation we talk about the fact that failure is a part of the process. So was it that it was that far along and that big of a failure that you felt some emotion around? Or I guess what are your thoughts on failure being a learning opportunity, not something to completely avoid?

Tony Ulwick: Well, the way I like looking at it is if you fail, certainly you're going to learn something from it, but why wouldn't you try to avoid failing? I don't believe that innovation has to include failing, because you know what you're trying to do when you're innovating, you're trying to create products that will, in our terms, help people get a job done significantly better. So if you've come up with an idea that doesn't do that, then why would you pursue it? Or if you can prove that the concept that you came up with does get a job done a lot better, well, that's going to give you the confidence of knowing that it's more likely to win in the market.

So there's some very basic things we could look at here to help avoid failure. One thing I find interesting is even to this day a lot of companies don't consider innovation to be a process, which I find interesting. And of course the innovation success rates are quite low, and it's just assumed that failure is part of this and you can't turn innovation from an art to a science, there's just too many unknowns, there's too many variables that can't be controlled. And this is the thinking I've been through for the last 30 years, what are all those variables that are causing failure and how do you control them? Because if you could, you could turn something that seems random and unpredictable into a scientific process, and that's exactly what we've done.

Sarah Nicastro: And we're going to obviously talk more about that, but you mentioned the art and science aspects. So to you, is it a combination of both?

Tony Ulwick: Not really. It's definitely far more science than art, because the way I like thinking about it is once you know exactly where to focus your value creation efforts, in other words, once you know where people are struggling to get a job done very precisely, and once you know that, you can come up with solutions that will address those parts of the job. We rarely... I'd say never, we have never run into a situation where companies say, "We don't have any ideas." People don't say that. They usually say, "We have so many ideas, we don't know which ones to pursue." And so now we're doing idea management and they think about innovation as an idea management exercise. I don't think about it that way. What I think about it is more like a problem solving exercise where people are struggling to get a job done, let's figure out how to help them get it done better.

So if we know precisely along what dimensions they're struggling, we can focus our creativity on those dimensions and solve them. A quick example, we've worked with Bosch helping them enter a North American market, and once we identified the top 14 unmet needs in the marketplace, it took them just three hours to conceptualize a new circular saw that addressed all those unmet needs. And as they said, "Well, it's not as if we hadn't had these ideas before. The problem is we've had thousands of ideas before. We just didn't know that these 14 in this combination was the magic win."

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So I want to go back. I feel like I jumped over my first question. So let's go back there before we go ahead, because I always have other things come to mind and I'll get us off track. So let's start with making the decision to focus on innovation. So can you talk a little bit about if an organization, if a company wants to focus on innovation, what's necessary to do so in terms of mindset, leadership, any of the factors?

Tony Ulwick: As we often say, to be great at innovation, you need a great innovation process. This is true of any business discipline. If you want to be great at lead generation, you need a great lead generation process. You could run that. I think there's 140 some odd business processes that are common, it's true of everyone, which means you have to treat innovation as a process. Again, as I mentioned earlier, half the population believes innovation isn't a process. Well, that's problematic. So if you think it isn't, then you're not really going to work very hard to try to turn it into something that's filled with discipline. So the first step in taking on innovation is to recognize that it is a process, and that often requires a different mindset. The mindset shift is generally a shift from a solutions first orientation to a problems first orientation. So a lot of people that believe innovation is not a process, believe that innovation begins with ideas.

And then you take those ideas, you go prototype them, test them, get feedback from customers, iterate on the product, go retest, and you go through this iterative process until hopefully eventually the product that you've come up with addresses the customer's needs to the degree that they want the product. Well, that is a very, very expensive way to learn customer needs. The other approach is a problems first or a needs first approach where the goal is to understand the job the customer's trying to get done, break it down into its component parts, understand how they measure success along each step of the way, and figure out where are they underserved in getting the job done. All this can be done with precision. And as I mentioned, if you know the top 14 or 15 or 20 unmet needs in your market, then you can focus on them very specifically and help come up with a solution that helps people get the job done a lot better.

So I think just that mindset shift and knowing that that's possible is the first step. I'd say the second step is then getting everyone on board with an innovation process that aligns people and the organization. So everybody can be rowing in the same direction, focused on value creation, and so they're not debating what market they're in or who their customer is or what a customer need is, but if they agree on all that, then they can sit and debate what is the best solution for my customer to solve that particular problem. So it's a transformation, you're shifting a mindset where people don't agree on what a need is to the entire organization agrees on what the needs are which you're unmet, and now we're debating the best solutions. That's where you want to get the organization.

So I should mention, Sarah, we've done a lot of research on these very specific questions, and we find that in over 80% of product teams, they don't agree on the best way to define a market. They define a market as a product or a technology or a geography or a vertical or a persona or a use case or so on. Over 90% of product teams don't agree on what a customer need even is. Is it an exciter, a delighter, a feature, a value driver, a specification, a requirement, a pain, a gain? And we've heard all these terms used interchangeably as if any input into this process is going to yield a great result, and of course that's not true.

We know that over 80% of product teams don't agree on the best way to segment markets. So they segment generally around personas, use cases, demographics, psychographics, attitudes, and these are all done as proxies for segmenting around unmet needs, because the goal of segmenting is to find groups of people with different unmet needs, but companies don't segment around unmet needs because they can't agree on what a need is. So it's this combination of factors that's causing companies to go off track. So if you could align your organization around a common language of what a market is and what a need is, so you have a common language of innovation in a process that leverages that insight into something more predictable, that is half the battle.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So we're talking about the how of innovation, when we think about what are the best areas of opportunity for any given company, what is the advice you would give someone on how to find the areas of innovation that will yield the best results for their business?

Tony Ulwick: And that's a great question. Not only do you want them to yield the best results, but they have to be within their capability set as well. So there's two things happening here. You want to figure out where's the customer underserved in areas that we can address? That's more or less the question you're trying to answer. And to figure out where they're underserved, that is where the outcome-driven innovation process comes into play. And again, I've alluded to identifying the precise underserved needs associated with getting a job done, focusing on those, of course, that lays out what I'd like calling the most efficient path to growth in problem space. So in other words, here's my opportunities in priority order, in problem space, but I may not be able to solve them in that order because I may not have the capability to address that top need or this other need or so on, so you're going to have to come up with solutions that you can address that will put you on the most efficient path to growth from a solution perspective.

