Balancing the Opportunity and Risk of Automating Service

Episode 303

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Arnaud Billard, Senior Director for Applications and Service for Europe at Cepheid. Together, they:

• Explore the delicate balance between AI adoption and preserving human connection in service delivery, discussing how to navigate technology evolution while maintaining valuable customer relationships

• Examine real-world examples of when automated service falls short, sharing personal experiences that highlight the critical need for human empathy and understanding in complex service situations

• Discuss how service has evolved beyond "break-fix" to become a strategic business function, with field service professionals now serving as trusted advisers who gather crucial customer intelligence

• Delve into the irreplaceable human elements of service that technology cannot replicate, including relationship building, empathy, and the ability to identify unspoken customer needs

• Consider how AI should be leveraged to handle repetitive tasks while freeing up service professionals for higher-value customer interactions

• Explore the future vision of service where AI enhances rather than replaces human capabilities, with technology working in the background while human teams maintain customer trust and drive innovation

• Address the risk of over-automation leading to service commoditization, emphasizing the importance of maintaining service as a key differentiator through meaningful human connections

The conversation provides valuable insights for service leaders navigating the AI revolution while protecting the human elements that make service truly valuable. Billard's perspective offers a balanced approach to technology adoption that enhances rather than diminishes the customer experience.

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Episode Highlights:

Here are 4 key actionable takeaways from Arnaud Billard's insights:

[05:24] Balancing AI with Human Connection in Service

Arnaud emphasizes that the challenge isn't about resisting technology but finding the right balance between automation and human connection. Service organizations must recognize that while AI can drive efficiency, it shouldn't come at the cost of personal relationships with customers. Field service leaders should evaluate each technology implementation by asking whether it enhances or replaces human engagement. This approach ensures that automation supports rather than diminishes the customer experience. The goal should be to use AI for repetitive tasks while preserving the irreplaceable human elements that build trust and loyalty.

[17:07] Service as a Strategic Business Partner

Service has evolved beyond simple break-fix operations into a strategic function that drives business growth. Field service professionals now serve as trusted advisers who gather customer intelligence and identify pain points that inform product development and innovation. Organizations should train their service teams to recognize and report valuable customer insights during field visits. This strategic approach transforms service from a cost center into a revenue generator by enabling new offering development and stronger customer relationships.

[27:03] Leveraging AI for Higher-Value Interactions

Service organizations should strategically deploy AI to handle repetitive tasks, freeing up human workers for more meaningful customer interactions. Leaders should focus on training their teams to integrate AI tools into their routines while maintaining control over decision-making. The key is using technology to enhance human capabilities rather than replace them entirely. This approach allows service professionals to spend more time building relationships and solving complex problems that require human judgment and empathy.

[31:23] Future-Proofing Service Excellence

The successful service organization of the future will use AI in the background for predictive maintenance and efficiency while keeping human teams at the forefront of customer relationships. Service leaders should invest in both technical and interpersonal skill development for their teams. Organizations must resist the temptation to over-automate for short-term gains, as this risks turning service into a commodity. Instead, focus on using technology to enhance technical expertise while maintaining the personal touch that differentiates excellent service from average service.

Quotes:

1. "The struggle I refer to is not about resisting technology or AI particularly. It's more about navigating its evolution while preserving what makes a service truly valuable, which is a human connection." - Arnaud Billard

2. "Service is no longer about just fixing things. It moves step by step to a strategic function or a strategic business partner." - Arnaud Billard

3. "AI, automation, you can analyze data, provide repair recommendations, optimize scheduling, but you are not going to build relationships. You are not going to instill trust, confidence." - Arnaud Billard

4. "The service professional now, they are not only solving technical issues. They are acting as trusted adviser." - Arnaud Billard

5. "Service is a source of innovation and growth. It's one of the most overlooked aspects of service, I believe." - Arnaud Billard

Episode 302

In this episode of The Unscripted Podcast, host Sarah Nicastro is joined by Maureen Azzato, Portfolio Director for Manufacturing and Field Service Events at Worldwide Business Research (WBR), to discuss the current state of AI in field service. Drawing from WBR's recent research, they explore the industry's adoption trends, successful use cases, and common implementation challenges.

Maureen shares insights on how early adopters are leveraging AI for operational efficiency, knowledge management, and improved customer satisfaction, while addressing concerns about integration, costs, and change management. They also discuss the future of AI in field service and preview upcoming topics for the Field Service Palm Springs 2024 event.

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Episode Highlights:

[00:11:45] **Current State of AI Adoption**

Organizations are at different stages with AI adoption - about one-third are early adopters diving in fearlessly, while 50% show cautious optimism. Those taking action now are learning and failing fast, while others wait on the sidelines. The key message is that AI isn't just another tool but will become woven into the business fabric, similar to how smartphones and the internet became essential. Organizations need to start somewhere rather than trying to solve everything at once.

[00:17:50] **Proven AI Use Cases Delivering Value**

The research reveals several areas where organizations are seeing concrete benefits from AI implementation. These include improved operational efficiency through automated scheduling and dispatching, better resource allocation, enhanced safety protocols, and productivity improvements both in the field and back office. Real-time support capabilities and speedier diagnostics are also delivering measurable value, ultimately leading to higher customer satisfaction.

[00:29:00] **Integration and Change Management Challenges**

Two major hurdles emerge in AI implementation: system integration challenges and change management. Organizations struggle with connecting multiple applications and desire platform-agnostic solutions. The human element presents an even bigger challenge, with workers fearing job displacement. Leaders must address these fears head-on while demonstrating how AI will enhance rather than replace jobs, especially given the persistent labor shortage in field service.

[00:34:55] **Future Vision for AI in Field Service**

Looking five years ahead, the industry is moving beyond predictive maintenance toward more proactive and prescriptive service models. AI will enable systems to take corrective actions before problems occur, while robotics will play an increasing role. The traditional break-fix model is expected to become obsolete as organizations leverage AI to deliver more proactive service experiences that drive higher customer satisfaction.

[00:42:32] **Broader Industry Evolution**

Beyond AI, the field service industry is grappling with several interconnected challenges including succession planning, culture shifts, remote service capabilities, and supply chain optimization. The next generation of leaders is particularly focused on creating organizations that align with employee values while addressing skills gaps and technology adoption challenges.

Quotes:

"I think what changed everything was generative AI... it was generative AI that really was the sea change in being able to take large amounts of data and text and information and pour it into a solution that can give you real value." - Maureen Azzato

"The biggest challenges I hear about actually is integration... what the market is looking for is give me a platform that's agnostic where I could plug and play no matter what I want to plug into it." - Maureen Azzato

"The field service engineer and technician is going to be doing a lot higher level activities now because of AI. They're going to be that trusted advisor... the eyes and ears of service organizations." - Maureen Azzato

"Find one thing that you can do that will have a big impact. What's that low hanging fruit that you think you can solve for instead of trying to find that one huge thing that might change your world." - Maureen Azzato

"AI can help us be better corporate citizens, environmental citizens, be more efficient... when you're a more sustainable company, you're also probably a more profitable company." - Maureen Azzato

"Service is going to move to just be more proactive in all areas... the break-fix model is not going to be anything that's going to sit around for very long." - Maureen Azzato

Episode 301

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Sara Mueller, an Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Keynote Speaker, Leadership Trainer, and Executive Coach, for a discussion around the misconceptions about EQ, the most common missteps across the four pillars of EQ, and what to do in each pillar that works.

Sara has over 15 years of experience in the field. After transitioning from a successful career in the field service industry, Sarah dedicated herself to exploring EQ and self-mastery, driven by her own journey through burnout and personal challenges. She has worked with Fortune 1000 executives and has published a book on the subject, The Balanced Life Blueprint.

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

Episode Highlights:

[08:45] - Pillar 1: Self-Awareness: Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence and effective leadership. While 95% of people think they're self-aware, research shows only 10-15% actually are. As leaders, our self-awareness often diminishes as we climb higher, making it critical to actively seek feedback from all directions. Expanding our emotional vocabulary is equally vital. Most people can name only three emotions when there are 87 to draw from.
[18:41] - Pillar 2: Self-Management: While it might not be the flashiest skill, self-management is the foundation for consistent, high performance. It's about making disciplined choices that align with your long-term goals instead of giving in to instant gratification. Often, we know what we should do but don’t follow through because old patterns and thoughts hold us back. The key is catching yourself in those moments, focusing on neutral facts instead of emotional reactions, and creating habits that allow time for what truly matters.
[26:07] - Pillar 3: Empathy and Others' Awareness: Listening to understand is the cornerstone of empathy and emotional intelligence. As leaders, the instinct to jump in and solve problems can backfire, leaving teams disempowered and innovation stifled. Instead, pause, ask questions, and create space for your team to express themselves and identify root causes. Engaged employees who feel heard are three times more likely to thrive at work.
[30:33] - Pillar 4: Relationship Management: The glue that ties all pillars of emotional intelligence together, relationship management focuses on inspiring greatness in others rather than leading through fear or authority. It's about creating a culture of respect, tough love, and honest communication, where conflict is embraced as a pathway to innovation and growth. Start by bridging the "delusion gap" in recognition. Regular, specific praise tied to outcomes can be a quick win. Additionally, stop avoiding conflict. Instead, adopt a "me and you versus the problem" mindset, equipping your team with tools to navigate challenges collaboratively and constructively.

Quotes:

“We're looking at emotions as data. If we're angry about something, that means that we need to maybe put up a boundary, make a change, or take a stand.”
“We think EQ takes time. We think it takes time to treat our employees well with that recognition. But it's being proactive because if that employee isn't getting that level of care, that human-to-human connection that you're talking about, they're likely gonna leave.”
“People who have high EQ are 27% more productive than their average EQ counterparts. People who work for a high EQ manager are 50% more inspired, especially in the service industry.”
“Self-awareness is really understanding and knowing yourself. It's about understanding your values, your strengths, and your weaknesses. It's about having an accurate perception of yourself as a leader.”

Episode 300

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Joern Lindstaedt, SVP for Global Customer Service at Rolls-Royce Power Systems, who was acknowledged as a Future of Field Service Stand Out 50 leader last year. Joern shares his views on what service leaders must do to navigate the looming silver tsunami.

Joern has over 20 years of experience in customer and product support in aviation, transportation, and power generation. With a career that began in aviation as an airplane mechanic and evolved through various service roles at leading OEMs, Joern brings a wealth of experience in leading global, cross-functional teams, as well as developing and implementing global service support strategies and MRO networks.

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

Joern - 00:00:00: I learned about the term silver tsunami during the service council event last year in Chicago. And I knew there is something like that. It's like an animal sitting in a bush and someday it will jump. But when I heard those staggering numbers for the US, the amount of people going to retire in the next couple of years, I was quite shocked. So it is something where, okay, everyone knows the demographic change and the boomers going to retire.

Sarah - 00:00:41: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today's episode is a very special episode. It is our 300th episode. And I recorded this episode while in London and actually got on and recorded the entire thing without realizing that it was, in fact, the 300th episode that we were recording. So I wanted to add this bit just to acknowledge such a big milestone for the podcast and really to say thank you to the guests, 300 guests that have joined me to share their insights, their wisdom, their passion, their opinions with myself, the Future of Field Service community, and the broader service landscape. It's been an honor to be able to have these conversations. I know I've learned so much from them myself and I absolutely enjoy hearing feedback from our listeners on when they listen, how they listen. Some people take the podcast on their morning walks, some people listen on their commute, some people listen when they're on an airplane and however, and wherever you listened. And however, you got here, I'm glad you are in. And it's an honor to be able to share our guests and these conversations with you. Today's episode is no exception. You will be hearing from Joern Lindstaedt of Rolls-Royce Power Systems. We have a great conversation about how he is taking responsibility and doing his part as a service leader in the face of the silver tsunami. So I hope you enjoy the episode. I hope you will join me in celebrating the milestone of 300 episodes, and I hope to keep them coming. Joern, welcome to the podcast.

Joern - 00:02:45: Thanks, Sarah. Nice to meet you.

Sarah - 00:02:47: Thanks for being here.

Joern - 00:02:48: I hope you had a good break over the new year and Christmas.

Sarah - 00:02:53: Very much so, yeah. With eight and nine-year-old boys, it was a lot of fun. Very energetic, a lot of excitement, a lot of fun. Yes. Some of you may remember Joern spoke in 2024 at our Future of Field Service live event in Cologne, and his session from the event was featured on the podcast, so you may have seen him there. You also might recognize him as one of the recipients of the Future of Field Service Standout 50 Leadership Awards that we did last year in 2024. So he was nominated, selected and acknowledged for the impact that he has had as a service leader. So that's excellent. And that standout 50 acknowledgement correlates into the conversation we're going to have today because it's really about doing some introspection and some deep thinking about what it is that's going on in the service landscape today and how we can really start to not only think differently, but act differently to navigate the challenges that are in front of us to make sure that we're seizing the opportunities that are in front of us. And you have some very compelling thoughts on this topic that we're going to get into today. So before we get into talking about the silver tsunami, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself.

Joern - 00:04:17: Okay. Thanks Sarah. Well, I'm Joern. You may have heard that from my accent give-as-away. Born in Berlin, and for most of my life, I worked in aviation, so I worked as an airplane mechanic. So basically always in the service industry. I studied aeronautics and worked for several OEMs, including Pratt & Whitney Canada, MTR Aero Engines, and Rolls-Royce. Always in service roles, service function, very service operational. And exactly six years ago, I swapped planes for ships and trains and other products of the power systems portfolio. And I really enjoy it. It's the role I have, really focusing on day-to-day customer and product support, sheet service. That's, I think, how we connected. Training, very important. 24-7 support. So all the very essential service delivery functions and tasks a service manager can deal with day by day. And I can tell you, swapping from aviation to an industrial side, I never had a dual day in those six years. And it's really an amazing job.

Sarah - 00:05:27: Wonderful. So the silver tsunami topic that we are speaking on today, it's a very multifaceted challenge for service leaders to work through. And I want to start by just defining a bit some of the layers of the challenge. So to start, can you just describe in your words what we mean when we say the silver tsunami?

