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November 1, 2023 | 9 Mins Read

Field Service Europe 2023 Recap

November 1, 2023 | 9 Mins Read

Field Service Europe 2023 Recap

Sarah shares some of the biggest themes and interesting discussions that took place last week at Field Service Europe in Amsterdam.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. I'm here in rainy, but beautiful, Amsterdam, where Field Service Europe just wrapped for 2023. I thought I would give you all a bit of a summary of the themes, and topics, and discussions that came up here at the event over the last two days.

I would be remiss not to start with my favorite session, which happened to be the one that I had the pleasure of moderating with Electrolux. I was joined by Reinier Welschen, who is best title ever, Head of Peace of Mind for Electrolux Group, as well as Charlotte Lewyllie, who is the Business Transformation Lead, and Jelle Coppens, who is Business Process Expert for Field Operations. These three folks from Electrolux have been intimately involved in the company's journey of service transformation. Electrolux is a company with a deep rich history, more than 100 years. A couple of years ago overall shifted to a more customer-centric strategy, and recognized that service obviously plays a critical role in its competitive differentiation and customer experience.

But at the time, was working on a homegrown service management system that dated as far back as the mid-'80s. They knew it was time to not only modernize the technology, but invest in a platform that would allow them to really introduce more intelligence, automation, and efficiency into their service operations, and also set the stage for a lot of the things they would like to be able to do in the future. It is a global service transformation project that Electrolux has selected IFS for, that is in its earlier stages. It's been underway for a while, but this team from the Benelux has been pivotal to the beginnings of the project.

The team joined, and talked not only about the catalyst for the change, and how the technological upgrade will help them with their service differentiation, they also shared a lot of the specifics around selection criteria, change management, lessons learned. I think we talked about challenges, as well as pleasant surprises, and it was a great session. Those three folks from the Electrolux team are folks that I haven't had the opportunity to interview before. Some of you may remember that Kristoffer Brun, from the Stockholm region, has been on the podcast before and has spoken at some of our events.

It was my first time having the opportunity to speak on stage with Rei, Charlotte, and Jelle, and it was great. They were all wonderful, and I think the crowd here really enjoyed the session, because it was just a very realistic view of what it takes to truly set a strong foundation for service innovation. That was great, but there has been a number of wonderful sessions over the last two days. There was a panel discussion on Tuesday about continuous innovation in service, and one of the things that stood out to me from that conversation is a gentleman, Matthew Skipworth, from Terex said, "By 2030, I don't believe we will have a skilled workforce in our industry."

Quite a bold statement. I'm actually hoping that I can get in touch with Matthew, and he'll agree to come on the podcast and have a conversation about that. But what he was saying is that by 2030, what he anticipates is, I think the way he put it was two feet and a heartbeat can do the work that needs to be done on site. Really, essentially, the source, or the core of value in service for the customer, he believes will shift. It was interesting to hear that statement, and also hear how the other panelists felt about some of the changes that are taking place in more remote work, more digital service offerings, self-service, all sorts of things that are changing what the traditional means of service delivery had looked like.

There was a Women in Service panel yesterday, with Chiara Maiello of Thermo Fisher, Anna Bonerandi from Donaldson, and Maria Jose Aguado from Glory Global. Those three women, along with Maureen, talked about the fact that most organizations are still really struggling to get women into service, particularly in frontline service technician roles. They each shared a bit about their own journeys, talked about how their companies are looking at that challenge, and making changes in terms of how job descriptions are written, and what mentorships look like. It was an interesting conversation. I think it was Maria that said how often she's asked, when she's traveling, who's taking care of her children, which if you listen to this podcast, or read any of my content, is a sentiment that I can fully empathize with.

They also spoke about how critically important, in each of their own careers, male mentors and advocates have been, and how important it is to make sure that we aren't being anti-men, which isn't the objective here. What we're talking about is the fact that women are just one form of diversity that is still significantly lacking in the service sector, and getting creative about how we can change that. It was a really good conversation.

There was a conversation, later in the day, talking about the evolution of the field workforce. Tying into Matthew's statement, earlier in the day, about what he believes will happen by 2030, but talking about how organizations are looking at their frontline workforce. What's changing, how they're upskilling, or what different skills they're looking for, et cetera.

That panel conversation had Didier De Vos from Glory Global, Christophe Hiette from Cytiva, Elena Lubrano from Tetra Pak, and was moderated by Alvaro Pombo from Pronto Forms. Some of the things that came up in that discussion, one of the things that I've talked a bit about before, and I think we'll continue to see, is the idea of segmenting work differently, so that you can allocate different strengths and skillsets to different roles that need to be done in the field.

Different organizations share different examples of how they're doing that. Some, I think they had a junior technician, a regular technician, a senior technician, others is done by product line or area of specialty. But the idea being that you have different ways to segment the work, where you can align strengths to the more technical jobs, you can align strengths to the more relationship building or customer-centric aspects of the job, et cetera.

Another important point in that conversation was the importance of career progression, and giving people a clear picture when they come into an organization of what their opportunity is within the business, and how they can progress through different training, acquiring different skillsets, and ultimately progressing through different roles. One of the things that I liked during this panel is actually something Alvaro said, that I believe he said his father used to always say to him, which is, "Thinking doesn't cost a lot of money."

That struck me, because I think, in service, a lot of our lot of what holds us back from the progress we could be making is that we don't want to think differently. We can make a lot of excuses for why things can't change. I think a lot more would happen if we just took that advice, "Thinking doesn't cost a thing," and did more creative thinking, more brainstorming about what is possible, instead of always tying ourselves to what we think is not possible.

There was a keynote presentation this morning, Wednesday morning, from Rick Lash, who was on the Future of Field Service podcast, along with Christine Miners. They co-authored the book Once Upon a Leader. If you haven't listened to that episode, and would like to do so, it's great. It's episode 226. But Rick gave a keynote presentation on the importance of your leadership narrative, and it was such a great session. I had so many people coming up to me after, just talking about how great it was to hear that presentation at an event like this.

He was very much speaking about how when we're young, we start to form our story; who we are, why we are who we are, what matters to us, what our purpose is. Over time, our environment can erode that, and often distracts us from our story, or encourages us to focus more on what our company's story is, or what our teams, or customers, or whoever’s stories are, and not necessarily staying true to ourselves. And how, as leaders, continuing to understand your story, live your story, allows you to connect with your teams. It allows you to stay motivated, stay energized to do the work, and really just how impactful it can be. It was a great message, and I think one that resonated with everyone in the room.

There was a panel discussion, after, on the circular economy. That was with Ralf Bootz from Philips, Zoltan Gal from ABB, Costas Dintsios from Frigoglass, Marcel van Beek from Gomocha, and Markus Hucko from Leadec. That was a conversation all about how things like refurbishment, recycling, and reuse come into play when we talk about the intersection between service, and how we can help the environment. Things like how insights can be fed back into product development to extend product life cycles, make assets more serviceable, and then how that intersects with the topic of servitization.

Because obviously, as we've discussed on this podcast before, if a company is manufacturing a product for acquisition price, and then the use of spare parts, et cetera, it's a far different business model than if a company is manufacturing a product for maximum lifecycle and cost of service, so how that plays a big role.

Also, how companies are helping their customers with their sustainability initiatives, looking at things like helping them lower energy costs, things like that. I think it was Costas that said, "We have to remember that this conversation is part of culture, and it can sometimes be at odds with things that are only focused on reducing costs. We have to be willing to look at the big picture, and think about value through those different lenses." It was a really interesting conversation.

Then there was conversation this afternoon with Andrea Pelizzaro of Alfa Laval, Valeria Zimenkova from Xylem, Tjerk Smits from Boston Scientific, moderated by Jan van Veen with moreMomentum, talking all about data, and really focused on the monetization of data, and using that as a service revenue stream, as a value proposition. But where the conversation went is that while that is certainly an objective for most organizations. It's really important to master the use of data internally for the purposes of efficiency, and productivity, and knowledge transfer, and business decisions, before you look at how to put it to work in creating a new customer value proposition.

It was interesting to hear where each of those companies are at on that journey. Andrea spoke about a lot of the work that Alfa Laval is doing to coach its sales teams on selling more value-based service offerings, and really working toward that end of creating new revenue streams through these digital connected products, and the data and insights that can be gathered from them.

Very well-rounded collection of topics here this week. Great conversations. It was wonderful to see some friendly faces, and meet some new folks as well. Pleasure to be here, and I believe this is my last trip to Europe for the year. We'll look forward to coming back next year. But in the meantime, stay tuned. I hope to reach out to some of the folks that spoke here this week, and ask them to come be guests, and talk to you all on the podcast directly.

In the meantime, you can, of course, find content on very similar topics by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. While you're there, be sure to sign up for the Future of Field Service Insider, so you can get the latest content delivered to your inbox every other week. 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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Reimagining Change Management for Today’s Service Needs

October 25, 2023 | 28 Mins Read

Reimagining Change Management for Today’s Service Needs

Sarah talks with Sara Smith, Director of Global Service Change Enablement at Waters Corporation, about her experience transitioning into a career as a woman service engineer and about what she’s learned in her current role leading global service change enablement for her company.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be having a conversation about re-imagining change management for today's service needs. Change management has been one of the most discussed topics for the entire 15, 16 years I've been in this space, and I'm sure longer than that. But as our industry evolves, the way we need to look at change management and the topic and practices changes as well. So we're going to talk about that today. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast Sara Smith, who is Director of Global Service Change Enablement at Waters Corporation. Sara, welcome to the podcast.

Sara Smith: Thanks for having me. It's great.

Sarah Nicastro: Sara and Sarah.

Sara Smith: I know, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Doesn't get any better than that, one with an H one without.

Sara Smith: The dynamic duo.

Sarah Nicastro: A little bit of variety. Yeah. Okay. All right, so before we get into today's discussion, tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your role and what Waters does.

Sara Smith: Yeah, so thank you so much. Yeah. So like you said, my name is Sara Smith and I am the Director of Global Service Change Enablement with Waters Corporation. I've been with Waters for 12 years now, and for those of you who don't know what Waters does, we are actually the world's leading specialty measurement company, but you most often hear our name in the world of liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. So our CEO likes to give the example of by the time you have woken up and had your cup of coffee and maybe taken an aspirin, you've already kind of interacted with our products and our instruments before you've even left the door. So what we do is we deliver practical and sustainable scientific innovation and solutions in the healthcare industry, environmental management, food safety, even your water quality, testing of water and making sure things are safe for you to eat, drink, all the chemical manufacturing. We're kind of spread across multiple industries.

So specific to my role, I lead the change for the global service organization with Waters Corporation and that comprises of about a third of Waters' annual 3 billion revenue. So it's quite the undertaking. It's a large service organization to support and in that role I lead soup to nuts change enablement, start to finish. So strategy, planning to execution, and then the support of the leadership in the local areas to make sure that our changes from large technical implementations to process changes or kind of anything in between to ensure that we are seeing that return on investment as quickly as possible.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, good. All right, so we're going to get into the change management, change enablement topics. But before we do that, I want to talk just a little bit about how you ended up in field service and what your journey has been. So can you tell everyone a little bit about that?

Sara Smith: Absolutely. It's been quite the journey for sure and one that I have been very, very thankful and grateful for throughout my career. So I kind of think of it as in three different pivots. So the first experiences I went to school for forensic toxicology. At that time, the shows like CSI and stuff were very popular and I thought, wow, I want to be that cool girl in the lab that's doing all the fun, exciting stuff. So I went to school, I went to work for Quest Diagnostics as a forensic tech right out of the gate doing drug of abuse testing, except when I got into the actual work of being a forensic toxicologist, I noticed that it wasn't really as exciting as TV made it out to be, right?

So for me, my favorite part of the day was when the instrument would break and I got to try to fix it before the engineer would get there. So for me that was a lot more satisfying and gratifying way to spend my time as I was a problem solver. I wanted instead of doing the same thing every day, which is great for some people, they love going into work knowing what they're going to do. For me, I like to be challenged. I like to find new challenges to take on.

Sarah Nicastro: Most people are hoping the instrument doesn't break. You were sitting there like, when's it going to break, when's it going to break?

Sara Smith: I really was, I really was because it was so fulfilling for me to try to fix it and then before the engineer I could call them and say, "Nope, you don't have to come. I got it." Or he would just send me the part. Eventually, once I kind of got that level of comfortability with the instrument, he would just end up sending me the part. So it was kind of very mutually beneficial where our samples, we didn't have the decreased downtime waiting for the engineer to get there and he didn't have to show up. So it was great. And then once I realized I could do that job full time, I absolutely pursued it. I had heard Waters name through many different organizations that I have and peers that I talked to and joined Waters as a field service engineer working on our mass spectrometry line mostly.

So I did that for five years. Then I was promoted to being the service manager for the southeast, which covered Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, all the way up into Eastern Tennessee and North Carolina. So I did that for another five years. So I've got about a decade worth of experience in field service either as an engineer myself or as a service manager for the territory. And then finally I moved into the role I'm in now about two years ago, and that's where I've been working on service transformations and I've learned so much and been able to apply that 10 years of experience into what I'm doing now. So it's been a great journey for me personally.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's really cool. And I think it's always really interesting to talk to people about how did you get into field service. Because to your point, your storyline makes sense. You're seeing CSI and you're thinking, oh, that would be a cool job, and then you end up going down a path, now maybe finding out it's not as cool, but you don't necessarily have kids saying like, "Oh, I want to go into field service." And I think there's a lot of reasons for that. And so I think it's always interesting to hear people's journeys of how they did get there, because I also think as an industry or group of industries that need to reshape the way we attract people to these careers, we need to be thinking about what ultimately gets people that awareness so that we can be more proactive in creating that. But I think it's a really cool story. What I'm curious about, I guess is being a woman field engineer, I'm sure you were in the minority and what was that like? What did you like about it? But also what were some of the challenging pieces?

Sara Smith: Yeah, the challenging pieces were honestly not just field service, it's STEM also. So these are even things that still to this day some of my peers still struggle with, but specifically into field service. I think there's a lot of areas that some of our colleagues don't realize where women struggle. There are the kind of more obvious things, but there are these examples where you're just like, "Really? That happened to you like, oh my gosh." Throughout my career journey, I've had people ask me for a lock of hair. I have had people photograph me because they thought it was funny that I was pregnant while being in the field.

So these kinds of things that you know while they don't happen every day, they do happen. And on a more regular daily basis, some of the struggles that we face is, I feel like respect to your proficiency in the role is never assumed it has to be earned. When you walk through the door as a woman to a new customer that you may have never met or seen before, there may be that unconscious bias of, well, she's not going to be able to do what this other guy can. And that's even something that can be seen in both men and women. It's just men that maybe have this unconscious bias, other women may have this feeling about another female engineer too. So I'm not trying to call anybody out, but it is something I've even done.

If I take my car to go get its oil changed and there's a female tech changing my oil, I'm like, oh, that's unusual. You don't see that every day. So it's still something I'm even trying to be more conscious of. Let's maybe make this more normal. So that's one of the big ones is maybe a male going into a new site, they see them walk through the door and "Oh, we're saved. Our engineer's here, he's going to fix it." Whereas maybe I walk through the door and also I'm challenged by height as well. I'm very petite, so not only am I a female, I am a short female, which makes it even less likely because our instruments are quite large, that they have that confidence in me right out of the gate. But that kind of flips to the positives. So when you get that fixed in field service and you are out there alone maybe, and you are... You versus the machine.

And you can finally get that win and you can get that fixed fix and the satisfaction you receive from turning the doubters into believers into your abilities, that was one of the highlights and the positives about me being in field service, was I love that feeling of fixing things. I've always had that natural fix it inclination. It's another reason I got into change management. I stopped fixing instruments and wanted to fix broken processes and support people. We never lose that fix it mentality, but that satisfaction that you receive from showing people what you can do and turning and then they request you the next time, that's something that's unmatched in my opinion.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, no, I can see how you mentioned even when you were at Quest, enjoying working on the equipment yourself, there's the satisfaction of the win or the fix, but then also double that by the people that doubted you could get the job done and kind of saying like, okay. But I do think it's important to go back to I think those sort of conscious or unconscious biases that people carry that's important for us to be reflecting upon are the workplace, so within organizations accepting and inclusive, those are obviously important things. But some of the other things that you mentioned with the lock of hair and someone taking pictures of you, I mean, that's really more harassment in actuality. And I think these are things that it's very important for organizations to understand that women still face and come across that we need to be aware of and dealing with because it's not okay.

And knowing that there's already going to be complexities to navigate regardless of anything like that, it just makes it that much harder. I did a podcast recently with a gentleman from Socomec, Franklin Maxson, and we talked a lot about safety, and part of the conversation we had is this idea of technicians feeling this sense of autonomy and whatever the reason is that they might not feel safe, whether that is physically, psychologically, et cetera, making them feel empowered to speak up and remove themselves from those situations.

And we talked about that that's something that can be easy for companies to say and harder for them to do because if the result of that is you are frustrating an important customer by saying, "I don't appreciate you taking a picture of me," it's a harder thing to navigate than a lot of people want to acknowledge upfront. So I think it's important to share those things and to have those conversations because those situations will come up and how a company makes its employees feel empowered to handle those situations goes a long way in how we make women or anyone feel more supported in those roles. So thank you for speaking to that.

Sara Smith: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is uncomfortable, right? It's an uncomfortable topic to talk about and it's probably uncomfortable to listen to as well and realize that this happens. But you're right, I do think it is important to share those examples because many people don't often realize that that does happen. So we got to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

Sarah Nicastro: Exactly, yeah. Now other than making ourselves comfortable, being uncomfortable, having the conversations, is there anything else you would point to on what you think it will take to get more women into service technician roles and into this space?

Sara Smith: Absolutely. I have heard this question asked many, many times through podcasts, articles, things like that. And I kind of wanted to call out a gap I often see in those answers. A lot of the answers that I've seen personally talk about policy changes and maybe some things that people like myself or people listening to this podcast don't have the ability to control within their organization. I don't get the CEO big bucks, so I don't get to make the decisions on which policies we enact, and that's fine. There's plenty that we can do in our level locally around us to make that positive influence. So I don't think we need to sit around and wait for organizations to make these types of changes. We need to start and look within ourselves first.

And now, I can say that Waters does an excellent job with this, but being an expert in change, I'm kind of one of the first to realize and amplify the power of social influence. That's a big one. And so I kind of feel like there's three outlets that we can do this effectively. So like I said, influencing our company culture, which yes, we can influence our company culture even if we're not driving those policies, interacting with our peers and raising that awareness, kind of like what you talked about. And then three within our local community as well. So within the company culture piece of it, I tell people at Waters all the time, you have the power to make the culture that you want within your team.

Just because we are driving these certain initiatives like yes, absolutely, we need to make sure that we get our business goals accomplished, but take a moment to create that environment that you want to see be the change that you want to see, have some more team building activities. Nobody's going to come and say you have to do this, and you have to make a positive culture locally. That ownership lies within us, and we kind of determine that environment. So being more aware of that and understanding that we have that control outside of maybe policy that's big, that's big for me, and that influenced a lot of what I do. The second piece of it with our peers. So I had an example of this that worked really, really well. I was actually invited to speak to... It was about a hundred sales and service managers at this meeting that we had about those exact experiences.

And after the fact I had many of my male service manager colleagues come up after me and say, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea that you had gone through anything like that." They're like, "You're so well put together. You've been able to grow your career. We had no clue that you were going through these things while you were a service engineer." So what they did is they actually took that back to their teams and proactively asked their teams, again, men and women, "What is your day like? What's happening in your world that I need to be aware of?" And they followed back up with me a few weeks later, and they actually found some ways that they could help their female employees and with struggles that they didn't even know were happening.

Because to your point earlier, a lot of people don't feel comfortable speaking up in those situations because they're afraid of any number of retaliation or I don't want to lose the big customer and the big client. I don't want to be the one that's responsible for that because I spoke out about a situation. So proactive dialogue, I think from a leadership perspective goes a long way because you're going to find a lot more information that way from your teams. And then finally, within our communities, I'm a big proponent of getting in front of our younger generations and normalizing women in service, women in field service roles.

Waters has this excellent STEM kit that takes purple Kool-Aid and separates it out to red and blue using one of our column cartridges. And I am actually going to have the opportunity to do that in front of my daughter's third grade class soon. So I'm super excited about that, but I'm also really excited to, again, it's normalized that I'm a woman going up and performing this experiment in front of the younger generations, so that way it's not weird when they grow up and see a woman in this type of industry. So kind of doing what I can on a local level within my community to raise awareness to these things, to be the change that I want to see within my community and kind of put myself out there and having those equitable opportunities for women as well is super important early in age as well as during their career.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, absolutely. Very good advice. Okay, so let's get into the change part of the conversation. So the first thing I want to talk about, you mentioned that you had about five years as a technician, about five years as a service manager before taking on this change enablement role. And the other thing to mention though is that historically Waters worked with consultants on managing change. So yours is the first full-time role dedicated to this for service. Okay, so what I'd like to talk about is a little bit about that decision and maybe some of the pros and potentially cons of handling change enablement in-house versus working with consultant.

Sara Smith:

Absolutely. So I took over this role during a deployment, and we had kind of set everything up with a consultant. So as they were rolling off, they made the decision to stand up this role long-term within the service organization at Waters. So my story is somewhat unique in the sense that I grew up in field service essentially throughout my career. I have that deep industry expertise, not only from the industry but for the company itself because I've been here for over a decade. And what that does is help create sustainment for future success. So kind of the consultants set us up and that way I can reinforce the changes long past their exit.

And consultants are fantastic. They did a great job of engaging for bigger program launches, supplementing support, generating ideas that maybe we wouldn't have thought of internally, but there is something very powerful in standing up a permanent change infrastructure that shows employees, we care about your experience, we care about your success. We are making this a long-term investment in you. And that really helps build the change resiliency within an organization when you show that you have dedication to that. But even an internal change management team needs to make sure they're keeping their finger on the pulse external to their organization, or you can start going down a path that is maybe not ideal to align with industry best practices or standards or things like that.

So my advice is I feel like there's not do one or the other, but maybe there is a best practice to find a balance between the two. How can you start off the program, get the outside idea... Especially with, like I said, larger initiatives, whether it's a tech rollout or a complete reorg of the organization, having that external expertise is very, very valuable. But standing it up internally, long-term shows that commitment to success.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. And I think the other big change is that we're at a point in service where I've been talking about this quite a bit as thinking about change from the lens of change leadership, not change management, because change management I always think of as historically it's been very project focused, but today it is more people focused because the change is ongoing, right?

Sara Smith: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, it comes in waves. Yes, it still comes in the form of projects, but it's also like we're coming from a world of where I think that companies didn't have something like this internally because they had relatively long stable periods. And then, okay, we're going to change this thing. Let's bring someone in to help us through that. And now we're back to another long stable period. That's just not the landscape that we're in. So I think this idea of having a dedicated function is also aligned with just our reality in service of being more in a transformative innovative phase and having something always changing, right?

Sara Smith: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: And that sort of thing, but I like your point too about what it represents to the teams, but then also not losing sight of the value of some of that external expertise, external perspective. So that makes sense. Okay, so you mentioned that you have a certification in and use a lot of the ADKAR methodology. So in your experience, what aspects of that work well? Because then I want to go on and talk a little bit about what gaps you see.