But there are some general rules of them that we follow that lay out the best ways to grow, and it's always growing from the core, because this is where you have the greatest set of capabilities. So most products get only part of a job done. You could be a kettle maker, for example, and a kettle's used heat water to a desired temperature, but people are using a kettle to maybe prepare a hot beverage for consumption. It's part of a bigger job. So the market isn't the kettle market. The market is a group of people who are trying to prepare a hot beverage for consumption. So if you take that as an example, you can grow from the core. You can say, "Okay, I'm a kettle maker today and I can focus on heating water to the right temperature better than anybody else." And that's a good starting point. Take your core, take the thing that you're doing, and do it exceptionally well. In other words, satisfy all the unmet needs associated with getting water to the right temperature.

Once you've accomplished that, you can look adjacent. You can say, "Well, what's the step that comes before heating water to the right temperature, and what is the step right after we've heated the water to the right temperature?" And say, "Well, can I get more of the job done?" These appear to be adjacent markets, but they're really part of the market as the way the customer defines it, because they're trying to create a hot beverage for consumption. And then, of course, if you can get the entire job done on a single platform, that is the next expansion to growth. And it's often common to see a kettle maker, for example, get disrupted by a company that gets the entire job done, like Keurig or Nespresso, where they have their machines that get the entire job done in a single platform.

But you can see that trajectory coming years away. 20 years ago, you could sit there and know that, well, people are heating water, but they're trying to create a hot beverage for consumption, and you could envision the solution to the future and figure out, well, how are we going to get there step by step over time? So that's more or less the formula I like thinking about that works really in every company, that's the most efficient path to growth for me, problem perspective and from a solution perspective.

Sarah Nicastro: Can you talk a little bit more about the outcome-driven innovation methodology?

Tony Ulwick: Sure. So the approach is broken into five steps. The first step is to define a market, but not as a technology or a product or a use case or persona. We're going to define the market as the group of people trying to get a job done. So it could be consumers who are trying to prepare a hot beverage for consumption. Sounds simple enough, but oddly enough, it isn't. A lot of companies don't want to define the market around a group of people getting a job done. They'd rather define it around a geography or a persona or a use case and so on. So if you have that debate within an organization and people can't agree on what market they're in, it's going to be hard to go take the next step in the ODI process, which is to uncover the customer's needs.

Now here we're going to define needs a little different. We know people are getting a job done, so we can break that job down into steps and figure out how do people measure success along each step of the way. So in the case of the kettle maker, minimize the time it takes to get the water heated to the exact temperature, minimize the likelihood that it cools quicker than it should cool, minimize the likelihood of overheating it to make it too hot. Now, there's very specific metrics that you can use to make sure you're getting that part of the job done perfectly, we call those statements the customers desired outcomes. They're solution independent, so they're not tied to a product, they're stable over time as the job is stable over time, they're unambiguous, they're knowable and discoverable. There's no such thing as a latent outcome, because we often talk about latent needs.

We say, "Customers don't have latent needs. They only have latent solutions." They can't envision a microwave, they can't envision the automobile when they're riding horses, you've heard all those arguments, but they do know what they're trying to accomplish. Those jobs stay stable over time. So focusing on outcomes from that perspective gives us a long term focal point and a value map for, or a map of value creation, I should say. The third step is then to figure out, well, which of these needs are unmet? And to do that, we put surveys together that go out to some portion of the population, it may be 1200 or so consumers of kettles, or Keurig machines, and we would ask them to tell us how important is each of those outcomes and how satisfied are you with your ability to achieve the outcome given the solution that you're using today? So what we're looking for quite specifically is where are they struggling in the job given the solution they're using.

And we can plot this out mathematically. So we've created what we call the opportunity algorithm that takes the importance of the outcome and then subtracts the importance minus the satisfaction. And so if a need, an outcome is really important to most of the population, but most of the population is dissatisfied with it, well, then we would say that's an unmet need, so we can figure out which needs are unmet and to what degree. And with that, then we can focus on the needs that are most underserved in a market. The next step, which is extremely important, is to recognize that in most markets people don't agree on which needs are unmet. This goes back to marketing 101, there are always segments of people with different unmet needs. It's true, we've proven it over and over again. Having said that, how do you discover those segments? Again, by segmenting around personas, or use cases, or demographics, psychographics, attitudes, behaviors, they're all proxies for doing what you should do, which is to segment around the unmet needs.

So once we know what these needs are, maybe half the population wants to minimize the time it takes to get the water heated to the right temperature, and they're unsatisfied with that. Maybe the other half says, "I want to minimize the likelihood of exceeding that temperature and getting it too hot." People disagree on what's important and unsatisfied. So you'd want to know that so that you can create products or maybe different products for different segments that will satisfy their unique unmet needs. Again, it's marketing 101. It's just hard to do in practice.

And then the final step is to take that information and build out your strategy. The first step of that is what we call the innovation strategy, which is picking what segments do we go after and which element needs to be targeted. In that Bosch example I mentioned much earlier, there was one segment that had 14 unmet needs in the market, and that's where Bosch focused its attention. They said, "In order for us to win and differentiate against DeWalt and Makita, we're going to go after that segment, address those 14 unmet needs, and position in this matter." Then comes to product strategy. How do you do it? I know what I'm going to go target, I know what segment I'm going after, what features do I have to have on my product? And it could be hardware features, it could be service features, it could be software features that can come to bear to help customers get the job done better.

And in the end, what you've done is you've created a solution that you know is going to win in the market. And how is that? Well, because the feature set that you've generated is tied to a set of needs, and you know those needs are the most unmet needs in the market because you've done all that research, and you know that by satisfying those needs, you're going to get the job done significantly better. And we have a threshold too. We say, "If you can get the job done, about 15% better or more, that's the tipping point."

Now, if you come up with a product that just satisfies one unmet need a little bit better, nobody cares. Would you switch from your favorite brand of anything if a new brand got a job done 1% better or 2% better? And the answer's generally no. So if you can reach that threshold, that's the tipping point. And the trick, of course, is if there are 14 unmet needs in a market like Bosch discovered, the question isn't how many of those needs do we address, the question is how do we address all those unmet needs so we can make a big difference?