Joern - 00:05:49: Okay. So for me, actually, I have to confess, I learned about the term silver tsunami during the service council event last year in Chicago. And I knew there is something like that. It's like an animal sitting in a bush and someday it will jump. But when I heard those staggering numbers for the US, the amount of people going to retire in the next couple of years, I was quite shocked. So it is something where, okay, everyone knows the demographic change and the Boomers going to retire, many of them retired. You can go ahead with the Gen X soon that we need to deal with. I personally looked at the numbers for us. It's not that dramatic, but it will come. And I started in Chicago. Imagine we waves. When it comes in waves like a tsunami. First, the stuff goes away, the water. And then the huge waves of problems come in. And actually, the term describes the problem quite well. Because nobody can walk away from that, right? It's so huge and this is nothing a single company can just deal with on its own. It needs new thinking, new approaches to actually deal with it. And in this case, come out better than before. It has so many impacts on so many levels and fronts. I guess we talk about this in more depth.

Sarah - 00:07:22: Yeah. No, and I'm glad you mentioned that you heard the term first at The Service Council Event last year, because I shouldn't assume that listeners have heard the term. So in the field service arena specifically, and probably, maybe not probably, perhaps in the US more so, it's a term that's been used over the last five years, maybe longer, talking about this looming issue of how many people are going to reach retirement age at one time or in a condensed period of time. And so that's essentially what we're referring to when we say silver tsunami. But when we think about field service and service specifically, can you talk a little bit about what are some of the facets of that challenge? So obviously, there's a lot of people leaving the workforce in a short amount of time. That's one. What are some of the things that compound that?

Joern - 00:08:21: Of course, service really relies on highly skilled labor and technicians, right? And the loss of workforce also means loss of skills, experience. I mean, each company can make the math how many thousands of years will disappear in the next couple of years. And that skill and experience somehow, it's not easy to transfer, right? So even if you get in the younger generation, it will take time to bring it up to that level. So that will mean, and obviously not only for the business to deliver the business plans, there will be a lot of disruption. There will be disruption in the teams, in the organization, because also team dynamics will change the, let's say, institutional knowledge will get lost. Each of the people had their own network, so to speak. So for me, this is something, A, you got to deal with it, and B, it's not just like a battle for talent. And B, the quickest shark in the pond and grab the talent, it's really a big strategic item each company has to deal with on sea level and to address many areas starting from HR, right? So what is our culture and brand? How do we want to approach those new generation of employees? Which, by the way, also the new generation on the customer side, right? And what's career development? I certainly don't see like in field service that you have an apprentice and then you work through 40 plus years as a technician. So what are the career development plans? What are the flexibility we give to those employees? And with that, other aspects come in, right? Employee experience, so to speak, will be very important. The use of Gen AI. So where do you use Gen AI? Of course, where you can improve the employee experience, like in planning the job and enabling more remote services. And I don't know who said it. I think it was in Cologne. If a technician can do his job, his work in a coffee, on a laptop, in his Birkenstock sandals, and can help the customer immediately and not just sit and jumping in the car and driving to the customer side, only then to learn that he could have done it remotely.

Sarah - 00:10:50: Sure.

Joern - 00:10:50: Or if he had to go there, that he's missing parts and other things. So that's important, right? So make that job and employee experience better, because I've fundamentally believe that a great employee experience is fundamentally important for customer experience.

Sarah - 00:11:08: Absolutely.

Joern - 00:11:09: Then I also think less is more. If you listen to a TOMRA and the leadership there on the service side, they actually want to really reduce the amount of sheet service jobs. And while in our industry that's not really possible, or I don't really want it to that scale, it allows us to think and really say, where can we do more kind of use of connectivity, monitoring, transfer the maintenance programs into more like an on condition type of maintenance regime. And with that also reduce maintenance costs and disruption for the customer. Because if I ask 10 customers in my area, either aviation or marine, everyone would repeat the same what's important for them. It's availability, uptime, and the slow cost of life cycles. And that's equal for most of the industries, right? So we also have to think about the less is more approach in the future.

Sarah - 00:12:12: Yeah.

Joern - 00:12:12: Other aspects, maybe training. It's often the first experience for people onboarding. So to really invest into e-learning hybrid. And especially, and maybe one thing, which is another kind of, not the silver tsunami, but the technology tsunami, right? So, hybridization and electrification is changing in a speed which hadn't been seen before. So, in the past, there were mechanics, right? And there were weapon engines, etc. And now we need people with mechatronics, electronics, pro-electronics, high voltage. And you really need to know your stuff, right? It also has implications with regards to health and safety. And so, it's that basically there are more waves coming together and overlaying each other. And that's certainly a big challenge.

Sarah - 00:13:05: Yeah. No, absolutely. So to your point, it isn't just about the fact that a lot of people are going to be retiring. You have combined in that that in the amount of time those folks have been in the workforce, we haven't always been doing a good job of capturing their knowledge. We haven't necessarily been leveraging technology in a way that that's been documented and is accessible or usable by other folks, right? And so they're leaving with all of these skills and knowledge that really only exist within them.

Joern - 00:13:35: That's so sad, right? After 40 plus years, some of the technicians go, they have such a knowledge and nobody really in like a structural fashion asked them about the input, download your experience and they're just gone. And it leaves them also empty. And that's also something which is on my agenda to see how you can do a pairing up like a mentoring type of relationship with the younger generation, send them out together on jobs in effect and even use them for the e-learning for the training where you say, oh I need to explain something to somebody. Then you have the school book that that the manuals and then you have like the tips and tricks of experienced technicians. And so that's on my radar to more put it into a structural approach.

Sarah - 00:14:26: Yeah. And then one of the biggest factors that is exacerbating this challenge is that we don't have talent coming into these roles at the pace that we need to replace them. And like you said, there's the technology tsunami alongside, right? So the way that we can and arguably should deliver service is changing in addition to the workforce landscape. So what I want to do is talk about some of these areas of responsibility that service leaders carry to navigate the silver tsunami. So the first thing I want to talk about is avoiding a victim mentality. You phrase this as falling in love with the problem. So can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that?

Joern - 00:15:14: They're just saying falling in love is a problem rather than the solution. A lot of in the service arena where people have lots of experience and for every possible scenario, they think they have an answer. It's basically really to take a step back and take time to think it through because it's so many layers. It's just not a battle for the talent. And if you have that battle, how do you need to go about this? How do you even praise? I think in Cologne, we had someone talking about how do you actually make your role advertising stuff on what criteria you hire them. So the problem is much bigger than just like, okay, I have less people. Okay, it's not my fault. It's big demographic things. I can't change that. And after the Second World War in the 50s, despite of birth rates, but it's an issue, right? In all markets, the science are really good that the industries can grow, right? And the thing is, if you don't really pay attention and go into the details, service could in the rows, to be honest. And so it can have a business impact for those who was not addressing that. And that's why I think it belongs into the C level, because even if you manage it practically somehow with outsourcing, even this outsourcing, then you increase the cost because it's not cheaper, right? And in the same instance, you really need to think, if I go for outsourcing as a route to mitigate some of these effects. Then you should also ask, okay, what tasks, what things do I outsource? So what is the core competence I want to maintain? What are the transactional service jobs I want to maintain with me? Because it has to do also with something with keeping the customer relationship and not just like outsource everything and then be totally disconnected by the operators. And last but not least on the problem, the thinking I said earlier, I don't think something massive like that each company can solve on its own. I think you also have to talk about collaboration across industry, collaboration with colleges, universities, with training academies. Maybe there are ways to bundle those training academies and really attract talent in a way that they really want to work in service. And what is a potential career path for being, let's say, moving from field service then into service management and into company management positions? Because I think what I also learned in Chicago is that's not only the silver tsunami, which is happening, also the younger workforce is not staying as long. So we have to double whammy of talent exiting after five to 10 years. And so that basically reflects that we have to address the needs of that generation.

Sarah - 00:18:26: So one of the things that becomes important in service is for the service leader to act as a conduit within the business between the service function, HR, and executive leadership. So can you talk a little bit about the responsibility to bring these parties together and help them understand the layers of what this challenge is and what it means for the business?

Joern - 00:18:50: The C-level leaders and executive team leaders, of course, they need the story, but they also need facts and figures. So basically, you have to describe the problem. So for which functional areas, for which skills, how does it look like for your particular company? And basically, as people go out, then the experience, how people come in through apprenticeship programs, through universities, etc. Then basically, you show the growing problem in the next years, which if you do the nothing case, would likely increase the risk of not delivering the business plans. And that's true for every company. And you grab their attention pretty quick. And because of those multi-layers, because it's not just like in service, in service and field service, it's very obvious. Right now, it still goes through each of the company function. It will not just stop in service and then purchasing or engineering. You don't have the same issues. You do have the same issues there. So it needs basically sponsorship by the C-level because it's like it's not a project, right? It's not a silver tsunami project. It's something where a company fundamentally needs to address that. And I call it riding the waves of the silver tsunami. So how do you ride it? What are the strategies to come out as a more resilient company and make the problem to more like hey guys, it's actually an opportunity, right? If we do it right. Because you want to, basically now we need the future employees and we want them as long as possible to stay with the company, right?

Sarah - 00:20:42: Yeah. Now, you touched on this a bit earlier, but let's talk about the need to prioritize solutions for knowledge management and also be a bit more inventive about how we might leverage our aging talent longer or in different ways.

Joern - 00:21:00: There are two aspects. One, we're already doing, and it's what we introduced last year. It's a new e-learning platform for technical training, but we also will use it for sales and service management. But on the technical training, we went back to very experienced technicians and went through and creating those e-learns together with learning management, because I haven't put it more like the editorial, the content type of work. And then we did videos for key tasks, with their help, and capturing that knowledge in videos. And those will never go away, right? And you do tips and tricks, safety topics. So I said, okay, there's a pound. The manual would say remove the pound, but they would say, okay, be careful. The pound is 15 kilos, so you need to kind of protect yourself and be ready. There's like some weight coming. And they felt it, and it was quite good. So they see that this is like, it's already capturing their knowledge, and they're happy to support it. And that's ongoing. And we have a couple of thousand customers, what technicians from our network now owns on that platform. So it's quite good. The learning we is changing from in the past, okay, you have to send people to Singapore, to Germany, to the US to do a training course. And now they can even prepare online. They do the testing and exams. And then when they come to a training, and e-council training, they can address the knowledge gaps, et cetera, and really accelerating actually the onboarding of

Sarah - 00:22:39: people.

Joern - 00:22:40: And the others are really what I mentioned earlier, which I haven't done really yet, but it's more like a mentoring program and buddy system pair people up. Where you bring on the older generation with the younger generation. It would be good that the pairing is based on sympathy and rightness, like it also needs to kind of click even to a point where you would think, hey, do you maybe need to, like in Germany, with 65 or in the future, 67, the contract stops. You can't continue to work like in other areas of the world where you can continue to work. So it's like if people are fit and want to work, so what is the framework that can still contribute and contribute with their expert know-how? And that's how we have to work with our global network and with human resources to come up with respective approaches, right? I mean, a lot of these people, I found it funny when I had a post on LinkedIn on the silver tsunami following the Chicago visit. And I had like a general eye doing the picture of the guy retiring. He had actually a smile on his face. I didn't put in the proud thing, the smiling technician, but what it told me is, hey, the guys can look back at a very fulfilled life, stressful and sometimes really crazy at times, but a very rewarding job, right? They leave behind and they should also enjoy their retirement. But for those who really want to continue to contribute and whatever means, I think we should give them an opportunity, right?

Sarah - 00:24:26: Yeah, another example that I've seen when you pull in what's possible from a technology standpoint is companies leveraging remote assistance or augmented reality solutions. So instead of what you're saying, having a one-to-one mentorship, you could have an older technician in the office or even at home who can virtually connect with three or five technicians every day. So if they get stuck, they tag that person in to see what they see and walk them through it, etc. That's one of the overarching points in this conversation is there are so many potential solutions and parts of the solution that you just have to be willing to think differently and explore and try new things. Speaking of that creativity, we talked about the fact that updating job descriptions or changing the way that we describe or market these roles certainly isn't the solution in its entirety. But we do need to continue to push to be more creative about how we attract new talent into field service. What are your thoughts on what this might look like or what people should be thinking about or trying to get more of the younger talent interested in these careers?

Joern - 00:25:48: It starts with speaking to those generation. I'd go out to the colleges, the schools and talk about that those are the jobs out there and how interesting they are and actually travel the world and be kind of supporting customers. Last year we did a program where we have like in Germany like an apprenticeship program which then goes for three years and but every country has such a like an apprenticeship program. But in that way and then from time to time, we put like experienced technicians. And they talked about the jobs. We took people on a voluntary basis out into the field. And with that we actually recruited three times more of the apprentice who finished for service that's been in the past to really talk about it, listen to them, what's important to them and then what type of flexibility they need. And with that, it put then you can talk about what roles we need, right? So we started creating a hybrid role where we say, okay, what is the relation between working at the customer and at the system in turning branches where it was working from home in the past? There's always like a percentage level. Boom. You have to work with the customer and utilization is the most important KPI for a technician and you need to have a utilization of 90%. So we have to ask ourselves, what does utilization consist? Is it just turning branches or is it actually solving a problem for a customer? And how you do it, it's totally different. So you have to break through some of the older kind of KPIs and methods and really give it a new perspective. And I think if there's discussion, if you always go back to what does the customer need and what makes a company more efficient, often it doesn't conflict with what the new generation, what their expectations are. So what you said earlier, the ability to work remote, remote assistance and remote troubleshooting, having expert joining those sessions, because I think like chatbot, I'm not a big fan in private life using a chatbot, right? I'm very picky. And so, but the younger generation, they use chatbot all the time, but also in customers, they would be more. Open to use those type of new technologies. So, hey, we should look into this and see in the next years where Gen AI can help us planning the jobs. If the planning of field service is so, the results are so disruptive. And this is like a pain in itself, the traveling and the way we're doing it and pushing too much in and always be with the back against the wall. Nobody wants that. And that's why I'm also very happy that we signed up this IFS on a workforce management. So reintroducing that in the next couple of years, that is also part of the employee experience. And all that together, the employee experience, the customer experience, use technology on purpose to make that better, have a career opportunity for them that they can grow and choose technology. Okay, instead of 10 jobs a week, now you can do 12 or 13 jobs a week. And by the way, you do it until you retire at 67. I mean, how many kids really volunteer? I want that. I don't think so.