Sara Smith: Sure. So for those who don't know ADKAR, I can give a brief explanation. ADKAR stands for the five elements that every individual needs to go through during times of change in order to reach that future state. Prosci, it believes that organizations don't change people change people are the ones bringing the organization along on this journey. And on this journey, you have to move through these five steps in order. That's very important. So always start with why. So the awareness piece, that's the first one in the ADKAR message, making sure people know why we are asking them to change, right? Have you ever been sent to a training class and you have no idea why you're there? I bet you didn't retain much from that training class. We need to understand why are we here and what's the goal. So that then leads to our next piece, which is the desire piece. And this one's a little bit more challenging because this is where our human nature can really come into play.

And at the end of the day, we are free will humans, and we cannot control people in that way. We have to understand that the desire piece of it I have chosen to adopt to this change is an individual's choice. We can influence, we can try to bring them along as much as we can, but at the end of the day, it is up to that individual to make sure that they have that desire. Then we get to knowledge. So this is your training, making sure people have the information they need to be successful in this change. And then I like that Prosci has separated knowledge from ability. So ability is the next piece. Just because you have the knowledge doesn't mean you have the ability to put it into practice. And these can be physical barriers, mental barriers, but it's up to the leadership teams locally to really foster that ability piece and making sure the right environment is there for their teams to succeed.

And then finally, the reinforcement is the last ADKAR element, and I feel like this is one that kind of drops sometimes, especially without that long-term change culture within an organization. Because think about it like a diet or if you're trying to stop smoking, if we aren't continuously reinforcing that behavior, we're going to fall right back into eating an entire sleeve of Oreos in one sitting or something like that. We need to reinforce that positive behavior and making sure that it sticks long term. And I have been able to scale this approach and apply it really well on a large scale here at Waters through our Change Champions network. So since ADKAR is a more individualistic approach, what we did... It kind of kicked off with our deployment and we've kept it going for a couple years now based on the positive feedback that we've seen.

It's comprised of about 230 service employees, so about 10% of our service population across 34 countries. So this is a global scalable initiative that we have, and it brings that peer-to-peer approach with focused personas. So engineers are talking to engineers, managers are talking to managers. Our expert center tech support staff are talking to other tech support staffs and creating that community around people locally because typically within organizations support, the support teams are small. So when we were dealing with thousands of employees to support with such a massive change, having those localized champions in supporting them to be that local expert has been super, super helpful. So we do do that. We have quarterly surveys and we get about a 95% approval rating, which is phenomenal in my opinion, of our champions. So they're doing a fantastic job and we've really seen a lot of success with the Prosci ADKAR model, for sure.

Sarah Nicastro: So then what gaps, if any, are there? The methodology works, but where would you say that following a methodology like ADKAR doesn't necessarily meet all of the needs?

Sara Smith: Absolutely. There shouldn't be one approach that fits everything, in my opinion. And I have found a lot of success. Like I said, when I'm kind of working down within the organization, when I am speaking to our senior leaders or our executives, that's when I feel ADKAR's not the best approach. Those executives, they don't need to know the what's in it for me, they need to rise to that higher level. So I use, I'm sure people are more familiar with Kotter's eight steps, that's definitely something I use with more senior leadership and executives. And for people who don't know what those are, I can list them very briefly.

So for one, it creates urgency. Two, forming a powerful coalition. Three, creating a vision for change. That's a big one when we're talking about executives having that vision, having that goal in mind for the organization of what are we driving to is super important. Communicating that vision, communication, I cannot emphasize enough how important communication is in times of change. Removing obstacles, creating short-term wins and I always like to say celebrating those short-term wins as well. Building on the change is step seven. And then eight is anchoring the changes in the corporate culture, which again, like we talked about earlier, when we are working with those senior leaders and executives who have more pool over the corporate culture of an organization, if you embed that change in that culture, again, it's more likely to succeed long-term.

So there's that. And also, I like to talk about how change affects people emotionally. I feel like it's one of those topics that can be a little stigmatized, and I would love to de-stigmatize that. So I use the Kubler Ross change curve when I'm talking about the emotions that a person may go through. Again, man or woman, we all have feelings about changes. The comfort zone is a very powerful thing, and when you take someone out of it, they're going to have some thoughts and feelings about it. So there's some great models online of the Kubler Ross change curve, kind of goes through how a person goes through shock, denial, frustration, maybe even depression before they kind of experiment, decide and integrate as they're coming out of that downward slope. Those are the two that I kind of use to supplement the ADKAR methodology.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, no, I love that. We had a woman on the podcast a number of months ago, and she actually spoke at our event in Minneapolis, Elizabeth Moran, and she talks a little bit about the neuroscience behind change. And it is a very, I guess simple point, but I think one that sometimes we forget and ties to the emotional reaction, which is we need to remember that resistance to change is human nature. So it isn't someone being difficult. It isn't indicative that the change will fail or it isn't a good idea. It's simply just built into someone's brain. And so I think that is important to remember and acknowledge that you have to work through and that it's normal and all of that, if that makes sense.

Another thing I think is interesting, we talked a little bit about how you are in a global role, but you're working a lot with regions to sort of execute these initiatives. And so what we talked about is that you have to rely on leading by influence versus having direct control because these aren't direct reports that you can say, Hey, I need you to do X, Y, and Z. You have to get people invested. How do you think the focus on influence versus control shapes your approach?

Sara Smith: Yeah, absolutely. I think that goes back to what you were talking about with change leadership. So our local leaders are absolutely paramount to ensuring that any change that we try to implement, large or small is successful. And actually, so there's been some research, 70% of employees want to hear personal impact messages about change directly from their immediate supervisor. They don't want to hear it from me as the change director. They don't even want to hear it from the executives because the executives can't get down to the what's in it for me, how is this going to impact me personally. So like I said, communication and setting up those leaders to be able to have those talking points, and they have the support to feel like they can go to their teams with that type of information. So what we do is we try to enable our leaders before we bring it to the rest of the organization.

Those local leaders are absolutely necessary to making sure our changes is successful. I kind of think of it as change for change. So I use some of the same change management principles associated with awareness and desire building to create advocates in those local leaders, ensure we have alignment because that's another big key thing, make sure we're all talking about the same thing and get their buy-in before we bring it to the rest of the organization. As a change leader, I should be providing framework for them to go execute. So that's really the kind of overarching themes is support your leaders as much as possible, because the influence versus control doesn't matter as much if we have those advocates built already.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, no, I think that's a good point, and I think it's a piece that sometimes can be overlooked, the importance of having frontline managers who are not only bought in but capable. So going back to the knowledge and the ability piece like, do they themselves have the ability to be those change leaders? That's a whole different conversation in terms of enablement, but often you see companies focus on change management from a very top down approach, but not necessarily from the perspective of, I like what you said first, tackling the managers, building that understanding and awareness and building those advocates and then taking it from there. So I think that's very wise. I'm curious, how do you navigate change saturation or change fatigue? Because obviously we talked about the fact that we're living in a very dynamic world, to put it kindly, and obviously from the lens of a global company and all of its employees, I think people can get to a point where they're just like, I can't handle anything else tapped. So how do you-

Sara Smith: Yeah, they've tapped out.

Sarah Nicastro: ... worked through that? Yeah.

Sara Smith: Yeah. Change is here to stay. Like you said, we're not going to slow the pace anytime soon. You can't open up your computer these days without hearing about AI in some sort of way, shape, and form. The industry is changing at a pace that we've never seen before and it's not going to slow. So going back to the concept of building that resiliency within an organization and empowering leaders to have that accountability, empowering them to have that ability and knowledge to better best support their teams. We are all human. We all experience this change fatigue. Even me and I deal with change on a daily basis, and sometimes I'm... Why can't things just stay the same even for a little bit? But that's okay, right? So normalizing those thoughts and those feelings, again is extremely important to managing the change fatigue. One other thing that I have seen be very, very helpful is those quarterly surveys that I send out, there's an option to be contacted.

It's an anonymous survey, but there's an option you can put in your email address if you wish to be contacted about any of the information or troubles that you're having. And I block out a day and I literally respond to every single one of them that comes in. Most of the time they entered their email address because they didn't realize it was an optional field versus a required field. But what they say after that tells me that we're on the right track because what they say is, "Oh my gosh, there's an actual human being reading my comments and responding, reaching out to me about my struggle or what I'm going through." That alone has created such a positive influence. Just the fact that they have an avenue, they know somebody's listening and somebody cares. So again, that also goes back to that standing up the change management or change enablement internally because you have the bandwidth to do those kinds of things. It speaks volumes to employees to have their voice heard and actually have someone follow up with them as well. It's huge.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. I think the only other thing I want to reiterate that you mentioned earlier that can really help with change fatigue is you mentioned the importance of celebrating the small wins. And I think in an environment where change is pretty constant and there's always going to be a next thing and the next thing, making sure that one, you're celebrating, period, but two, you aren't waiting until every huge seismic shift to do so, but you're celebrating the effort. You're celebrating even the failures, and you're making people feel that you appreciate the effort they're putting into adapting, not necessarily accomplishing just the big goal. I think that is so, so important and also something that people under utilize for sure.

Sara Smith: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, so last question is, we talked about normal human response, right? That there's phases people go through, resistance is normal, et cetera. Are there anything you would point out that kind of goes a step beyond that, that are more persistent mindsets or beliefs that really can kind of serve as a big roadblock for positive forward motion?

Sara Smith: Absolutely. I'm sure you've heard of the fixed versus growth mindset, and that is one I always come back to where I'm thinking about this kind of topic. So it can be the silent protest or it can be someone that is overtly speaking up in meetings that they just don't want to do. This resistance can come in many ways, shapes and forms, and to your point earlier, it is inevitable. It is human nature. I can speak from experience that I made the mistake, and early on in this role that I thought some of the changes that we were putting out were they were going to be great for everybody and everybody was just going to get on board with it. I did not expect the level of resistance that I received, and that helped me, again, learn for future initiatives. So did I need to do a better job explaining the why?

Every kind of setback or every piece of feedback that I get that is not positive is an opportunity for us to learn and adjust our approach a little bit more. So when you think about those different kinds of mindsets, the fixed mindset specifically, we have to expect it. We have to plan for it, not only at a 30,000-foot view, and I tell the leaders here at Waters all the time, "I can only do so much. I'm relying on you to bring us home the rest of the way." We have about a goal of 80%. So if we can reach 80% with a global change initiative, that's what we consider to be a success. We are relying on the local leaders to bring us across the finish line with that rest 20%. So planning for it and mitigating it, understanding we'll never be able to get rid of it.

Because that can create a lot of frustration if we're just like, oh, why is everybody resisting? Or why is this one person resisting? It's going to happen? And maybe it's just because they don't understand the training material, they don't understand the why. They don't understand how this is going to personally impact them. But embedding that growth mindset within the culture versus a fixed mindset and continuously building upon the why, going back to reinforcing those things, that's really one of the biggest things that I still feel persists is kind of that fixed mindset. We've done things this way for so long. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Why are we changing things? So like I said, building that resiliency of change culture, reinforcing the why, just the reinforcement piece in general to whichever ADKAR element people are suffering with, and having those conversations with your team to know where are they actually struggling that can really help us get from that fixed mindset to the growth mindset.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, really good stuff. I like this. All right, this has been great, Sara. Is there any other thoughts or comments that you want to leave off with?

Sara Smith: No, I want to thank you for this opportunity. These are two topics that are extremely important to me and I'm passionate about, so I'm really thankful for the opportunity to share my experience and share what I've learned over the last few years in my career journey. But no, I think this has been fantastic. And the more that we can talk about change management, because like you said, we've heard it that it's necessary, but not a lot of people talk about what that actually means. So I'm really appreciative of the forum here to kind of talk about what I do. So thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Yes, thank you for coming and sharing your perspective. We really appreciate it and hope to have you back sometime in the future.

Sara Smith: Great. Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Yep. 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 INSIDER, which will deliver the latest articles in podcasts to your inbox every other week. 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: Stockholm Highlights

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Live Tour 2023: Stockholm Highlights

Sarah shares a synopsis of the topics discussed at the Future of Field Service Live Tour 2023 stop in Stockholm on October 10^th.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Last week we held the sixth and final Future of Field Service Live Tour event for 2023 in Stockholm. It was a great day, great event, and wonderful way to wrap up the live tour series for this year, and thought it would be worth sharing a bit of what took place with you all. If you haven't listened to any of our event recap podcasts before or haven't had the opportunity to attend a live tour event, the format for the day is we have a series of speakers, typically four or five, six speakers depending on the duration of that day's event, who do interview-based sessions. So similar to what you normally hear on this podcast just in-person. So they're pretty casual in nature. We sit in front of the audience, but they aren't slide based. We're welcoming these people in to share their experiences, insights, expertise with the audience and learn from one another.

We also have workshops that are sprinkled in, usually one in the morning, one in the afternoon, where attendees break out into smaller groups and have some more in-depth conversation related to the topics that have been presented. So this is the second year doing these events. In 2022, we hosted five, this year, this was our sixth. And overall the feedback has been very positive and it's always heartwarming for me if I ask people, how is today for you? I had a gentleman last week that said it was inspiring. And those are the answers I love because we live in the information age, we can get information everywhere. So while the speakers are definitely sharing helpful insights and information, what I love about these days is when these service leaders take a break from their everyday responsibilities and come together as a community, they have the opportunity to leave feeling inspired and reinvigorated to go back and continue innovating in their businesses. So that's an honor for me.

So last week in Stockholm we had our first session was with Caroline Häggström Marklund, who is the Managing Director and Vice President for Customer Services in the Nordics at Vattenfall. So this session was an inside look at Vattenfall customer services prize winning people first strategy. Okay, so Vattenfall customer service has won a couple of different awards and recognitions such as winning the Swedish Union's HBTQI award for Most Inclusive Workplace. That's just one example. So they have won these awards because they have put a lot of effort into really creating this people first culture. This is one of those things that, as Caroline and I discussed, can be a very thrown about term. Everyone knows that they should say there are people first, but it's a question of if they're really doing the work to live that out, and then what impact that can have. So I loved that Caroline made a number of really, really important points, and the entire session was great and hopefully will be released as a podcast.

But I know one of the things that was important for her to convey is that people tend to think that this idea of people first is this soft, fluffy concept. And what she wanted to make sure people understand is that there are real business benefits that come from putting action behind creating a people first culture. So she spoke in specifics about some of the impact that Vattenfall customer service has seen since it started on this journey and how that has related to metrics of results achieved, customer satisfaction, et cetera. She also spoke about some of the challenges. So she was there from the perspective of winning these awards and having made all of this progress, but she was sure to share with folks that it hasn't just been a smooth journey. There are some things that are challenging that you have to overcome if you want to put the effort behind truly becoming people first. So she shared some of those.

She also spoke about some of the most important elements. So she shared some stories about building trust and how that can take time, requires patience, but is very, very important in showing your teams that you are invested in the process. She also talked about the fact that leaders can't do this without being able to be vulnerable and emotional. Being people first requires you to really get to know people as humans, and you can't do that if you're not willing to open up and be yourself. And she also talked about the importance of being humble and shared a story around her willingness and readiness to admit when she doesn't have the answers. And also sharing with her teams that her intentions are good, but she isn't perfect and welcoming them to hold her accountable. So many great points were made, and I think a very important discussion.

Any of you that are here on the podcast often know that I'm a big believer in this approach and what it will continue to mean in terms of retaining and recruiting top talent into the future. The second session we had was a service transformation deep dive with Electrolux. So, I was joined by Kristoffer Brun, who is Services and Repair Transformation Manager, Anna Mezzanotte, who is Service Operations Product Domain Expert, and Peter Sandqvist, who is the Transformation Manager, all from Electrolux. What was really cool about this session is Kristoffer, Anna and Peter are all from different functions of the business and came together to really talk about what has gone into making their service transformation a success. So they're in the midst of a global rollout of IFS and talked about some lessons learned in actually piloting a solution before they regrouped and went through a new selection process and what they learned about the importance of having all stakeholders involved.

They also then talked about the pilot process, change management, lessons learned from, Peter was speaking from the business perspective, some of the things that came up that were maybe a little bit more unexpected or unique that they have kept track of and taken as lessons learned. And Anna then from an IT perspective, so they went into some detail around what does it really take to execute this type of global transformation? What are some of the things that were pleasant surprises? What are some of the things that were unseen, unforeseen challenges? What have they been learning along the way that they then take and put into the plan for the next region, et cetera.

So it was a great session. I think these are the types of sessions people really value because we often speak of these global projects once they're completely executed and we talk about the impact, but people aren't always willing to share the in-between and the deep dive into what it takes along the way to get to that ultimate success. After that, we had our morning workshops and lunch, and then the next session was with Hannele Peltonen, who is the Head of Field Service Transformation at KONE. So Hannele joined really to talk about how KONE is viewing and forging the future of service. So we spoke about a number of different areas of change or of transformation, and how those can be both a challenge and an opportunity. So Hannele spoke about her view on each of those areas and what some of the challenges are, but also what some of the opportunity is that those areas represent for the business going forward.

So again, very big global brand. So a lot of things to take into consideration when you think about this idea of creating global consistency and customer experience and global standards, but also keeping in mind all of the regional differences in approach, culture, et cetera. We talked about obviously technology and the role that plays. We talked about how the role of service technicians has changed and is changing. So a number of different areas that are top of mind for Hannele as she leads KONE into the future of service. The next session was with Henrik Wahl, who is the Business Area Manager for Services at Coromatic. And this session was how Coromatic has taken service from aftermarket afterthought to business growth engine. So Henrik started by saying how much he dislikes the term aftermarket and why that often gives the connotation that it is more of an afterthought.

We talked about Coromatic beginning in 2017, really saw an opportunity for differentiation and growth around service, and Henrik has been leading that journey since that time. So they decided to create service as a dedicated business. And so he spoke about why that decision was made, the impact that it's had, how they have encouraged technicians to not necessarily outrightly sell, but to make suggestions with customers to take more of that consultative trusted advisor role and the impact that that's had. Also, how this journey has evolved, the type of services that they offer their customers. So moving from the traditional service to more of an area of opportunity to make suggestions to a full outsourced service model. So it was interesting to think about how this focus brought about for them areas to introduce different service offerings, and certainly they have succeeded in really growing service for Coromatic. And so we talked about in the future making sure that the different areas of the business are aligned to provide a cohesive customer experience and some of the things that will be coming next.

And last but not least, we had a session with Ann Sørensen, who is the Global Competence Development Manager at Alfa Laval, and we talked about what it takes to build competence and service from the front lines to the leadership levels. So Ann spoke quite a bit about some of the changes we see in the talent landscape and what's important to new talent coming in, in terms of not only the onboarding experience and training, but also career development paths. What opportunities exist for them within the business and how that requires Alfa Laval to take a different approach than it has traditionally. We talked about how she and her global role aligns with local HR and business leadership to create and execute this competent strategy.

We talked about the importance of a company brand and evangelizing the service opportunity, bringing people into service as a potential career. We talked about the importance of competence, not only at the frontline level, which is I think what people often think of, making sure that the frontline workforce is trained and enabled to do the job we need them to do, but also remembering that we need to think about competence from the leadership perspective. So tying back to the first session of the day with Caroline, and for us to be more people first, for us to take a modern leadership approach, we need to keep in mind that leadership also demands training, development, upskilling and competence building along the way. And of course, she spoke about how Alfa Laval is tackling these different areas, what she thinks the future holds in terms of building competence and some of the trends. And it was a great way to wrap up the day.

So five great sessions and some workshops interspersed to talk about these things and to have people weigh in on where they're at in their companies with these topics and also ask questions and have some good dialogue. So it was, like I said, a great way to end the tour series. We don't yet have plans in place for what 2024 will hold, but stay tuned. We'll obviously share those with you all as soon as we know, and hope that if you haven't had the opportunity to join us at one of these events thus far, you will in the near future. They are special days, and I enjoy each and every one. So big thank you to everyone in Stockholm who joined us to speak and share their insights and also those who came to attend and enjoy the day.

As always, you can find more content by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. My hope is in the coming weeks, we will be able to share some of the Stockholm sessions as podcasts so that you can hear the conversations that I've mentioned today in their full detail. The Future of Field Service podcasts is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

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Top 100 Service Visionaries: Awards Recap

October 11, 2023 | 8 Mins Read

Top 100 Service Visionaries: Awards Recap

Sarah shares insight from the awards ceremony for the inaugural Hot Topics’ Top 100 Service Visionaries which took place last week at the iconic Abbey Road Studios in London.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. This week I had the opportunity to visit the iconic Abbey Road Studios in London to help announce the inaugural group of awards for the Service Visionaries 100. The Service Visionaries Top 100 List is an acknowledgement of service leaders globally that was created in partnership with HotTopics and IFS. If you're not familiar with HotTopics, they are a London-based firm who are dedicated to creating a community of C-suite leaders across the globe, and they have created these awards in various categories, including chief digital officer, information security, marketing, things like that. Obviously, IFS understands the incredible role that service leaders play in today's businesses and worked with HotTopics to create this first ever Service Visionaries 100 List to recognize and acknowledge the hard work of some of the world's top service leaders. So it was a wonderful experience.

I had the opportunity to record a panel discussion in the famous Studio Three, the main event took place in Studio One. I had an opportunity to speak on stage about why I think the recognition of service leaders is so incredibly important and what a service visionary means. And one of the funnest parts of the day that I was a little nervous about honestly going into the day is at the end of the evening, we all got together in Studio Two, which is where the Beatles recorded a lot of their art and music over the years to record a group song.

So we had a vocal coach that led us in some practice before we dove in and recorded a song ourselves as a group. We had the sound engineer, Paul, who was hilarious and a lot of fun. And I was nervous because I'm no singer, but it was actually a really cool experience and it was just incredible to be in a place that so many artists have been and created amazing music and just incredible moments. So just to think about what's taken place in that building while we were there was just phenomenally cool.

So that being said, I thought it would be worthwhile to record this episode to talk a little bit about not just how cool the day was, of course, but what the recognition of service leaders means to me and why I was so honored to serve as a judge in selection of the top 100, and also why I think it's so great that HotTopics has created this category and this list.

So first of all, what is a service visionary? I think everyone would define that a bit differently, but to me, I think that a service visionary is such an incredible connection point within the business between customers being leader of the frontline teams that interact with customers on a day-to-day basis. They sort of own the ability to have that incredible customer impact, to build those relationships, to provide that brand experience, to create loyalty, to bring customer sentiment in, et cetera. So they are incredibly important when it comes to the customer intimacy that a business has. Of course, they can't do that piece without their teams and the frontline workforce. And so they're also a critical connection point for all of those employees throughout the ranks into the business and to the customers, and ensuring that those teams are engaged, empowered, and understand the importance of the mission that they have and the purpose of what they do.

And then finally, they are a connection of those things into the business. So being able to help evangelize the importance of service within the business and being able to help continue to shift the perception of service from a cost center to a profit center, something that is a key pillar and area of innovation and evolution for companies in so many industries. So I think the service visionary has to be a master prioritizer. There are so many different competing projects, objectives, interests, KPIs, challenges, and they're constantly forced to make sure they are not only addressing the day's most immediate needs and priorities, but also looking ahead and putting the business and the function in a position for innovation and making sure that they are creating service differentiation not only for today, but for what customers will want in the future. So incredibly important role.