And I think it's that mindset shift that makes a difference as well. A lot of companies stumble along and have to go through incremental improvements, product iteration after product iteration as they discover one or two unmet needs, but to the customer they're never getting the job done a lot better, so they can't go with an upcharge in their price and execute on a differentiated strategy. They're stuck more in a sustaining strategy, adding features, maybe even adding costs, but not really increasing their profits. So that's a dangerous position to be in, and you can overcome that by understanding all the unmet needs in a market upfront and going after quite a number of them. So you're looking like you're creating a breakthrough solution, it's a radical solution compared to what existed before, because it's gotten the job done so much better.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Now, you mentioned earlier the difference between innovation and I think you said idea management, and so we talked about how sometimes these innovative ideas pick up a bit of momentum, but then get to a certain point and just fizzle out. So for companies that are looking at ways to innovate within an existing business, our audience, like I said, is typically looking for ways to evolve and transform from a service perspective, what is the trick to taking those ideas and really getting them to scale, and have an impact on the business?

Tony Ulwick: Well, you're assuming they're good ideas, but when you're going down this idea management path as your approach to innovation, generally there's not just two or three ideas, there's thousands or at least hundreds of ideas, and somebody's responsible for evaluating them. So how would you even evaluate an idea? So the first thing you'd do is you'd say, "Well, is that idea in a market that I want to be in?" That's how we approach it. We'd say, "If that idea is addressing a group of people trying to get some job done, who's that group of people? What is the job they're trying to get done? Do we want to play there?" So that's the first test. Assuming the answer is yes, then you'd take the next step and say, "Are people underserved in getting that job done? And can we help them get the job done better? Do we believe we can't? Do we have the capabilities?"

If the answer is no, then you don't want to go play there. If the answer is yes, then you go to the next step. The next step then is investing in understanding what are the unmet needs in that space. And as I've described the ODI process, figure out precisely where the customers underserved, so you can come up with solutions that will address getting the job done significantly better. Now, it may be that the original idea that you had really does the trick and it gets the job done a lot better, or it may be that it's getting part of the job done well and that you need to enhance it so you build on that idea so it turns into something that will get the job than 15% better or more.

But what we're doing here is we're trying to move this ideas first mindset into a market first mindset. In other words, don't start by saying, "Hey, I have a thousand," or I think in Bosch case it was 10,000 ideas. I know IBM at one point had an ideas database of 100,000 ideas in it. What do you do with all that? So what you'd rather do as management in an organization, instead of saying, "Everybody have lots of ideas and we'll figure out which are good," what you want to do is say, "We want to go after this group of people who are trying to get this job done, and here are all their unmet needs." Now, organization, go out, figure out ways to satisfy those needs, and we can be successful in those markets, that's how it should work. And so organizations who are becoming outcome driven follow that kind of thinking, pick the markets that you know are attractive, that way you you're playing in the right ballpark. Where to play, ODI helps figure out how to play to win, and then you can go on to be successful from there.

Sarah Nicastro: So the piece about identifying the unmet needs makes perfect sense. What I'm wondering though is a little bit more about the process of... Let's take the Bosch example. So with Bosch, they had this group of people for whom shared this 14 unmet needs, and they decided that was a good fit for them strategically to go after. So what happens then from that decision to keep them on track through execution?

Tony Ulwick: That's a great point because teams can easily get derailed once they start developing products and go off track. I think the beauty of having a set of metrics like these outcomes that we talk about to guide your decision making process and the trade-off decisions that you make through development are absolutely critical. Like in the case of Bosch, people are trying to minimize the likelihood that debris flows up in their eyes when they're making a lengthy cut, or they're trying to minimize the likelihood that the extension cord gets caught on the piece of plywood as they're leaning over, making a cut. There's very specific things. So if you know those are the metrics, that helps guide you even in development, so all the way through launch. So you can conceptualize the product up front that you know is going to win, but it's only going to win if it satisfies those outcomes.

So it's often the case that when we go into development, we turn the concept into a product specification or product requirement that gets acted on with this added information, and we can even add to it, minimize the likelihood of the debris flying up in the user's face. Well, what is the likelihood of that happening? Is it 100%? Does it always happen? Does it happen half the time? And you can quite literally measure it. Engineers can set up an experiment and say, "It used to take this amount of time to go to get this part of the job done, and now it takes this much time. We've made progress. It's measurable."

Sarah Nicastro: I guess I'm trying to think through this in the service context and a service example, because obviously a lot of that is far more intangible than product specifications and some of those types of measurements. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Tony Ulwick: Sure. So let me give you an example. We worked with an agriculture firm that made seeds and fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, a bunch of products, and we studied the job of growing a crop. That's what growers do, they grow crops. And we studied that job from beginning to end, understood all the metrics they used to measure success when getting that job done in a solution agnostic way. When we were done, there were about 50 of the 150 outcomes that related to service-oriented solutions, they had nothing to do with pesticides and herbicides, they were really more along the line of getting help at the right time, or having things show up at the right time, or things like that, that can't really be solved from a hardware standpoint, they can only be solved from a service standpoint. But they also discovered another 40 or so outcomes that related to information flow, which lent itself to software solutions or digitalization as it became digitalized farming. There are many outcomes that growers were underserved with because they didn't have the right information at the right time.

And then, of course, a whole bunch of needs related to the hardware products that they already made as well. So by studying the job at that broad level, from the customer's perspective, it takes you out of that mindset as to whether or not you're a hardware company, a software company, a service company, you're a company that's going to help people get the entire job done. The entire job generally requires all three types of solutions, some hardware solutions, some software solutions, some service, not always, but you should think along all those fronts. Most hardware companies certainly can find opportunities to find underserved outcomes that could only be solved by services or by software, so it's great for them to move in that direction. A lot of software companies don't like moving into service or hardware because it's much more complicated, lower margins impact, valuation, all that type of stuff. But generally, it makes good sense for a hardware company to go into services and to go into software even, because it can help with their growth and valuation.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. So we've talked through a couple, but if we think about what are the most common mistakes you see companies make, and what's your advice to avoid those? What comes to mind?

Tony Ulwick: The biggest mistake is failing to recognize that innovation is a process and that it can't be turned into a science. The biggest mistake is thinking that it's impossible to hand over a set of needs to a product team that are complete, that points out precisely where the customer's underserved. I think companies are still on this ideas first mindset and struggle to break out of it, and it's pervasive. Like I said, if half the companies believe that innovation isn't a process, or those that do believe it is a process think it's all about ideas management as opposed to uncovering needs and discovering solutions that address them, that's the biggest mistake.

And that's where the mindset shift has to come into play. And we've been at this for 30 years, we've certainly changed some minds over the years, people see that this works, it intuitively makes a heck a lot more sense, but behaviorally it's very hard to change the way people want to approach this, because it's really fun having ideas and getting people to rally behind your idea, and seeing it get developed, seeing it come to market, all that is super fun, but it's not much fun when it fails. And I think if we start with the end in mind and know that we are creating solutions to help people get a job done better, we can prove to ourselves that the idea that we had will get the job done a lot better before we start developing it so we don't have the IBM PC junior mistakes.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. Tony, tell everyone where they can find more information on you, the books, and the work that you do.