Sarah - 00:29:29: Yeah, it's a really good point. I mean, it's looking at the bigger picture. I did a podcast last year with ABB and they talked about some of the specific applications within their service business for augmented reality and AI. And the time they've gained back from that. And he mentioned specifically, not just allowing the company to absorb all of that time to expect more, right? But to give some of that time back to the employee. It's the shift in thinking from just the short term, how much can we wring out of people to the longer term? How can we create a balance where we're hitting the productivity we need to? We're making our customers happy, but we're not doing it to the detriment of our employees, because we know that they're not going to tolerate that, the younger talent, they're not going to stick around, right? And then to your point, the importance of just acknowledging that it's very unlikely to have young talent join and expect them to stay in a role for 10, 15, 20 years the way that has been normal, right? And so it goes back to the point you made about not taking a victim mentality. Sometimes where companies get stuck here is that rather than accepting the problem and deciding to see it as an opportunity. They spend time thinking, I wish it would go back to the way it was, right? And it's just, it's futile and it's not going to, right? So we really need to do things differently. When it comes to the technology piece, you just talked about some of the things that you are doing to take these important steps. And to your point, particularly, let's talk about the workforce planning. It's a good point because when you're thinking about something like utilization, it can also be very common for the company to focus on maybe where the employee is falling short. But there's also a responsibility from the organization perspective of have we invested in the right tools to make our operation as efficient as it can be, right? That's a conversation on both sides. When it comes to how you're looking at technology's role in this overall puzzle, though, are there things that you keep in mind in terms of the way to leverage technology well? And in a way that will benefit everyone versus looking at it the wrong way or either rushing or expecting that you can replace the workforce with AI. Like, are there certain things that you kind of think through in your own filter of where technology can help in this conversation?

Joern - 00:32:17: I mean, when I talk about technology with purpose, the purpose comes from A, delivering an outcome to a customer, to a partner, whatever. But then also that delivery, that it's really at the point to the cost on time and smooth. And the field service teams, they all have the knowledge how it works and what can go wrong and how many dots you basically have to connect to actually have that great experience from the customer and employee experience. Being on time, being there, the sun is shining, the parts are there, the tooling is there, and the scope is clear. And if you need support, you get the backup from the headquarter with remote assistance and connecting the dot. That is where the Gen AI and the technology can help to basically with the thousands of jobs each of us has to plan over a year with that complexity, the scheduling changing. You need the assistance of really technology of tools to help making the right decisions, because right now it's people sometimes just sitting in front of an axle or a whiteboard. And making those assignments and then trying to manage that complexity with, okay, it's that job. What skill do I need to have to do this? What visa or whatever other kind of legislation requirements, export control? So the world is getting more complex. The technology is getting more complex. And to really deliver excellence in these days requires that we get help and that we do a proper planning and it's seldom the quality and the way of the wrench turning. It's basically do all things count to place when required and then have that dynamic scheduling planning tool and which includes the customer, right? So sometimes you maybe do you have the technician, but you don't have a part in their region. And then you say, okay, it's not Monday, but I will be there Wednesday and you can count on me. And he says, okay. Or for scheduling, hey, I'm there. Something happened. And the customer says, I need to deploy technicians immediately. Okay, get the data and say, hey, and one week we have downtime planned anyway, and you can still go on until that week and your operation does not be at risk. Have that conversation, but you need information and data and help to have that conversation with the customer.

Sarah - 00:34:56: Yeah.

Joern - 00:34:57: And their technology plays a role. And if that in the end helps too. Have less stress and make a job. In time and no overtime and maybe have half an hour time to have a conversation with the customer, then that's a good investment in technology, but not in a way, oh, it looks great and it's kind of the sexy label, right? Hey, look what we can do. Okay, so why do we need this? And raised us what's in for the customer, what's in for the employee. Employee, if they don't like certain things, they can, there's the saying, culture eats strategy for breakfast. If they don't like certain things, they will find all means to stop it. So we were always very hand in hand when we introduced new solutions with people who are actually doing the job, right?

Sarah - 00:35:51: Yeah. And I think that's what it comes down to. I love your point about technology with purpose, right? And you mentioned at the beginning of our conversation how strongly you feel that a positive employee experience leads to a positive customer experience. And I think that's the mentality that some lack when they're not necessarily taking that part into account. I attended Field Service Europe last fall, and Marco Hugo Gutierrez from Tetra Pak did a great presentation where he talked about company performance or company financials, customer experience, and employee experience making up a triangle. And his point was, if you take any of those three out of balance, it crumbles. You have to think about every decision you're making, every strategy you're putting in place, every investment, et cetera, through the lens of all three of those factors. And I think in a lot of ways that's similar to what you're saying is it's important to keep all three things in mind when you're thinking about not only the technology piece, but how to solve this overall problem.

Joern - 00:37:04: And as it stands here, keep it simple. In service, you have to keep things simple and really keep asking the question, what does the customer need? What's important? Where should we focus? Can we look at processes and ask them, do we need to continue doing these processes like that? Or can we review it, script certain paths, be faster? And yeah, I totally agree what you just said.

Sarah - 00:37:31: Yeah, more is not always more. And the last thing I wanted to talk about in terms of the components of navigating through this challenge is how imperative the role of the service leader is in this sort of transitional phase in our industry. So thinking about how we work through the waves of this tsunami, how do you view the role of the service leader?

Joern - 00:37:57: Well, A, there is the recognition that there is an issue. And basically, in service, you can, I sometimes say, we work for yesterday because there's always like so much work that you can work 24 hours every day. So basically, acknowledge that there is this issue, put the numbers behind, and then really take time to deal with it personally. So it needs a personal commitment to address the issue with the teams, with your peers, and also with the exec teams. And that takes time. If you just duck and say, well, I'm so busy with delivering the day-to-day business. I mean, look at myself. I have 10 years to go. But also, one part of my role is to look at the new generation and say, who can do my job in the future? That means also, okay, if you need more time, then delegate to the talent who can one day maybe go into your footsteps and invest time because that's what you need to do. And then just go through the stacks of data and making a projection of potential impacts and what do you need. Because if you go to the C-suite and say, hey, we have a problem. I say, okay, we see the problem. It's obvious. Okay, so what do you need? You need to have answers. And so you need to come up with proposals. You need to work out the proposals in like really cross-functional, cross-regional way. Because if a tool spits out certain numbers, you really, again, have to invest. And so how's it looking in the US versus Germany versus Asia, right? And it's time you need to invest. So that would be my ask to all service leaders to not duck away and to address it, deal it, and act now.

Sarah - 00:39:43: Absolutely. Sarah, if you look over the next, let's say, five years, okay, what are you most excited about when you think about the landscape of service over the next five years?

Joern - 00:39:55: I think it's, again, to learn that we have to bring in a new generation on board who's then dealing with the future technology. We are just putting in place everywhere because the service you do is basically on staff which is out in the field, right? So normally when you bring in new products, it will take some time until they become more service intense. So it's the technology and the onboarding of new talent. It's the use of technology with purpose. And again, it's the responsibility of a service leader to also look at those and say, I need those solutions going forward and talk to IT and make sure that they then look jointly for solutions, that you get the budgets agreed for the next couple of years, right? So long-term thinking. And then I think what will be important to really get your grips behind how that future ecosystem look likes. And ecosystem is what are you doing? What are your partners, partner network doing? What are the customers? Where are all the IT landscape and digital landscape? How it fits? How is everything connected and draw, that's what we do right now, draw the future, that ecosystem where it's like how customers request coming in and how do you bring all that together? And that's going to be exciting.

Sarah - 00:41:27: Yeah, very much so. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing. I admire the passion that you have, not only for falling in love with the problem, but for really taking control of the role that you can play in your organization and even sharing knowledge with the industry for moving this forward. So I only wish everyone was so excited about what they can do and what's to come and really appreciate you coming on and sharing.

Joern - 00:41:55: My pleasure. And with that, your role, you having this Future of Field Service podcast is also very important because that gives us an opportunity to reach out to our peers, industry peers, and discuss those items.

Sarah - 00:42:11: We're all stronger together. So thank you for that. You can find more by visiting the home of the UNSCRIPTED podcast at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

Episode 299

As we gear up for all the action 2025 is sure to bring our way, host Sara Nicastro welcomes Roy Dockery, once again, for an insightful and provocative episode of Unscripted. The Director of Field Service Research at TSIA brings new perspectives backed by recent experiences to the conversation, shining a light on the critical ways in which field service leaders need to adapt and change their leadership styles this year.

Tabling thought-provoking ideas, the two discuss the many shifts that need to take place, the first being that of a shift away from a culture of complaining with field service organizations. The conversation underscores the role of service leaders in fostering a positive workplace, emphasizing the necessity of being a “translation engine”, learning to speak the language of other departments, ensuring that their insights and challenges are understood and addressed at the executive level. They further unpack the importance of values like empathy, curiosity, proactiveness and collaboration, which can elevate the impact of field service leaders in the industry. They also consider the impact of AI and automation on the field service industry, discussing how leaders can remain relevant by focusing on strategic thinking and emotional intelligence rather than getting bogged down in tactical firefighting.

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

Episode Transcript:

Roy - 00:00:00: I think in field service, we have to kill the culture of complaining. Yeah, like I just said, because we speak a different language, we tend to get frustrated that other people don't hear us. And then because we all speak the same language amongst our management team, our directors, our field service engineers, we complain that sales doesn't get it and HR doesn't get it and these people don't get it. So within your organization, you create a culture of complaining about the fact that the rest of the organization doesn't understand you. The rest of the organization doesn't, you know. And it creates a weird disconnect within the organization. It creates a lack of like horizontal transfer. So then field service engineers don't want to go work in engineering. They don't want to transfer to customer success and like spread that DNA to the rest of the organization.

Sarah - 00:00:55: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. At this point, today's guest probably doesn't need a huge introduction. Many of you know him from his multiple roles in the space or his LinkedIn. And he's also been a guest on the podcast a number of times before. So, Mr. Roy Dockery, welcome back to the podcast.

Roy - 00:01:30: Thank you, Sarah. And Happy New Year. It's 2025. We have been doing this for a long time now.

Sarah - 00:01:35: Yes, yes, yes. Now, former, well, former military, but we don't need to go back that far. Former service leader, author of The Art of Leading, also consultant and advisor. And you have, since your last appearance on the podcast, added a new role to your repertoire. So, you are also now the director of field service research at TSIA. So, tell everyone a little bit about getting into the world of research.

Roy - 00:02:06: Yeah. So it's not something that I thought I would be doing, right? I know you and I talked about this, right? I've done podcasts, I've done content creation, role books and consulting, but I always just enjoyed being a service leader, right? So thinking about progression of a career, it's like lead more people, lead bigger teams, keep kind of moving up vertically on a ladder. And so when I transitioned earlier this year, and like you said, just started doing some consulting, I traveled to Sweden with you, which was super fun. The food was amazing. I had to contend with all the Swifties that were running around.

Sarah - 00:02:34: Yes, yes, yes. But we didn't make it to the show, which is unfortunate.

Roy - 00:02:39: We did not. But going through that, going through that time period, right? Like I said, this was doing consulting, helping people with leadership. And I really like enjoyed being able to kind of like engage with companies at a larger level and being able to impact multiple organizations. And so I don't even know if I think I've shared this with you, but so I made a video on my, like you said, I make a lot of content on LinkedIn and I made a video about the fact that, I have a passion for field service. I love the industry. And I kind of want to evangelize the industry, right? Like I really want to share across generations, the jobs that are available, the things that people can do, the economic opportunity, the experience that people are looking for. And I posted that on all of my social medias, LinkedIn, TikTok, and everything else. And back when I worked in healthcare technology, I was a member of TSIA. And several people at TSIA still follow me on LinkedIn. And one of my former, my former account executive saw my video. And then he messaged me on LinkedIn that same day. It was like, what you just described, we're actually hiring for, right? Because I'm thinking like, okay, this is something I'll just do. I can consult and kind of keep doing content. And when he sent me the job description, it was like exactly what I had just described on LinkedIn or in my video. And so I was like, well, that's not what I thought I would do. Right. I was thinking about consulting, maybe going to run another service organization. So landing on, okay, I can be in a position where I call it the intersection, right? Like I'm TSIA. The intersection of technology and then the industry. So we've got all the partners that come to our events that come to our shows, but then we have all of our members that we provide support for across different segments of the technology industry. And when you want to evangelize, right, you want to be at a busy intersection so that the message gets relayed. So I made that decision, joined back in August of last year, and it's been fun, right? I always joke with my members when I'm on the phone and I'm like, that's great. Like we just talked about a lot of problems. Now you get to go work on them and I don't have to. Because for 14 years, I was the one in the seat that had to drive it. So it's really, it's almost like, and I think most people don't, like I do counseling and mentoring and things of that nature as well. But it's like counseling for me, right? It's like counseling other leaders and executives on the challenges they're going through, some of the foundational things that they can address. And being able to do that for small companies, medium companies, and large companies, I get to impact dozens of companies a week, thousands of people a week versus one organization, one vertical, or one team. And so that's where I am and been enjoying it. We had our conference in October, got our next one coming up in May. And so it's been fun to work with our members and keep working to try to grow that out and do what's needed for the field service practice so that we keep moving forward and that we're kind of staying ahead of the curve instead of always playing catch up.

Sarah - 00:05:27: Yeah, I like the description of the intersection. I don't feel dissimilar, right, in the roles that I've played in this space. And it's nice because to your point, the work that you've done as a service leader in the different businesses you've been a part of, you had a massive impact on those organizations, right? And of course, when you speak at conferences and you do what you do in terms of sharing your knowledge on LinkedIn, you have some ability to impact other organizations. But in the role you're in now, you're able to take not only what you've learned from, your past experiences and also blend that with TSIA's expertise to help a number of people. And that's what I've always been passionate about. When you start talking to a high volume of service leaders week after week, like you really get that true sense of how common the challenges are and how you can start making those connections in a way that the change that's needed can catch on and we can move the industry forward. So.