We had a conversation in our panel discussion about did the folks there feel that the impact of a service visionary is widely understood at the C-level? And the answer was no. I think that we know that historically, service leaders and the service function have been viewed as important in resolving problems and meeting customer needs when they need a repair or an installation or whatever the company's service is. I think what's still not as widely understood, recognized, or acknowledged as it should be, is that service not only is an incredibly important piece of customer experience, but it is a very powerful source of customer sentiment. We talked a lot about how the intimacy that service teams have with customers is often only leveraged in terms of maintaining satisfaction, not leveraged in bringing voice of the customer into the business in terms of product development, R&D or the go-to-market strategy and developing new offerings and understanding what areas of innovation may be most impactful. So it's respected in the sense of the importance of solving problems, but not necessarily the power of how it can play a role in a company's innovation and evolution.

The other piece we talked about is, of course, companies that still aren't harnessing the potential of service to grow the business and create new revenue streams. So there are certainly companies that are and who understand the competitive differentiation and growth potential of the service function, but there are a lot who still view service as quite frankly, more of an afterthought or that necessary evil, if you will. And so I think really bringing service to the table in not only its impact on the customer experience, but its ability to bring customer sentiment into the business and be a key part of the company's evolution and revenue growth is very, very important.

So this award, I think is such an important step in bringing some of that awareness to the C-level, making sure that they understand the impact that service does have, but more importantly can have on the business.

In the panel discussion that we had, we talked a lot about how service leaders often have so much passion and conviction around how a company needs to transform or innovate, and that comes from hearing so much from customers firsthand. So we talked a little bit about how there are functions of the business who are at the table in company-wide decision-making strategy, et cetera, that are quite far removed from the realities of the customer's business. Service, on the other hand, is intimately involved and often owns those relationships and sometimes doesn't have a seat at that table and doesn't have the opportunity to weigh in on what the company is looking at overall. And I think in the years that I've been in this space, I've grown to really love this community. And I think it is that passion and conviction that comes from seeing the opportunity that exists to make changes, to create new things, to solve different problems from those customer interactions.

So I think we in this community all understand the incredible role of service and the ways in which companies who are recognizing its impact, how it sets them apart. But I think this collaboration between HotTopics and IFS to acknowledge not only these top 100 leaders of 2023, but the category itself, to bring it into the conversation, to be able to have myself, some of the other judges, some of the winners on stage in London to talk about what is a service visionary? What is so important about service leadership? And what does the future hold? It's a very important way to initiate those conversations in the businesses of everyone attending. So I just think it's a great initiative.

Judging was hard. There are so many leaders doing incredible things within their businesses, impacting their individual teams and their company's customers, but also for the industry at large. And I have the privilege of talking to so many of them on a weekly or daily basis, and that's why I love what I do so much. So the acknowledgement of the top 100 is just the tip of the iceberg. There's so many more who are having just as big of an impact and playing just as important a role in their respective organizations. So I hope that as HotTopics does this award again next year, the idea of it will catch on, the nominations will be more and more, and the organization will have an opportunity to recognize another 100 leaders and just continue to elevate the discussion around the critical importance and opportunity of service within each and every business that is part of their C-suite community.

So again, big thanks to HotTopics and IFS for seizing the opportunity to create this category and acknowledge these leaders and appreciate the opportunity to play a role in doing that this year. It was an honor and huge congratulations to the top 100 service visionaries of 2023. I have deep respect for each and every one of you and admire the hard work and passion that you bring to what you do. I know that you and your teams are so well deserving of this acknowledgement, and I hope you take a moment to be proud of not only being a part of the list, but just the impact that you have day in and day out. So huge congratulations to this year's winners. I will make sure we link to that list in the show notes so that you can take a look through who is part of the top 100 this year, and of course, as the award surfaces again in 2024, we will be sure to share how you can nominate the top 100 of next year.

So just wanted to share that with you, draw attention to HotTopics as a community, if any of you're interested in following them. Of course, IFS as the leading service management provider and the brainchild behind bringing this award to such an important stage. And of course, the leaders who were recognized. So thanks for having a listen. I'll link those things in the show notes and we'll talk to you next week. As always, you can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldservice.com. The Future of Field Service Podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. And as always, thank you for listening.

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Reimagining the Role of the Field Technician for 2025, 2030 & Beyond

October 4, 2023 | 23 Mins Read

Reimagining the Role of the Field Technician for 2025, 2030 & Beyond

In this session from the Future of Field Service Live Tour stop in Paris, Sarah talks with Ravichandra Kshirsagar, VP Digital Buildings & Global Commercial, Schneider Electric who explains why and how Schneider prioritizes discussions about the future and shares what the company has done to reimagine what the role of the field technician will look like in 2025, 2030, and beyond.

Sarah Nicastro: Hi, Ravi. Make yourself comfortable.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: Thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: Ravi is the Vice President for Digital Buildings and Global Commercial at Schneider Electric. And Ravi and I are going to be talking about how Schneider is re-imagining the role of the field technician for 2025, 2030 and beyond. Okay, so going back to the evolution of service delivery, the talent challenges that we have. These things all intersect to raise a lot of questions really into how are things going to change. That's what we're going to get into. Before we do that, tell everyone a little bit about yourself.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: First of all, very happy to be here with you Sarah. Thanks for inviting me and enjoyed the panel with Sebastien. I think it was a good start this morning. So about myself. Yeah, I'm born in India. I've been expat for more than now 19 years. I've lived in Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America, and now in France last 13 years.

And I've had two parts in my career. In the first part I was a solution architect in telecommunications industry. So I worked with Nokia Networks Erickson across Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America, on deploying the biggest three G rollouts at that time. And really enjoyed traveling across the globe. Then I did my MBA in France in HEC. And I joined Schneider Electric in corporate strategy where I worked with the executive committee for a while. I understood our problems in deep. I became an internal auditor. So I went in finance actually thinking I'll become a CFO in the group. Because finance something I enjoy and I still, the closest to my heart is. And I think deep down, I'm a financial guy. So I worked with our executive committee on the biggest problems across the globe from R&D, efficiency solution, business model, services transformation, topics like that. For roughly three years, I traveled across 15 countries. I spent time in our factories. And at that time I realized I'm not a financial guy.

Because I like one part of finance, which is value creation, but I don't like the other part which is controlling. It's not in my DNA. So I went into business, and I started with our biggest customers and cloud and service providers. Supported them in their own expansions across the globe. And I think data center cloud business growing so fast, I learned so much about our own business. Our own deficiency in terms of where we need to transform. And from there now I've been part of the business transformation team, what we call digital energy, for the last seven years. So I was recruited by one of our executive committee members and I worked with him on commercial transformation, which is to turn around the P&L, which was the first phase.

And I was responsible for commercial policy and pricing to turn around the P&L. And then I started leading services some four years back. And now I lead the entire digital buildings commercial globally, which includes three main elements. So one is our global initiatives, which is demand creation, sales community, leading back. Prioritizing new investments and our launches globally. So that's one part. Second part, I lead the international operations, which is growth of buildings, business in international where we want to double our market share in the next three years. And where I lead the investments in those zones, countries like India, Middle East, South America, all those are led by me. And then finally services, which is the major engine of growth and where my main focus is modernization and digitization of our services. And the biggest part is, the biggest opportunity is moving from that traditional service model to completely digital.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: So that's about me.

Sarah Nicastro: So thank you for that. And when you think about where Schneider is on that journey, from traditional to digitally enabled service, how would you describe where you are today?

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: That's a good question. Where we are, I think if I take a step back a bit, number one, I think our customers are transforming and the markets are transforming. The biggest opportunity we have today is sustainability, energy efficiency, comfort. And if I talk about sustainability. If you look at any Fortune 500 company and you go into their capital markets, they are talking about sustainability, building sustainable operations, achieving net-zero target by 2030, 2040. That's number one. Number two is energy efficiency. You look across Europe right now, the energy prices went up by three to four for companies like us.

So imagine your energy bill was 30 million euros. Suddenly it's a hundred, 120 million euros, and type of impact that has on your P&L. And third is governments. The net-zero targets the focus on sustainability, efficiency. That has created good secular trends for us to focus on those. And that has led to the transformation of our services business. That started with understanding our customer. The basic in service business is understanding your customer in a very deep sense. In our case, obviously one part of customer is people, second part is what you have sold to them.

And even that knowledge in a lot of our companies doesn't exist. So what we started with our first phase of transformation was creating products that connect to cloud seamlessly. So that we are able to provide that digital service seamlessly to our customer and delivering value over there. Second part is then digitizing those service plans. And I think Sebastian mentioned a very good point, like getting that remote service in your contract. So customers recognize, yeah, there's something that is coming remotely and this is how it's going to happen.

So that was the second phase of transformation where we are today, I would say in terms of maturity, we are not there. I mean today if I tell you in terms of numbers, 25% of our service plans are digital. My ambition is to be around 80% by the year 2025. 80-85% because we still have some customers that don't connect to cloud, especially the cloud customers themselves. So that's the challenge. So we'll go get to 80%. We have the offer, we have the technology. Where we are transforming is people. I think people, not only on our side but customer side as well. A lot of our customers still, they want to transform. They want to show they're digital, but they'll still say, "Oh, I want your guy on site."

But what is he going to do on site? Tell me. What is he going to do on site? Is he going to walk around with you looking at all this equipment? I don't know that's valuable. So my role, and this is where I am very passionate about this, is I go and ask him, "Oh, let me walk with you with my engineer. And show me what you are going to look at." And if I show you that happening digitally, why do you need that?

Sarah Nicastro: But it's a really good point. Because this is where the people part comes in, is digging into, when they say that, what do they mean?

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: What are they looking for? What are they wanting out of that time on site? Okay? Because if you just blow past that objection and just say, "No, no, no, that's not how we're doing it," right? There's an emotional need or concern that you're not addressing. So you have to take the time to understand, what are they looking for? Do they want more information? Do they want that connection? And what is the best way then, to provide that? Because to your point, it isn't just having someone go walk around. That's probably not what they're actually looking for. Or is it trust? Is it control, right? There's something underneath that.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: No, you are absolutely spot-on. I mean, whenever I talk about customer, we are in a B-to-B environment. Customer is not one person. So customer is this whole organization and their own politics inside their own regions. You've got one guy global, then you've got regional guys, but you've got country guys just like us. And then you've got a person on site who has his own challenges. He has to deliver his KPIs, he has to make sure the site is running 24/7, delivering the value that he's been asked for, the KPIs that he's addressing.

So number one for me is to understand that customer very in a deep sense, how they are as an organization. What KPIs they're challenged on, and how do I connect that to individual site owner? I think it's very important. Then to understand that site owner, his own opportunities that he would like to achieve. So he gets promoted in his organization. And his own fears as you say, because he's done that in that way for years. I'm not from the industry, right? I told you, I started as a strategy finance guy. But there are people in the industry. You had John on the screen who's been in the industry for 20 years. So now if the person has done that job in the same way for 20 years, I mean, there is something we need to do to make sure he understands the value on the other side. And it addresses his fears that keeps him back. Because fear is a big element.

I mean, we can propose these digital technologies and cloud, but that guy is concerned about his job. And he's concerned that if he doesn't visit that with my engineer, maybe he lose his job. No, we don't blow away from those challenges. I address them. And I like talking to customers and debating with them. Likewise with our own engineers. I mean, the guys on the field have so much knowledge, it's crazy. I go in one site visit and I have three features written in my diary. And I come back and I tell our development team that I want to see these features, and I want you to do a workshop with the rest of the team. I think there is that transformation journey you need to have with your people and with your customer. You cannot blow away from the fears of the people.

Sarah Nicastro: I had a woman on the podcast recently who is a neuroscientist that specializes in leading through change. And so we talked about these five elements of neuroscience that factor into change management. And one of the very simple things we discussed, but I thought powerful, is that we all need to understand that resistance to change is normal. It's human instinct. So whether it's with your employees or, like we just talked about, with your customers, getting that initial resistance is not a sign that they're not willing in the big picture or you're on the wrong path. It's just very normal when someone has done something a certain way for a long time to have that resistance. So we need to expect that and do a better job of working through it. And not see it as a signal that things are not as they should be.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: No, absolutely. And also you need to understand your own resources. We are a big company, we have a huge P&L. But I tell you, we are challenged big-time on the investment and the cost, where we spend. And one of my priority is that the investment that we make has the best return on investment. So in that case, when I say understanding your customers, you also need to understand which of your customers are ready for the innovation that you're building, right? You don't want to tell that to all your customers. You want to really have a group of customers that are leaders. They want to show outside that, "With this technology we are leading. We are the best in class." And that's the customer who's ready for that type of pilot project with you.

And then you start small in one place where you know that, "Okay, in this customer organization, the people are also open. This is the leader I like." And I do that myself at times, to go deeper in those pilot projects, to understand that we have agreed. The people who will be on those team, the SteerCo, we are aligned on the objectives that we will deliver, and we track that. And I always make them pay. You have to invest. Nothing is free. So if you put money, that means somebody at the top in their organization will ask them, "Hey, I gave you this investment, what is the return?"

So it's the best way. You go in customers, you also need to understand. Who are those leaders where you try your innovation? And you work with them first. And then it's a competition. Now, if you go to any company and you talk about sustainability, they want to be on that path. Today, if you're not on a net-zero path in your capital markets, your stock price will be discounted. It's as simple as that.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay, so when we think about the role of the field technician... So you mentioned they're incredibly knowledgeable, which is absolutely true. At the same time, we have a shortage of them. And we have all of these capabilities that are increasing our ability to resolve some issues remotely. So when you think about, what does the role of the field technician look like in 2025, 2030 and beyond, what are you planning for?

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: I think the first thing we did, just a couple of months back is we changed calling them "field technician." We now call them "service technician." And that's the first level of transformation. And there are two breaks in that transformation I would say, or three. One is the technology, the speed at which the technology is developing and getting adopted across a customer landscape. Second break is transformation of service processes and automation. And third break is obviously people. The most important break.

Services has always been a people business and will always remain a people business. But the way you deliver service to your customers will change, and the value that people will bring to their customers will change. As Sebastian was mentioning, partnership. Every technician, if you talk to him, he takes a great pride in telling you how close he is to his customer, how closely he knows about his business. And I can tell you a lot of our customers, even before placing billions of euros of POs, they will talk to the service technician and they will get his advice.

Sarah Nicastro: And that's probably one of the reasons they're saying, "No, we want them here onsite, right?"

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: Absolutely.

Sarah Nicastro: They have that relationship. They have that comfort level with that individual.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: And I think this is where the technology process will enhance the value he delivers to his customers. So you mentioned that we discussed about the fear in people. I think one of the fears is also, "Technology will replace me. It'll start doing my job, and I'll become redundant." The answer is "no." Technology will make you look even better, and that's what we need to help them understand. So when I look at a technician in 2025, 2030, the way they deliver service from going onsite and doing that break fix, to moving to condition-based maintenance, to completely an outcome-based service model. We are still on that journey of maturity, to finally a model where you have AI ubiquitously implemented in customer side. And where a technician is more like an analyst who's coming and helping his customer to further enhance the value. And taking decisions that he's not able to take. Even with AI, I mean, you look at the recommendations that are making, so you define the boundaries. And then it's recommending you certain things, where people need to press those buttons.

And even there, there is fear, right? And the role of technician changes from fixing issues to advising on issues. And helping your customer to take those decisions that will help them reduce carbon, that will help them reduce energy consumptions, that will help them become a better company in the way they deliver service to their customers. So that's how I see the role changing big-time from now until 2030.

Sarah Nicastro: So I like the shift that you've already made from calling them field technicians to service technicians. I think that's very, very smart. And I know another term that gets thrown around that people detest is "trusted advisor." Which I understand, but sometimes when we don't have a better term, we use what's there. So I'm personally very curious. Have you thought at all about as this changes in the ways that you explained, in 2030, is there something you might call these workers other than even "service technician?"

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: Probably, yeah. There'll be the huge shift. So first change is the operating model. The way you operate today with your customer base to the way you will operate in 2030 is very different. And we've already started that journey some six, seven years back. With the change in our offer, connection to digital, all of those things. And now bringing that at scale to our customers. So that's number one shift. With that, what changes is,. A lot of the data that you capture from site, you need to have a team that analyzes that data. So we already have that. We have something called global connected hubs that is in my team. We have those across India, UK, and US.

And then we helped, we explained that operating model to our countries. That this is how we are going to shift and these are the things that are going to change. So in that operating model, you have a team that delivers remote service. You have a team that is called customer success. So you are transforming that function as well. You have a team that helps understand, explains that report and outcomes to the customer. And the third, the final leg is your technician, who goes and then talks to the customer and finally executes some of those elements that come in. So that whole shift, that whole transformation is a massive journey. And then you need to take that into account in that whole ecosystem. Because the role of the technician is one of the role that will deliver the value that you are looking to build with your customers.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it's really interesting to me and I don't think there's any universal answer. I mean, what that evolution looks like for Schneider versus a different industry, they're not going to be the same. But thinking about the fact that there will be multiple parties responsible for what it looks like and probably some different segmentation of work, some different titles coming along. I think it is something that it's really important to be thinking today about. Because these things are going to happen faster than we probably feel.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: So we already started plotting what I was talking about, the operating model and the core rules over there. So the connected hub engineer, the analyst, the customer success engineer. And then started defining the role of technician in 2025 and 2030.

And there are some elements there that are variable. There are some elements there that will remain constant. So the engineer, the need for people will be constant. But what will be variable is the technology and how fast we are in deploying that technology.

So some of that technology exists today. For example, fault detection diagnostics. It's a simple anomaly detection system. In simple terms, anomaly detection is a system should work in a certain way. And you detect the variances that happen in that system, and you make decisions based on that.

So part of the technology there, we are already piloting AI. As I was mentioning, we did a huge project in Stockholm with a Stockholm school, which I also talked about. So AI is something we are launching in selected countries. And these are two technologies. And we are also looking at other technologies for our different segment of customers. So multi-site customer, multi-site retail. So we are looking at those technologies as well, which will help us build that jigsaw puzzle of technologies. So I believe that the 70%-80% of the technology that needs to be there for 2030 already exists in a way. Or at least we know where we need to go. Now it's important that with that technology, you need to imagine how a technician that is delivering value today will deliver that value in 2025.

So for 2025, we got that figured out. Because we are already on that transformation path. So we defined that out of the service plans that we have, these are the customer segments and the plan that move there. And we are actively talking with those customers, helping them understand the value and helping them make that shift. Because that takes time as well to make that change in their commercial contracts as well.

And then the third part, which is the most important, is people, the technician himself. So the competencies of technician that they have today and in our industry is HVAC controls, heating, ventilation, air conditioning in simple terms. And the controls part that exists over there. From there, that technology is now becoming more operational technology. So it goes on the same IT network as your IT infrastructure. So that brings newer challenges around networking, cybersecurity.

So we need to train our engineers around that. Dealing with cloud, cloud data. The question that customers are asking is, "Where is my data stored?" Data governance-related topic. So that is something we have launched in a few geographies now. What we did is we, out of the group of let's say a hundred technicians, we selected a group of 20 that will undergo that competency development. I'm sponsoring part of that, because countries don't have that budget as well. To make sure they make that shift. And then that becomes a competition. Every engineer wants to be on direct track. He wants to be part of that community. So that just steamrolls. That's the beauty of it. But again, it's really to think of it in a broader ecosystem, breaking that down into smaller problems and then tackling certain problems that need to be tackled today. And then paying attention to performance. Again, 2025 is like tomorrow for me. We're already in '23, '24, '25, and we have committed numbers that need to be delivered as well on that.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I think there's a couple of things you said that I want to come back to. One is I think it is still really important to reinforce that this shift or these technologies are not taking jobs. So for those of us here, knowing the talent shortages that exist, the capacity we need to fill, that probably seems pretty obvious. No one's trying to get rid of a bunch of technicians. We need more as it is. But in their minds, there is that fear. The second thing you said that I liked is this group of 20. You're kind of making it exciting for people to get involved early and that will help with the change management. But the other thing that I'm thinking about going back to the welcoming problems idea is, while this shift in what the role of the frontline worker will look like, it's challenging in the sense of managing change for existing folks. And helping them understand what that change will look like. But it also presents an opportunity to have these roles be more appealing for different candidates going forward.

So it's less mechanical, more technical work, probably more customer-oriented work. Like you said, less in a lot of scenarios, less travel, less time on site, et cetera. So these are all things that, when we start to welcome the problem and shift our thinking, become opportunities to think about how to diversify the candidates that we're presenting roles to, et cetera. So I think from that perspective, we need to not only be problem solving, but thinking about the positives of that as we go forward.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: I think what is great in our industry is 40% of carbon emission comes from buildings. 30% of energy globally is consumed by buildings. 80% of the infrastructure that is in buildings is not working well. 50% of systems are not efficient. So there is a purpose in your job if you are working with buildings. And that's the purpose I like. And I share that with the rest of the team, which is we are working on something that helps us deliver sustainability outcomes to our customers, help them in that journey.

I think that's very big, and that's also created a challenge in a way that's an opportunity and a challenge. Challenges that, that purpose has caught on to many companies. Which is great for us, which is great for humanity, and that has created demand for people who understand those control systems and help them drive that sustainability, efficiency. So a lot of our customers end up recruiting our people, which is great. I would like our people to work in with our customers. They're our biggest ambassadors and supporters. So that's a challenge and opportunity that I see. And obviously when we are in a university campus or in the market, you are competing with whole lot of different industries out there. And your pitch has to be the best one to attract the new talent that is coming in the workforce from engineering colleges and the talent that already exists.

Maybe in adjoining industries, maybe there is an engineer working in process technology or in electrical side of industry. And I would like that they transition to controls. And I want to look at those guys and say, "Yeah, we need to attract them and bring them in the fold," so that the overall talent pool grows.

And this is where we are spending time. So two sides. One is on the university programs. I think that's the best place. I think if your purpose is clear, if your company is true to the purpose, then your brand should attract the best in the market. And for us, we just don't talk about it. And Schneider Electric was the most sustainable company in the world in 2021 by Corporate Knights. And that helped us because we are on this journey for a long time. We are able to tell people that you come to a building that I'm setting, it is the first ISO 50,001 building in the world, which is a benchmark for energy efficiency. Likewise, I was mentioning the building that we build in Grenoble is 113 out of 120 points on lead platinum certification. That's again highest in the world. So when you have done it in your own operation, you are more credible when you're talking to students, future talent that wants to join your company.

Having said that, it's still not that easy. I think the challenge remains. I think we still have shortage. There's so much demand. There's so much demand. I think that's a great part of it.

Sarah Nicastro: So I really respect the work that you're doing and your teams are doing to sort this all out, to put it simply, right? I think that for a lot of leaders it can be very daunting to carve out time to think longer term when you're really fighting a lot of immediate challenges. So do you have any advice for folks on how to balance the short term needs of the business with the necessity of innovation?

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: Yeah, I think short term is key. I'll tell you that. If your company is listed, you guys know. And you get a call before closing that, "Where are the numbers and where are you?" And I pay a lot of attention to short term, because my short term will define my long term. I'm not credible in front of management team if I'm asking for investment when I've not delivered the past investment that I've asked for. I pay a lot of attention over there. Now, having looked at all of that, I still prioritize where I want to spend time and where I delegate. I prioritize few topics that are on my list. Number one is obviously the performance. Performance is not optional. I mean, you need to deliver performance, and the P&L has to be on track. That I deal with directly. Second is technologies. I want to understand in deeper sense which technologies are out there in the market and where do we invest. I want to have a say over there.

And in our industry today, there are hundreds of startups, hundreds. That's so crowded, the startup space. But out of that, only three or four actually make annual recurring revenue more than 10 million euro. So that just simplifies your focus, where you want to be and who do you follow. So technology is the second thing.