Tony Ulwick: Sure. So our homepage is strategyn.com, it's strategy with an N on the end of it. That is one location. You can contact me directly at ulwick@strategyn.com. And there are two free books available as well. Well, it's the same book. It's available as a ebook and as an audiobook, and that can be found that jobs-to-be-done-book.com with all hyphens, jobs, hyphen, to, you get the idea. So that's available there for free download, and that should set you on your journey to develop a new mindset about innovation.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. All right. Well, Tony, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights with us. I appreciate it.

Tony Ulwick: Sarah, thanks so much for the opportunity. I appreciate it as well.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely.

Tony Ulwick: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks. You can learn more and find more at futureoffieldservice.com. While you're there, be sure to take a look and sign up for the Future of Field Service Insider. Also have a look at the Future of Field Service live tour dates, and be sure to register for the event nearest to you. You can also find us on LinkedIn and Twitter. And the Future of Field Service podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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3 Ways Remote Capabilities Are Significantly Changing Service

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3 Ways Remote Capabilities Are Significantly Changing Service

Sarah welcomes Stephen Goulbourne, Global Service Program Director at Mettler Toledo to discuss three major areas of impact that more sophisticated remote service capabilities are having (and will continue to have) on service.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be talking about three ways remote capabilities are significantly changing service. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Steve Goulbourne, who is the Global Service Program Director at Mettler-Toledo. Steve, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Steve Goulbourne: Hey, thanks, Sarah. Great to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Thanks for being here. Okay, so before we get into our discussion, just tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your role and Mettler.

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, hey, so I'm mechanical engineer by trade. So I guess found my way back here. Had a few years in sales, you could argue, perhaps crossed over to the dark side into sales. I thought that was the easier place to be. It turns out it actually wasn't, but I had about eight years in sales, including some time with Mettler-Toledo in a product leadership role. But for the last 12 years or so, I've been a service leader here at Mettler-Toledo. So I guess a good mix of that commercial and service leadership experience.

The role that I have today, I guess is largely defining a strategy for service, implementing that strategy and then executing that strategy with our global operating unit. So certainly not a one-man operation. Lots of stakeholders and lots of people involved. Mettler-Toledo is the world's biggest weighing and measurement equipment company globally dispersed across five divisions, encompassing lab, industrial, product inspection, retail and process analytics. So quite a broad reach and industry, but actually very linked in the way that we work.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. So I think the discussion we're going to have today, if there's a few key trends or areas of innovation that I'm most excited about or to see how they sort of play out in the industry, this concept of the growing capabilities that technology allows for remote service I think is really, really interesting because fundamentally it has the potential to really change how and when services is delivered. So I think it's a change that will translate over into roles and a lot of other aspects. So we're going to sort of talk about some of the different technologies that play a role in this augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and how these remote capabilities are really having this disruptive impact on the way we traditionally think of service delivery. So we're going to talk about three major areas that are evolving, but before we get into those, can you just talk a little bit about how the pandemic for Mettler spurred a lot of interest in these different capabilities?

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I think it's an interesting one, the remote service piece. I think it'd been around for quite a period of time and as we know in the service space, there's always the latest and greatest that's been brought to market and remote was something that I think a lot of people knew about and a lot of people had been investigating and looking at for obvious reasons. I think there was some significant benefit there, but there probably wasn't a real driving need to go ahead and start a new tool and start with a new tool and really, I guess in some senses complicate what was a working model and then of course came along the pandemic. And I think one of the very few positives that came from that was it really forced a lot of organizations into adopting those new technologies. And the biggest one being that we had to find a way to, in the early stages of the pandemic, to provide service to our customers safely in terms of the technicians and of course our customers.

But primarily our focus was on our technicians finding a way to help fix people's equipment or at least diagnose issues with equipment without going to site, which was practically impossible without remote tools. And so I think ourselves, a lot of the industry really went and moved quickly towards those remote tools. I guess it was the nudge that we needed to implement it. And I think from that point on, it's been a little bit of a rollercoaster ride for everybody as there was a lot of adoption. And I think then probably finding our way to do this as we go, which is it is suboptimal, it's imperfect, but the pandemic certainly pushed us towards that. So as I say, I think I take that as a positive. It showed how quickly the organization can adapt, showed our resilience in a very difficult time and really allowed us now to implement a tool that that's having a real stronger profound effect in how we provide service to our customers.

Sarah Nicastro: So I think one of the points you made that's interesting is when there were a lot of restrictions in place and/or a really high level of concern around safety, it was to your point, you're nudged into what can we do remotely? Let's do that. And then as things normalized, you mentioned the rollercoaster a bit. So I think what happened in some of the other company I spoke to is once things normalized, it was, "Okay, well let's just go back to how we were doing things before," and maybe a little bit of resistance and then strategically thinking about, okay, so when we needed to do everything this way, here's what we could do. But rather than going back to what was, what's our sort of intentional strategy around remote service? And so then it becomes not out of necessity, but what works for the business and for the customers in the new world.

So I want to talk a little bit about your opinion on how these capabilities are forever changing service delivery. So like I just said, it would, I think, not be wise to just go back to the way it was, but we also discussed that specifically for Mettler-Toledo, and this is where the topic of remote service starts to vary a lot from industry to industry, company to company. But you mentioned that there really isn't a high likelihood of a lot of jobs being resolved entirely remotely, but there's a lot of insight that you can glean from these technologies that can really transform what that service looks like. So can you talk about that a little bit?

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I mean, maybe just really quick, just to drop back into the previous question. I think what's quite interesting when you implement a technology like this, you go through the change management piece and you're right to say I think there was concern, pushback, perhaps it's something new, something different, and that's a normal reaction there. But obviously the pandemic just didn't allow us any time to go through that change management, why we're doing this, this is the benefit it's going to have. It was almost a case of within two, three weeks, "Hey, we have a remote tool, we're going to use this." So there's a way to find way through that. But you're absolutely right also to say that we just can't simply say, "Well, let's go back to as we were." Looking at it, this was the nudge that we needed. So yeah, I mean if we think about the remote tools and how they are changing service, I'm certain, it's not only Mettler-Toledo where that successful fix rate remotely being high, even to 50% is really unheard of and it's probably in the low single digits in terms of getting that fixed.