Roy - 00:06:30: Yeah. And I was talking to somebody yesterday and it's exactly what you said. The interesting thing is when you're the field service voice within your company, you're the only field service voice within your company. So you feel crazy. You feel like John the Baptist screaming in the wilderness, right? Like, cause no one else really speaks your language. You're at the bottom of the, of like the outcome. So like you're the sales and the engineering and the projects, everything lands on you. So it's almost like you're speaking a foreign language internal to your company. But then like, I get to hear the message from all of these people. And even when we have our event, that's why field service events are so, are so popular because you get to go and hear somebody speak your language. So it's fun for me because I speak that language, but I also spent enough time in a senior executive role that I can help them speak the other languages as well. I speak finance and engineering and software support and supply chain. So I can, whatever question you have, I can help you position it in a way where you can start getting the other organizations to see the needs of field service instead of just always kind of being at the outcome in, of the decision tree and start to leverage it, influence the rest of your organization as well.

Sarah - 00:07:40: Yeah. When we have done the future field service events, like you came to in Stockholm last year, and whenever we have the opportunity to bring that community together in person, I would say the most frequent feedback I've gotten is I feel so much less alone. And it's honestly my favorite thing, right? Because, you know, that takes an amount of time. Of pressure off, it lets you know that there's a community around you that is working toward the same objective, struggling with the same challenges. And when you're able to bring people together to share their experiences and build that collective knowledge, that's what it's all about. Okay, so today we're going to talk about, we're going to combine your, leadership, expertise and your service expertise into talking about three ways service leaders should evolve in 2025. So hit me with number one.

Roy - 00:08:42: All right. So the first one's going to make some people, we're going to lose some friends. I think in field service, we have to kill the culture of complaining. Yeah, like I just said, because we speak a different language, we tend to get frustrated that other people don't hear us. And then because we all speak the same language amongst our management team, our directors, our field service engineers, we complain that sales doesn't get it and HR doesn't get it and these people don't get it. So within your organization, you create a culture of complaining about the fact that the rest of the organization doesn't understand you. The rest of the organization doesn't, you know, and it creates a weird disconnect within the organization. It creates a lack of like horizontal transfers. So then field service engineers don't want to go work in engineering. They don't want to transfer to customer success and like spread that DNA to the rest of the organization. And I think I learned that probably seven or eight years into my career when you started hearing like your complaints that you think you're just venting. You start seeing it actually become a tangible part of your organizational culture, because when someone that you've never directly spoke to before brings the same complaint that you echoed back to you, you're like, oh, this is going further than I thought it was going. And so I think it's creating like a lack of interest. I think it leads to attrition because the thing is some and I ask this question all the time when people have high attrition, right? Like who's leaving? Are your senior technicians leaving or are your new technicians leaving? And it's normally the new technicians leaving. And the reason they're leaving is because the culture of complaining. Because the people who have been there for 25 years make $90,000 a year as a technician, and they're not going anywhere, right? Because they have expertise, they have domain knowledge. But when they constantly complain to the new people, that new person gets kind of embittered, and they're like, why do I want to be here, right? So everyone's losing their one- to two-year technicians because they're being poisoned by a culture of complaining that we all complain about our senior techs and the grumpy manager, but it actually comes from us as the leaders. And because we make it seem like no one understands us, no one speaks our language, what we should do as the leaders is we have to learn everyone else's language. We've got to be the Rosetta Stone, and then we've got to take the concerns of our organization and go effectively communicate it to those teams in their language so that our team feels heard, because that's going to create a culture where people want to stay. It's going to create a culture where you develop leaders that vertically move up, but it's also going to create a culture where your people move horizontally, and now you've got field service. I call it spreading field service DNA, right? Like when I worked at Swisslog, we wound up having field service people in engineering, in the warehouse, in sales, in customer success. And so they all speak my language. So now I have someone in customer success who understands me. I have someone in sales who understands me. But if you make it, it's us against the world, which a lot of times we do. You don't get that growth, and you create an environment where people tend to leave, especially if they're new. It doesn't feel healthy, and it doesn't feel productive.

Sarah - 00:11:54: I think that's a very good point. Leaning into the, probably in many instances, valid frustrations of not feeling understood. I'm going to focus my comment more on the senior leadership in service, right? Leaning into that, you're just further ostracizing yourself and the function from the business, right? And then all of those ripple effect things you talked about. I think though, the only thing I would add to what you said is you talked about speaking the languages of the other functions and understanding how to reframe some of the challenges into terms that they will understand. I think it's just important to also, especially if you're trying to minimize or eliminate a culture of complaining, to think about not only how you translate the challenges, but the opportunities. Because even when you are presenting opportunities, if you are presenting them in the language that the other functions of the business don't understand, it's just noise. They don't see the value in it, which then fuels that frustration, right? Because the service leader is saying, I'm telling you X. So also think about how you adopt that language both to resolve some of the challenges, but also to articulate the opportunities that we know service leaders see that are relevant for the business that maybe aren't getting through because they're not being spoken about in language those people care about.

Roy - 00:13:18: Yeah, and I completely agree. And especially when you talk about, and I know you deal a lot with customer engagement, right? Like, especially when you think about the customers, because we are the ones that hear most of the things, but we bring them in our field service language. So then sales is like, I don't know what that is. And engineering is like, so like take the customer complaint and I'm going to translate it into sales. And then I'm going to translate it into finance or because it is an opportunity, right? Where if we just relay the complaint, they're going to be like, I don't know what that means. Right? But what the complaint is an opportunity for you to close the gap, deliver a different service solution. But if we just relay the complaint, then people don't know what to do. And then, like you said, it fuels the frustration. It's like, no one's listening to the customer. It's like, no, they don't understand that language. Right? So you've got to put it in terms that they understand. Like when you're developing a product, you got to give the product team an MVP, right? What's the minimal viable product. Like what's the, that's what they need. Right? And so like when you learn to speak that way and understand, speak incentives, and sales and targets in revenue, when you're talking to the sales team, a complaint does not equal revenue unless that complaint is a product that could be sold that is revenue. So I completely agree on that side that you've got to reframe opportunities as well.

Sarah - 00:14:31: All right. What's number two? All right.

Roy - 00:14:32: And I know you touch on this a little bit in your 2025 predictions, right? But it's I think you called it storytelling. But I also want to say it kind of goes into what we were just talking about a little bit. But we've got to become we've got to be that translation engine. Right. So we have to learn and most field service organizations do not report directly into the CEO. So we're kind of outside of the C-suite table. But we have to learn how to speak C-suite. So we can't just go in and say, hey, our techs are doing X, Y and Z. And we can't speak the same way that we speak to our organizations downstream. We have to because we're at the end of the value chain in most of these situations. So we've got to know how to speak to everyone upstream from us, which is project management, pre-sales activities, legal contracts. Right. The product, the marketing, like we've got to understand all of that. And so we talked about that a little bit, but that's my major second one is like I call it field service should be a Rosetta Stone. So it doesn't matter what's going on. I should be able to take a problem to the CTO, the CFO, the CEO, the COO and be able to translate it to them in a way where they can take action for what I'm saying. And they don't have to go figure out, okay, what does that mean? How does that translate? Like, no, translate it for them and deliver it to them, because we have to realize that people don't- Everyone in field service probably agree. People don't fully understand what we do.

Sarah - 00:15:59: Right.

Roy - 00:15:59: So we get frustrated by that, but it's not their responsibility to understand what we do.

Sarah - 00:16:04: Mm-hmm.

Roy - 00:16:04: Right? We have to deliver what they sell. So we have to understand what's being given to us because we have to go deliver it to the customer. But like I said, kind of to the first one, instead of complaining about that, like spend time learning to speak that language. Like I remember I spent I used to spend a lot of time with our principal engineer.

Sarah - 00:16:23: Yeah.

Roy - 00:16:23: Because he had a lot of influence on our VP of engineering. So if I could get him to understand what I was saying, then I heard my thoughts through him come out of the VP of engineering.

Sarah - 00:16:35: Mm-hmm.

Roy - 00:16:36: And I was like, oh, like as long as if I can speak his language, he can get it to leadership because he speaks better engineer than I do.

Sarah - 00:16:44: Right.

Roy - 00:16:45: At least I can communicate with him on a software level or on a hardware level and work that way. And the same thing with our my sales colleagues and other people as well.

Sarah - 00:16:53: Mm-hmm.

Roy - 00:16:53: We have to learn how to do that if we want to take advantage of opportunities and also if we want to address some of those challenges that are in front of us.

Sarah - 00:17:01: Yeah. So I think if we take that point a step further, right? So like when you're talking about working with the engineering person, because that person's close to the VP of engineering almost can be your... Go between right and yeah in a way you're building inroads right like you're being smart about taking steps to get the message where it needs to go in a way that's going to make sense I think the other part, if we think about how what you're talking about applies differently in different organizations, right? Some companies are further along in sort of understanding the role and the value of the service function and leveraging it appropriately. Others are miles, miles, miles away. And hosts are somewhere in between, right? But for the service leader who is further away, feeling really on the outside, feeling really not understood, I would urge them to start by understanding, like really understanding the core objectives of the CEO. And if you're going to learn the language, right, start with figuring out. What you can share that can help with those. Because if you want to be successful getting someone's attention and you ultimately want to build a common language with them and have them listen to you more, you need to start by talking about what's important to them, right? And the thing that is incredible about service is how much it can play a role in... Not only all of the other functions of the business, but many of the strategic objectives that people in that C-suite don't necessarily correlate service to, right? So if it's diversifying revenue, right? Maybe you have ideas in your role about different offerings you could be providing that you're sitting back rolling your eyes because no one wants to listen to, right? But if you can go to someone and say, I know that diversification of revenue is very important to you. I have an idea for how we could help with that. You might get their attention, right? If your company is highly focused on sustainability, right? There's a lot of ways that people don't necessarily think about that service can play a role in. Not only the company's targets and changing things to help from that front, but also positioning it with customers, right? So I think it's speaking the language is right. But I would just say if you're really on the outside, take it a step further and start by speaking the language around things that are most important to them. And they might not be the same as what's most important to you. But like if you start with what's most important to them, you're ultimately going to get further along.

Roy - 00:19:55: Yeah. And like you said, when you're trying to help them, and I guess the other thing I'd say as well, and I completely agree with that, it's like a lot of times you're in a role, you're a VP or a senior VP, you think your title gives you influence and it doesn't. Relationship gives you influence. And like you said, when you're trying to build that relationship, talking to them and everybody will tell you in counseling or whatever else, right? Like what is important to that person? And like, and that's, so even when I talk about like speaking their language, I'm talking about exactly what you're talking about, right? It's going like, like when I went to the principal engineer, I'm like, what are you struggling with?

Sarah - 00:20:28: Right.

Roy - 00:20:28: And he was struggling with escalations that were coming down to him. But most of those started in the field with me. No one listened. And then it got out of hand and the customer got really pissed. And then it went from the CEO to his VP to him. So like what I started doing is like before I was escalating things to my counterpart, right? Or things are getting escalated to my boss. I just started telling my team, take it to the principal engineer. Like he wants to fix it as well.

Sarah - 00:20:53: Yeah.

Roy - 00:20:54: And he can actually fix it. He's the person who knows the code. He wrote it like his blood and his DNA is in those, are in those lines. And I think that's what it is. And it was funny because the weirdest compliment that I got when I left my healthcare technology company to shift is one of our sales executives. He told me, he said, Roy, you're the most sales friendly service executive I've ever met. And it was weirdly like uncomfortable to me because I always, you know, there's always a weird tension between service and sales, but I know that I always was intentional about making sure that my team knew like it's their job to sell. They have a sales target. They've got revenue. They didn't design the product. They didn't make the product. They didn't ship the product. Stop getting mad at the salesman. If something doesn't work or if the customer overbought or if the customer underbought, like that is just their job, they're doing their job. Right. And like, let us help them be successful. If anything, let's teach them more about the equipment. Let's teach them what problems these things solve. Let's go with them. Let's send some of our technical experts on our site visits. And because at the end of the day, they want to be successful. Because the first sale is good. All the recurring sales in the referrals is better. So they don't want the customer to be unhappy because then they don't have a referral.

Sarah - 00:22:03: Right.

Roy - 00:22:04: So like we have a common interest is you want your customer to be happy. And to your point, how can I help you make the customer happy? And that's from the estimate. During the pre-sales process, during the project, at the handover, what service they buy, how we treat them during warranty. And when we make sure the customer is taken care of, then when that health care director goes to another hospital, now they want your technology over there because they were taken care of. And that just developed a good relationship between us and sales. It still got tense, right? We argued about estimates and work, but we were ultimately, we had the same goal. We want the customer to be happy, right? So that they recommend more business. And that's what we just built a healthy relationship to do so. But we had to learn to speak their language and we had to teach them some of what we were saying because they were also talking to technical people, right? So when you're talking to the VP of operations, he doesn't speak sales either. So it's helpful for you to learn from us because we make you more effective at speaking with them. So ultimately, it winds up helping everybody out. But internally, it definitely improved that relationship.

Sarah - 00:23:11: Yeah, and I think what you just said, use that common interest to create the common language, right? Like... Honestly, I mean, if more companies did that, they would be markably more successful, right? We talk about all of these silos that exist, and the customer is the common interest across all of them. The problem is they're so deeply embedded in organizations through the different language, which is reinforced by different KPIs, which is exacerbated by different use of technology. You know what I mean? Like, if we just looked more at, I think the companies that are leading the way are using the customer experience as the common interest to start creating a playbook that everyone can kind of rally around.