The third thing is people. I want to have a team. And I build a team which is very balanced, obviously gender diversity, diversity in terms of where they're coming from in countries. And the third one is the intellectual capital. So we want to have intellectual capital that balances both experience and lack of experience. Because what happens sometimes with experience is you go down one path, which is about, "Oh, I know this, so it should happen like that." But I want somebody who should say, "Why is it happening like that? Why this way? Maybe we don't need all of that. We go this direction." That debate balances the team also. Everyone has a great seed, and I think the performance is much better.

So those three things, and what else? I mean, I use something very practical. I have this board on in my office, and I put priority and impact and I shuffle. Every Monday. I come actually and I shuffle the stickers on that. Which is top priority? And which one is going down the list? Or something going out in the dust bin? So I do some practical things like that as well to spend my own time.

I think the biggest resource all of us have is the time. I mean, time and mind space. Those are the two things. And I try to manage my mind space and my time. And I think mind space is the biggest because if you're not in your office, it doesn't mean you're not working. You are at home and you're thinking about work. You're thinking about work. When you are on weekends somewhere, my colleague, like that, or "I have this problem." So you are working. So that mind space where you focus on those three, four things is very important. If you choose the things correctly, then you will think very deep about it. You'll go deep on it. You'll try to ask five "why" questions. You'll go so deep that now intellectually you know that topic better than anyone, and you have the right questions.

It's not about knowing. It's asking the right questions. Because when you have the right questions, then you come to the right conclusion as a team. And my job is to ask the right questions, not to provide the answer. I want that people come to an answer together. Then it's shared, and then everyone says, "Oh, I built something. I contributed that to that solution. So I want to implement it." If I solve it and I tell somebody, then "Ravi wants this. I have to do it." And sometimes you have to push it, but most times you would like in a transformation journey that people come to those solutions together, very importantly.

Sarah Nicastro: Absolutely. Yeah, I think the point about listening and asking the right questions and not feeling like you have to have all the answers is really good advice.

So thank you so much, Ravi. Appreciate it.

Ravichandra Kshirsagar: Thank you.

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Creating a Culture of Safety in Field Service

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Creating a Culture of Safety in Field Service

Sarah welcomes Franklin Maxson, VP Field Services, North America at Socomec for an important conversation on safety. Franklin touches on what works well in terms of policy and leadership but also why a top-down safety approach will never be enough.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be talking about what it takes to create a culture of safety in field service. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today Franklin Maxson, who is the Vice President of Field Services for North America at Socomec. Franklin, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Franklin Maxson: Hi, Sarah. Great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with you on this topic today.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you here. Franklin and I had the opportunity to be together in person. What was it? Well, it was last month still. It seems like longer ago, at Field Service Hilton Head. Franklin was part of a panel discussion that I moderated, and so we caught up after the event and chatted about different topics that are top of mind. And safety is one that you are particularly passionate about, so I'm excited to have that conversation today. Before we get into the topic at hand, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your role, and what Socomec does.

Franklin Maxson: Yeah, Sarah, so my background is I'm one of those weird ones that decided to go get a management degree. So have been in the management now for pretty close to 10 years. But really, I have been in field services for the last 20 years. So, I started out my career in telecom and then made a switch to field services with GE Healthcare. Spent almost 11 years with them in a progression of roles from a field service engineer, all the way up through a program manager.

And then I decided to change focus and get out of the healthcare environment, and go work with the critical power. So the last nine, 10 years of my career have been in critical power, primarily focused around data centers, and that type of an environment. So it's been a really interesting 20 years of learning how to operate in a remote environment, long before Covid forced everyone to operate remotely.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that's great. And so when we caught up after the event, we were chatting about what we might do a podcast on, and you said that safety is a topic that is near and dear to you. So as I explained to you when we were chatting, I always like to ask people first, "What is it that you would like to talk about? What's important to you? What's top of mind? What are you passionate about?" Because to me, those are always the best conversations to have. So can you share a bit with me and with everyone, why is safety a topic that is important you?

Franklin Maxson: Yeah Sarah, and I think safety should be one of those things that all of us are constantly thinking about. For me, it really goes back to growing up with my father.

So growing up with my father, I always knew he was a little bit different, and I remember from an early childhood thinking about it, because his left hand had actually been amputated. His fingers I should say, of his left hand had been amputated. And so he had the majority of his thumb and his pinky, but most of the other fingers had been amputated in an industrial accident.

And so I grew up with that. And it's always very interesting, especially as a young child, seeing some of the reactions from some of your friends of how that happens.

Then later on as I started working, I actually had a close call with a conveyor. I had a tool that was sitting on a conveyor belt, and I was a teenager working on some electronics, probably 18 or 19 at the time. And I had a tool sitting on a conveyor. The conveyor turned on, and I quickly without thinking, reached onto the conveyor to try and grab the tool. And my arm got pulled, got jammed up. And thankfully I was able to jam it up against a piece of metal that didn't cut me, but allowed me to have the leverage to pull my arm out. I had a friction burn and abrasions on my arm, probably about a six-inch by two-inch nasty little spot. That was a really close call for me.

Then along the way, I became a private pilot, and safety is huge in aviation. Whether you're a private pilot, or even more so in the commercial world, but safety is huge, and there is a very strong emphasis and a mindset around safety, around checklists, around how do you remain safe in that environment.

Then as I transitioned and later on went into the leadership roles, we had a couple of close calls with employees that quite honestly could have ended in fatalities, and we were lucky they did not.

So over the years, I've had a long exposure to the results of what happens when things don't go well from a safety perspective. And it has become very much something that I'm very passionate about and that we discuss on a regular basis, almost daily basis with my team.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, wow. I didn't realize that it stemmed all the way back to the accident that happened to your father. And it's interesting because when we were speaking about doing an episode on this topic, it's one of those topics that it's not the flashiest, like at the event you and I were at last month. Everyone's talking about AI. I didn't notice any sessions on safety.

But what we spoke about is while historically I think in certain industries, it's been more of a conversation. You have certain industries, take mining for example, that just by nature warrants very regular, very serious conversations about safety.

What we were chatting about is in the world we're living in today, whether we're talking about navigating Covid and other things like that, or just societal things, etc. I mean, no matter what industry we're talking about in field service, there can and probably will be situations where employees will be at risk in some way. And so it is a very important conversation to have, yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about in the different experiences you've had, and in your perspective, when it comes to the company stance on safety, the official policies, procedures, communication, the top-down aspect, what's your take on what works well? What's important to consider? Let's talk about that aspect of things.

Franklin Maxson: Sarah, I think that's a very important piece of it. Because as we talk, there's different aspects to safety, and right now we're talking about the top down approach for safety. And I think that is very important, because from an executive perspective, we've got to drive the focus, emphasis, and attention that safety deserves.

You're right, it's not sexy. It's not nearly as much fun as talking about AI, or some of the other very cool stuff that's happening out there right now. However, at the core of what we do, especially from a service organization and a service perspective, service is about people, whether it's our clients, or our most valuable resource, which is our employees. So we have to maintain safety in top of mind.

And it was interesting talking a little bit aside with Roy Dockery when we were at the event, and he has a completely different set of safety parameters than I look at, but we're both still very focused on how do we keep the employees safe. I don't necessarily have to worry about some driver not paying attention running into my employees, he does.

But we could take a look across multiple industries and see that this is very much a requirement. And when we're talking about how does management encourage this, and even more importantly within a service perspective, how do we encourage and empower people when we're talking about employees that are often working alone? We are in a distributed environment. We're not seeing them every single day. We have reduced control of our environment, because we're often operating at a client's site. So we don't know necessarily what the safety policies are or how well they're implemented.

And so when you take all of that into consideration, and we take a step back from an executive level, and look at what is it that we're actually trying to accomplish with our safety policies, we have to make sure that it is embedded within our culture, within our vision, and our mission, and that it remains an active part of every conversation so that we can maintain that focus. Safety is one of those things that if you don't focus on it, you become complacent about it.

And so that is one of the key factors to setting the stage for being able to have a really good safety culture within the organization. I think it comes down to that, right? It's the policies, the procedures. The law doesn't really drive safety as much as the culture does.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So that being said, I think it's a really good point that the role it does play is in keeping the conversation top of mind. Because like you said, it's not a sexy topic. Therefore, it is one that if you aren't intentional about it over time, you can take for granted. Just assume that people understand what the rules are or how they should react in certain scenarios, etc. So it is important from a top-down perspective to make sure you're reflecting on how often and in what ways are we reinforcing the importance of this. That makes sense.

Now, that being said, as you said, the official policy, or rule book, guidelines that the company develops and that top-down focus are not going to be enough. So can you talk about why that is?

Franklin Maxson: Because at the end of the day, we're all humans, and we have to remember that our employees are humans as well. And I don't know about you, Sarah, but I know that when I have to read T's and C's for a long time, yeah, I'm going to want to take a nap. And if we think about our safety manuals and our safety policies, it's just another set of T's and C's that we're all supposed to be out there reading and understanding.

So this is where you have to take advantage of psychology, peer pressure, and a cultural norm around safety. Because if you normalize safety, and that is actually the culture that the organization has, then that peer pressure, all of your teammates in your leadership are all focused around it, and thinking about it, and driving that. And it becomes much more of a grassroots effort.

The other thing that is critically important with this though, is you have to have that open door policy, and you have to be able to listen to the employees without judging. Because the whole judgment part can backfire on you very, very easily in a safety scenario.

And so as you think about a grassroots organization that's going to focus on safety, that is going to be able to do it, we think about, what are the safest organizations out there? And I'll go back to my roots in aviation.

If we stop for a moment and we think about how many people right this minute are actually sitting in an aircraft seven miles up in the sky, it's probably somewhere close to a million people right now, at any given moment around the earth. And if you think about the total number of travelers worldwide, and the fact that the accent rate is so tiny, we don't think about it. We jump on an airplane and we go, right?

But why does that happen? That happens because the entire culture that has been built around that. As a pilot, if you self-report an infraction, you realize, "Man, I just screwed up," and you self-report that, you're actually protected from punishment. Now, you may get some recommended remedial training that you may have to take, but you're protected from punishment.

And if we take some of those aspects, and we take some of these punitive aspects that have generally been found within the companies and say, "You know what? We're not going to focus on that. We're going to try and focus on what is our systemic approach, and how do we identify the systemic breakdowns that led to a safety incident." Then we can start to change that culture and that mindset, and develop that basically bottom up.

The other thing that I think is really important is at a grassroots level, you have to identify the people that are passionate about this. Oftentimes, unfortunately, as people that have either suffered injury or had loved ones suffer injuries. But if you can identify them and identify the folks that have that passion, and you can begin to create those little teams, and to borrow from General McChrystal's book, is eventually create some teams of teams that are focused around safety. They're not necessarily aligned within a normal organizational structure, but you just let that develop so that there's a lot of cross-pollination, a lot of discussion back and forth around what's happening with safety.

Field technicians working next to the factory team members and talking about safety, the factory team members understanding more about what the team in the field does, and the field team providing an outsider's perspective to what's happening inside of the plant. Those things can open up a lot of interesting perspectives that are not necessarily seen. And so when I think about, how do we develop all of this, it's a combination of all of this and creating this holistic approach towards safety.

Sarah Nicastro: I really like the point about withholding judgment, right? Because we know that there's so many aspects that we talk about today in service, where we're creating strategy up here, we're talking about innovation up here, but the reality is happening on the front lines.

And so the same way you would say... Let's say we're talking about technology. Have you gotten input from your frontline workers? What do they need? What are their challenges, etc. We know how valuable that insight is. But in this scenario, if they're fearful of being honest about what the issues are, then they're not going to share that insight, and they're going to keep it to themselves. And that's when you have problems that can arise. So making sure that they're comfortable sharing that.

The aviation example is such a good one. I get so frustrated when... Yes, I mean, everyone gets frustrated when flights are delayed and canceled, etc., right? You get on a flight, you might even be taxiing. "Oh wait, there's a light on. We're going to take you back. You're going to get off."

But there's people literally throwing temper tantrums, and it's like, would you prefer they take off? I mean, I don't know. There's nothing more important than the safety aspect of it. So yeah, it's an interesting industry to think about this topic through that lens.

So I think the idea is, how do you create this openness, this really transparent conversation? And I think you had shared with me when we were chatting, the example of where there are safety policies and procedures. I think we were talking about someone completing an inspection.

Do people around them know what's going on and why, and why it's important? Do people understand some of the situations that field technicians might find themselves in, and some of the risks, so that throughout the organization, that importance is understood?

Franklin Maxson: It's funny, because it becomes such a check the box exercise. And there's a couple of different scenarios that you can think about it. So in a factory setting, regardless of what kind of industry you're in, there are many times the monthly safety walks. And what are those generally comprised of? "Oh, well, let's go check that the aisles are clear. Let's go check that the fire extinguishers are still where they're supposed to be, and that they're within the certificate date of them, that the exits are clear," etc. And some of the things that I have found throughout my career is you go through and you're checking that box. You're doing all of that. For a field service organization. If you look at an NFPA 70E, it requires that you do a annual audit of lockout/tagout. And all of us that work in electrical, know lockout/tagout. We practice it, we can recite it in our sleep.

And so we go through and we start talking about the lockout/tagout, and we're going to do that check. And it can very easily become a check to box exercise. Across the board, that happens. And one of the things... I remember talking to Bob Baker who was my safety partner back at ABB, and one of the things that he really focused and helped to drive was, how do we change that conversation? How do we take it from a check the box exercise to a, "Hey, let's talk about lockout/tagout. What have you been doing with lockout/tagout? What are the challenges to actually implement lockout/tagout?"

And if you think about a field service organization that may be going to many different sites, for me it's electrical. But others may have mechanical, or hydraulic, or other things that have to be locked out, right? Well, there's a variety of breakers, variety of valves, variety of different things that you have to manage and control the energy around. And do we have the right kit to be able to do this? Do we have the right tools and equipment? Are employees having to use their ingenuity to figure this out, instead of actually having a really good engineered process to do this? And actually changing the focus to having that conversation.

Same thing if you're in a factory. If you are walking the factory floor, maybe instead of necessarily just going through as quickly as you can to check the boxes, take the time to actually go spend some quality time with those employees in that area and ask them about safety. How are things going? Not just check the aisles, and make sure that the fire extinguishers are good, and that the exits are clear. But really get to know what they're doing, how they're doing it, and get that feedback. And ideally, get that feedback in a systemized format that can be acted upon.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I think even asking field technicians, "Is there a time in the last 12 months you've felt unsafe? And if so, why? And what did you do about it?" Not with the idea of, again, from a judgmental or a punitive standpoint, but just to really understand. You brought up the psychology of it. Do they feel safe?

And if yes, great. If not, what are the things that are coming up? So rather than this blanket or generic policy, you can look for the real challenges and make some changes. Yeah, go ahead.

Franklin Maxson: Yeah, I think within that perspective, is how do we empower people to have some quick little checklists of things to look out for, that will put you in an elevated state of mind around safety?

One of the things that I always talk to my team about is when something changes, you're prepared for a certain scope of work when you get to a site. And I'm sure many of your other guests have always told you that you get to the site, and your scope of work is supposed to be A through C. And suddenly we got D, E, and F added to it, right?

Well, when that situation happens, it's making sure that the team is empowered and really focused on, "Let's stop. Let's review our safety procedures. Do I have enough PPE? Do I have the right tools? Do I have the right processes in place to be able to cover the revised scope of work? Not just what I came here for, but the things that have been added to it." Because now there's a change.

And typically, what we find when we do the incident investigations, is something changed. Something went outside of the expected norm, and we weren't prepared for it. So how do we take that moment and say, "You know what? Let's take 10 minutes. Let's review our hazard analysis. Are we actually ready to proceed to do this, or do we have to take a step back?"

And if we have to take a step back, then it comes back to the leadership. We have to be able to support our field team members, because that customer may be upset at us. They may be upset about, "Hey, now we need another visit." On the flip side is, yes, we may need another visit. But going back to your earlier example around the aircraft, that light went on in the airplane as you're taxiing, and you really don't want to take off.

It's the same scenario with our clients. We have an alert, something we're not prepared to do, or we don't have the right PPE. We do not want to cause an incident on your site, or possibly put someone, whether it's our employee or one of your employees at risk, and possibly damage the equipment along the way. So it's being able to have those conversations to support the field team, while they do those types of reviews.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. And I think that was actually the next thing I was going to ask you, because I think empowerment is important in many ways today. But as we're thinking about safety, I think it's a term that gets thrown around a lot. And I would guess that it's a lot easier to empower employees around safety when it's something taking place in your own environment. If it's on a factory floor and they see something, "Speak up, say something, we'll fix it."

When you're talking about a field technician going to a customer site, and for whatever reason, feeling uncomfortable, feeling at risk, feeling unsafe, empowering them to say, "We're going to have to come back. I'm going to have to do this another time." It's a different conversation, and it's one that I think companies and leaders need to be really thinking about and talking through.

Because, I think that culture you want to create comes from how you react in those moments, not the ones that are easy to address. Do you know what I mean? When you're risking customer frustration, when you're risking increasing costs to serve, and you're still choosing safety over those things, that's what tells your employees, "I'm important to the company. This is important to the company."

So I think there's shades of empowerment, right? Because there's situations where empowerment is very easy, and then there's situations where it's a lot trickier, and there has to be consideration for that.

Franklin Maxson: You are absolutely right. I mean, this is a huge important piece of it. And when you said that the culture of greed's created in those tough moments. I couldn't have said that better myself. That is the absolute essence of what we're trying to drive.

So I'll give you an example. I have to protect some names, so we'll go with some generic names here. But a few years ago, we had some employees at a hyperscale data center. And it was in the middle of a construction job. Everybody on that construction job has liquidated damages for delays, etc. Okay? We did. So did the rest of the contractors. Again, this was one of those instances that makes me just to this day, the hair on my arm just stands up thinking about what could have happened.

But I had two employees at the site at that particular data center, in the middle of this project that was going on. One of them realized they had not grabbed a piece of test equipment that they were going to need. So while the preparations were still ongoing for that test by the second employee, the first employee left to go to their vehicle to grab that piece of test gear. On their way back in, they were walking by a lockout gang box.

So in lockout, you might sometimes have these large boxes for multiple teams working at the same time. And so typically, the way that this works is you have a single point of contact that maintains control of the entire lock box, and then you put your individual keys for your locks inside of that lock box.

So as my employee was walking back, he saw another contractor reaching into the box, prying the box open, literally prying it open to reach in there and grab his key. He tried to stop him. The employee was very rude and walked away.

He ran and got his partner out of the building, called his manager. I got a call within probably a minute to two minutes after this happened from their manager saying, "Hey, this is a situation. We really need to report this. But all of the LD's and everything, I don't care. Now people are at risk. I don't care."

I instructed the team members to go to the owner's trailer and find the safety manager there. Meanwhile, I placed some phone calls to some of my contacts. Within 30 minutes, Sarah, we had shut down construction on tens of millions of dollars data center, and the entire place went into a safety standout that lasted almost a week. I can't even tell you how much money that cost. It was probably in the millions by the time it was all said and done.

But at the end of the day, my team was commended by the general contractor and the owner, because they had the willingness to report this. And if we had not reported this, somebody could have died very easily in the scenario. There was a whole lot of retraining that had to happen across the board.

But it's those situations and it's those scenarios when you know what, I could have very easily taken a step back and said, "Well, maybe it's okay. Go find the supervisor," whatever. But if I did that, then what is my culture to my team? I preach safety every day to my team members. And if I can't back them up, then that culture doesn't continue to develop.

And I think that those are the key elements, is we have to support them. And when you said, "We don't control our environment in the field." When you're working in a factory and you have a supervisor right there that you can go to, you're right, that is a much easier discussion. But to empower the team members to possibly have a very upset project manager, a very upset general contractor, to basically put a job and completely stop it from proceeding, it is a different level of empowerment, and you're absolutely right about that. And it is something that quite honestly, takes courage on their part, on our field conditions part to be able to do that. And if they don't feel that they have the support from the executive leadership, they won't do it.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And this is where it takes top down buy-in as well, right? Because ultimately, you need to have multiple layers of support to be able to do something like that. Right? So yeah, that's a really good example. We also spoke Franklin, about challenging assumptions. So we talked about the rules are the rules based on what you know, what you've encountered, what you've seen. But what about when something outside of that happens, or what about when something at odds with the rules happen?

So this is tied to empowerment, but I'm just wondering if you have any examples of employees feeling comfortable speaking out, challenging assumptions, so that you have more of this working relationship to continue to evolve those procedures, and not just let them get stale or become these checkbox exercises.

Franklin Maxson: So, I think that this is where that open door policy and listen without judgment really comes into play, because we can set up policies across the board to try and cover as many scenarios as we can think of. But you're right, things happen that don't fit a neat little box that we created. And I think it's having the employees be able to bring this up.

I'll give you an example. To this day, I go back and forth and we have open discussions with the employees. So for example, in our line of work oftentimes, we're working inside of a battery cabinet. And you cannot turn off a battery, right? It has stored energy. It's going to be there.

And so when you're having to, for example, check a bolt, or more importantly, put in a new bolt on a battery terminal, and you're having to wear your liners, your gloves, your insulated gloves, the rubber insulated gloves. And then you have your leather protectors over the top of it, you don't have any dexterity left.

And that's always been a tension point that we've had in the field as to how the heck do we do this, and how do we meet the guidelines? Because if you do a strict reading of NFPA 70E, you have to be in the PPE. There isn't a choice. But yet, if we're wearing the PPE, then now we're putting ourselves at risk by dropping the proverbial screw that may cross to ground, or create a ground short, and create a situation there.

So I went back to the employees and I said, "I hear you. Give me options." I'm like, "I don't know what the options are." Bob Baker actually, referring back to him, he and I were working on this together, and we were looking at different ways to do it. And so some of the employees said, "Well, we can lower the working voltage by separating the different trays." So they're built in a cabinet that has multiple trays. "So if we separate and isolate the tray, we can drop the working voltage. Then maybe we can go to a lower hazard standard."

So we looked at that and understood some perspectives. And then another employee said, "Hey, by the way, I found these cut resistant arc rated gloves." And we were like, "Well, okay. In this particular scenario, under these particular circumstances, if we reduce the working voltage, that makes sense." Because now we're still providing the cut resistance, but we're actually able to reach inside the cabinet.

The thing is though, everything has consequences. So now we opened a little bit of a door that we have to trust the employees, that that's the only time that we're going to use those gloves. Because to be honest, it opens up a bit of doubt from my perspective, from the safety leadership perspective of we've given them something else that if it's misused, it could end up in a big hazard. Because that arc resistant glove is great, because if it shorts, if something shorts, your hand will be protected from a burn. But it does not protect you from electrical shock. So you always have that dynamic tension, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. But I think what's interesting to me about that is, totally makes sense. And of course, there's always going to be risk with trying something different. But I think the other thing though is when you really focus on increasing empowerment, I think you also increase trust. Do you know what I mean?

And that's the thing is you've listened. You've allowed the employee to be not only heard, but part of the solution. And you have met their need, and you're trusting them to use it appropriately. You know what I mean?

And I think that because they were heard and they were part of the solution, the likelihood of them respecting that trust and using it the way they should is a lot higher. There's no guarantees, right? So I understand the concern. But I think we do have to understand that the more we can be collaborative and we can empower our employees, there is that mutual trust that grows as a result of that.

Franklin Maxson: And honestly, there's a lot more creativity that you can tap into. Right? So if you're looking for a solution to a weird problem, you've got to find sources of creativity.