And that's probably due to the fact that oftentimes this is electromechanical equipment and certainly in our case it's electromechanical equipment with the use of hardware and software. And so of course from that perspective, that makes it challenging. I think where we have the opportunity to do an intervention with software, that significantly increases to the levels where you would expect. But I just think with the kind of equipment that we manufacture where we have moving parts, hardware, software, it's often required that the spare parts is needed and consumed when that occurs. And I think that it's more important to us to make sure that we're now fully understanding the issue with the use of the remote tools.

We can actually see what's happening versus just a, I guess a traditional triage where you're asking questions, this can really allow us to fully understand a situation before a truck rolls and then we can make sure that we send the right technician with the right skills and the right spare part to try and make sure that we get the first time fixed, that that's the most important to our customers because that increases their uptime. And of course from a business perspective, that allows us to reduce our cost to serve. And so I don't think we were disappointed that we weren't fixing things remotely all of the time. I think we went into that with our eyes wide enough open to know that that would be the case. So it's certainly had a different impact, but for sure there are still cases where we are able to fix something remotely and that's hugely beneficial both for us and for the customer.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think it's just important to, for organizations to be aware of the different areas of impact. It's not just about solving these issues remotely. It can also be about gaining enough knowledge to maximize first time fixed. There are situations where these same technologies are being used because companies want to allow customers to do more self-service, you mentioned the fewer truck rolls you have the lower cost to service. So there's these different measurements of success with these same tools that you can really match to your business. I think often there's some misperceptions when we talk about remote service first, I think people tend to think that the goal is remote only or remote as much as humanly possible, rather than just remote first or remote as a tool to really understand and examine what's going on. But then also knowing that there really are different use cases and different potential benefits and picking what best fits each service operation.

So you're gaining a lot of knowledge. You mentioned when it's a more software related issue, sometimes you are able to resolve remotely, but when it's not, you're maximizing your ability to repair on the first visit because you what you're getting into per se. So I feel like when you explain this to me, it sounds like objectively makes sense, why wouldn't anyone be doing this, right? But there's still a lot of question and debate that I run into about, I would say particularly augmented reality. Is there really any use case for it? And I'm always like, "Yeah," but it seems like there's some skepticism, some cautiousness. Do you have any thoughts on why that is and some of the reasons why there's maybe a little bit of lag in adoption?

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. I think it's one that probably has lots of answers and going to be, I guess, unique to the circumstances of some of the people and some of the organizations involved. I think cost typically is a strong consideration and particularly to your point of will we really get the benefit of this? And of course when you're investing any kind of funds into new tools, well you really have to have an ROI and you really have to understand where that's going to work. And so I think if people look at the low likelihood of a fix remotely using the tools as we've just discussed, then yeah, I can understand that. But I think it's kind of changing the view a little bit and having people understand that if the first truck roll becomes the triage where you go and you see what's wrong and you understand what's wrong, you assume that the technician has the right skills and the right spare path, but oftentimes don't.

You then want to be moving into what I call a necessary second visits and that first visit being only to do a triage and really I guess old-fashioned way of doing things, it's also a very costly way of doing things. And we talk about reducing the cost to serve for the business and increasing customer satisfaction. And that's actually the very opposite of that. And it becomes quite challenging then to explain to customers that we're going to come back perhaps with a different engineer in a different spare part. And so those second visits, they drain capacity. And I think when we listen to the voice of the customer a lot of times, and again, not unique to Mettler-Toledo, I think in the industry, technicians always get very high scores in terms of customer experience, but actually scheduling and finding time to be able to do the work is a challenge. And so if we can improve the capacity by reducing those unnecessary second visits, I think that definitely helps. And so I think if you think about it differently from a cost perspective, that's one thing.

I think the other considerations is then how you integrate the tool. And so again, I think at the beginning we spoke about, this came quite quickly, a lack of change management there, the how and when to use that and the process is to support it. That's a further challenge and it's something else to consider. And then finally I think how you monetize this to really ensure that you get that ROI if you don't consider the first piece that I spoke about. So I guess there's a number of questions there, and I think a lot of people have adopted the technology and are probably still scratching their heads and asking those very same questions when they've spent the money. Now how do we really get to leverage that? And I think we spend a lot of time doing that, and I think we've been pretty successful in answering some of those things because it became more changing the view and thinking about those unnecessary second visits, avoiding those, making sure that we get a first time fix for our customers.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Because we're talking about the cost to serve, which is important, just the wasted time really of having this whole first trip just to find out what's going on and then having to have someone go back. Obviously you mentioned there's the implications of customer satisfaction, right? They're still waiting for that uptime. I also think what's interesting as a part of this conversation is how it intersects then with sustainability because all of those unnecessary second visits are wasted truck rolls and unnecessary carbon footprint as well. So that matters more to some than others, but it's an undeniable aspect of the benefit of adopting this sort of approach.

Before we move on to the next point though, I want to go back to the monetization part because I think this is a really big sticking point for organizations and what I'm curious about is how you're dealing with that. So I'm going to ask that question first and then depending on your answer, I might have a follow up.

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, again, I think monetization has been, again, shifting the focus of how you consider monetization. And I think there are different ways to look at that. I guess the most traditional way is what revenue we generating from having this tool. So what's the ROI? What additional dollars, what pound, euros, whatever it may be, are we bringing into the business because we have this remote tool? And I think it's again, maybe shifting that perception a little bit around what that monetization is. And to me it's the monetization becomes we're saving those second visits, we're not going to unnecessary second visits, we're improving uptime for our customers, which improves our net promoter score, happy customers spend more. So that's one way of looking at that.

I think then if you consider, again the monetization piece, do we only have this for our contract customers, are non-contract customers able to have access to this? Of course, we want to remove the volatility of a service business by getting as many of our customers onto a service contract as we can, of course the benefits for customers as they can plan their spending more effectively. So there's lots of reasons to do that, but we want to be able to have some differentiators into our service contract.

And now if we start to include the ability to do remote service, that's adding value to a service contract, and then if we can see a deeper penetration of our installed base on contracts, that again becomes that monetization piece. But it's perhaps not the model of charging for an intervention at arbitrarily $500 to do an intervention on a job by job basis. And so I think that's still something that the industry is kind of wrestling with a little bit and in some ways where we were, but I think we feel as though the monetization comes from perhaps non-traditional route and you look at the reduced cost to serve and the differentiation of a service contract and deep penetration because of that, that becomes that monetization piece.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So you mentioned that this idea of that first visit being the triage is just really sort of an outdated way of conducting service. I think this second aspect, how do we monetize this? What's the revenue model, is a really interesting piece that is going to continue to evolve as we go forward because we know that today's customers value outcomes more than they do products or even services. So this idea of whether that's delivered in a contract or whether some companies are getting to the point of a truly servitized model where you're charging per use, per uptime, that sort of thing.