Roy - 00:23:57: You said one thing that I think is really good, which is the silos are based on our metrics. Everybody's just trying to attack their goals. And we make conflicting and contradictory goals within a company. Yeah. Where if I 100% just focus on my metrics, I'd be screwing half of the rest of the company. So it creates a silo just around those. But when we're all driving customer experience or retention or growth, those are the things at the high level. And so when we all speak there, it helps because, yeah, we got to be good at our individual functions, but it can't be at the risk of causing pain in another part of the business.

Sarah - 00:24:34: Right. And I think understanding that, right? Like, I mean, the fact that persists, it infuriates me. Okay. Because, whoever is at the top of those companies, like, really should be thinking about how are we working at odds with one another. Right. But it happens everywhere. Right. But going back to your point, which is being the Rosetta Stone, the more you can look through a lens of empathy and understand that the person that runs the other department that you want to punch in the face isn't really an a-hole. They're just doing the job they've been incentivized to do. Right. So.

Roy - 00:25:11: Yeah.

Sarah - 00:25:12: It's like, I think when you get that sense of frustration, it can be, it feels very personal. Right. But if you can step back and see that. They're probably not a jerk. They're just incentivized differently and focused on doing their part, right? So it can, I think, diffuse some of the emotion that exacerbates that. Culture of complaining and like just putting yourself further and further away from creators.

Roy - 00:25:39: And you said a good word, which I know you read my book. I talk about that in my book, right? Like that's empathy, right? Like it's empathy for like, I know you have sales targets. So you might oversell.

Sarah - 00:25:48: What's the common ground, right?

Roy - 00:25:49: Over promise, right? Like, all right, I get it. So I see why you did that. You aren't, and I would always tell people, no one's trying to hurt us.

Sarah - 00:25:56: Right.

Roy - 00:25:57: No one's intentionally, maliciously trying to ruin your day. It might happen, but no one's doing it on purpose. And like, once you understand that, it lets you step back a bit and then try to understand, okay, why would they do that? And then, like you said, it's because they're incentivized to do it that way. Or sometimes they just don't know. They need training. They might be new, right? Like there could be changes in process. But I mean, I've been, you and I have been in this industry for a long time. 95% of the time, it has never been malicious, right? Like there was like some jerk that got fired somewhere that was just trying to ruin everybody's life. But for the most part, people are trying to do their job. We just have natural conflicts. And when we don't talk about them, it seems personal. But it's really not, right? They're just doing their job, right? But we get so focused on our lane. Sometimes we don't pay attention to where other people are trying to merge or where there are opportunities for us to work better together. So.

Sarah - 00:26:49: Yeah. Okay, what's number three?

Roy - 00:26:53: All right, last one and quick one. Field service is a reactive organization by nature. And so what I want to say is that our teams should be firefighters. Our teams should be reactive. We as the service leaders need to be forecasters and not storm chasers. Like let our team go run once the tornado touchdown. Like let them do that. Because the funny thing, and I know for me, it took me a long time because we enjoy that. A lot of us come from that. So we tend to lean more towards getting into the tactical, getting into the problem resolution. When we actually need to sit back and into what we're talking about, we need to look across the silos. You need to go forecast and say, hold on. Our sales department just got a 30% revenue increase target. Our product team just got told that they need to make three new widgets in the next two years and say, how does that affect us? How is that going to affect my headcount? How is that going to affect my employee training? Or we're already seeing the decline. We got a bunch of people retiring. Instead of waiting and then reactively saying, hey, HR, I need a bunch of people. Let's develop your own workforce strategy and say, I need some apprentices. I need entry-level positions. I need people to start coming in and shadowing my senior employees because I don't want to lose this knowledge. And I'm guilty of it as well. I did it my whole career. I used to get excited and I used to get bored. I actually was mad. At some point, I used to tell my employees, y'all have all the fun. Like, once they were able to handle the escalations, we spoke the same language. They knew how to work with cross-functional partners. I'm like, I'm just sitting up here doing strategic planning. It's boring. It's not as fun. You need to do that for your team. You need to be the person that's at the helm saying, okay, like you said, where's the CEO trying to go? Where's the organization trying to go? Let me make sure I'm focusing. The vast majority of my time, of forecasting how that's going to impact field service. Because no one else is going to do that.

Sarah - 00:28:58: Yeah.

Roy - 00:28:58: Right? And then you're going to land at year-three of the five-year plan. And now you got to go double the size of your field service organization in six months because the product is ready.

Sarah - 00:29:09: Yeah.

Roy - 00:29:09: Right? So I think we've got to be more intentional about pulling ourselves out of our natural inclination to be technical. I mean, to be tactical and technical and into the problems. And then we've actually got to look at the company as a problem and say, what is the field service solution to the company's problem, not the customer's problem. So let your team deal with the customer's problems. And then you look at what field service problems are going to become prevalent because of our technology, because the industry is changing, because of hiring changes, because of pricing constraints, because of material restrictions, because of the availability of company vehicles. Right? Or all of this other stuff that can impact your team. Because if not, we're just kind of like a victim of circumstances. And then it puts us in a situation where we're scrambling. It becomes more expensive. It's more deconstructive in that way. But yeah, but it's pulling us out of our natural habitat. Most of us who are service executive, or at least from my network and the people that you know, we love the problems. We love the customers. We love diving into it. It energizes us. We enjoy it. But we've got to shift to what are the future problems the company is going to have with field service. And then start working on ways to resolve that. And then trusting our teams, our directors, our managers, or our other VPs, if you're a senior VP, to take care of the customers every day. Right? I feel like 80% of your job should not be interacting with customers.

Sarah - 00:30:37: Yeah.

Roy - 00:30:37: That should be 20% of your job or less. 80% of your job should be leading your team so that they're effective. And then making sure that the field service organization is ready for wherever the organization is trying to go. Because that keeps you learning. It keeps you engaged. It keeps you jumping into those silos and going to spend time with the product team. Like, what the heck are you making? And what is that going to look like? Or working with finance? And what are our targets? And being able to plan that way. And so I think that's the other thing that we've got to do. And it's got to become a normal rhythm for us to test that. Right? And if we're drifting too much into the tactical, and if we're spending too much time troubleshooting and solving problems, we've got to pull ourselves up. Because while we're that deep down, something's being missed. That's the strategic level that we're going to have to respond to later. That's going to cause us a lot of pain and frustration.

Sarah - 00:31:26: So you know me well enough to know I would never weave AI into a conversation unless it was genuine, but... Here is what listening to you talk about that third point just made me think. A leader who is not putting ample time, effort, energy into being strategic and is not pushing themselves to get to a level of emotional intelligence that they can adeptly communicate across silos of the business.

Roy - 00:32:00: Yeah.

Sarah - 00:32:01: Those are the leaders that people think about when they think about AI replacing jobs. Because you're not doing, I mean, I'm just saying right now, like the big conversation around AI, is it going to take my job? How many jobs is it going to take? I just saw a statistic that came out this morning that said the World Economic Forum showed that 41%% of employers intend to downsize their workforce. Through AI automation, I think by 2030, right? So my point is the firefighting part is the part where technology and automation can help the most. I have never felt it can help entirely in field service. I never will, right? Like to me, that's just not feasible. But my point is, if you stay stuck in the tactical, if you stay complaining, if you stay unwilling or unable to understand and speak to the challenges across the organization and the company's strategic priorities, like you will very quickly work yourself out of a job because you're not then doing anything that is centered in the skill sets that are going to be most in demand in the next phases of the business.

Roy - 00:33:19: I completely agree. And one of the reasons, right? AI is good. And I mean, this is all going to get better, right? You got agentic AI and all this stuff that's coming on GenAI, but AI is good at answering questions based on unstructured and structured data now. What AI isn't good at is asking questions that no one's asking, right? So in that form, when I talk about like, when you pivot away from, like you understand this, you know what technically needs to be done. So what you're talking about being easily replaced is what a lot of us as executives have done is we have the knowledge of what points need to be connected to be successful. But you could also look at historical data and know the same thing. So you know exactly who to call to get the right answer. So does your phone records. So does the service ticket history. But like, it's all in your brain. So like, it's an easy neurological path that you can just, you can get there. So when, if all we're doing is coaching the team, if all we're doing is directing the players on the board, that's just like nobody can beat AI at chess right now. It's better than you, right? Because it's taking more things and more signals into consideration. But AI can't, can't go to the, right? Like can't go ask the questions to the finance department or the product team about something that doesn't exist yet. Right? The product isn't here. There's no data on the product. The product is a thought. It's an idea. It's an alpha. It's in beta. That's where you should be spending your time as a leader. Because to your point, if I'm in the present, AI is going to become better at making decisions on present information than you are. Right? So like, you've got to be in the future a bit in helping guide that navigation. And asking the right questions. Because to your point, until things that operate 10 fingers extremely precisely. At a very cheap cost, field service isn't going anywhere, right? Like you still need people to fix things and climb ladders and go under houses and climb. Like that's still a very expensive robot at this point. And we're not at that point in society. But yeah, just moving the pieces around on the chessboard and knowing tactically the best person to sit in here, the best person to sit in there, like AI can do that now. So we've got to be better at asking the questions about the things that don't exist yet, right? We've got to be more creative. We've got to be more future focused. But I agree. And like you said, and that's why we've seen a lot of kind of stale outs and a lot of organizational shifts within field service where a lot of VP roles are eliminated. A lot of things are being shuffled around because I think a lot of us were tactical for so long that the organizations didn't see us as like a future forward thinking asset, right? So when they do a reorg or they got to look at a cost structure, they're like, well, like the pieces can move themselves on the board, at this point, and that was always a question for me when I was an executive, like, does my team need me?

Sarah - 00:36:07: Right.

Roy - 00:36:08: Right. And if they don't need me, I should go because I'm not adding value, right? Like if they don't need to tell me to move around or what to do, if they've been taught, if they lead well, then I don't need to be here, right? And like you said, in both of my transitions, that's why I made my transition. My team didn't need me anymore. Like they were good. They were just as good at doing what I was doing as I was. So I'm like, let me go do something else and have an opportunity to do something forward thinking in advance, but.

Sarah - 00:36:34: I think what is even scarier than becoming irrelevant because you stay stuck in the tactical as a leader, right, is really, I mean, it comes down to like bringing the three points you made all together, which is having the good ideas about the future and the questions that would get you there. But being so frustrated that you do nothing more than bitch about it. Or being so unable to translate your ideas or your questions into the language of others.

Roy - 00:37:10: Yeah.

Sarah - 00:37:10: That like to me, that's a worse fate, right? Because I think a lot of going back to your advice, I think there's a fair amount of service leaders that are in that boat. They're not necessarily incapable or unwilling of being more strategic. They just feel like it's a dead end for them. You know what I mean? And it's because they need to do more of what you told them to do today.

Roy - 00:37:37: Yeah, and it's funny. I love the way that you structured it, right? Because like you said, one of the reasons we have a culture of complaining is because we haven't learned to speak the other languages. And like, because we can't speak the other languages, it's hard for us to help us articulate, right? Like you're on the Titanic and you can see the ice, but the people who are steering the ship are too far away from you. Like they can't hear you. So like you see the problem, but you can't get the message there quick enough or you can't articulate it in a way where they can take action. And then you watch the ship crash and you're like, I knew it was going to crash. So now you're complaining and it's like that situation reinforces it. So I think I do. I love the way you tied it together when I think it's all relevant. Like once you learn to articulate and if you're frustrated, you probably really got to check your own heart. And are you frustrated because people don't listen? Or are you frustrated that they don't understand you? Because if they don't understand you, which means they can't take any action, like you said, that's emotional intelligence. Slow down a bit and then try again, right? Like if I say something, and your reaction is completely different than what I would expect, I shouldn't assume that you're a jerk. I should assume you didn't understand me.

Sarah - 00:38:46: Right.

Roy - 00:38:47: Right. I know you travel internationally a lot. You got the world tour for Future of Field Service. But like when you're in a different country and you say something to somebody and they just give you that weird look, you look around like, yeah, I don't think they speak English. Right. You're not like, you don't get rude. Right. You're just like, oh, they don't understand me.

Sarah - 00:39:02: Right.

Roy - 00:39:03: Like we don't do that in when we think we all speak the same language. Right. Like you just assume that person is ignoring us or disregarding us. And like you said, that's emotional intelligence. And like I said before, assume it's not malicious. Assume the best of intentions. And if somebody doesn't get it, just find another way to say it. Right. That helps with the relationship and it minimizes the frustration. And you'll stop complaining when people hear you and when you see action being taken and your future ideas are being incorporated into strategic planning or what we're doing for the next year. Because when you sit in a room and you pour your heart out, about what you want for your team, and then you don't see any of it on the list of plans, then what, like you said, you stop talking. Well, they didn't take my advice last year. So like, well, I'm going to keep talking. I'm like, but then you're doing your team a disservice as well. So like if I, and you know, and you know the origin of my leadership style is love. If I genuinely love my employees, I'm going to keep advocating on their behalf, whether somebody takes action or not. It's my responsibility to keep speaking until somebody gets it.

Sarah - 00:40:05: Yeah.

Roy - 00:40:06: And if I have to change my language so that I can, you know, bring that stuff to you, then I just need to, I need to take the time out, pause, get over myself a bit and then go do it. But it's definitely connected. And I like the way you connected those together.

Sarah - 00:40:19: I'm going to make one more connection. You said at the beginning when you were talking about joining TSIA that you said that you started talking about how you're passionate about evangelizing field service. And it's interesting. It's like a if you know, you know thing, right? Like only people in it understand how it makes you passionate. And it's weird. I mean, I never saw myself having a career in this space. But I mean, I can't tell you how many people I met that feel the exact same way about it. And I just was thinking as you were saying that there are people in the situation you just described where you say something, they didn't get it. You jump to they don't care. Like, yeah, forget it. Right. Some people are in that situation because of ego. But I think a lot of people in service, it's because you're passionate. But you can't let your passion prevent you from making progress. I'm speaking from experience. My passion gets in my way a lot. And so to your point, like that passion is good, but it has to be channeled appropriately. And passion can very easily become a force that ostracizes you. Because when you feel like people aren't getting it, like you will step back or you will find a way around or you will whatever, right? And that passion is good, but channel that passion. Use the opportunity to learn how to speak different language to channel that passion in a way that will resonate with other people. Because then when you start to see their brains clicking and you start to make some progress, you're going to realize that in some cases at least it wasn't that they don't care or they weren't listening. It was just that they really didn't get where you're coming from.