So at that time, I had something like 70 field technicians that were trying to figure this out. That's a whole lot more brainpower than just having myself, and the safety manager, and maybe a couple of other people looking at this. It's that collective creativity, and getting them to look at different options, and try and understand how we could possibly get to a workable solution that opens up a whole lot of possibilities.

And again, it goes back to that grassroots team of teams approach of, "Hey, you know what? Let's try and understand. Let's work with different people. Can we come up with better tools?" And I think that there's always opportunities to engineer a better tool.

And some folks were working on that. We never came up with something that was satisfactory to all of us. Some folks were working more about, how do we reduce the specific risk in these situations?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I also think it's indicative of a good leader, that they came to you with a problem, you listened. But you didn't know the answer. So you just said, "I hear you. I don't know what the solution is, so let's figure it out together."

There's this, I think really outdated mentality of, "As a leader, I need to have all of the answers." And that just really stifles that creativity, many times over.

So that was a really good example of one of the things I wanted to ask is, so we talked about the top down, and we talked about the grassroots. So you want to have the top down in terms of having formal policies of course, but also keeping the topic itself front and center, top of mind. But then you want to create this culture, and the culture really happens within the ranks. Right? How do you make sure those two are ultimately meshing? How do we make sure that we're all moving in one direction together, and not at odds with one another somehow?

Franklin Maxson: Yeah, that's a great question. And I call it the dynamic tension. It's a dynamic tension that we always have to watch for. And I think that there's a couple of different things. From a top down perspective, we've got to set goals, expectations. And how do we measure that? Are we actually moving towards the outcome that we want to have? Are we still going in the right direction? So we have to be able to measure that.

From a grassroots perspective, I like to always implement a mechanism where we document what is being found out in the field. And as we document those, you should call them hazard reports, or safety observations, whatever you want to call them. But we record those and we bring those in, and it's actually trying to get to what I call a close rate on those, where we're reviewing them all.

We may not be able to implement all of them. To be perfectly honest, some of them may not actually be something that makes sense. And we have to be able to have that candid feedback to the employees, and explain why it does not make sense, and what it was that they missed. And it gives you some opportunities for some really good discussions and some training from that perspective.

There are some that we have to close out immediately. These are obviously a big hazard. It is an immediate risk, and we have to put immediate focus and effort on it, and get it taken care of.

There are some that we're going to say, "You know what? We're going to put a project team around that and we're going to close that out." And there are some that we literally have to say, "You know what? We're going to watch this, figure out where it's going, what do we have to do with it?" And so there is several different buckets and categories.

But I think the important thing is being able to share back with a line team that we're looking at all of them, and here's where some of these ended up. Some of these we may not be able to do anything about because of X, Y, and Z. Some of these, we have a project going on, and it's going to take anywhere from six months to a year to close out. Some of these, we're working right now. And some of these others, we went back and had feedback directly with the employee and we're able to close them out. Don't have to say anything more than that, right?

But if you can create that feedback mechanism... And it really is being completely transparent, it's hard work for the leadership team. Because from the team leader, to the regional manager, all the way up to myself, we all have to remain engaged and focus on these things, and making sure that they don't languish, because it's too easy to let them just sit, because it's not revenue generating. So because it's not revenue generating, maybe we don't have the bandwidth to add to it. But if we don't have that bandwidth, then what I find is the culture begins to rapidly slide back. And I think I mentioned in our earlier conversation, that safety is one of those things that requires constant attention. Because otherwise, we slide back very easily.

Sarah Nicastro: And it's a very, I think important and honest comment, that because it isn't revenue generating, it would be really easy to push it. Because that is the pressure and the balancing act that service leaders are faced with all the time. Right?

But it is important. And I think doing that hard work of making sure that that feedback loop exists is the only way that those employees will continue to engage, challenge assumptions, give input, and be bought into that culture. Because you are showing you care by doing the work, which makes them engaged and care as well.

The minute you guys say, "Okay, well yes, this is important. But it's not as important as the money we're making, so we can't prioritize the time to do this." Not that you would say that, but they know that. And then it just sort of erodes. I mean, to your point, right? So yeah.

Franklin Maxson: Definitely. And I think one of the things... This is something that I was talking to my core leadership team about was, we know that there isn't revenue associated with safety. But if you think about the cost-

Sarah Nicastro: Associated with ignoring it.

Franklin Maxson: There is a huge cost right there. So one of the challenges that I've had, to both my team as well as the finance team, is how could we quantify this a little bit better? If we had an accident rate of whatever, what does that equate to from lost time, from insurance possibly, premiums that have to go up, from a health coverage that has to increase, etc.? And how do we actually quantify some of that?

I'll be honest, I don't have the answers to those yet. And hopefully, there are some out there that listen to this that actually have those answers. We'd love to hear from them how they've done that.

But I think from a leadership perspective, we really got to think about it from it's not revenue generating, but it is avoiding cost. And there is a huge implication. And the worst case scenario would be a fatality, and there's all sorts of things that come along with that.

But even if it's not a fatality, if we lose an employee because of a safety incident, and we have to bring someone new and train them up, in my industry, we're talking basically 18 months and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $300,000 to get a new employee up to speed. That's a significant amount of cost.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think, again, this is another point you're making that could be translated to a variety of different topics in field service. But this idea that we've historically perceived investments of time, money, whatever, based on making money in a quantifiable way, return on investment. But there is these different areas where there's this cost of doing nothing that is real, and significant, and presents significant risk, that we have to get better at talking about, prioritizing. Because it's relevant, like I said, to a number of different topics. So yeah, that's another really good point. Okay, Franklin. So what would you say is your biggest personal lesson learned related to today's topic?

Franklin Maxson: Do I have to limit it to one?

Sarah Nicastro: No.

Franklin Maxson: So, there's actually two big things that I think over the years, just have solidified in my mind. If you stop paying attention to safety, safety will erode. There is no doubt about it. I have seen it. Unfortunately, I have made that mistake, and have seen the results, and have had to come back from that organizationally. Just quick look away, and the next thing you know, there are things that are changing and that are not going the right way, because we stopped focusing on it. And it didn't take long, just a couple of months, and it started to erode.

And I think the other thing, and I'll credit Bob Baker, who I've mentioned earlier to this, is he once told me this. He said, "For all that we complain about the laws, and the rules, and the guidelines, we have to remember that every safety guideline, every safety law, every rule that is out there was written in the blood of those injured or killed at work." That is a stark reality that we have to understand across the board. It's something that I have shared with my team members.

Because at the end of the day, the question that I asked the team is, "How much are you willing to give for you at this company?" My dad gave his fingers. I think that my sweat and tears are enough. I don't want to shed any blood.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. Yeah, no, that's a really good point. Yeah, very good insight. And I think this has been a really helpful conversation around a topic that doesn't get enough attention. So I'm really glad we chose to talk about it, and appreciate you coming and sharing your personal experiences, and your lessons learned as a leader, and your thoughts on how to create that culture and keep it top of mind. So thank you.

Franklin Maxson: You're welcome, Sarah. It's definitely been a pleasure.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. We'll do it again sometime. But thank you so much, Franklin. I appreciate it.

Franklin Maxson: You're welcome.

Sarah Nicastro: 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 INSIDER, so that you get the latest content delivered to your email every other week. 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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Transformational Leadership in the AI Era

September 20, 2023 | 31 Mins Read

Transformational Leadership in the AI Era

Sarah talks with Dr. John Chrisentary, former Director of Global Technical Services and Technical Fellow at Medtronic, about the difference between transactional and transformational leadership, why transformational leadership is so important in today’s service landscape, and how advanced technologies like AI present distinct challenges – and opportunities – for transformational leaders.

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

Today, we're going to be talking about transformational leadership in the era of advanced technology. I'm thrilled to welcome to the podcast today, Dr. John Chrisentary, who is the former director of Global Technical Services and Technical Fellow at Medtronic. Dr. John, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Dr. John Chrisentary: Hey, it's a pleasure to be here and thank you for having me. I'm very excited about this opportunity.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I'm thrilled to have you. So I had the good fortune of moderating a panel that Dr. John was on recently at the WBR Field Service Hilton Head event, and also having the chance to sit in on his solo session that he did on transactional versus transformational leadership. And it was a great session and so I was happy when I reached out. I said, "Hey, can you come and share some of your insights on the podcast?" So here we are and happy to have you.

So at the event, you talked about this concept of transformational leadership, and we're going to get to in our conversation today how that relates to advanced technology, AI and some of the other themes that came up at that conference, of course. But before we get into that, let's go over some of the things that you spoke about at the event. So the first thing I wanted to touch on is how do you define transactional versus transformational leadership?

Dr. John Chrisentary: Wow, that is a phenomenal question. It's like, "Did you make this up, John? Where did this come from?" If we look back about 20 years ago, the thing that people were talking about, and you still use it as people manager, you're a really good people manager, and you have these soft skills, and there were actually colleges that added it to their leadership curriculum to understand this process called people management. But it's really transformational leadership, and this has been around for a while, but it was more or less defined between 1994 and 1997. There are many books about this but the main authors that people are aware of is Bass and Avolio. Now, hopefully I pronounced the last person's name correctly, but they had some documents that they wrote in '94 and '97 that spoke about transformational leadership. So I'll give you the traits.

The five traits of a transformational leader are one, they idolize the idea of influence by attributes and also by behaviors. So this works two different ways. It's what the leader provides and also what the person they're trying to influence has. And then how do they combine the two to make both work together? Those are two parts of it. They're inspirationally motivated, so it's not just, "Hey, let's do something. Let's move on. It's the way to do it. How can I get from A to B because I've traveled that road, so let me show you something shortcuts. Let me inspire you. Let me find out the things that you need that you're looking for and make it more attractive for you to be part of this process." And then they have individual consideration. And this is the hard part for a lot of leaders, you have to start to know your people on an individual basis. And so, this helps the transformational leader become more than just I'm in charge. They have a connection to literally everyone in the organization.

Now, that doesn't mean they have to sit with every person. If they have 200, 500 people under them, that's not going to happen. But there are ways that that leader will connect with their teams. Now, if you look at a transactional leader, this is different. It is a contingent award or reward. And what I mean by that is what I do for you, you give me something and if I give you what I'm stating I'm going to give you, you're going to do what I need you to do. There is no inspiration assigned to it. It's management by exception, which is active and passive. And what I mean by that is I don't have to do what I'm telling you to do, but I'll hold you accountable. So I'm not leading by example. I'm more or less leading by the power of my position.

So if I say, "Go and fix this widget this particular way," and because I told you that way and you followed my instructions and it didn't work, you're still held accountable. Whereas, if we were a transformational leader, you're going to find a way to make sure everyone is responsible from the top down. If the mistake occurs, everyone then addresses it. And it's more or less like a team effort or community effort to fix the problem versus saying, "You did the wrong thing even though I told you what to do." And if you look at these different leadership models, because people say, "Well, how many?" Because I've heard multiple views of what type of leader you can be. There are three key leadership models and then they have submodels. So you have the transactional leader, which we're talking about and the transformational leader. But the third one is the laissez-faire, and that's one... And I have not experienced this, but I've heard about it's the leader just listening. You just do what you need to do and I'll take credit, and if you don't do that, I'll hold you accountable.

And I think that's the worst of all the different leadership models. If you look in transformational, that's when you get into the charismatic, which a lot of people start to talk about and it has a bunch of other attributes that follow under it. But it is more linked to how can I influence change a person's way of thinking about themselves, about a process, how can I encourage them? And then also, how can I get them to move to a higher level? Once again, the transactional leader is, "I need you to get this done. And by doing so, the reward is you keep your job and I'll give you a bonus. You get your salary." It's very cut and dry. I equate it to what a politician does. Politician needs your vote. So they make a lot of promises, you vote for them. And of that list, you might get a half of 1% of whatever you voted for.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So then can you talk a little bit about how in the service landscape today, why is transformational leadership becoming increasingly important for leaders to understand, embrace, work toward, et cetera?

Dr. John Chrisentary: It's interesting. COVID, it was a serious condition for the entire world, but for business, it made everyone stop and take a look at how they've done things in the past and now what the future looks like. So everyone's working remote. It created a lot of havoc for a lot of leaders because they weren't used to not having the ability to walk up to someone and touch them on the shoulder and see what they're doing. Being remote made a lot of leaders nervous because it was new. What COVID has then caused is there has to be a new way of leading people because certain things are not going to go back to the way they were. So one is we're still on hybrid schedules, so we somehow have remote, some have a mixture, and there are quite a few people are going back in the office, but it's at a limited basis where they're doing maybe four days versus five. So you still have that remote aspect.

The importance now of leadership is to understand and influence and also come up with ways to drive an organization to be successful in the course of how business is done in the COVID environment or the post COVID environment, but also the expectations of the customer. One of the things we also found out from, especially from services is once we got through COVID, services fell off tremendously. So the customer expectation, it shifted, but now, we're more aware of the issues that we weren't thinking about prior to COVID. So having a leader that can provide this different mindset to get people to understand what the vision is, to live the vision, to make whatever their purpose, make it purposeful. Because normally in the past, the purpose and the vision landed at the leader's table and basically you just provide information to the team to achieve these different objectives.

Now, they need to know why. And creating that why then creates that sense of trust, but also sense of urgency and development. Because if you're telling me, "Oh, if I need to do this because the why is associated with my ability to help or to change the trajectory maybe from a medical device perspective, a patient at the end of this process, now you're giving me a value proposition that's beyond the idea of a paycheck." It is a purpose for why I'm doing my job every day. So that's why it's important to have that type of leader.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And I think talking about purpose, COVID certainly was a big factor. I think the other factor here that is tied into that is just generational differences in what's important to the workforce, right? And so when you gave the example of COVID of you could go over and put your hand on someone's shoulder, I also think that what that makes me think of is it was a lot easier for leaders to control everyone when they were in close proximity to them, right? And then they found, "Okay, if I don't have proximity and control isn't as simple, now what do I do?" Right?

Dr. John Chrisentary: Right.

Sarah Nicastro: I need to up my game and I need to actually inspire and empower, et cetera. But then, on the flip side of that, you have younger workers where they're not motivated by the same simple exchange that worked for transactional leaders for a long time. So that makes sense.

So I asked a question at the end of your session, which I loved your answer. So I said, "What keeps a transactional leader from embracing transformational leadership?" And it was that term specifically you said it's control because transformational leaders often appear to have less control because they're focused on empowering others versus empowering themselves. I love this answer because we've been talking a lot on this podcast about this idea that the old school command and control leadership is becoming very outdated. And so, your answer was very much in line with this idea of, "I don't know if you want to call it ego or what have you, but these leaders who feel their success is tied to how much perceived control they have versus how much they're willing to give others." So what do you think will ultimately happen to leaders who fail to move beyond that transactional form of leadership?

Dr. John Chrisentary: I think we're in the storm right now. If you have asked me this question back in say 2020, right after COVID was really starting to really bump up, I would state it's going to be a 50/50 type of proposition. The person who's a transactional leader can still ride this thing out for a long time before we see that there's going to be change with the organization. Now in 2023, I see that organizations are starting to lean toward having that diversified leadership that a transformational leader can provide because the roles of a lot of leaders are now not just domestic, they're international. So I'm coming from a global role. A transactional leader doesn't work well in Europe.

Matter of fact, if you're not a transformational leader, you're going to have a hard time working in the international realm because one of the things you have to create internationally is relationships. And this is where that transformational leader really comes into play because they understand that every person brings value to the process. And if they can help the person understand their value, that person has a higher probability of success, not just in the role they're in where they want to go in their career, and it builds a different level of, and I keep using this word trust because it's key of not just the leader but the organization. And you get things done that way. The transactional leader creates a barrier, literally, between he or she and whoever they're leading because their objective is not known. It's not even provided to the person who's joined the work, and the person becomes more of like a widget and I say a widget in the fact of I'll just replace you with another widget. Well, the problem about replacing people like that is you lose the capability.

We also talk about tribal knowledge, right? Tribal knowledge is I think the thing that hurts an organization more than anything else because that person with tribal knowledge leaves and then suddenly you've taken away, let's say, 20% of the knowledge of the organization of how it runs smoothly. On paper, it looks like, "Oh, well, we just got a rid of so-and-so." Internally, that 20% is the difference between a successful rollout or implementation or a non-successful. 20%. And then you say, "Okay, I'll just hire another person to get into that position." Well, the issue is you literally go from say ground zero. When the person leaves, you go negative 50 because you've lost that capability. You hire somebody that doesn't create that same influx of information, that person still has to build expertise in your area. So they're slowly building. So there's a long period of time if you put this on the graph, you literally dropped it negative 50 and it's tracking at negative 50 for months. And as that person starts to become part of your organization, gets the knowledge that the last person had that slowly start to get back to zero.

And most leaders and especially transactional leaders do not look at that time, which could be six months, could be a year of ineffectiveness. The transformational leader understands that each person brings a key component to the process, but the key is the knowledge around the entire organization. You lose a person and you might lose if you do it right, maybe 2% because someone else has the same skillset, maybe not the expertise, and they'll step up into the next role because that is what you're providing, that you're feeding, you're nurturing the organization to do. So it creates a different dynamic than what we've seen in the past with transactional leaders where these common issues of people leaving now are not the detriment of the organization, it's just part of the way an organization will work.

But internally, that knowledge is what's going to keep the organization solvent and keep people happy to trust that leader, trust the organization, and in most cases, then you get to achieve these sometimes more difficult objectives as you're rolling out to make the company more effective and efficient in its vision, using this through the people who are doing the work.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. I'll tell you a quick story that I'm thinking of and it'll segue us into our conversation about technology. But I interviewed a woman, Trine, she leads logistics. So in a global role for a company, she's based out of Denmark, and she is a relatively young woman in a global leadership role. So already, there's layers of diversity more so than a lot of folks. But we were talking about leadership and she said it's very humbling today to be a leader because even when she came up through the ranks, she said the goal was to be the smartest person in the room. And not only is that not the goal anymore, it's not possible. When we talk about the way that digitalization has changed how we do business and everything that goes into those capabilities and leveraging data for business intelligence, it is not possible anymore for any leader to know everything. You are focused on accumulating a group of people that together are able to accomplish great things. No one person can be in that role.

And so she said, "That's a humbling change to go through as a leader and reconcile that it's not my job to know everything or to be the smartest person in the room. It's my job to help this group of really smart people accomplish this objective." So I'm just thinking back to that conversation and how it really parallels in the terminology we're talking through today. Her really witnessing that change from transactional to transformational, and I think it was just powerful to hear her acknowledge that that's humbling, that as a leader, there's some emotions tied to like, "Okay, it's not about me, it's about the team." Right?

Dr. John Chrisentary: Right.

Sarah Nicastro: So yeah, it's really interesting. So then let's talk a bit about the intersection of transformational leadership and advanced technology, okay? So you have all of these sophisticated tools today that are really changing the way we can do business, right? AI, machine learning, augmented reality, and so on, and so on. So it really demands leaders not only accept the change but become a lot more adaptable. So let's talk about how this factors into transformational leadership.

Dr. John Chrisentary: Okay. Well, one, the story you just told of the person overseas, I think that's a great example. The hard I think for leaders to understand is, one, you don't have to have total control. You don't have to have total control from the standpoint of how every gear moves. You just have to have control on when to move the gear. So it's a different mindset. If I have to know how every gear works, there's no way I'll be an effective leader. But if I understand the key components and I start to put people into those positions and allow them to grow and I can help nurture them to be that positioned player to move the gear, then I'm still being successful without having to know every dug on thing that goes on, right? The smartest person in the room is not the one who always is the ones talking. I was told this a long time ago.

Matter of fact, if you want to know who the smartest person in the room is, let everyone talk and wait to see who everyone wants to listen to. And normally, that person doesn't tell you everything that someone has stated. They give you two or three facts and that's it. So I say that before we get into the technology question. Technology creates what I call the agile mindset. And the agile mindset is going back from how software is developed, effective software or effective processes software development, whereas you're developing something for a company. And traditionally, if I told you I want my application to at the end be red, white, and blue, you tell the developer they do what they think you want. At the end, you get red, white, and pink. Now you say, "Okay, I want red, white, and blue." Okay, well, we'll create some updates and we'll get back to where you want to go. So day one, you're not where you want to be.

In an agile environment, the developer is coming back to you and say, "Okay, is this the red you want? Is this the color of blue you want? Is this the color white you want? Is this meeting your standards?" So by the time they give you your last, it's a final process or product, it's pretty close to what you're looking for. Now, does it take a little more time and the processes appears to at the end result, it does it because you're giving someone what they want at the end of the task, not having to fix it after the task, right? As a leader with technology, you're doing the same thing. You're seeing these new technologies come on.

One, you have to embrace them. As I already stated, the superpower of a leader is one, they have to empower themselves first, and then you empower others, and then you empower your community. And why do I state that? Because our technology is changing so rapidly now. AI is creating in the service world, opportunities I'll state like that we're not thinking about. It's also creating, I would call hazards. If someone's using say ChatGPT to write an email, and there's another AI that I just read about, actually I was testing it last week, where it writes your emails in a personal way. You don't know then if you're getting the person's information or an AI version of it, which also means is the knowledge there or is it the machine learning knowledge this person is presenting to you?

These are now new hurdles that leaders have to overcome. Now, as a transactional leader, you don't care. It seems like I'm getting the right thing from person X. We're getting our processes done. I'm meeting my objectives, let's move on. Long-term, you start to see kinks in the armor. The transformational leader wants to understand how are we working to achieve these objectives, but how are people using our tools and are our tools the tools we need for the future? So that leader starts to embrace this as the way to move forward and not a fear of this new skill or this new technology overtaking my capabilities. Now, will new technology affect the workforce? The answer is yes. It always has. If we look back before the use of laptops and even your phones, you had paper and you had people sending paper and we killed a lot of trees. We're still doing that even though with technology, but the process was slower, now you can get everything instantly.

I always equate it to when we really started getting into the internet, we used to use AOL. So everyone had to go through the process of clicking in, hearing the noise, and you would just thrilled to get logged in through this dialogue. And now if someone would provide that same level of service to you, you would say, "This is the worst thing ever had." So we have to look at technology as moving us from that dial up process to this high speed broadband process and to this gig process, to this five gig process. And as we're doing this, we're allowing our organization to move forward. Now, here's the caveat. The leader is the one who gets the team to understand the hurdle they're about to have to overcome preparing them for this. And even in being blunt, you need to do X, Y, and Z to be effective six months a year down the line, letting the people know and being honest about it.

Will everyone take that information and move with it? The answer is no. So you give them a way to move forward. You give them a roadmap that means the leader is the least adaptive. What is going on? They're really listening to what's out there from a technology perspective. And I would say in the service world, I don't know if leaders are really looking at this yet. From our conference, we saw various vendors that use AI. There's a whole lot more in development. Are leaders actually looking at this? And if they're not, their teams are not then being aware. So it's important as a transformational leader to be aware, don't have to be an expert and prepare the team because you're going to have people on your team that can fit these needs that you have, but they don't know they can fit them until that leader exposes them to what changes are coming along.

In my past roles, not just over technology, but even when I was with another company, I would have a six-month roadmap with my entire organization, letting them know where we are and where we're going to go in six months. And then here's what you need to be aware of and plan it out so that people are aware. So if we get to a point where we have to start saying, "Okay, we need these particular skills," and people have not done the work, have not taken the training, have they even asked for training. Then if they happen to lose their position due to their obsolescing themselves, the role of that or the weight of that falls on the person and not the leader.