Once you get to that point, it makes the conversation a bit easier because it doesn't matter how you achieve that outcome, it's just the fact that you are achieving it. I think for companies, which still today is the majority are not in that servitized model, it does raise some questions of, okay, well if we're lowering our cost to serve, then how do we make that money? If customers are used to paying us for our time and materials, then how do we evolve that? And I think it can be challenging, but it's a really important question to be working through, right? Because do you think there's no going back from that, right? I mean it's not like we're going to just decide we don't need to figure it out.

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I use the term, and I'm certain I haven't coined the phrase, I'm sure I've picked it up from somewhere or put it together from somewhere, but I think you said as well, we need to focus upon is outcome based pricing here, and it's the outcome that the customer wants their issue resolved and always reminds me of that old story or the old sales story where a guy goes into the hardware store and says, "I need an eight millimeter drill." And the guy says, "No, you don't." He said, "No, no, I need an eight millimeter drill." But he said, "No, you don't." He said, "No, I don't why you keep telling me I don't." He said, "No, you need the hole, you need the eight millimeter hole." And so I'm saying millimeters as a European there, I should have probably said, I don't know.

But for the Europeans that watch this, that kind of makes more sense. But I think they want their issue resolved first time just as quickly as they can. And if we fix something remotely using an AR or an AI tool, we've met the needs of the customer and outcome's the same more quickly. And I think the trick is here is to try to stop customers fixating upon the fact that a technician didn't come to site. And that's where the perceived value is because isn't. The outcome is where the value is. And so if we can stop the customer's fixating on a customer feeling as though a technician on site, that's why the value is we saw him, he came, he had a tool bag, he connected his laptop and he fixed that. Ultimately you're probably 24 hours down the line, but the outcome's the same.

And so I think again, it's that kind of paradigm shift in terms of not only how we monetize this, but also how customers view this. And I think a lot of customers are there, but a lot of the traditional customer base still thinks that if they're paying for something, they actually physically see someone if they don't, it's hard to comprehend. And so yeah, outcome-based pricing I think is something that we need to continue to push here. This is simply a better way of doing things. And I think a really great point you made, and people mention to me all the time where I'm talking about reducing cost of services, the green piece of that as well, reducing carbon footprints, something that we absolutely have to focus on as an organization, but also as an industry.

Sarah Nicastro: I think there's a couple components to this. One is this value-based narrative, and I think this is a big part of the challenge for people because I agree that I think customers are there. I think customers get it. I think the struggle really lies more in a company's challenge to have external conversations about internal tools. I see this a lot where it's like, "Well, we're implementing remote service so that we can reduce truck roll." Well that doesn't mean anything to a customer, it's great for you. But it's this idea of I think people would fear this conversation less if they felt more prepared to speak it in the terms of what matters to customers. Like you need the confidence of saying, "Yes, Bob isn't going to be on site, however we're able to resolve this issue for you in one hour instead of 36 hours," or whatever.

And not externally sharing the internal benefits, but rather focusing on what the customer value is and having that be a part of the conversation. So I think that's a really important skill or growth area that people need to focus on. And it kind of comes with this progression of service as a profit center. I mean, historically when it's a cost center, you probably didn't have a marketing function that was helping with what's our service value proposition. It was sort of an afterthought. But if it's going to be competitive differentiation for the organization, then you need to invest in refining that message and making sure that teams are skilled in delivering that message.

I know another piece of this with outcomes specifically is oftentimes you need to be engaging with someone different than you sold the transactional model to. So that can be another piece of it as well. But I think it's a really interesting part of the conversation. It's sort of this old school mentality and this old school way of conducting business and just getting up to speed, not only in the technology, not only in the operations, but also the communication, et cetera.

Yeah, the other thing I was thinking of too is this idea that how do we replace that feeling a customer gets from someone being there in these opportunities where we're doing remote service? So I was moderating a panel yesterday with Tetra Pak and TOMRA talking about servitization, and one of the points that we talked about is customers don't actually just want the outcome. They do, they want that peace of mind that you as an organization are going to make sure that my X, Y, Z is always working, but they also want the insight and the reassurance and the validation that you're doing that. So I also wonder if part of the removal of as much in-person visibility can be accomplished through different ways of providing that insight. So I think it's interesting to think about not only from a messaging standpoint, but in our communications with customers, how can we replace some of that onsite triage that's wasteful for everyone with different types of touchpoints that reassures them that we're still there as much we care as much, et cetera, et cetera. Does that make sense?

Steve Goulbourne: It does, and I think it's quite interesting in the sense that we talk about in the industry and certainly Mettler-Toledo being technicians of the trusted advisor, and they're definitely people who customers have that relationship with, and in many senses the technicians consider them, their customers not necessarily Mettler-Toledo's customers. And we spend a lot of time making sure that the technicians soft skills meet the needs. And that's very easy face-to-face. I think they're very comfortable in that face-to-face scenario, the hard skills being the, excise me, technical skills. But how does that translate when you're doing something like this, something remotely where you lose that interaction. Are we really looking into each other's eyes when we're talking and explaining something technically well, but we're kind of looking into a camera. And so yeah, I think it's a very valid point of how we give the customer that feeling of confidence that whether this person's on site they're doing this intervention remotely, those soft skills may be coming to even more focus and we really need to make sure that everybody's comfortable with how we're explaining this and how we're doing this.

And so yeah, I still think that that's something that will continue to develop and grow and soft skills remotely. Maybe that's a whole new thing to consider as well as this develops. But it's definitely something that relationship a technician has with a customer. And in many cases, certainly for us, that customer has known that technician for a lot of years and there's a deep trust there. If this is perhaps not their usual technician, it's remote, will they get that same feeling of that this is going to be worth it and if the way that when Bob came to site, this is the way that he did it. And so I think it's an important part and it's one that we need to consider greatly and deeply as we move forward with this.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. All right. So we talked about how remote is changing the way we can actually provide service, and then we talked about how remote is creating an evolution in how we monetize service. The third piece that we talked about that we think will be greatly impacted by these capabilities is around talent. So we know that this is a big challenge for companies across geographies and industries. Can you talk a little bit about how for Mettler-Toledo, what does the talent challenge look like for you and how do you see these things intersecting?