Roy - 00:41:57: And one thing I love about what you said and you had a little alliteration there with your peas as well. But I think the other thing is that we assume we kind of prioritize our passion as well. Service in the outcomes and the people in the fields and the customers. I wasn't passionate about bill collection and none of us would have had a job if somebody wasn't passionate about making sure we got paid. So like when you get that escalation from the collections department, that's like, why hasn't this person paid this invoice? You're like, hey, calm down. It's not that serious. So it's like I think, like you said, while we're empathetic and we all have an understanding that we all have different passions, they're not deficient. They're just different. And sometimes they do compete. But there's nothing wrong with that. Right. Because competition also drives creativity and gets us to be better at what we're doing. But I think that and in service, we're service oriented people like that's why we're in there. So when we feel like other people aren't aren't leaning in to serve or to help because that's what we're passionate about. You think that there's something wrong with them. But I don't want an engineer to be service oriented. I want an engineer to be engineering and innovation and creation oriented. Right. Like that's what I need them to do. So it's like all of us together will work effectively. But we know one person should think that they're part of the mission or kind of their part of the body is more important than the other. So it's like you might be the hands. Right. But like somebody else is the mouth. You don't want the service organization doing all the marketing.

Sarah - 00:43:42: Mm-hmm.

Roy - 00:43:43: Like, you don't. So it's like, so I think that's the balance. But I absolutely agree that there's normally a conflict of passion.

Sarah - 00:43:50: Mm-hmm.

Roy - 00:43:51: But it's like, no, like, just you're passionate about something that they're not. So instead of just keep pouring out your opinion, like, kind of figure out what they're passionate about.

Sarah - 00:44:00: Right.

Roy - 00:44:00: And that'll also help you understand. Like, we talked about that Rosetta Stone. It helps you understand their language. And you have children, right? You love to travel. Like, you can, there are even personal things that you can find to connect people to that completely change the way that they're communicating.

Sarah - 00:44:14: Right.

Roy - 00:44:15: Right? And then, like, you can tap into some of those passions as well. But no, I think that was a great point.

Sarah - 00:44:19: Yeah, I was just thinking, like, how big of a part of empathy curiosity is. Like, just take a pause before you react and just think about being curious about where another person is coming from or what do they care about or, you know what I mean? Like. Yeah. It's a very important part of being able to build that skill. Well, we said we were going to do a short episode and we failed, but I think ultimately we succeeded. So thank you for coming back yet again to the pod and sharing your insights and your wisdom. Is there anything you have going on that you want to tell people about?

Roy - 00:44:58: Yeah, I mean, the one thing, like you said, you mentioned the book, and I think the last one was on a podcast in February. So I have heard a lot when it comes to leadership development. A lot of companies aren't, like they talk about it. There might be a speaker at a kickoff and then there's nothing really more. So I've actually been working with an organization to build like a learning module for leadership development with an organization called Tinker Time Labs. That's going to be based off of my book. So one thing people will start seeing me promote this year is an actual like learning module that you can pull into your LMS system. That'll walk people through like almost a year long program on leadership development that talks about empathy, that talks about authenticity and all the things that you and I shared. I know you wrote an article about the book as well. So because I'm trying to focus on, like you said, like broader impact and evangelism. I think the biggest way for me to help leaders is to try to help. Drive like a more effective leadership culture where people can participate, go through. There's like questions and scenarios and things that you can go through. And we pulled in like information and leadership tips from different sources as well. So that'll be largely outside of my primary role. What I'll be doing this year is kind of helping Tinker Time Lab push that out there. And then they'll be doing some facilitation and stuff with the book as well. So it's like, I got to write the book and then somebody else gets to go, gets to promote it and do it. But yeah, that'll be a learning module that companies can actually buy. And we'll just sell it based on company size. It won't be a subscription, like download it and then use it for the benefit. Because for me, and you know, I have a passion about people being effective leaders. So I don't even want to make like ongoing costs or limitations. So people will be able to download it. It'll be in your LMS and then you can use it for your leadership cohorts or your entire organization. So that's the main thing. People can follow me on LinkedIn. I share information there and on my other social media platforms. But that's it. Just follow me on LinkedIn. I normally share what I'm doing and we'll be doing some stuff to kind of impact businesses at a higher level in 2025. That sounds so weird. It's already 2025.

Sarah - 00:46:54: I know. You did miss one important plug, which is if you truly can't get enough of Roy and I, Roy has asked me here to be a guest on a state of service webinar. So TSIA's state of service webinar, looking at what happened in 2024, what's coming up in 2025, and that is taking place on January 22nd.

Roy - 00:47:21: Yeah, January 22nd at 2 PM.

Sarah - 00:47:23: Eastern. Yes.

Roy - 00:47:25: They can register on TSIA on the portal. And then even if they miss it, the webinars are normally available on our portal afterwards. If they can't watch it live, they just have to register for a portal account on TSIA. But you can register for the portal for free. And you can see other articles and stuff as well. So we've got survey insights on supply chain and logistics. There's going to be some insights coming out. We just finished the talent management survey in December. So that'll be getting released right before the webinar as well. But yeah, so they can set up a free account on the portal and then they'll see the webinars available. That webinar and for field service and there's other ones for customer success, education services, managed services, professional services and support services as well.

Sarah - 00:48:05: Very cool. All right. So check it out and join us on the 22nd. Roy Dockery, thank you so much for coming back. I appreciate you. You can find more of Roy and I's podcasts and all sorts of other things by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. And as always, thank you for listening.

Episode 298

While host Sarah Nicastro doesn’t believe anyone can truly predict the future, in this episode of the Unscripted Podcast, she shares what she expects 2025 will bring based on interactions with the Future of Field Service community and featuring insights from the Stand Out Service Trends report.

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Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Sarah: The reason that there are not any excuses not to is that the options for offering flexibility are enabled by today's technologies and just a bit of creativity, a bit of getting willing to move beyond the way that it's always worked and to reimagine a bit what service delivery could look like in a world where you are offering your employees some of that flexibility. So if we consider how the incorporation of more self service change what's possible, we start to see how coming up with different scenarios that can offer more flexibility to our workforce is feasible.

Welcome to the Unscripted podcast. I'm your host, Sara Nicastro. The day has come for my 2025 service predictions, or as I'm going to refer to them today, my non predictions. The reason I say that is every January, all different types of content creators, analysts, journalists, etcetera are asked to share or decide to share predictions for the coming year. I've always found this challenging because the reality is none of us can predict the future. No one knows what is around the corner, and so it's really hard to feel a sense of confidence or conviction in stating with certainty what is to come in the year ahead. That being said, it is something that I'm asked often. And while I don't necessarily feel any of us can predict the future, There are some different themes or trends that, in my opinion, we can expect to see in 2025 based on the conversations that I have on this podcast on a weekly basis, based on the interactions I have the opportunity to have with people within the future of field service community, the interactions that I have with different IFS customers who are on their journey to service transformation and service optimization. And, of course, last year, we had the 1st ever standout fifty leadership award and did a standout service trends report with those leaders in which we gathered some insights that I'll also reference today as I go through my non predictions.

So I have a few to share, and the first that I want to start with here is organizations will begin to offer the frontline workforce greater flexibility. Here's why I think this will happen. It has to. We know that flexibility and better work-life balance is incredibly important to today's talent, And this is an area where for a long time and for a lot of different reasons, service organizations have sort of dismissed it as simply not possible, and that has changed. So in the standout service trends report, 29% of respondents report that they already are allowing flexible schedules, remote work options, or other work-life balance initiatives as part of an employee engagement focus. Now if you didn't read the standout service trends report or haven't heard me talk through some of the findings on the podcast before, I do want to mention that the standout fifty was fifty leaders. They were nominated by peers and colleagues and folks within the industry based on the impact that they're making, but there's no way that we can say that necessarily a sample size of 50 is representative of the whole. Right? So in my mind, if these folks were folks that were nominated for their impact, we could deduce from that that they, as leaders, and possibly the organizations that they're a part of, are on the better side or further alongside of thinking and best practices when it comes to service. That may or may not be true, but my point here is saying that that's 29% of those 50 leaders, not of all of service by any means. But 29% of the standout service leaders who participated in that report are already offering some sort of flexibility, and I think that is tremendous. There really though is no excuse for others not to at this point. And that's why I think in 2025, we're going to see more and more of this. The reason that there are not any excuses not to is that the options for offering excuses not to is that the options for offering flexibility are enabled by today's technologies and just a bit of creativity, a bit of getting willing to move beyond the way that it's always worked and to reimagine a bit what service delivery could look like in a world where you are offering your employees some of that flexibility. So if we consider how the incorporation of more self-service and remote service change what's possible, we start to see how coming up with different scenarios that can offer more flexibility to our workforce is feasible. In the standout service trends report, 15% of respondents said that they have extensive self-service options in place and state that customers are responding well to those, and 52% currently have some self-service capabilities in place and are focused on expanding those. 33% of respondents have transitioned a significant portion of service delivery to be remote, and another 30% are in the midst of transitioning a portion of service delivery to be remote. So these and other changes give companies options for flexibility that would have been nearly impossible to achieve not too very long ago.

I do believe companies that seize this opportunity are on the cutting edge of looking at things differently and leveraging today's tools to reimagine what's possible for the frontline workforce will have a significant advantage in the talent war. Now this should go without saying, but organizations should be offering their workforce a lot more than just flexibility. That's certainly not the only thing that is important to talent. It isn't the only foundational pillar of employee engagement. This is simply an element that is desired by today's workforce that has long been dismissed as impossible in the service industry that is now entirely feasible. So that's why I think in 2025, we're going to see a lot more offering of flexibility, and it will be really interesting to see some of the different shapes that takes. That could be days that they work from home, that could be rotating schedules, it could be allowing them the opportunity to pick their start and end times for the day, etcetera. There's a number of different shapes that this can take and that's where getting creative and understanding what's important to your workforce, understanding the constrictions of how you deliver service to your customers today and what could change in that regard to make new things possible, all of those things come into play, but they deduce down to the ability to offer more flexibility to the workforce.

So that's number 1. Number 2, customer expectations will exploit service organization complacency. So it is incredibly challenging to keep pace with what customers want, but it is the name of the game. For a long time in this space, we've been talking about consumerization and the influence of how the experiences that we can receive in our personal lives bleed over to what we expect from companies that we do business with in all areas of our lives. And so I believe that many service organizations are soon going to face the consequence of sitting pretty or maintaining the status quo when they could have or should have been innovating.

One of the data points from the standout service trends report that drove this home for me is that respondents shared that when asked what's most important to customers, wanting peace of mind or guaranteed uptime slash performance was 2nd on the list. So it's the 2nd most important thing to the respondents' customer base. Yet only 26% of respondents are offering outcomes based services, and, perhaps more importantly, 26% still offer only reactive or transactional break-fix service. So that shows this divide between what's important to customers and where these organizations are in terms of evolving their service offerings to provide that peace of mind that we know is important. So what was once effective at setting service apart has, in many instances, become table stakes. We've talked a lot in the past about soft skills, prompt response, high degree of first-time fix. There are a number of companies who are still struggling to shore up those strengths, and those companies are falling behind the organizations who have shifted to modernizing their service value proposition along with modernizing service delivery itself. So I think that this is the way the pace at which customer expectations are evolving is really going to magnify the gap that exists between service organizations who have taken the initiative to be innovative, to keep on top of trends, to keep pace with change, to understand what's important to their customers, and to continue to evolve their operations and their offerings accordingly and those who have sort of just stayed complacent and maintained the status quo. This evolution in progress or foreshadowing of a reckoning, if you will, is also suggested by the wide range of KPIs that are used to measure service success today. When we asked respondents in the standout service trends report how they measure performance of their service teams. Some mentioned things like CSAT and NPS, but there were quite a few who still solely rely on metrics like productivity, efficiency, and utilization, which, don't get me wrong, are quite important, but when used in a vacuum, can be at odds with evolving an operation beyond that transactional service mentality. So the lesson here is that customer-centered innovation is essential, whether that means the development of new service offerings, an evolution of service delivery, incorporation of more sophisticated technology to allow things like greater personalization or more extensive information to your customers, or more than likely a combination of all of these things. And measuring the performance of your workforce based on the success factors of today's business, not yesteryear's, is a must. So I think this reckoning is something that we'll see quite a bit of in 2025.

Number 3, organizations will be forced to reconcile technology debt and invest in more modern service management. So when we think about what is possible in terms of customer-centric innovation or we think about what's possible in terms of really changing the employee value proposition, both things should contribute to companies' overall performance in a positive way. When we think about what's possible, so many of the areas of opportunity rely on technological innovation. And so the importance of a strong, scalable, sophisticated digital foundation in today's service landscape can't be overstated. However, in the standout service trends report, 20% of respondents said that their core service management platform is not ideal and are currently evaluating or implementing an alternative, and 59% more reported that their service management platform is capable, but not ideal for the future state of their operations. Only 15% reported that they have a fully functioning and future-ready service management system in place, and 50% stated that less than 10% of field service tasks are automated. This shows not only the opportunity, but the directive to modernize core systems in order to remain relevant, both to your customers and to your employees. The good news is, supporting why I think we'll see a lot of this investment in new core systems and replacement of legacy systems in 2025, is that respondents also indicated that for 2025, nearly half of respondents are set to bolster their technology investments. 35% expect a moderate increase in their technology budget, and 12% expect a significant increase. 47% remain expect their technology budget to remain flat, and 6% expect a nominal decrease. So the stage is set here based on the absolute imperative nature of having that capable, scalable solution in place that not only meets the really strong demand of today's business, but sets you up for success in the future.