I would prefer as a leader to at least let everyone know and in doing so, give them an opportunity to make the adjustments. And if they do that, provide them the skills, provide them training, but those that don't, at the end of the day, I can always say, I could sleep well stating, "Hey, I provided you this information. I wanted you to be successful." And you then decided not to make the move to move forward. At this point, we have to make changes.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. That makes sense. So that makes sense. But we know that change, especially when it's continual, is complex, right? It can bring about discomfort, fear, et cetera. So how does a transformational leader address that, I guess, if they're feeling it themselves and within their teams?

Dr. John Chrisentary: Well, you know what, I'm going to give you credit, so I'm going to put this out because this is what you stated during your opening to the conference. The difference of change management to change leadership. Right. Change leadership I think is what we're looking for now or transformational leaders, they have to want to understand and they will, as a transformational leader, they will understand that there is a need to make an adjustment. Now, depending on the environment, the adjustment may not be drastic. In other environments, it may be like a 360, right? They then have to start taking time to at least understand or demystify the technologies that are coming into their world. AI is probably one of the most scariest words, two letters you can tell someone because we've seen different versions of they'll take away the human aspect, but there are products that we use today that are based on AI, and no one tells you that, but you start to really think about how do we get to this certain point?

I mean, look at Google, and I'm not picking on Google, but they use AI. They've been using it for a while. But think about this. If you or me, we say, "Okay, we're looking for a pair of shoes, a pair of brown shoes. Just say, let me Google this." Right? Suddenly you get shoe ads all over the place, right? And you get shoe ads almost to the type of shoe you're looking for, right? It is using that machine learning. We don't think twice about that. It might make us more agitated. How do they do this? But we're not saying, "Oh my God, they're taking over the world." Right? It happens all the time, and you have different platforms that are coming along to offset that. Leaders have to start looking at this as a positive because it's not changing, and they have to then embrace enough to feel comfortable. So if they're using ChatGPT, use it in a way that you feel comfortable, learn how it works, then learn the other AI tools out there and use it to be comfortable.

So if you want to write a note, let me try ChatGPT to write a note. Let me see how it works. Once you start to get that, I would say interest, right? To get your foot in the water, just see if it's cool, if it's warm, if it's comfortable, you're more apt to put your foot in the water and then finally immerse yourself in it. It's like putting your foot in the ocean. When you first step in, it's cold. Stay there long enough, you get comfortable. Next thing you know, you're walking further and further out. Same thing that a leader has to do. It's across the board. If some are doing a really good job of embracing it, others are, "I don't know." And then others are saying, no, but it's a tidal wave that's coming, a tsunami that's coming, and it's coming a whole lot faster than what we're really anticipating. So the faster people get comfortable getting their foot in the water, I think then you'll start to see transformational leaders help their teams to adjust because they've adjusted.

Sarah Nicastro: Right. You're not going to stay dry, so suit up.

Dr. John Chrisentary: No.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, good points. I think here's the thing. You talked about the fact that at the Hilton Head event, it was AI this, AI that AI everything, right? And I think there's a lot of ambiguity right now around the term, and I think that's one of the challenges, right? To your point, there are ways that AI is already being used in service organizations today and has been, and it just hasn't been referred to in a buzzword type of way, right? Then there are very ready and practical ways that companies could be adopting it today, and then there's a whole future coming that we really can't be certain of, right?

Dr. John Chrisentary: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: And so, to me, I think one of the biggest roles of a transformational leader when it comes to AI specifically is to not shy away from the fact that that tsunami is coming, right? And not be fearful of leveraging the attributes of the technology that can help the business, but also to protect the irreplaceable role of the human skillset, right? So figuring out how that puzzle works together in a way that accomplishes what customers need, right? Because we've heard many stories of companies that have gone too far in the direction of automation and have felt the effect of that because they've taken away from the human element that is essential really to service. So what are your thoughts, I guess, on things that they should be thinking about to strike that right balance?

Dr. John Chrisentary: I think we have to look at the demographics of our customer base. If you're looking at the baby boomers, the Gen Zs, the millennials, and Gen Xers, what percentage of your install based... Let's stick to baby boomers who are less likely to really embrace the technology as it's changing. How do you address issues with them? How do you make them comfortable? And this is where that human touch is required because that is something they've expected. If you could talk to a millennial, "Hey." They can get around it because technically savvy, and then if you get into a Gen X or Gen Z, it's not as prevalent as a problem for the baby boomer.

So if you start to customize a way to integrate your processes to address your customer base, knowing it's moving away from the baby boomer environment into the Gen Zs, Gen Xs, and millennials, then you still have that personal touch, I believe, and there's a vendor I deal with, not calling names, but they've used AI as their way of dealing with you, and it's the worst system. If you have a problem, you're literally in the queue for 20 minutes, and I'm savvy on how to work through the process. It still takes me 20 minutes to get to a person. Suppose someone's not, they'll get totally frustrated and not want to use their products. So now you have customer disloyalty to your brand basically. Not that the brand is bad, the service is bad, and so let's... Talking about as generating your revenue, that's a different topic, but it all falls in line and service is very critical.

If you are looking at technologies as ways to bridge the gulf between those that used to having that personal touch in a way to maximize the AI, cloud, virtual reality process, then you should start with the human factor and add tools that will help transition your customers over. This is where that transformational leader is really essential in sitting down of the C-suite to explain the need and also the benefit. There's a huge cost to make these changes and there's a paradigm shift, a cultural paradigm shift for an organization, but that transformational leader will be the catalyst to say, "This is the roadmap to success." So one, 30% of our custom base is baby boomers or how do we migrate them? We need to still have the personal touch, but how do we make our systems open to that person but not starting to shy away from the other generational needs as we're looking at Gen X and Gen Z, and then millennials and build it out that way?

So there is a way to contact me and talk to a live person. There's another way to use a QR code and it links to your landing page on your website, which directs it to a person. There is the AI component that will give you your commonly asked questions and answer those for you, or even give you the voice of prompts because it's assigned to these particular skill sets within your AI module. Each one then provides this level of service that the generational ways of communicating are there. Is it costly in the upfront? Yes. Long-term, no, because now it's going to adjust with your audience. So as you're moving into newer technologies, they will start to become accustomed because you can add components into what their regular world is that allows them to move into the new technology that you're looking for, especially from an AI perspective.

So it's coming with that strategy of developing what fits your current install base, looking at the different generational needs, and then starting to come up with ways. Phase two, moves this component a little further into the AI side. Phase three, we take the human factor of having them answer where say, 40%, we might be down to 20% because mow we're seeing people are using our QR codes and things of that nature. It becomes a definite business strategy that is long-term, it's like a five-year plan to get your customers to ride this new technology or this new way of communicating with me so that everyone's aligned versus just stating, "We're going to change everything on January one and you're going to lose your install base because you didn't think about the generational needs." It's more strategic mindset of that transformational leader, and once again, they're the persons, he or she that goes to the C-suite and explains this logically with evidence. It is out there already how to move your organization from where it is to it will need to be in five years.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. So I think one of the things that I think is interesting is let's say maybe it's the opposite of the leader who is not wanting to dip their toe in, right? I think another risk is for a leader to hope that these technologies can do the work for them, right? So they hope that they can put X, Y, Z in place to solve this huge problem, and that will be that. Maybe even that will take the onus off them to really embrace this transformational leadership, right? But in reality, it is just a tool, right? So what is the words of caution in terms of realizing that whatever tools are in your toolbox, you still have to do the work as the transformational leader?

Dr. John Chrisentary: I like to use analogies, so follow me on this. Every year in the fall, before COVID, and not even this year, we go into what's called flu season, right? And they advise everyone to go out and get a flu shot, right? And there's a percentage of people who get flu shots who feel that if they get the shot, they'll get the flu. There's another percentage that feel if they get the shot, they won't get the flu. And then you have a percentage that says, if I get the shot, it will give me the tools to minimize getting the flu. Right.

To your question, leaders fall into those three categories. Will the technology fix it for me? Others will say, "I need to do some work with the technologies for it to be effective," and others say, "It is not going to even happen. Very similar to the flu shot." I always look at it's human nature of when we're looking at leaders, we have to create or have to understand what is important to them. So if we look at the components of a transformational leader, we gave some of the traits, this idealized intelligence, which is the behaviors and also the attributes. We're talking about inspirational motivation and the intellectual stimulation. We did not talk a lot about that. All of these traits, if a leader has them, they're going to be in the middle ground where they're saying, "We'll use the technology to help us." If they hold some of these, say two of these traits, they may be on the fence of, "This will fix my world." If they have one of the traits, they're going to say, "This is not going to work at all."

So it's getting people to be more aligned with all of the traits, not just say I'm a transformational leader, but to actually live and breathe that mindset, to understand that people want to do a good job if you give them an opportunity, and technology is a tool to make you effective. It is not a silver bullet to make your organization or even your position Kevlar enforced. It doesn't work that way. You're using these tools to make your organization the best it can be, and you're providing opportunities for people to learn to master the tools. It's like another analogy. You buy something from IKEA and you get the schematics, it has like 400 parts to it, and they tell you you only need a screwdriver. And you say, "Okay, I'm going to do this with a screwdriver." And you don't have a lot of wrist strength to tighten each one of the screws, but someone else says, "Hey, I'll use my drill," and do the same work because they understand how to use the drill. They've been taught.

They have a skill, not a master skill, but they understand how to use that drill. They make that job easier. Now, it sounds like this, John, that's kind of bland how you explain that, but I want you to think about it. Watch someone who is not proficient with a tool at all trying to put something together versus someone else saying, "I'll just grab this drill and I'll make the adjustments as I need to and how fast they can build it." This is what we're talking about, these leaders. If a leader is not embracing being a transformational leader, 100%, they're going to pick up the screwdriver because that's what's provided to them, and then they get frustrated in trying to put this thing together. Whereas another leader who is a transformational leader understands, "I have a better way of doing it. I'll still meet the objectives. I might need some help. Let me start to help get some people and advise me sometimes on how to do a really good job."

The burden doesn't fall just on a leader, it becomes part of the corporate or the organizational mindset of solutions are built from one, not just the top, but from the bottom up. This is where that transformation leader really becomes beneficial because they find ways to make that complicated process and simplify it. So it's still using technology as a tool and not as a burden.

Sarah Nicastro: That makes sense. Okay. So if you think about what we've talked about today and then what might be next in terms of this evolution of technological capabilities, human soft skills, leadership, et cetera, what are your closing thoughts on what people need to keep in mind and be thinking of as we move ahead?

Dr. John Chrisentary: One, we're talking this topic of transformational leadership, like you can turn the switch and you'll be one in 24 hours. The answer is not. The answer is no, actually. The answer is you're going to have to work on this. Giving up your power, and now I'm going back to a transactional leader, your power of influencing a situation, creating that basically yes or no scenario, do this and you get that. It's hard, really hard for people to start to give the perceived power to a person. Understanding that we are better as a team when everyone has the skills, when more than one person knows how to do the things we need done and that everyone is going to learn at a different clip, some people are going to have a really great understanding of it and then use that to create the expertise that you need and others are going to be in the middle of the road. That leader then starts to see the value of making sure the community understands that because we're in this dynamic environment, it's going to cause a leader to either become or slowly become obsolete.

Now, I'm not saying it's going to happen in two years, five years, but at the rate we're going, people are going to start to feel it, and I'll tell you how you can tell. Can you adjust to change? Does it hurt you? Do you really go, "Oh, I hate this." Or is it what you feel is the norm? Right?

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm.

Dr. John Chrisentary: If you feel it's the norm, you're going to move very quickly with the change. If you are those that state, "I just don't like change. I want things the way they are," you create your own obsolescence. And the problem is when you go back looking into other opportunities of employment, the things that we're talking about are... You'll see this on all the job boards. They're looking for transformational leaders. People who can drive an organization, influence an organization, create positive change in the organization, these are in job descriptions now. Organizations are currently looking for and not quantifying it as a transformational leader. So if someone doesn't see this as a value in a few years, it's going to be a problem for them. And those that embrace it, I believe it creates the longevity for the leader, but it also creates the positive impact for an organization, which then allows the company to be successful.

When I wrote my dissertation on this in 2013, it was linked to communities of practice and way before COVID about the virtual communities of practice. But the idea of leadership is not something that's new that I created. This has been really talked about since 1964 really put into this transformational mindset in the '90s and now is a way that leaders are looking at how to move an organization. So if it's not the train that people want to ride, you will come to a stop where you're not going to be able to go any further because it requires that mindset of really wanting to influence people in a positive way and knowing that and doing so, you then have a greater impact to the business and you become a great leader. Matter of fact, you'll want your people to grow up in the organization, move on to other opportunities that really then shows your level of leadership versus you're the only one who's in charge and no one grows under you. You have a stagnant organization.

Sarah Nicastro: I agree. And it's interesting being able to talk to different people in different industries, different areas of the world on this podcast week to week, you can see the change taking place, right? So I agree 1000% that it's the writing's on the wall, right? And it's just a matter of folks deciding whether or not they're willing and able to adjust. So really good. Well, Dr. John, thank you so much-

Dr. John Chrisentary: Well, thank you.

Sarah Nicastro: ... for coming to share your insights with us. I really appreciate it.

Dr. John Chrisentary: No, this has been fantastic. Thank you for having me.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, it was a pleasure.

Dr. John Chrisentary: All right.

Sarah Nicastro: 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 you get an email every other week with the latest content. We also have one more live tour event in 2023. That event is in Stockholm on October 10th. So if you're in the area, registered to join us for a great day of insight and discussion. 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 Pillars of GEA’s Service Transformation

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3 Pillars of GEA’s Service Transformation

In a session from the Future of Field Service Live Tour in Paris, Sarah talks with Sebastien Garric, Director Service Liquid and Powder Technologies, France and Maghreb at GEA Group, about the company’s focus on mindset, customer experience, and operational efficiency.

Sebastien Garric: Sarah.

Sarah Nicastro: Come on up. Thanks for being here.

Sebastien Garric: Brilliant.

Sarah Nicastro: Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I will try and do the same.

Sebastien Garric: Thanks.

Sarah Nicastro: I'm always nervous with a tall chair. I'll fall off in front of everyone. Let's hope not.

Sebastien Garric: I will take care of you. Don't worry.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay, thank you. That's good service. Okay, so what we're going to be talking about with Sebastien is GEA's transformation and some of the factors that are most important in that transformation, specifically mindset, customer centricity, and operational efficiency. Before we get into that, Sebastien, can you tell everyone a bit about yourself?

Sebastien Garric: Yeah. Thank you for being here. It's a pleasure and also to be here with all of you. Thank you. So my name is Sebastien Garric. I'm 45. I'm married with three kids, nice kids that I really appreciate. I started my career in a very small company. Its name is Coca-Cola. During 10 years where I'm at different roles, starting from logistics and then moved to production and project management in different plants. So, I had the chance to know a lot about transformation, organization, production efficiency, and what agility means.

So then I started in GEA almost nine years ago, and I'm pretty sure that we have to explain what GEA is doing.

Sarah Nicastro: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sebastien Garric: So we are a technical company, and we are also producing a line for our customers. What does that mean? Is that we are producing equipment and also solution engineering just to create some production lines for different applications such as in dairy, food, chemical, pharma, and so on. So we've got a diverse customer.

So today, I'm service director for GEA France and also some activity worldwide. Just to understand what we are doing in GEA, I think that we have to think about not doing only equipment for equipment or solution for solution, but we've got a social challenge. We are there to support our industry, to feed people, to heal people, and to make part of the transition in ecology, such as moving to some transformation and the lithium generation and production. So we are part of this sustainability development.

Sarah Nicastro: Great. So, I had the opportunity to attend GEA's Global Services Kickoff in Copenhagen in February, and they invited me to speak. When the gentleman Lucas, who reached out to me to speak there, sort of talked to me about why he wanted me to come, it was this idea that the legacy of the company is very much manufacturing and how he's really passionate about bringing service into the identity of the business. This is a really big challenge for organizations that are trying to embrace the potential of service because when you have this deep, rich legacy as a product manufacturer that's rooted in every aspect of the business, you're asking people to really change the way they think and also operate. So, let's talk a little bit before we get into what that means. Talk about how you would describe the opportunity that you see for GEA around service.

Sebastien Garric: You have to know that into our development items, service is central. We do expect that service roles will increase as high as new sales development. We do see service as a full potential for our customers because we are producing lines, and we are not on the B2B business. We're on B2C business. So that means that we are following our customer, not only as service provider, we are there as a contributor for them. We're there as trainer. We do, and they are doing. They expect to have some improvement opportunity from us, so our production line is made to have a lifetime of more than 17 years. So, that means that we need to contribute and collaborate. This is more a partnership business, and the service is key just to follow our customer production all over those years.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So, can you talk about that fundamental piece, which is the shift in mindset for so many people within the business?

Sebastien Garric: Yeah. So, I have the chance to have one experience from Coca-Cola to be on the customer side. This is really important for me because I know how difficult it is when you are under production just to manage what will happen in the next four hours, eight hours, one day, or even one week. So this is really a stretch on time, and you need to focus. The point is that when you are in an engineering company, then you have to think about what will happen in the next 15 years with your equipment. How do you put in place the key points or the key support that will enable your customer just to find a solution for the next 15 years? And you have to mitigate and combine both needs, and it's all about understanding what the customer is requiring.

So you need to be in really close contact with your customer, knowing more their requirements and the technologies in-house, and we'll not change our DNA completely as an engineering company. This is not what we're willing to do. But we have to understand how to support and give the support all along the lifetime of the production line. In terms of change, you have to make people understand what are the challenges of your customer in terms of quality, in terms of safety, in terms of production, in terms of yield, in terms of cost, and to adapt yourself. This is really key just to be able to think about what are your expectations. How, from my experience and my knowledge, can I support you as well, and how do I need to improve?

Sarah Nicastro: So, you mentioned it as what you're working on is combining your culture with the one that's required for your customer's needs.

Sebastien Garric: Yeah.

Sarah Nicastro: So, what do you mean by that?

Sebastien Garric: Customer need, one more time, is really we need to understand and be on the customer side to understand. Understand this is the main point. And to adapt our internal process, doing better every day. Try to develop the according service product that has also enabled us to develop their business. And one more time, this is key about collaboration. We do have to think about what are the goals of our customer, and we need to fix it, support them, and provide the right key service product that is enabling to be much more efficient. Can I just give one?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, go ahead.

Sebastien Garric: We are wondering if it makes sense, for example, just to send one field service engineer across France with one day travel to fix one issue during one day on one equipment and then to go back. Does it make sense in terms of cost efficiency? Does the customer have also the right experience, the right knowledge to do it by himself, or do we need to support? And how do we need to support? Do we need to stay, as you mentioned, on the standard service level, such as traveling by car, fixing screws, and so on, or could we move to a new remote support service? And this is where we are and what we are doing, and maybe premier info for you is that in our contract in France, we also integrate this remote support into our next contract in the coming days. So really experience and really willing to share with our customer just to propose the best experience and what is the best cost-driven solution.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. That makes sense. There was something I was thinking about when you mentioned understanding your customer's overall objectives, and you mentioned kind of taking a look at the entire customer lifecycle. So there was a gentleman I had on the podcast from Dell, and he gave a really good analogy that, hopefully, I can explain. So he oversees service, but historically, the different functions of service, the call center, field service, were all very siloed. And so what happened is you could have one doing a fantastic job, but from a customer experience standpoint, they were having a poor experience because one silo was succeeding, but it wasn't connected to the others.

So, he used the analogy of think rings, not trophies. If you think about, because this is a sports analogy. If you have a most valuable player, they get a trophy for being the best player in the game. When you have a team that wins together. So, in the US, we have the Super Bowl, we have the World Series, the whole team gets a ring. So his point is we need to stop focusing on being the best in our particular function or our silo and look more at how are we playing together as a team because that's what affects the customer experience.

Sebastien Garric: Sure.

Sarah Nicastro: And I think that's where your point about how much can we do or should we do remotely are the questions a lot of organizations are asking themselves right now. So we know again that the capabilities to do that exist, but how does that fit into your operation? How does that meet the needs of your customers? How willing are they to accept that transformation right now? All of those things are questions that I think a lot of people are sorting through.

Sebastien Garric: Okay. So we are already quite mature in terms of service. We do have some sales engineers dedicated for service splitted in our market areas, and they're already visiting the customer. That's why it's really key as you get the customer voice just to understand expectation. One more time, different type of industry and different type of application, and different type of customer are not expecting the same one or the same needs. Some of them are cost-driven. Some of them are performance-driven. And then we need to understand them, thanks to our sales team, and then provide the according service potential.

So, the key players are the people that are on the ground. Really, this is key just to understand what they're living every day. What are the experiences of the field service engineer? Also, to support them to be a provider of future service as a voice and what the customer is looking at. Being as well-trained as we could to be able to answer to them and make the transition and make them understand what's the customer requirement.

Sarah Nicastro: So, one of the other challenges you and I spoke about is the difference between selling products, which are tangible, and selling service, which is intangible. So what have you found related to that, and how are you enabling your teams to be able to articulate that intangible value?

Sebastien Garric: One more time, this is all about understanding what we could offer from our side. When you are offering one complete installation, for sure, you've got some KPIs to achieve, and then the production is running, and you are not part of the journey from the customer side. What we are willing to change into our mind is to be there on the prefilled sales because being at the pre-sales is enabling to follow the customer journey into their production. And this is also creating a changed mindset into our internal organization. Not being only provider for new installation and then preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, spare part, and so on, but being there to support.

One more time, this is all about collaboration, understanding, and making the switch to sell the intangible. That means that we will be upfront to the customer and explaining to him just to be confident on us and use advanced service product as we could have such as remote support, but also our technical knowledge. This will be kept into our DNA. We'll not change it, but we will use it to better support and use the right tools and advanced tools to be more efficient.

Sarah Nicastro: We had an interesting conversation at the event in the UK last week. When we talk about the move to delivering outcomes, I mentioned in the introduction customers want peace of mind, and a lot of times, we think about that as the combination of the product and the service to make sure that we're delivering what we say we will, whether that's uptime, what have you. But what we talked about last week is there's a third component to this that I think some people are missing, which is what gives customers that confidence, builds that trust, which is the insight. So customers don't just want what you say will happen to happen when you say it will happen. They also want the visibility to know that it is happening. So, they don't want the intervention. They don't want to have to ask for the service, but they want the insight of what's happening and when.

So I think that's a piece that sometimes companies are missing, and it also helps make that intangible more tangible, in the sense of your showcasing, we may not have been on site, but here is everything that we've avoided, or here are the things that we did remotely, so sort of almost like a business review type of thing. Along with, in particular situations, sometimes the data that you're collecting also has use for them as a business, so you can incorporate that as well. So I think that's an interesting distinction.

So, you mentioned that you were formerly with Coca-Cola. What would you say you learned in that role that's helping you in this role?

Sebastien Garric: One more time, I've been in production for a long time, and what is key is also really true to understand how it is working. Because in Coca-Cola, we are using some gas equipment, so this is part of the bridge. I'm still in touch with some of my colleagues, that I really appreciate because we are really creating links in production, and this is the key point and create the link in between what is your experience and what is my own experience. I've lived during my career just to understand how it is running on the ground in detail. What is the focus? What is the expectation? What is the challenging, every day challenging? And then this B two B business in Coca-Cola it requires really strong agility, a really strong capacity to react really fast, being a quick decision maker, and one more time, taking decisions and risks, but also supporting the teams.