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I think if you start to consider the remote tools really how that positively impacts talent and retention, it can feel perhaps a little bit tenuous in terms of saying, "Well, remote helps us there, how does that work?" But I think one way that when I considered this is that the industry in general, I think you're seeing a shift now in age profiles with Boomers starting to leave the workforce. Gen X is aging, I include myself in that one there, meaning more millennials are at the core of the workforce and now the numbers of Gen Z is increasing exponentially now as well. And so those generations have different needs, different requirements, and I know we're kind of into some HR, maybe blue sky thinking, and a reference that gets a little bit tenuous.

But one of the things that millennials or Gen Y talk about, and one of the big areas that the research has done, and there's a ton of research here, and Deloitte even have a survey every year that goes out that provides a lot of insights, this generation doesn't necessarily like to be staying away from home and doesn't like to say on Monday I leave and I come back on Thursday night and I've done a huge amount of work. They're actually what they like to do. They're digital natives, so they like to be using these digital tools to improve.

So if we are using AR tools to reduce those unnecessary second visits talks also to the carbon footprint reduction, definitely something that this generation is rightly very concerned about. But if we can get better resource capability and resource capacity because we're using these AR tools, it means we can plan more effectively and by planning more effectively, we can make sure that that person does their eight till six hours, nine to five hours, whatever they may be. And then they're home in the evening with their wives girlfriends, whatever it may be, families at home of an evening, they're not staying in a hotel, which is something that the more you read about this topic is something that something that's really important.

And so I think it adds that layer of more benefits to the people and also to the organization. If we're reducing overnight stays, that of course reduces the cost of service. That's kind of a secondary piece, but we keep coming back there. We're a business that has to run profitably, but if we can do that and then also satisfy the needs of this generation, I think that that's all the generations coming through. I think that that's a positive. So as I say, it's a little bit tenuous, but it's just another way in which that we're able to use the power of those tools to provide just a little bit of a different organizational side to the business that hopefully means that people want to continue working in this industry and format.

Sarah Nicastro: I think the other thing is the power of a tool like augmented reality. When you think about the changes in the workforce, you could have an older, very experienced technician that maybe doesn't want to be out day to day anymore, connected to a handful of newer, greener technicians remotely, literally to the point where they're over the shoulder really seeing what they're seeing, giving them direct coaching, move this, do this, et cetera. And that isn't a one-to-one relationship that can be a one to multiple, so the idea of being able to speed time to value of new employees because you have the confidence of them being coached or mentored by someone who has more experience, I think is really interesting as well.

It always surprises me when there's questions about the value or the fit of this technology. It just seems so obvious to me because when we talked about eliminating those triage visits and you have this fear sometimes, well remote's here to take jobs, there aren't enough people to do the jobs. You know what I mean? So the jobs aren't going away, you're just working smarter. There's still plenty of jobs to be done, it's just you're not wasting your time. I mean, there's a big difference. So it's interesting if you think about what we talked about earlier and this idea of using remote capabilities where it makes sense, but how the role of the frontline technician may change. What do you think that could look like in a few years time?

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I think that we're in the very early stages of certainly the AI technology. And so yeah, I try and think about we're definitely going to see further advances in technology, further adoption of remote and AI type tools. But I don't see a time where a field service technician, somebody that has to go and change a particular part. It's one thing to have maybe the removal at some point in the future, machines are thinking themselves and saying, Hey, this is broken. Somebody needs to go and fix that. So I think it's still so early in that technology cycle. AI is always in the news recently, and anyone that's had any kind of interaction at all with chatGPT, kind of terrifying on one hand, but also really, really exciting and others. And so the development of this I think is while it's here, I think we're still wrestling with where, the how, and when to use this.

And I don't see a time probably in my working lifetime where we'll not have service technicians that need to go and undertake a repair. It just may be that whole triage piece becomes redundant, which in some senses is not a bad thing. That's kind of what we're trying to do with the tools today. But I think the way that the industry is moving, there's still a time where having an actual service technician is an absolute requirement. So to your point about the removal, I don't think this technology is going to remove jobs. I think it's just going to make jobs that little bit more straightforward, more simple for the technicians, and of course the customer is going to need more efficient, more effective fixes and even higher uptime than we see today.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, this is one of the areas that interests me most about how our industry is evolving. I totally agree with you that I don't think there should be this fear of field service jobs being eliminated for all of the reasons you said. What I do wonder though is you know, mentioned earlier the increasing importance of soft skills, and then we talked about this idea that there's, as there's some increase in remote resolution or remote even triage, there is less face time. So then does that need to be offset somehow with a different type of customer interaction? And so this is the part I think is really interesting, whether we take our frontline workers and I think advance what we've mostly done so far, which is try and augment their technical skillset with soft skills.

Or at some point is there more of a segmentation of work and maybe a blurring of some lines where there's a technician that does the technical repairs, but maybe there's some sort of customer service manager, customer relationship role that it's not the same as wasting time to go on site for a triage appointment, but there's maybe a quarterly business review where there's more of that trusted advisor relationship. This is the part I think will get interesting because I'm a firm believer that the capabilities that we have technologically today are really impressive, definitely underutilized, which gives a lot more potential, but I think people still value human connection above all right? So not only do I think there isn't a point where there aren't field technicians on site, but I think the relationship with customers is always going to be important and there's always going to be some human element in nurturing that. So I think the way that can be done through service and what that looks like going forward is really interesting.

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I mean, I think what you're saying is you can see as things progress, the AI tools kind of taking the fault finding piece and somebody just goes to site just to do exactly what they get a report kind of spat out, we're kind of in Back to the Future territory, now I imagine what it will be like in however many years, but I do think that that's the way that's going. But I think if you look at how service businesses typically are built, you often have a core that's quite a small core of the kind of expert level technicians that know a lot of the equipment and have a lot of tenure. And so they've got a lot of experience, but the reliance on those more experienced people is high. And there's only so many of them, and there's only so many pair of hands available to a service business to be able to do that.

And actually you get to a point where those people are kind of become burnt out because that that's where all the deep technical questions come, "Hey, we've got a problem. We don't know what this is. Can you dial in? Can you call whoever it is on site?" And so I think the more we get to that machine learning that kind of says, "Was it this, was it that, was it this, was it that? We recommend this" and actually it keeps learning and you say, "No, that didn't fix it, but this did," then it says, "Oh, okay, next time I'll consider that." So I think it's still quite a way into the future. I think service, field service is still quite conservative for good reasons in adopting some of the technologies, but I think for sure that's where it's heading. But I think that that's a positive. Again, I don't mean to raise any alarm for anybody there at all.