It's so crucial to businesses to be successful, and it's the time has come to get rid of what's not working, to get rid of what can't meet the needs of where you need to go, and put in place the solutions that can. So building off of that, certainly, over the last few years, everyone's predictions have included AI in some way, shape, or form. And my next non prediction, if you will, is that I believe we will witness some major service-centered AI successes, but also the 1st major missteps. So the AI buzz that has had the industry in a stronghold over the last couple of years is warranted. It is. I've said before, I actually shared in my predictions last year that the buzz started as buzz and companies started taking action, and the intelligence the AI can bring to an organization is the next significant milestone in digital transformation or in the digital journey. There are so many opportunities, sometimes so many that it can be quite overwhelming, but it's something that we have to be very pragmatic about. So all of the buzz is something that the service trends report showed that the standout leaders also believe in.

62% of respondents are currently using AI in their operations, and they shared some examples such as chatbots, triage and tech support, service order summaries, document and data search, guided troubleshooting, optimized scheduling, generating service tickets from emails, and much more. Further, 47% state that AI is their next area of focus in terms of technology investment, and 76% believe advanced AI will be critical for remaining competitive in field service. That being said, the current and future use of AI is not without concern. The top 3 concerns that respondents shared are accuracy and bias with 33%, the need to master the basics first, 23%, and not having the data at the ready to support the use of AI, 19%. So personally, I think it's positive that leaders were very open and upfront about the concerns that they have because we will see more missteps by those who are just racing and rushing into expanding their AI use than we will those who do have some concerns and are doing their due diligence and making sure that they're being pragmatic in their approach. So here's what I think will happen in 2025. I anticipate that we'll see the buzz that has moved to action morph into some really compelling success stories. There are so many ways that AI in different forms can be incredibly useful to service organizations, and again, in a way that can really bring value to not only the business, but the customer experience and the employee experience.

If you want to take a deeper dive into some of the the different ways that AI will unfold in service in 2025, you should check out the predictions blog from my colleague, Mark Brewer, who is the vice president for service industry at IFS. You can find that at blog.ifs.com. But he explores in detail some of the cool ways that he believes AI will evolve in service this year. And, personally, I'm very excited to start to see at conferences and on the podcast, in discussions, some of these real-world success stories. And not just real-world success stories on a small scale, but starting to see real-world success stories from companies that are doing quite sophisticated things and driving real business value by doing so. But while I'm excited to see how companies put AI to work for their businesses, for their customers, for their employees, I also fully expect that we will inevitably really see some major missteps, ones that could be quite significant. If I were to get out my crystal ball, I would anticipate everything from failing to see AI as a tool that can augment the work of talented people and instead trying to replace them with technology to the detriment of the customer experience, or rushing into AI use that isn't rooted in real business case or supported by capable technology. There are some ways here that organizations can go really, really wrong if they aren't keeping in mind the ethical implications, the customer experience implications, and being really smart about how they take this incredibly valuable tool and put it to the best use for their organization. So I'm not concerned, to be clear, about the fail fast type of mistakes that are part of any innovative project, but more so the big kahuna, what were you thinking type missteps that come from believing that there's some sort of loophole away from the realities and limitations of the hard work that is involved in getting AI right. So be smart about tying your investment and evolution and the technology to real business cases, and be smart about the partners that you choose to work with and the way you communicate those changes to your workforce and to your customers.

And my final non prediction is more so a call to action, which is service leaders must get better at storytelling. At the Service Council Symposium last fall and in their own 2025 predictions, John Carroll of the Service Council spoke about the rising existential threat to service leaders. Essentially, the risk that exists for service not to have a spot in strategic decision-making at the company to have a for organizations to miss the full view of what service and the wealth of insights a service function has mean to the business and instead be dismissed or deprioritized. So this existential threat would be massively unfortunate to see unfold, and my hope is we don't see that happen at all. As we know, service is far more than a means to meeting customer needs. It's really a treasure trove of so, so much more. But to avoid this potential reality, service leaders have to become better storytellers. Many service leaders grew up from being technicians themselves, and not all have become comfortable or adept at articulating and influencing, but that is exactly what is needed. Service leaders need to use storytelling to translate the needs of and opportunities within the customer base to terminology that screams business value and shifts the perception of them and their teams from that of a necessary evil to a powerhouse of competitive differentiation and potential innovation. Deep diving into being sure you understand all the ways in which service is interconnected with your company's financial objectives, strategic vision, sustainability initiatives, and technological road map is a great start. But using storytelling to explain this interconnectedness in a language that will resonate with your company's C-level executives is a must. So let's work on that in 2025.

And those, my friends, are my 2025 nonpredictions. I would love to hear your thoughts on anything that I've shared here. I would also love to hear your thoughts on what you think 2025 will bring. So if you have any insight for me, please feel free to reach out through email or on LinkedIn. And next week, I look forward to our 3 hundredth episode. That's crazy and hard to believe. Until then, you can find more by visiting us at futureoffieldserviceref.ifs.com. The unscripted podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can find more at IFS.com.

Episode 297

In the second half of this episode of the Unscripted Podcast, host Sarah Nicastro reflects on the top Unscripted podcast episodes of 2024, celebrating the inspiring guests, diverse topics, and invaluable insights shared throughout the year. Sarah delves into conversations on neurodiversity, authenticity in leadership, mental health awareness, and more with Tristan Lavender, Roy Dockery, Tim Spencer, Marco Hugo Guiterrez, and Rob Stephenson.

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

Episode Highlights:

[00:55] - Episode 292: Are You Overlooking the Importance and Impact of Neurodiversity at Work?: In this episode, Tristan Lavender dives into why neurodivergent individuals are vital to innovation and how companies can create environments where they thrive.
[03:36] - Episode 252: The Art of Leading: This episode is packed with insights on authentic leadership from Roy Dockery. Roy's perspective on authenticity stood out as he believes it's more than being genuine; it's about embracing your unique qualities, sharing your passions and vulnerabilities, and creating a ripple effect of respect and empowerment in your team.
[05:07] - Episode 282: Reflecting on a 35+ Year Career in Field Service: What’s Changed, What Hasn’t, and Where Are We Headed Next?: Drawing from his experience, Tim Spencer shares a powerful guiding principle: always look for the next problem to solve, not for innovation's sake, but to truly make things better.
[07:07] - Episode 265: Smashing Stigma Around Mental Health & Prioritizing Well-Being at Work: Inspired by his own journey, Rob Stephenson shared powerful insights on fostering psychological safety, reducing stigma, and truly listening to employees to understand their needs.

[09:37] - Episode 247: Tetra Pak’s Proven Ways of Supporting Field Force: Marco Hugo Guiterrez shared proven strategies for supporting field force well-being, highlighting the importance of flexibility in work modalities, such as offering remote support roles or back-office rotations to accommodate personal needs.

Episode 296

In this episode of the Unscripted Podcast, host Sarah Nicastro reflects on the top Unscripted podcast episodes of 2024, celebrating the inspiring guests, diverse topics, and invaluable insights shared throughout the year. From the challenges of servitization and the power of diversity in field service to leveraging AR and AI for modernization, Sarah highlights key lessons and favorite quotes from thought leaders like Dr. Kawal Kapoor, Daniel Trabel, Stuart Thompson, Dot Mynahan, and Teresa Carneiro.

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

Episode Highlights:

Sarah: I just wanna start by saying a huge thank you to each and every one of the guests that we have had join us for an episode of the podcast in 2024. We've had a wide range of topics, different parts of the world represented, a lot of different perspectives, and we're really proud of that. So we will work hard to continue to provide that, but it isn't possible without the willingness of our guests to come and share not only their time, but their opinions and their journeys and their lessons learned and so forth. So big thank you to everyone that has joined for an episode this year, not only the 10 that I'm going to go through. We are quickly coming up on our 100th episode of this podcast, which blows my mind.

Welcome to the Unscripted podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. We have somehow found ourselves yet again at the end of another year and it is time for the top 10 podcasts of 2024. I'm gonna do this in 2 parts because I wanna talk a little bit about each of these episodes and share some other things as we go along. So part 1 is what you're hearing today. Part 2 will run on January 1st. So I just want to start by saying a huge thank you to each and every one of the guests that we have had join us for an episode of the podcast in 2024. We've had a wide range of topics, different parts of the world represented, a lot of different perspectives, and we're really proud of that. So we will work hard to continue to provide that, but it isn't possible without the willingness of our guests to come and share not only their time, but their opinions and their journeys and their lessons learned and so forth. So big thank you to everyone that has joined for an episode this year, not only the 10 that I'm going to go through. We are quickly coming up on our 3 100th episode of this podcast, which blows my mind, but is very exciting, and have some fun plans for that. That'll happen in January. Stay tuned for that. And thank you for being here and taking part in this journey.

As you can imagine, coming up on 300 episodes in a lot of aspects, the podcast is a well-oiled machine at this point. I always appreciate when I do interviews, guests often say, this was really easy. This was really enjoyable. This was a lot of fun. So I work hard to minimize the ask of their time and to make it an enjoyable process. But that being said, even though we've been doing this for a while, we are always open to feedback from our community. So if you have feedback on what we could be doing better, what you would like to see, please reach out anytime. And along that line, if you have a story or views, opinions that you would like to share, please reach out as well, and we can see if we can make that happen.

So with that said, I'm gonna go ahead and dive into the first half of our top ten of 2024. I also wanna point out that I randomized the order of these. So we're not necessarily doing a countdown. These are just the top 10, not in any particular order. But the first one I'm going to speak about is episode 266, which is innovating advanced services and delivering on servitization. This episode was with doctor Kawall Kapoor, who is the research manager at the Advanced Services Group out of Aston Business School. Also, the coauthor of a book released this year and a a playbook that came alongside with it titled Servatization Strategy, Delivering Customer Centric Outcomes Through Business Model Innovation. So, Kawal, being part of the Advanced Services Group, some of you who are longtime listeners are probably familiar with that organization. We've had a number of their team on the podcast to talk about different themes and trends related to servertization, professor Tim Baines and plenty of others. And I really appreciate the work that they do around advanced services because Powell's piece of that is managing the research that they do. But they also have a very hands on component of what they do with businesses who are incubating and working through their advanced services ideas and journeys. So they have a good balance of understanding the trends via research, but also understanding the real-world implications of trying to advance services in today's landscape. I'm gonna share for each of these episodes my favorite quote, why that was my favorite quote, and then if there's any other things that come to mind. So my favorite quote from this episode, Kawall says, "what tends to happen is you'll see a disconnect between how a firm is describing its servitized offerings and how it would truly resonate with a customer. The key is customers are more interested in why a service matters, not just how it works. So if you hear firms saying, we offer condition monitoring or we offer digital services, it's technical to a customer. That's not to say they don't understand. They obviously do understand their function, their business, but it's not really clear what it is from that conditioning monitoring or from those digital service that will provide them benefit. And we've always said that that servitization is about putting customers first. So if you think of it this way, you wouldn't buy a product unless it made your life easier." So Kawall point here is that one of the barriers to success when we think about advanced services, outcomes-based services, servitization is companies struggling to articulate the value proposition in a way that resonates with the customers. So for companies to really recognize the value of the full potential of advanced services, we have to not only be able to take that customer-centric view, but to adopt a more customer-centric language. And this is something that talking it through, it sounds very simple, but in reality, it's a sticking point that a lot of companies struggle with. So this was a good conversation about that and other things. You can check out that episode. Again, it is episode 266. And, uh, if you wanna check out the work that Kawall and the rest of the Advanced Services Group team do on Advanced Services, their website is advanced services group dotco.uk.

Alright. Next episode on today's list is episode 257. The title of that is Equity is Everyone's Responsibility. This episode is with Daniel Trebel, who is the director of field service EMEA at Thermo Fisher Scientific. So in this episode, Daniel shares the success that Thermo has had in bringing specifically more women into field service roles and why he feels that organizations ignoring the need to improve diversity overall of field teams are set up to fail. So my favorite quote from Daniel from this episode is, I think it's important to really take a step back from the problem and start asking how the solution should look and how to get to that point. It's important that you really map the situation and try things out. Maybe you're disruptive and you take a risk, but when you don't change it, you will fail from the very beginning. Companies who don't do this will fail because they can't unleash the power of people and they can't unleash the power of diversity, which is necessary to be successful. We are dealing in a situation where when we talk about STEM, there's only a handful of people who can cover open positions and everyone is keen to get someone from somewhere. But if there is no someone, then there is no somewhere. We need to open up the talent pool. And if you don't do that and you're not thinking of changing your plans and your strategy in the long run, I think those companies will fail. That's my clear statement here. So Daniel has a very good point, which is, historically, many field service organizations have hired based on, uh, previous experience. And there's a couple of layers to what we discuss in this episode. The first is that experience is becoming extinct, ultimately. We can't keep relying on previous experience to find the talent that we need in our businesses. That challenge is actually what prompted Thermo to do what they did that Daniel shares in this episode. However, they also realized that not only is there an opportunity to expand the talent pool if you start opening up yourself to more diverse candidates, but there's also value itself in having diverse teams, diversity of thought. So in this episode, Daniel talks about not just the premise of why this is important. It's a premise that I think just about every service organization today understands. Everyone will talk about the challenges to find higher and routine good talent. What is less common is a example with as much detail as Daniel shares of exactly how a company has overcome this challenge. So he talks through many specifics of how Thermo really got more creative than ever before in reflecting on job descriptions, changing hiring criteria, creating new roles, managing change around doing all of this, and also ensuring that diversity was represented at all levels of the business, not just these entry-level field service roles. So there's a lot of great specifics in this episode if you find yourself within an organization that recognizes this problem, but isn't necessarily getting creative about finding solutions. So again, that one is episode 257.