In my actual role, I do think this is really important for me to keep in mind how it is running on a plant, and every day, I'm wondering how do me and my team is serving our customer in the same manner. How do we need to react fast when there is a production stop in between us and the customer? We need to be there for them, find some solution, being a problem solver, trying to find the right people to understand this is how to support. And finding the right way, also sending one engineer or doing by remote.

There is a way, and this is a journey, meaning that from my experience from the customer and providing this experience to my team and my organization is really key. Because we know, when I started in GEA and starting to talk about meantime between failure, this is key standard in the production industry. Nobody was knowing what was that. And for me, it was really important just to make this transition and to change mindset in GEA. Just to understand and make my people understand, okay, you need to know how you support and service your customer, not only going on-site, fixing, going back. No, we need to be there and to know what is happening. After running intervention, call, "Is everything fine?" Collaborating, how to support, what could we propose? Okay, we are a technical company so our customer are expecting from us some technical solutions. So we need to be there on that.

Sarah Nicastro: Makes sense. Okay. So, if you think about some of the trends I mentioned in the beginning and the journey that you're on, where do you see GEA's business going over the next three or so years?

Sebastien Garric: There will be a lot of challenges into this transformation because we are not as mature as we are in all the countries, but we have a really good chance because we've got a full network that is existing, and we've got full of talented people everywhere. And a network is key to work as an ecosystem internally and externally just to ensure that we're providing the solution for the future.

Last week, I was in New Zealand just to collaborate with my peers in New Zealand just to see, okay, how could we combine strengths? And by doing that, then we will move to another step that will go into digitalization, advanced service product such as predictive maintenance. That will be the next step. And one more time, also, in other tools such as moving to what we are calling the GEA-verse by being able to use the digitalization to support our customer on their plant and explaining to them what they have to fix really in details and what and where.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. A lot of challenges but a lot of opportunity. Right?

Sebastien Garric: Exactly. Exactly. Full of opportunity.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. And last question is, what would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned in your time as a leader at GEA?

Sebastien Garric: It is not only in GEA, but I will say that I think that for the service, we shall enjoy to solve problems every day with passion. I have a former boss that says, "Okay, you have to think into production. Welcome to problem." And this mindset is really key. Welcome to problem, is enabling you to solve problems every day. So you have to support and serve your customer, but you're also learning for you and make the change on your mindset. And one more time, we are more than a supplier. We are a partner. We are a partner. We are there to train. We are there to improve. We are there to fix, and we are there to support our customer into their journey. So, welcome to problem.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, I like that. I think that when we think about leaders or companies that are succeeding most at innovation, it's that they see those problems as potential. So they kind of get past the problem solving, which is the more immediate need, but then look at that problem as an opportunity for how can we change beyond addressing this in the near term, and how can that lead to innovation. So I think that's really interesting. Welcome to problem. I like it. All right, Sebastien, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Sebastien Garric: Thank you, Sarah.

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Balancing Today’s Business Needs with Preparation for the Future of Field Service

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Balancing Today’s Business Needs with Preparation for the Future of Field Service

In a session from the Future of Field Service Live Tour stop in Dusseldorf, Sarah talks with Jan Helge Bruemmer, Global Field Service Manager, Global Service Operations at Alfa Laval about striking the appropriate balance between investing in the future with what’s required for today’s (short-term) performance, especially when those two things seem to be at odds.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. So, the real question of the day is, how do we balance today's needs with innovating and preparing for the future? This is the tightrope back to you all are walking. So, before we get into that, tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your role, Alfa Laval, and we'll go from there.

Jan Helge Bruemmer: Yeah. All right. So, Alfa Laval is a Swedish machine building company focusing on heat transfer, mechanical fluid separation, fluid handling. So, that's the traditional way of explaining that. That nowadays comes, of course, with a big focus on sustainability, energy consumption, water consumption, waste, heat recovery, and so on and so forth. So, that's that. I am then responsible for our global field service operations. My background is also a bit from the sales side. So, I've always been in service, but then also responsible for both the commercial side of things, but also the execution. Moved around a bit, lived in South America for five years, then in France for three years plus, sometime now in the new role. But working now centrally for our headquarters.

Sarah Nicastro: Excellent. So, I think everyone here to some degree has the challenge of balancing short-term business objectives, hitting the numbers, reaching the goals of today with thinking ahead what will service look like in two years, three years, five years. And I have a lot of respect for that balancing act, because it's a really, really tough one. What do you feel are the biggest barriers to striking that right balance? What do you find most challenging?

Jan Helge Bruemmer: I mean if you look at a company, a manufacturing company as a whole, I don't even think it is a challenge as such. I mean, we have senior managers everywhere that... I mean you have the macrotrends and so on, and you try to be in advance and I mean be on those sustainability trains, for example. I think the tricky thing with service then, and we talked earlier about service being its own business entity, profit center. Service as such is very profitable. It is then also very short term. I mean, the moment you start investing in service, you add service salespeople, you invest in service capabilities, as such, you have an immediate result. And that, of course, when we look on that as a business, I mean we also go into certain investments with that mindset, that they pay off quite fast. And that maybe sometimes makes us lose patience when it comes to the really long-term service related investments.

Sarah Nicastro: So, what are some of the things that you feel have a faster payoff versus some of the things that are more of a longer term objective?

Jan Helge Bruemmer: I mean, if we split a bit like the service, I mean we have all the spare parts business, like the traditional after sales. And we have maybe then the service execution part, and here we have this huge people aspect that goes into that. So, I think, again, focusing on service sales is normally an immediate payoff. I mean, I know from my times being responsible for commercial things, I mean you visit a customer, you talk about service and spare parts and maintenance and those more standard things. You always walk away with a bag full of opportunities. And I mean the conversion rate is pretty high, the hit ratio is pretty high. So, that's a very easy thing to do when it comes to investment.

I think then building up that backbone, because everything you sell at some point, of course, you have to execute. We talked a bit about spare parts inventory now, but it's also the pure execution. And for a company like Alfa Laval that does rather complex technical things, for us, that is a challenge to really build up that backbone that will then really support that front sales side of things. So, I mean, investing then in field service capabilities, investing in competences, investing in the right amount of people, that is the more long-term a thing that I feel sometimes gets a bit neglected, because we have this dollar sign in the eyes and think about the short term profitability.

Sarah Nicastro: So, what do you think then, how do you fight against that? I mean, what's the mindset companies need to have to make those investments that are more on the midterm, the longterm?

Jan Helge Bruemmer: Yeah. I think it is really about getting away from this services just about fixing stuff for customers to keep the business up and running, but really to make sure that we have the long-term view and that we invest in those capabilities with a much more long-term approach. And that, of course, because services then also to a certain extent, of course, reactive. I mean we have customers calling us and they have breakdowns and problems. So, that already puts quite a big workload on our organization. So, finding that time and those resources to think more long-term is I think what's key and it's probably easier said than done.

Sarah Nicastro: So, one of the aspects of that has to be recruiting and hiring new talent. We talked today about how that's really challenging. So, how do you think doing that needs to change to fit where the industry is headed?

Jan Helge Bruemmer: Specifically talking about field service, I mean I think we all agree. I mean field service undergoes a massive transformation. I mean the way field service used to work five, 10 years ago, doesn't have a lot to do with how we're going to work in the future. So, I think the first thing is being very clear about that in the recruitment phase. And that comes, of course, with a lot of opportunities for those people that you're going to recruit. But it also comes with that clarity that you don't, I mean, promise the ideal world going forward. I mean, field service is a tough working environment in many cases. So, I think it's very important to be clear about that.

That's I think an important factor. And then, also, we talk so much about attraction and being relevant for new talent, but of course, it is also a lot about retaining the people we already have, many of those with lots of experience and coming a bit from the old days. So, how do we take those people with us on the journey? Because I mean the labor market is tough, we mentioned that several times today. So, we cannot, even if we ran by when we recruit and we attract, if we have a leakage, then in the existing organization that's, of course, also something we really have to avoid.

Sarah Nicastro: So, from a retention standpoint, if you think about the technicians that have been at Alfa Laval for quite a while, what do you think you need to be doing in terms of, you mentioned competence building, so upskilling and preparing them for the more modern day service of tomorrow?

Jan Helge Bruemmer: I think also here, I mean there are parts of the organization that has the capabilities to develop further into new roles, into new functions that represent more the modern way of field service, and then there are others that are not. Then we also need to be aware that we will not fully transform a field service, at least in our case. I mean we will always have a certain percentage of jobs that we will do on site, and that's probably, I mean even on the very long term, more than half of what we're doing. So, then it is, of course, about identifying those that want to do more. It's about showing up the career path also for those people, showing them that they have a future in field service.

I mean, so far, you're a field service engineer, you either become the team manager or the team leader, or you go into a sales role. I mean, that's basically the career path for field service. But with all those new possibilities, I mean we've been talking a lot about remote service, we've been talking about also this more advisory role for our customers. Not just go onsite, fix the machine, leave, but also I mean discuss potential sales opportunities, upgrade opportunities. I mean that is a bit where we are trying to lean into and try to build up that competence accordingly.

Sarah Nicastro: I was going to mention earlier during Nina's session and we ran out of time, when we talk about remote service, I think like you just said, there will always be onsite work. And I think that's true for most organizations. So, I think there's this misperception that when we talk about remote service, we're thinking that we should do all service remote. And I had a podcast interview a few weeks ago with a gentleman from Mettler Toledo. And I found it particularly interesting, because he said the nature of the work they do, it's virtually impossible for them to get to a point of remote resolution. That's not their goal at all.

However, they have invested in remote capabilities, because until very recently, they've had almost every initial visit just as a triage visit. So, it was almost every initial truck role was the technician just going to see what was going on, then come back, get what they need, et cetera, et cetera. So, his point is just I think sometimes we think narrowly about the capabilities that exist and don't necessarily think instead about how to apply them to our own circumstances. So, in their situation, his goal is really not at all remote resolution, it's just to understand what they're getting into when they go on site.

And if you think about the vast majority of their visits being two, just to diagnose, then to go and repair, you're eliminating 50% of those, which is tremendous when you think about resource utilization, cost savings, all of those things. So, I think that's a really important distinction. And then when we think about what could become possible with the segmentation of work, what you're talking about, and we talked a bit in one of our breakouts of with more remote service, then you think about different roles and what that could look like. You think about the trusted advisor role.

Or I've had some conversations with folks that think that it's almost a redefined customer success manager type of role. At our event in Paris a few weeks ago, we had Ravichandra Kshirasagar from Schneider Electric. And we were talking about what the company envisions the role of the frontline worker to be in 2025, 2030 and beyond. And this is going to sound super simple and it is, but it really struck me. One of the things that he pointed out is that they've just recently changed the terminology they use from field technician to service technician. And the whole point of that is because they think that in fairly short order, the technicians are going to be doing some of that remote diagnostic type of work, probably from home or maybe from an office and only onsite part of the time.

So, there's so much to imagine in terms of what these changes can look like for any given organization. I mean, the idea of coming together here isn't that anyone's going to come up and be able to give an overall blueprint. But just to think about these things, talk about these things, and get you all thinking about what's coming and how to be thinking about it, preparing for it, et cetera. One of the things that I find most exciting about how service is evolving, and when we talk about the creation of new roles and how it will shift from being less break fix, less mechanical to more of these other things, it really gives us a lot of potential to bring more diversity into the workforce. Because the nature of the role is changing and it opens it up to people that maybe haven't been a part of it before. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

Jan Helge Bruemmer: No. And I mean all this remote service has, of course, two aspects, two sides to it. I mean, we actually started thinking about that more from a customer perspective. And I mean, reducing cost of service, travel time, increased response time and all of that. I mean, eventually, uptime, of course, customer satisfaction, but it was really from a customer perspective. And I think the other side of things is actually nowadays, I don't know if I can say more relevant, but it has definitely a very strong impact now on our thinking about going forward with remote services. And that is actually what you say the role of the field service engineer and also how that will evolve even further.

I mean, if we look at our organizations and the people that leave field service, either to external companies or also inside the company. I mean if we look at the reasons for why they want to do something else, there is always the comp and ben issue. But the number one reason for that is actually work-life balance. And I mean, the guy that has been fighting for a weekend job 10 years ago or five years ago because of the extra hours and the overtimes, well, people don't want to do that anymore.

I mean, the younger generation that comes in, I mean this free time, the regular working schedule, again, field service will never be 100% like that. But going a bit from the total chaos, from the not knowing where you're going to work tomorrow, not knowing whether you have to work the weekend to something halfway there, halfway acceptable for everyone, that will already be a big step. And I think that's key also in this ongoing talent war.

Sarah Nicastro: I think it's also important in terms of change management to frame to employees the positive ways we can use technology that will benefit them. So, it isn't just about how we can reduce cost to serve or how we can increase efficiency. We should also be looking for the lens through which we can communicate the positives to them. We had our event in the UK about a month ago, and there was a gentleman there, Adam from Mighty, and they are using IFS's planning and scheduling optimization tool. So, very AI-based, self-learning scheduling tool. And I had never heard this and I absolutely loved it. He said that one of the things that they've done, because the tool self adapts to whatever changes are happening in the inputs.

So, they've allowed each technician to choose their start and end time for each day. Simple thing, but they were saying some people want to drop their kids off at school and they don't mind staying a little bit later in the day. Others want to come in really early, but maybe be done by the time their kids come home or whatever the circumstances are. And he talked about how much that simple thing has lifted the mental health and spirits of the staff. And it's a very practical way of giving them not all the flexibility in the world, not you can work from home every day. So, it's not necessarily on par with what someone's competing against in a different type of job.

But it's taking what we have, what constrictions we have from a customer service standpoint, but also what capabilities exist to make the equation work to everyone's advantage. And I thought that was a really, really good example of framing the technology change in a way that really has benefited them personally and helped with acceptance, but also helped the employee value proposition a bit. So, what about the role of leadership in all of this change?

Jan Helge Bruemmer: Yeah. I mean, of course, as in any change process, leadership is key. It starts there. I think when we look at our landscape and our leaders in service operations, and as I said before, it's very often its former technicians that grow into that leadership role, or at some point they were just the best technicians. And then, I mean, logically they become the manager, right or wrong. But what they're very good at, and this might bring us back a bit to the topic of the conversation, I mean they are really experts in handling the daily activities, all the emergency, all the chaos, everything that's happening. I mean, historically, they're problem solvers, they're firefighters, and that's what they're good at.

What they're sometimes lacking then is, of course, the long-term vision, again. And really, I mean the preparation of the future and looking ahead and try to get on the way those things that we need in order to still be competitive. And again, I mean that externally with customers, but also internally with our people. So, I think then going one level higher, maybe the senior management's responsibility in that sense is that we need to make sure that whatever leaders we have in service operations, in field service, actually can set aside some time and some resources to really reflect about what's needed for the future, instead of just being buried in daily activities.

And whether that's the same person or if we need to bring in other people, also with really an outside perspective, I like the idea to not only have people with a field service experience and a field service leader position, but why not bring people in from sales? Why not bring in people from marketing or whatever area? But we need to be aware that in order to prepare the future, it's not possible to do that in five minutes here and there. We really need to increase the focus on that long-term. And then also, I mean the acceptance that the long-term for field service is investment and mainly in people.

I mean, we're not buying any super machines, we're not investing in R&D, we're investing in people. And that's a number of people. But that's also the awareness that learning curves are long, at least in what we are doing. So, also making sure that we give those people the time to really be prepared, to really be comfortable when they go on site, when they're in the cold water, so to speak. And that is something, again, coming back to the barriers, I mean service, short-term profitability, it's sometimes a bit of an issue there, I think.

Sarah Nicastro: I think when we first talked about this session, what you said is very true and true for a lot of folks I talked to, which is a lot of times what we say we need to do and know we need to do is at odds with what we have to do today or what we end up doing. We know that it's important, but then you get caught back in the day to day or the short term, et cetera. And it can be hard. But I think Nina said it very well this morning, which is to some degree the business case is that if you don't do some of these things, you're just not going to be in business in a few years. So, it's also, I think reminding people of that and making sure that you're not being too shortsighted. It's a balancing act, but also you can't skew too far in either direction.

Jan Helge Bruemmer: And I think here it's really about setting the right structure. I mean, again, we need to take care of the short term, of the day-to-day in service. I mean, our customers, they have issues, they have problems. They need our help to fix that. And then it's more, again, as I said before, we need maybe an additional level, an additional part of the organization thinking then more about the longterm.

Sarah Nicastro: And I've seen companies handle that different ways. I've seen companies that do okay with having their leadership set time aside and not have it be cannibalized by whatever the day's fires are. That can work for some. I've seen organizations that have a parallel innovation function that works alongside the business leaders to take some of that pressure and weight off. I've seen companies that have a center of excellence or that idea where it's more of the thinking happening there and then being communicated out and people giving feedback.

So, I don't know that there's a right way to do it, but I absolutely agree that you can't just allow yourself to be so consumed by the day-to-day that you don't put the time and effort into thinking ahead for sure. Good. And that's it. So, thank you so much. We're going to have some drinks at the bar and networking for the next hour or so. So, feel free to stay and hang out if you can. And thank you again for having me.

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An Organizational Scientist on Building Effective Teams & Managing Change

August 30, 2023 | 32 Mins Read

An Organizational Scientist on Building Effective Teams & Managing Change

Sarah welcomes Dr. Josh Elmore, Principal Consultant at Court Street Consulting and Adjunct Professor at both Columbia University and the City University of New York, to discuss how concepts of industrial and social organizational psychology factor in to what’s demanded of today’s leaders in building strong teams and leading through change.

Sarah Nicastro: Welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today we're going to be getting an organizational scientist's take on building effective teams and managing change. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast Dr. Josh Elmore, who is principal consultant at Court Street Consulting, also an adjunct professor at both Columbia University and the City University of New York. Josh, welcome to the Future of Field Service podcast.

Josh Elmore: Thanks so much for having me, Sarah. Excited to be here.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, thank you for being here. I appreciate it. So before we get into the thick of it all, tell everyone a little bit more about yourself.

Josh Elmore: Sure. So, my background is, as you mentioned, organization science and what that entails mostly is social and organizational psychology, which is the application of psychology to the world of work, how people work in corporate spaces, nonprofit spaces. In general, people coordinating their effort and trying to reach some goals together. So I tend to focus on things like group dynamics and performance and motivation and how do we get people moving in the same direction and that can scale from an individual looking to do their career pursuit, career coaching type of consultation, all the way up to a large scale organization change effort. So I finished my PhD in 2020 and I've been practicing since then. I've consulted prior to the PhD in 2018, I started with some faculty mentors of mine and it's been a really interesting trip learning about how organizations change and how they update the way that they work, and it's a constant effort. So I'm excited to chat about all things change management with you today.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. So one thing I learned when you and I connected to prep for this session is that the social organizational psychology was born of industrial psychology. Okay. So how has the evolution from industrial psychology to more modern forms changed the way that organizations and leaders manage people within the business?

Josh Elmore: Yeah. So early days, early 20th century, there was a group of folks, and among them was Frederick Winslow Taylor. And he was applying psychological ideas or ways of coordinating people's efforts through things called time in motion. And so he would go onto factory floors and work with those folks in the factory and try to optimize how many motions they took to do a given task, maybe around assembling something or working on some larger scale production. And at the time that whole space was thinking around productivity and getting to reduce the amount of effort that had to go into any given task.

And over time what you had was different forms of psychology coming out of academia, out of basic research where things like social psychology grew up in the '50s and '60s and were then applied to the organization setting. And organizational psychology became something where you look at the whole system itself as opposed to just individuals. Today we have a field that's called industrial organizational psychology and we call it IO psychology for short. And we, and I say we, I mean my colleagues in organizational psychology world, they tend to use the I and think about the individual. And so when we say industrial, we're thinking about individuals, and organizational, we're thinking about systems. And so I'd say that industrial psychology began with a focus on individuals, how do you select the right person for the job? And that exists today where we look at selection or job analysis, but it's expanded into other domains.

Sarah Nicastro: Okay. Very interesting. Okay, so if we were to take a look then at what is the modern focus? So if you were to get people up to speed that are listening to the podcast on what is being taught today, I think about this, I got my MBA 13 years ago and it's like you don't always think about how much has changed, what the core focus areas are, what the best practices are, what new discoveries or topics or themes or teachings have been uncovered, et cetera. So when you think about the industrial organizational psychology realm today, what is the modern take or what's most important for people to be aware of when it comes to teams, systems, and groups in the workplace?

Josh Elmore: So I think speaking back to that evolution and the gradual drive towards our understanding, and it began in this psychology research, but it quickly became something that management was talking about and using, and folks from organizational psychology were coming and helping consult to organizations and apply. And you had things like for instance, like the Hawthorne studies, which was an experimental design where they tried to, some researchers went into a factory to learn what effect lighting had on the output of factory workers. So they would change the lighting. And what they found was actually the factory workers produced high output no matter what. And the researchers were confused, they were thinking why was there no change when we changed all the lights? And what actually mattered was the fact that these folks were being paid attention to. And so that's when we learned that attitudes matter.

And so over time when we go into these organizations and you learn that, oh wait, people have different motivations. They need to be given incentives, they need to be given opportunities to grow and stretch themselves, and these are more modern takes on, we use them a lot. You see them everywhere where folks are talking about learning and development and performance management. But these are relatively new ideas. And I'd say that those are the things that A, we take for granted. And B, are the indicators of the evolution of the field in the regular world where HR is an advanced people function. And I'd say people like Peter Drucker talking about management in the '50s, '60s, and throughout the 20th century, how he talked about knowledge workers and he talked about what we call the future of work. He was always talking about the future of work.

And I'd say there's pieces that are still held onto to this day that are very important for industrial psychology, social psychology, organizational psychology. But those speak to those three levels that you mentioned, right? Industrial psychology, thinking about people, individuals, how do you put them on the right track, social psychology, thinking about teams, how do these groups work together? And then organizational psychology, how does the system work and how does it interact with other systems? A lot of times you live in... We spoke about the field service industry where you have lots of different organizations that are interdependent and have to coordinate their efforts together. And so that is similar from an organizational psychology perspective because you need to coordinate your efforts. And so I'd say that in general the thinking around social psychology is an idea of scaling from the individual perspective to the team perspective to the organizational perspective. And we call that levels of analysis.

Sarah Nicastro: And they're obviously all very interconnected. So that makes sense. It's interesting because when you spoke about the roots of industrial psychology and talking about really a focus on maximizing productivity, which obviously is important, but I think I shared this with you, in our space in field service, if you go back 15 years ago when I started interviewing service leaders, that was really the focus. There was not a whole lot more to it beyond just managing costs, maximizing efficiency, maximizing productivity, et cetera. And obviously a lot has changed including, and maybe most importantly, the recognition of service as a potential profit center for businesses and as a integral piece of the customer experience.

And so with that happening, then a lot of other variables have become important and things that leaders and businesses have to weigh and prioritize. And that also brings about then different skills that the employees need to have if they're playing a role in a profit center versus just executing a task in a cost center and then different skills that leaders need to have to be able to draw that out of folks. So it's really, really interesting. Now taking the team piece of this, okay, so you mentioned a lot of the work that you do when you consult with organizations is on team facilitation. So can you just talk a little bit about when someone wants you to come in and do team facilitation, what does that mean? What does that look like? What are some of the common areas of focus? What are maybe some of the common pain points in making sure you have engaged and empowered teams? Can you talk a little bit about that part?