I think it's just going to be more beneficial for technicians, it's going to make their job easier. They're going to be able to get to a site and just affect that first time fix and make the customer happy, which is always what a service technician generally wants to do. So I think that's where it's heading. But I think as we've seen with the adoption of the tools so far, it's a little bit slower, certainly I think, than the people that are working on these AI and AR tools. I think they wish that we would be a little bit better at finding ways to use this more effectively. But I think it's heading in a good direction with lots of benefits of both. And I don't see a time, as I say, in certainly my working life or I mean my working life that we'll see anything get anything different as it becomes easier.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you think about when you look at how things are changing or what the future holds that either falls into the challenges category or things that you are excited about?

Steve Goulbourne: Yeah, I think probably one of the limitations of these tools, and they're things that are here today and are a challenge, and I think one of the big things that we hear is with a lot of the AR and AI tools, you have to have a good wireless infrastructure. And the infrastructure of organizations for internal use is often there and it's very, very strong. But externally, it can be a little bit of a challenge. And I think the reason for that is the inherent risk of cybersecurity. And I think that that is around as day-to-day we see it day-to-day big stories, people being quite rightly probably the most paranoid people in the organization with good reason. And I think that continues to be one of the biggest risk factors for organizations. So I think as we advance with digitalization, that fear of cybersecurity, which is absolutely right right now, I think is also holding back some of those advancements a little bit as well.

And as I say, perhaps some of the infrastructure needed to use these tools, you simply need a good wireless connection or a wired connection to stream video at the right level to be able to annotate on the screen and talk about those things. So I still think there are some limitations there and some big concerns around cybersecurity.

I remember a conversation I had a number of years ago with one of our larger customers, and he was getting really frustrated. The guy was getting real frustrated, "Hey Steve, why do you need to send a technician to our site? Why don't you just log in and do that?" I said, "Hey, that's great. That's absolutely what we wanted to do. That's music to my ears. Let's do that. I'll get our IT people to talk to your IT people, and we'll connect that." Safe to say it died a death immediately when our IT people, "Well, we need to connect to this." No way. You're not getting anywhere near it. So I think that there's a lot of progress need to be made around infrastructure, and I think there's a lot of thought goes into just how these systems interact safely and try and offset some of the concerns, absolutely the right things to be concerned about in terms of cybersecurity. But I definitely see that as being perhaps a limitation today and need some certainly brighter people than me to answer some of those questions.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. That's a really good point. Okay. So you mentioned 12 years as a leader in service. What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned in that time?

Steve Goulbourne: I say this somewhat lighthearted, but service is hard. I think that I referenced I was in sales, and the reason I moved to sales was I was a mechanical engineer by trade. I worked as a service technician, and I saw the salespeople and I thought, they just drive around in a nice car, they take people out for lunch and pick up orders and they get paid more than us. And so that's really where I want to go. And so the reality was it's totally different. So that I was a national sales manager as well, and I saw both sides working in sales as a salesperson and then also the management side. And it's difficult and it's challenging, but actually I think it's not even close to service. There are so many moving parts to a service business. If you consider supply chain, the people involved, the customers involved, there's so many things there.

So service is hard. I think that was probably the biggest thing. Without even touching on service is intangible, if you've got a product, I can sell you that product. I can loan you the product, you can work with the products, it'll do all the things that I told you to told you it would do through the features and benefits. Service is intangible. And so I think that adds a layer of complexity and makes it more difficult. But I think probably the biggest learning is people. People is at the core of what we do with service. It's not just the hard skills, the technical piece that we touched on, it's the soft skills both from the technicians on site, but equally the salespeople, the back office people in most cases, customers are in need of help and support. They're frustrated or agitated or feeling as though in some way or another the organizations let them down and they need our service.

And so people are absolutely the core of what we do. And it was actually one of your articles that I read where you were talking about total experience, and it resonated really strongly. We've, for the last three or four years, really focused on customer experience, the voice of the customer and net promoter schools. But over the last few years, and again, I think the pandemic showed us with the great resignation and the focus on recruitment and retention, we need to look at everything and not just necessarily focus on the voice of the customer. Hugely important and has been hugely beneficial. But the TX piece I think that you spoke about is there. And so, yeah, service is hard. People are at the core of what we do, and that's really where I think a lot of our focus needs to go now is on that total experience. So yeah, I've learned a lot. Thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm glad I made the move into service from sales, didn't think I would. Despite being an engineer, despite having worked there, [inaudible 00:46:48].

Sarah Nicastro: I think it's a good point that it's hard, but what that makes me want to ask is what makes you stick around then?

Steve Goulbourne: I think it's the fact that it is hard, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Steve Goulbourne: And it's never boring. In any level of service, every day canon often is different, and I think there's still lots of challenges and lots of things to address, lots of ways that we can improve how we work, why we work, the work that we do, both for our customers and importantly for our own people. So yeah, I think there's that. That side of me kind of thinks I like the fact that it's hard, and I like the challenge of service. Would I be comfortable and satisfied in a job where it's pretty, not that many are, but where, you don't feel as though there's going to be a challenge today, literally any given day, at any time of the day, a curve ball can come your way, be it internally, external, a new entrance of a competitor, a new product, whatever it may be. So it keeps you thinking. And so yeah, I think the fact that it's hard is the piece that keeps me engaged and keeps me motivated.

Sarah Nicastro: And you have an opportunity to help people every day internally and externally, right?

Steve Goulbourne: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That's great. Well, Steve, I really appreciate all of your insights and you coming and having such a great conversation with me. So thank you very, very much.

Steve Goulbourne: No problem. I'm sure there was more we could have spoken about as well. But yeah, hey, they're really important topics and hey, I always enjoy listening and watching the podcast and learning. I think it's always, we said it's hard and it's nice to see you get so many great leaders on here and you can learn so many things. So yeah, enjoyed it. Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Thank you, and always happy to have you back for part two.

Steve Goulbourne: Look forward to it.

Sarah Nicastro: All right. You can learn more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for the Future of Field Service Insiders so that you get the latest content delivered to your inbox every other week. You can also take a look at the schedule for the 2023 Future of Field Service Live tour. We have events coming up in Birmingham, May 17th, Paris, May 24th, Minneapolis, June 15th, and Dusseldorf, June 21st, Stockholm, September 7th. So if you're in any of those areas, we would love to have you join us. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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