Next on the list is episode 264. This one is ABB's use of augmented reality and artificial intelligence to modernize field service and transform the customer experience. This is with Stuart Thompson, who is the president of the electrification service division at ABB. So what we're really looking at here is how does an organization with nearly 3,000 field engineers across 50 countries respond to customers that are demanding more in an industry with less and less workforce capability to go and serve. So when we think about the premise of the last podcast, Daniel's podcast, we're talking about the need to evolve our talent strategies. In this episode with Stuart from ABB, we're talking about the role technology also plays in minimizing that need and helping the workforce that you do have work smarter. So my favorite quote from Stewart says, if you think about your field engineering work, it's hard work. There's a lot of travel. There's a lot of heavy equipment that you're lifting out in the field. Some of the best field engineers we have are nearing retirement, and so travel becomes more difficult. But the knowledge is there, and for them to be able to impart and share that knowledge with 20 people in a day instead of 1 when they're traveling to a site is far more attractive. As the tools have become more intuitive, you can talk instead of type. If I look at a 64 year old field engineer, being able to just have a conversation and talk like we do, and the computer or device in the background takes care of everything else, it becomes a lot more natural for them. From a customer's viewpoint as well, we can offer different levels of service support. I can have a level 4 technician expert from the factory online with you in minutes, or you can wait a week, I can have them at your site so that customers are taking on that decision. Depending on their sense of urgency, yes, they would love to have a person at the site, but if they're losing $1,000,000 an hour with oil barrels not rolling off the production line, they're very happy to have someone online guiding them as well. Stewart's really talking about 2 different aspects of these types of tools here. One is the way that these tools can help change how your teams work in really significant ways. And he speaks specifically in this example of how that can help organizations take some of their very experienced, very knowledgeable talent that may not want to be out in the field on a day-to-day basis any longer and make really good use of that talent in a way that is comfortable for them. He also, on the other hand, is talking about how to create acceptance from a customer perspective in making changes to your service delivery model. So he talks about really putting the decision in their hands in the sense of stating what the options are and allowing them to choose, and doing so in a way that allows them to determine what the level of urgency is and, therefore, what the appropriate service is. Within this quote, he's talking about these 2 different things. Across this entire episode, he's sharing a very pragmatic approach to adopting modern technologies that I see a lot of companies struggling with. There, we talk through not only what's worked, but some of the challenges that ABB has overcome in bringing these technologies more prominently to its workforce and to its customer base. So the other point that Stuart makes that I think is really important is he talks about how with the introduction of AI supporting field engineers to help them with reporting and admin work, ABB has saved between 2 to 3 hours a week of reporting and admin time. So I believe that's yeah. It's 2 to 3 hours a week per technician, which he says in the episode equates to $30,000,000 a year. But he also points out that they took the opportunity to look at this from the perspective of work, life balance as well as company benefit and to take a balanced approach of monetizing those savings, but also giving some of that time back to the engineer to have an extra hour off, to have an hour for training, etcetera. And I think that mindset is so important in this overall conversation. This episode, in my opinion, is a must listen for anyone who is working through how to incorporate, better incorporate, further incorporate AR, AI, or any other sophisticated tools and automation processes because Stewart shares a lot of tactics for how they've overcome some of the challenges to get to the point they have that I think could be really helpful for others to hear. Again, that one is episode 264.

Next up, episode 256, a look back at 32 years as a woman in service. This episode is with Dot Minahan. When we recorded this, she had recently retired from Otis Elevator after more than 32 years and is now the senior director of safety and workforce development for the National Elevator Industry Incorporated. So Dot talks about how more than 33 years ago, she answered a newspaper ad to be a temporary service clerk at Otis Elevator and ultimately worked her way to being the executive director of field operations for the Americas. So she talks through some of what that journey looked like for her and a lot of the lessons she learned along the way. I think there's so much power in storytelling and and hearing about people's experiences, and there's different aspects to this. There's spending more than 32 years with 1 company and and kind of working through the ranks. And Dot also talks in this episode about some of the value of thinking of career progression as not only a ladder, but a lattice. So she talks about how sometimes making more of a lateral move can bring a lot of value. Obviously, being a woman in a very male-dominated space from 33 years ago to today is really interesting. And quite frankly, she accomplished a lot of really cool things in her time with the company. My favorite quote from Dot in this episode was when I asked her what accomplishment she was proudest of in her time with Otis. And she says, the biggest achievement I have was starting forward, which was the employee resource group for women in field operations. We started that in North America with a group of 12 women. It expanded to over 500 women internationally and really has made a difference in the careers and career ladders, not only for women in field operations and the offices, but even in the field. Because we talked a lot about career ladders and there are career ladders even within the field organization, I'm proud to see a lot of women getting the opportunities that they deserve. It's been an incredible organizational structure to have that employee resource group that Otis supported as well as they did. That's probably my number one achievement. I like this because it underpins a couple of important points. One is the impact that 1 person with a strong passion for something can ignite. So Dot had this idea to start forward, and it started with 12 people in North America and has grown to over 500 people globally. And as she points out, it's impacted the careers of many of those hundreds of women, and that's amazing. It also underpins the power of women supporting women. And don't get me wrong, men need to support women as well as allies, but when you take the time, as Dot did, within her own career to pour back into some of the younger talent around you, to do mentoring, to create something like she did with Forward, it is a really powerful thing. Also underpins, as I mentioned, the importance of storytelling and also community and the tangible effect that groups like this have within and beyond their companies. Really great accomplishment and really cool conversation with Dot to hear about some of her experiences over her career at Otis. Dot also, later in the year, took part as a judge in our standout 50 leadership awards and is featured discussing that a bit in episode 293, which is also worth a listen. Again, Dott's episode on her journey is episode 256.

Last, but certainly not least for today, is episode 274, inside the mind of the new talent you're seeking. This is with Teresa Carneiro, who is a field service engineer at Stem Cell Technologies. Teresa is based in Germany, and I had the great fortune to meet her this June, I believe it was, at our Future of Field Service live event in Cologne. So coincidentally, Daniel Trebel from Thermo Fisher, who we talked about earlier in our conversation, was speaking at this event about some of the work that Thermo has done to attract more women into its field service operations. And so, coincidentally, Teresa was in the audience, which was just wonderful because she was able to bring, uh, first hand perspective to the topic, and it was interesting to see the reaction to her. So once she spoke up and said who she was and what her role was, every break we had, the service leaders in the room were trying to pick her brain, I think probably also giving her job offers and all sorts of things. So it was really serendipitous that she joined us, and I asked her to come on the podcast and share some of her insights about what drew her to field service, what does she enjoy about the field service engineer role, how does she feel about being a woman in field service, how does she envision her career evolving, all sorts of different things like that. And so in sharing some of her journey, she really gives invaluable insight for the service organizations that are looking to improve and evolve their hiring practices. So there's actually 2 quotes from Teresa that I want to share. I could not pick between the 2, so I'm gonna read them both. The first is, I think it's very curious because ever since I joined the industry, I have heard all sorts of companies saying how hard it is to get young talent on their teams. I must say that having very recently searched for a job, I felt exactly the opposite. I felt that I was always behind because I didn't have any previous experience in the industry. And even when you come across some entry-level jobs, they often ask for years of experience. It can be a bit discouraging to find that most job ads require some years of experience, and especially for this type of role because I feel that this type of job, you need a lot of training regardless of your previous experience because of how specific it is. I truly believe that recently graduated students can bring a lot to the table. We are used to learning so many different things in such a short time frame. So she's really giving that firsthand perspective of, at least in the region that she was job seeking, which is in Germany, that most organizations are still requiring experience even for entry level positions, which, again, is really going to limit the talent pool that you can address. The other quote I wanted to share says, I would just like to quickly point out that these questions and the question was around, how does she see her career evolving and changing over time, particularly with the amount of travel and and things of that nature. So she says, I would just like to quickly point out that these questions about balancing this type of job with parenthood are often framed as exclusively a woman's problem, such as how do you see yourself managing this lifestyle when you become a mom. And, of course, you did not frame it that way nor did you assume that I do want to have children, which is also not an assumption that should be made for every woman. But this balance is not just a woman's problem. This might be a concern for anyone who wants to start a family and knows how much time we spend away from home in this type of job. So companies should tackle this problem and get creative having everyone in mind and not just women. I really respect this point, and I think it's refreshing to hear her perspective. And she also shared with me a bit her partner's perspective on this, and to think about how we're framing things, what some of our unconscious bias may be, what the value of flexibility and getting creative about these roles can mean for everyone. And for families, regardless of which parent is benefiting from looking at things differently. So I think that some of the points Teresa makes in this episode really make me wonder how many organizations are still missing the boat on great talent because they're not willing to do things differently. They are acknowledging the problem, but they're not changing. They're not getting creative about the solutions. And I think that seeing the potential in someone like Teresa and knowing that so many organizations are missing out on that because they're trying to just do what they've always done even though it's not working any longer, it really makes you think. And I think her perspective on what that journey was like, what young talent wants, what their viewpoints are on some of the things that, uh, us who are generations older are making assumptions on, etcetera, is just so, so helpful to listen to and understand. So I would say for anyone listening who really wants a peek inside the mind of an intelligent, young, driven field technician that, in my opinion, any organization would want to hire, definitely go back and listen to what Teresa had to say. And again, that is episode 274.

So those are the first 5 of the top 10 podcasts of 2024. As I mentioned, we will be sharing, uh, part 2 on January 1st, so please come back and have a listen to that. In the meantime, you can find more content by visiting the home of unscripted at future of field service .com. As always, the podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. Thank you for listening.

Episode 295

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Ryan Snellings, Founder and Coach at The Jobless Leader, who formerly held a variety of service and operations leadership roles at companies like Fresenius Kabi, Luminex Corporation, and Agena, to discuss three areas of focus for leaders who want to excel in service today.

Ryan brings over 25 years of experience in service and operations leadership within the medical device industry. Having held significant roles at companies such as Fresenius Kabi, Luminex Corporation, and Agena, he has cultivated a deep understanding of the intricacies of service leadership. Ryan's recent transition to coaching reflects his commitment to empowering others to lead without formal titles, emphasizing the importance of self-awareness, personal development, and empathy in leadership.

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

Episode Highlights:

[03:51] - Growth, Ownership, and Empathy: Self-awareness, career ownership, and empathy form the trifecta of effective leadership. Start with daily self-reflection, just 10 minutes at the end of each day, to evaluate your conversations, decisions, and productivity. Manage your career proactively, as no one else will advocate for your growth like you can. Lastly, lead with empathy. Consistent one-on-ones and open feedback build trust and understanding, reminding us that despite all the goals and technology, success is ultimately about people.
[16:00] - Turning Wins Into Opportunities: Feeling uncomfortable about showcasing your achievements is natural, but managing up is crucial for career growth. Regularly share wins during one-on-ones, connecting them to team and organizational success. This not only builds trust but also ensures your efforts don't get overlooked. Remember, celebrating wins as they happen creates a culture of recognition and momentum.
[24:41] - Lead Smarter: To lead effectively, focus on three key practices: First, ensure alignment by clearly communicating your priorities and the team's goals across all levels, so everyone knows their role in achieving them. Second, prioritize genuine and timely recognition. Acknowledge individual contributions when they happen, and go beyond generic gestures by creating meaningful moments, like celebrating top performers in ways that involve their families. Finally, time-block everything, from strategic tasks to personal self-reflection, to make sure what matters most gets done and becomes a habit.
[39:59] - Building Trust Through Authentic Leadership: Corporate leaders face an uphill battle in building trust when actions contradict words, like proclaiming "we're a family" while executing mass layoffs or demanding more from employees without fair compensation. Authenticity and transparency are the real game-changers. Employees can handle tough decisions if they're communicated honestly and without corporate jargon. Cut the fluff and be real. That's how you keep people on your side.

Quotes:

“Self-reflection was a big part of me and I wish I would have learned it at the very beginning of my career.”
“You really have to lean on the side of empathy because when you have that many people, someone's gonna have something going on in their personal life or professional life, and you need to be able to identify those things.”
“To me, there's just nothing better than to lead people and help them get where they want to go.”

Episode 294

In this episode of Unscripted, Sarah Nicastro, the creator of Future of Field Service and VP of Customer Engagement at IFS, reflects on the Stand Out Service Trends Report, sharing actionable insights from some of the most innovative leaders in the service industry. Drawing on her extensive expertise and years of observing the evolution of field service, Sarah explores best practices in hiring, employee engagement, change management, and technology prioritization.

Sarah's career began unexpectedly in the world of field service after earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology and an MBA, with plans to enter the nonprofit sector. Her fascination with the innovation and complexity of field service sparked a passion that has driven her work ever since. Based in Erie, PA, Sarah balances her professional life with time spent at Lake Erie hunting for beach glass, Peloton workouts, and indulging in her love of hip-hop and ice cream.

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

Episode Highlights:

[06:20] - Hiring for Success: Nearly 50% of standout leaders have updated job descriptions in the last six months, signaling a shift in how they approach talent acquisition. Thirty-three percent now prioritize hiring for skills and capacity to learn rather than requiring prior experience, while 19% have implemented apprenticeship programs to nurture new talent. These modern practices reflect a commitment to building diverse, future-ready teams that adapt to evolving industry needs.
[08:44] - Enhancing Employee Engagement: Leaders know that engaged employees drive retention and customer satisfaction. Sixty-seven percent conduct frequent one-on-one reviews and 61% have formal recognition programs to reward excellence. Continuous training programs (59%) and flexible work arrangements (29%) further boost morale. These efforts foster a culture where employees feel valued and empowered, fueling overall performance.
[14:05] - Embracing Change Management: 42% of leaders surveyed have embedded change management into their company culture, focusing on continuous improvement. They engage employees in developing solutions and see change as a competitive strength. Open communication, leadership buy-in, and a relentless focus on execution help these organizations thrive in a constantly shifting landscape.
[16:33] - Technology with Purpose: Technology adoption is a priority, with 47% planning AI investments in areas like predictive maintenance and troubleshooting by 2025. Leaders emphasize matching tech to business challenges while addressing concerns like accuracy, data security, and readiness. By balancing opportunity with caution, they ensure technology enhances, not disrupts, operations and customer experiences.

Quotes:

“We know that if we continue to look for talent based on previous experience, it just simply doesn't exist. We need to modernize the approach, which often means that the organizations hiring have more work to do to get people ready to go out into the field on their own and be comfortable and successful performing those duties.” - Sarah Nicastro
“Performance reviews, recognition programs, and professional development are key areas that drive employee engagement and retention.” - Sarah Nicastro
“The goal isn’t just introducing new technology; it’s understanding what your business challenges are and how technology can address them.” - Sarah Nicastro

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