Josh Elmore: Yeah, I'd love to. And just briefly, I want to speak to that earlier point that you were making around this idea of the evolution of field service from cost center to profit center. And it's a really interesting idea around this idea of having to push down costs versus how do we develop new opportunities to build business. And when you're doing that, you can look to analogous industries that are seeking to grow and build. And tech is one very clear analogy of organizations being born and then evolving and growing and scaling. And in those cases, you look at the practices from a Google or any of the tech firms that are huge and numerous, not necessarily today because they're cutting back a lot, but in not so long ago they had all the tech perks, they had everything you could think of, never leave our campus, always be here on site.

We're going to do your laundry for you, we're going to feed you. And what does that give you? It gives you the ability to have your basic needs met, but then also it might give you the sense that this place caress about me, I'm going to care about it in turn. And so you can get a really rich dynamic between organization and the folks who are actually bringing the work to life for them when you leverage all of the psychological experiences that feed into self-actualization, right? If we think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, basic needs are just at the very bottom, but self-actualization is at the top.

And so if you're thinking about how you want to get folks on board and moving in one direction towards some big large goal, how do you help them self actualize? Is it learning? Is it giving them the ability to test out stretch goals or making sure they don't burn out by giving them enough vacation time or checking in with them, giving them mentorship. So all of these holistic practices that you can use that are also speaking to the idea of more indicative, more modern human resources and people practices. Right. Makes sense. I just wanted to speak to that idea.

Sarah Nicastro: No. That's good.

Josh Elmore: And so from my team perspective, for me, I really love working with teams because we talked about that individual perspective, the team perspective, the organization perspective. And I like teams because when you work with a group of people, you can make high impact because working very closely with them, not one-on-one, but you're working closely enough with them to where you can have a pretty direct impact around how they're doing their work, helping them check in, helping them check in with their team. And when you do that with a group of 15, 20, 30 people, they go off and do that. If they learned something and enjoyed the work, they go off and do that with their teams. And so all of a sudden you have a huge intervention with a very quick or bite-sized engagement. So I like working with groups because water falls down and upward and it can permeate the system.

And so the way I frame those engagements right now is there's a lot of changes in the way that we're working today. Remote hybrid organizations are constantly having to reevaluate how they've arranged themselves, and that speaks to larger change management challenges. But it also speaks to on the ground, how are people dealing with the new policy of how we work? How does your team come together and do its work? Is it remotely? Is it hybrid? Is it full-time in person? And if so, how do you pursue your work given this new paradigm we're in? And so that's what I do with leaders and managers. I help them bring their people together and check in on how they're doing, how are they communicating, how are they making decisions? Are roles clear? Have they grown or changed shapes or maybe their mandate has changed?

And if so, have they talked about it? Does everyone know what's the plan? How does the team's goals align with the organization's goals? Right? Giving folks the ability to have space to talk about the things that are not necessarily every day work topics that get discussed over and over. Oftentimes that space needs to be intentionally developed, and that's what I'm focusing on right now is helping teams develop an intentional space to work on the more foundational challenges and opportunities.

Sarah Nicastro: Now, would you say that the need for that work typically surfaces due to a problem or simply because it's recognized as an opportunity?

Josh Elmore: I'd say it depends, right? I think lots of times folks that are managing a team have some level of view into what's going on with everyone, depending on the configuration, how are you working, how much contact do you have? Is everybody getting to do things on their own because maybe they're a bunch of experts and they don't really need to coordinate their effort very much. So oftentimes it might be around a lack of knowing what's going on and things may be popping up. Oftentimes I talk with leaders around symptoms, right? They'll tell me that there's conflict on the team, and conflict can come from a lot of different places. So sometimes it's like, okay, well let's understand where that's coming from and let's talk with folks and get on the same page. I call it building a shared understanding. Let's build a shared understanding of what's happening because everyone's realities are different.

And so it could be what's perceived of as an issue. And oftentimes maybe a leader's been given a new business unit, maybe they have to bring something to life and drive a whole new direction, which is great. And it's an opportunity and it's hard. So having some support and having the ability to get folks together and start coordinating your effort and building that continuous practice of just checking in and making sure that everyone's on the right boat and you're all heading towards the same destination, and also creating space to where people can think creatively and bring up challenges as they come along so it doesn't build up.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, that makes sense. Now, obviously the work you would do in that process is quite individual to the organization you're working with, but that being said, I'm wondering are there any commonalities that typically arise in terms of the root of some of the conflict or the challenges or the best practices that you end up helping these teams create as they go forward?

Josh Elmore: Yeah. At the end of the day, it always comes down to the most fundamental features of a team. Are we coordinating our effort together? Are we communicating enough? Are we giving each other feedback? Are we making sure that I'm doing what we've agreed upon, that it is that I should be doing, that you are doing what we've agreed upon that you should be doing. And no one is feeling that too much work is landing on their back and things aren't distributed enough. And so it comes back to just team hygiene, really. In the same way that you build a relationship with a friend or a colleague and you have this rich, very healthy dynamic, if you can think about that dynamic that you've created with that person, how did you create it? Was it that you have frequent conversations? Is it that you're tuned in to the same challenges of maybe your industry?

And if so, how did you get there? Do they have the same education as you? Did they take a class that you've also taken? How did you get to a place where you're both on the same wavelength? And so you can think of these simple terms of same wavelength and use them as a barometer of, all right, are things going well or not? And if not, start to figure out, okay, look at good examples. To your point, there's a lot of uniqueness between everyone's challenges, but from the reason that there's a whole science of social psychology is because there are some rules. And so I'd say because we are all different individuals, the way that we have healthy relationships with people is different from anyone else.

How we build relationships with folks is different. So you need to look at examples of where you've been successful at building strong relationships and take those lessons and then apply them in other circumstances to more or less, and getting feedback from whoever you're working with as well. Because what works here may not work there, but there are general principles around just good hygiene, good communication, good checking in.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Okay. So then if we think about change management or change leadership, which as you mentioned earlier, closely intertwined because one, obviously it impacts teams, but also it seems ongoing and constant at this point. So it's something that folks are always navigating. So when we talked about change management, you mentioned there's sort the model and the mindset. So can you talk a little bit about why both are important?

Josh Elmore: Yeah, and I think speaking to the idea that you mentioned at the outset of framing the question where you mentioned I change management or change leadership and change leadership and those, you can use those as similar analogies to the idea of change management, the model, change leadership, the mindset, and why would we make this dichotomous of view? I mean, definitely go hand in hand, but if we wanted to pull them apart and say, okay, I'm a leader. I've been handed this new business unit, we have a whole new mandate, I got to turn it around. We need to work towards some new set of goals and metrics and everything.

How do you do that? You have two, three, four or 500 people working for you or coordinating effort in the unit that you have. And it could even be just a small team, but at the end of the day, you need to have vision. But your vision should be rooted, not just in start with, what do you see? How did you get here? You're working with some other set of leaders, you've been given some authority to do some work, and you have context. So what's your context? What are you seeing? What needs to happen? And then how do you share that with everyone else and get their feedback on the current state of things so that you could build a shared vision? So change leadership is taking your context, taking your vision, knowing what needs to happen, turning and getting feedback from the system, from those folks that you're going to be relying on and saying, okay, how do you think we should go about this?

Start the conversation. If you go all the way down to the team, it's seemingly simple, right? Six, five people, 10 people. You can have everyone in the room and you can have a conversation. You could write notes and you can say, all right, this is generally what everyone's thinking. But at hundreds of people you need to build in the practice of continuous listening. That's like working with people analytics and feeding back. What are you saying? What are you hearing back? And that's the leadership piece. That's you projecting vision, but also listening and not only listening, but taking it to heart, integrating it, and then feeding it back to the system like, I heard you, this is what we're doing to address it. Actually, I might bring you in to help us address it. And as you start to do that, that's when you're getting into change management.

Some of those techniques that I was talking about are models of how you produce change, how leadership shows up and listens and gives folks the ability to feed back to them. That's part of change management. And it's iterative. The more you do it, you're managing this continuous shift, steering the ship in this new direction. And so that's why we call it organization development. I haven't mentioned that term yet, but the broader field that encompasses change management, change leadership is organization development. Why do we use the term development? It's because what do you do as an individual if you're learning, you develop. And so that's the same thing you have to do for your system. You need to develop it by helping it learn, understand, and get motivated by whatever it is it's heading towards. And that's by involving people and stepping forward together.

And leaders have to head that up, but in doing so, they're helping to manage a process which is change. And that's when you're building in mindset, you're building in this conversation, people are getting on the same page. Okay, what we're doing, we're engaging in this shared pursuit towards success. However you frame your change management initiative, you're always going to have pushback. And you need to do from a model perspective, stakeholder management, where are you going to have resistance? Where are you going to have folks that are on board and championing the change? And as you build out this apparatus, this scaffolding for the organization, which is out of your leadership in change, you can test ideas, what we call interventions.

You can intervene, you can hold an all hand meeting and get questions. How did that go? What did people say? What did they talk about? Where are people at right now? Let's not jump ahead 10 steps to the ending of this change engagement. Let's listen to where people are right now, meet them there and step forward together. So that's how change leadership manifests to produce managed change and can create a shared mindset of change. For those that are navigating very hard things, change is not easy.

Sarah Nicastro: So I have a couple follow up questions. One is in the mindset model relationship or surrounding it even, where do things typically falter? And I'll explain why I'm asking, right? I have been interviewing people in this space for 15 years, and when I say what went wrong, what would you do differently? 90 plus percent of the time, it is related to change management. So I always say it's one of my favorite and least favorite topics simultaneously because it just always baffles me that it comes up again and again and again and again as the sticking point. Yet it doesn't seem so far. Okay, I think we're getting there, but it doesn't really seem like people are getting it and getting ahead of it. So I'm just wondering if you were to generalize about companies that get it wrong, that don't get it right, where are the most common missteps? What is the missing piece?

Josh Elmore: So, we say changes the process, it starts and it proceeds. And if you think about entropy, the idea that everything, the whole universe is expanding all at once, and things become more chaotic as everything expands. We can say we feel that in the world of work, because it's a process, you have to examine where are things starting? How many components do you have involved in this network of support resistance in the organization? How complex is your organization? At the end of the day, if you think about change, I like to think about it as just one person. You're one person and you have one brain and you have connections in your brain and you make a decision and you can go off and do the action that you've decided on doing. It's very easy or it's easier than working between two groups of or multiple people.

So if we think about going between people, there's a lot that can get lost in understanding between a couple of different people, between functions, between whole systems, and you have to be continuously examining what you're doing, right? Edgar Schein, one of the early thinkers in the world of organization development, said everything is an intervention. So every single thing that you do is an intervention. Every email that gets sent off by leadership, every behavior that seems in contrast or not aligned with this new direction that an organization is heading, people see it. They think, oh, maybe I don't have to go that way. Maybe I don't need to work so hard. Or there can be feelings of not being included. A lot of times from a strategy perspective, you can go to an offsite with your leadership team and get together and make a whole bunch of decisions about what's going to happen in the organization and then just communicate it down and expect it all to happen, as opposed to having that offsite with the whole organization.

What does it look like for leaders to say, these are the broad directions we want to head? How do we get our people working in that direction? So I'd say that change management as a field has a lot of great practices to the extent that organizations put them to use in full force. It's a challenge, right? Because oftentimes when a consultant or a change management practitioner gets called in, it's halfway through the change exercise, they've planned some change, or they decided at a leadership offsite, we're going to do these things. They've sent out the memos, nothing's happening, or it's not going as planned. And okay, we need somebody to come help. And by the time a practitioner comes in and can help, you're halfway through and you got disenchanted folks in the organization. And so it's a process and it's always happening, and it's like a muscle.

It's like you have to use your change muscle. And that's the mindset. If we live in a time of constant change, Bill Pasmore, one of my mentors at Columbia wrote a book called Leading Continuous Change, and he uses the metaphor of a roller coaster. And so if you're always on the roller coaster, then you need to have the ability to think clearly in these very hard times, but also show people how to think clearly or to build a coherent narrative out of what's happening. And so there's a common refrain. I'm not sure how much, and I've looked this up to find how some solid research around it, but there's a common refrain in the organization change world that 70% of organization change efforts fail. And anecdotally, you, it seems like you're hearing that, and in a lot of ways it has to do with how easy is it for us to change as individuals?

It is pretty hard. Now think about doing that in a group and then in a whole organization. And so you have to be very thoughtful. You have to be very deliberate. If you want to pursue a new direction, you got to plan it out and you have to track it, and you have to deal with setbacks and then pivot in and of itself, that's where the leadership idea comes in. It is a full-time job. And oftentimes organizations, they'll find a consultant or two, or they'll have a small organization development function in their organization that work as internal consultants, which is great. Having some folks that can be there to help out and give some insight is wonderful, but you have to treat them as real partners and think of the way that you're going to change as something that doesn't just end.

You've already started it just by nearly thinking it started because you probably told somebody about it. And so especially if this is a subordinate of yours, it's on their mind because you mentioned it. And so what are they doing differently? And so very simply by mentioning something that needs to be different to a subordinate, you could check in a week later and ask them what their thoughts are on that. That's the very beginning of the intervention of trying to change. It's the same way that you reflect on if you got a new job, you would reflect on how's it going, right?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, I think that makes sense. And I think it's the leadership piece or the mindset piece is where historically folks in this space at least have faltered because I think it's been viewed a lot as a checkbox. We know we need to do this, so let's make sure it's on the plan. Does somebody have it on the plan? Is it in the budget? Okay, wait, our budgets got cut, let's just cut the change management piece. Do you know what I mean? It's not a mindset, it's not a part of the leadership skillset, it's just something that is on a list because they know it should be on a list type of thing.

Okay, so the other question I had on, you've said a couple of times about the fact that it's continuous. I think another trap is and tied to the mindset of, okay, well, let's just get this over with. Let's do the change management and be on our way. And obviously, as you've mentioned a couple of times, as we know, change today is constant, right? We're in a state of continually evolving and innovating. So with that though, comes change fatigue. So how do we handle that?

Josh Elmore: Yeah, I've thought a lot about this idea, and sometimes I wonder to what extent we are poorly framing what it means to be at work. What does it mean to have a job? If you are at will in your employment, then technically your job is precarious because you can be fired at any time. And yet, we have benefits. We build entire lives around the fact that we have what we consider a stable job, but if there's any evidence that we don't live in, that paradigm is living in continuous layoffs. You look at the way that people who are at will find themselves without a job, they may be moved for that job. They built an entire life around it. And so in some ways, the way we frame how work looks is a little bit misleading. And because we're framing work as this very stable thing, which the evidence signals that it's not. In the past, in the 1950s, people could have a career at a single organization, and some people still do.

There's very large organizations that are embedded and massive, and you can go in and build your entire career there, right? GE, PepsiCo, very large systems. But in general, across most organizations, that's just not the case anymore. You can't build entire careers. And there's some conventional wisdom that says you should jump around to different jobs because that's how you get a raise, right? That's an idea because you move from one job to the other, you get experience, you get more opportunity, and maybe you get a little bit more responsibility. And so looking at the way that jobs work for individuals is an indicator of how organizations also are operating, and it's in a non-stable and evolving process at all times. If you just took a look at an organization and tracked it for a year or two and watched all the things that happened to it, and maybe read its quarterly reports, what did they do? They're constantly doing things. Why? Because they're seeking to make a profit, or if they're a nonprofit, they're trying to pursue some mission. And so they're super energetic.

Organizations in and of themselves, the term organization is a verb, right? It's energetic. And so I think by framing systems and jobs and everything that goes with it in a way that seeks to hold onto this idea of stability, it produces some misleading idea of what actually is happening. And so if we were to shift that back to the mindset that, and that's an idea, I don't have research to support it, but I think it doesn't necessarily make sense to frame things as stable if they're not, it makes more sense to frame things as being fluid and dynamic and agile. And if we do that, then we are coming to terms with it and we can lean into it. What happens when we frame things in a way that it's like we're constantly moving, right? Organizations, startups talk about this all the time, we're innovators.

And so if they're innovators, what does that mean? It means they're moving fast, they're breaking things, they're disrupting, and they can do that because they're small, and everyone has the mindset that things here are constantly changing. And if you don't, so we also have analogies in these nascent organizations, and we've talked about field services or field service, and that's coming out of an established industry, it's becoming something new, but it's embedded in something much more evolved and much more mature as an industry. But it needs to be given some space to have the ability to evolve and to do some change work just like a startup might, right? Especially if they're becoming a profit center. How do you inject some of that opportunity to become innovative and thereby changing, adapting, and infusing in everyone else that this place is making moves. Things are happening here, and it can be exciting. It could be a motivator as opposed to something you should be afraid of.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. No, that's a really good point. I've never really thought of it that way, how with your idea are almost fueling that sense of change fatigue or even resistance in a way, because it's seen to be at odds with what is, but is it really right? Is it really? Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so you recently contributed to a book on data science in organizational change. Okay? Can you talk a little bit about what you covered there? How data is being leveraged to better understand the psychological behaviors, the impact of change, and how do you see the use of that growing or expanding in the future?

Josh Elmore: Yeah, it was great. It was really nice to be included in this handbook, which is generally a handbook of organization change research methods. And so I was part of a section on leveraging big data in organization change research, and a lot of my research when I was doing my doctoral work, I used advanced analytics like R to analyze larger data sets. So it'd be statistics, but it would also be just taking large amounts of data and examining some insight that could be drawn from, for instance, when I did my dissertation, it was on letters of recommendation, and I examined 1,200 letters of recommendation and did content analysis on them, but from a natural language processing perspective. And I was able to look at to what extent were men and women described differently in the letters of recommendation. I was able to find that men were described as researchers and scientists and women were described more as teachers and students.

And so you can really draw out huge insights from a lot of data by leveraging the tools of data science. And unfortunately, when I gave the topics that I found in the letters of recommendation to 250 faculty members in the geosciences who would've read these letters of recommendation and ask them to rate the topics in terms of how important they are for making a hiring decision, unsurprisingly, they rated researching and scientists as more important than being a student or teacher. And in such a way that they rated topics more expressed more frequently for men as more important for making a hiring decision. And what you get from that is not just one way by which you see the inequalities in an organization setting for the university in this perspective, but it gives you that big picture view into what's happening at the foundation of the way that we do our work, among all of the materials that we use to produce our output.

What are the trends? What are the deep insights that we can draw on and use to learn and update how we work? And so that's the idea of leveraging data science, which I believe is going to be a tool for every scientific field. Every scientific field in the future will figure out a way to leverage data science. It's the modern use of statistics. And so what I do in the chapter is I produce a framework for examining continuous change. So for instance, if you were to send, say you have an organization of a thousand people and in the chapter, I use this example of you are a brick and mortar store and you have stores in various locations, but you want to become an e-commerce store as well. No, excuse me. It's that you're an e-commerce store and you want to become a brick and mortar store.

And I got mixed up there because in general, the idea not so long ago was for brick and mortar to become e-commerce, Barnes and Nobles trying to catch up with Amazon. All of these different organizational changes going on Blockbuster trying to be Netflix and way too late. But if you are, say you're an e-commerce store and you say, I need to open up brick and mortar because I think brick and mortar is important. We're living in a new era where people like to go and experience things, not just on the internet post-COVID, they're going to the mall again. So we're going to open up our stores and malls across the country. How do you do that? Your entire organization are used to being e-commerce? How do you get them to shift to supporting a whole entirely new way of working, which is brick and mortar, that's retail and having real estate and leases and all of these different new things that you have to do.

And so leadership has to get together. They have to think about it, they have to bring people in, and they have to start talking about it. With data science, for instance, you could measure, for instance, say you built a dictionary of all of the words that were associated with the change that you were pursuing, like retail, clothes hangers, lease, right? All of the words that would be included in discussion around this new direction your business is heading. And you looked at a, maybe a department level, look at all of the emails being sent around. So the change starts and you start tracking what is the language that's being used across all of my different departments? Are people talking about this new change? And if they are, what other words are they using to describe it, positive or negative? And then you can start look at positive sentiment around the language people are using related to the changes that are going on.

And you can look at negative sentiment and you can say, okay, it looks like there's some challenges here at a high level. So how do we help this part of the business to manage the change? And what's the big challenge? Let's bring folks together, let's hear from them. So when you start to look at large aggregated data, you can start to see trends across your organization to say, okay, here's where we have some challenges, here's where things are going great. Maybe how do we get the folks that are doing really well based on the sentiment of the slack and email that is being sent around to meet with the folks that things are going poorly? How do they share practices? So the things that you probably would've done anyways can be rooted in evidence. They can be rooted in the actual real things that are happening on the ground.

And so that's what the chapter is about, is taking measurement and then updating it and continuously building what we would call a listening system, a way of gathering a sentiment, gathering taking what we call a pulse people. Analytics is a big element of this, but it's like if you have a people analytics team and they partner with the organization development team or organization change management team, and you bring their forces together and they can start to build a listening strategy around the change, and leadership has a dashboard to say, okay, this is how these things are going. Let's put together some all hands meeting where, because this moment, it feels critical, especially if it's real time. If you can get real time data about what's happening, next week, let's have an all hands meeting so things don't start to get stale, and people start to feel like we're not actually changing. This is not actually happening. Right?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's really interesting because you mentioned obviously it's evidence-based, but I think it's also being able to get ahead of the time it would take for those sentiments to surface without looking at that data. So if you have this pocket of negative sentiment here, if you're not utilizing those data streams and looking at that input, it might take a lot longer for that to surface and for you to have the opportunity then to go and address it. So very interesting. Okay.

Josh Elmore: Thanks.

Sarah Nicastro: Josh. What, if anything, we missed, I mean, I'm sure there's a lot we could dig more into, and probably some of these topics could be a podcast in and of themself, but anything else I guess for today that we should touch on in terms of team building and change management?

Josh Elmore: Yeah, I think you shared where the field service world is right now, and that it's going through lots of change and having to produce new outputs given new sets of goals and new mandates for how things should be going. And I'd say, I've already said this, but the more that you can involve the people that you rely on to do that work, they're out there in the world. They're putting the technology to use, they're deciding whether or not they're going to leverage the new practice that you're hoping will streamline efficiency, or they're just going to digit for some old ways of working because it doesn't necessarily make sense to them. Learn from your people what doesn't make sense to them? Why might they not necessarily adopt the new direction that you're heading? And the more that you can listen to them and bring them into the conversation, the more you're going to learn, do things in a way that is appropriate given the constraints, and it gives them the feeling that their input matter.

And that's going to build a lot of rapport with your people. So I just wanted to share that. I think being in that process of evolution is not easy. And if it's not easy for you, it's not easy for everyone else. And so if you're a leader, how do you make it easier for everyone else, or at least make them feel bought into the process?

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah, no, that's really good advice. Where can folks get in touch with you?

Josh Elmore: So I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. I think it's a great platform for sharing ideas. So you can find me on LinkedIn, just Dr. Josh Elmore. I have my website, courtstreetconsulting.net, and I am planning on doing a podcast pretty soon on team effectiveness.

Sarah Nicastro: Yeah.

Josh Elmore: So if you're listening to this in 2024, then check out, look for the Team Effectiveness Podcast where I'll be talking about all things teams and yeah, always happy to chat about any challenges you're facing. It's my pleasure to learn from the challenges other folks are facing with this work, and I like being helpful.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. I love that. Well, thank you Josh, so much for coming and spending some time with us today. We'll have to chat too about podcasting, it's fun. I'm excited for you, but appreciate you being here. So, thank you for your time.

Josh Elmore: Yeah, totally. Thank you so much, Sarah. It's been great. I love talking about this stuff. So happy to be here. Thanks.

Sarah Nicastro: Awesome. 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 Insider so you can stay up to date on all of the latest articles and podcasts. 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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