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Episode 277

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Alban Cambournac, VP of Consulting and Digital Services at Schneider Electric, to discuss the company’s digital journey and how it is taking its lessons learned and best practices and helping its customers achieve success as well. Alban shares his lessons learned in a global career, Schneider’s being named the most sustainable company of 2024 by TIME magazine, and what he thinks of all of the AI buzz.

With over 25 years of experience in digital power, buildings, and energy management, Alban is an experienced leader at Schneider Electric, driving growth and innovation. He leverages his strong background in product marketing, strategy, and engineering to lead the US Consulting and Digital Services team, delivering value-added solutions through connected services. Alban holds an MSEE from SUPELEC and an EMBA from Vanderbilt University.

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

The Show Notes

Alban - 00:00:00:

I think Schneider Electric has always been a pioneer in the adoption of digital technologies in the domain of energy management and industrial automation. We're very focused in our strategy and applications areas. So really our future is actually focused on the adoption of these technologies and making sure that these are making an impact for every business and every people around the world, right? To make the most of the energy, our energy, to make the most of our resources.

Sarah - 00:00:35:

Hello, welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Today, we're going to be taking an inside look into Schneider Electric's digital journey, talking about how to avoid common woes, amplify wins, and what that journey looks like, not only today, but into the future. I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Alban Cambournac, who is the Vice President of Consulting and Digital Services at Schneider. And notably, Schneider was just named this year by Time Magazine, the world's most sustainable company of 2024, which is an incredible acknowledgment. So welcome to the podcast, Alban, and thank you for being here.

Alban - 00:01:30:

Thank you for having me, Sarah. Hello to every listener.

Sarah - 00:01:33:

Yeah, and some of them may be familiar with you. You do your fair share of speaking at different industry events, and I've personally always enjoyed your sessions and looking forward to our chat today. So before we get into everything we have to cover, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself and anything you'd like to share about your role, about Schneider, etc.

Alban - 00:01:55:

Yes, thank you so much. To get started, where is home for me? Home is in Nashville, Tennessee. Actually, I'm in our Nashville hub office. So I've lived in Nashville for about 25 years with my wife and my two sons who are now grown up and in college now. And I've worked with Schneider Electric for 25 years. I lead the consulting and digital services business. I was very, very fortunate 25 years ago when I moved to the U.S., to join a very fast-growing business focused on the digital transformation of electrical systems. And this is where my digital journey started. And I had a career both on the engineering side, but also on the global business development side with an opportunity really to travel all over the world and do business in over 50 countries. So really very, very interesting career. And on a more personal basis, I'm passionate about, a little bit some of the extreme sports a little bit, but I do quite a bit of skiing, scuba diving, started kite surfing.

Sarah - 00:02:51:

That's really fun. Yeah. The kite surfing part, I don't know. I don't know about that. I don't know. Now, I was going to say, we can see in your background that you're in Nashville, but you don't have that traditional Nashville twang. So can you just sort of talk a little bit about, I know you said you've been there 25 years, but where did your journey begin and how did you land in Nashville and end up calling that home?

Alban - 00:03:13:

Yes, yes, for sure. And this is my typical opening in keynotes that I do is I talk about the fact that I don't have that Nashville twang. Yeah, so my wife and I are actual first-generation immigrants to the U.S. we're from France originally. My hometown, for those who know a little bit about France, is Lyon. And I went to college in the Paris region. And my background, original background, is electrical engineering. The interesting story here was we were looking to move to China, actually, with my wife. And the Schneider Electric called me back and said there was a great opportunity for me in Nashville, Tennessee. And not knowing where Nashville, was on the map, we actually said, hey, this sounds like a great opportunity. And 25 years later, here we are. We never looked back and are very happy.

Sarah - 00:03:54:

That's wonderful. China, Nashville, a little different, but I'm glad that you're happy with where you ended up and have enjoyed making a home there. I've been to Nashville myself. It's a great city, but also a beautiful part of the country. When you think about doing a lot of the outdoor activities that you said you like to do, there's some great options nature-wise within a bit of a road trip from where you are. So that's really nice as well.

Alban - 00:04:18:

Absolutely.

Sarah - 00:04:19:

Done. Okay. So you mentioned that you've had the opportunity in your career to work through a lot of different countries. So you've been in a global role for about a decade. And so I'm wondering if you can just share any notable observations, I guess, one on how do you feel like having the opportunity to be in a global role has impacted you in your career and in your life? And then two, are there any observations when it comes to digitalization on commonalities, major differences? What comes to mind when you think about the global ecosystem?

Alban - 00:04:56:

Yeah, perfect. And it's a great question. And actually, I did not mention, but I spent four years in India. Very fortunate to be there with my family. And at the time, I had a chance to manage the whole Asia Pacific business development and spend actually the time in China that we wanted to spend among other countries. So this was great. One of the key benefits and understanding that I got from this experience is really an understanding of cross-cultural communications and then also how to collaborate in very diverse teams. And this is useful, of course, when you manage global businesses and global teams, but also just here in the U.S., we always work with very diverse teams. I like your question on commonalities, because what you hear often, and I hear it from business leaders or from marketers, is they think that there's like U.S., has unique needs that nobody else in the world has or China has unique needs that nobody else in the world has. And while this is true in some respect, the fact is that there are underlying common requirements that we see from the market, that we see from our customers that are pretty much global. And one of those is really around the trends around digitization that you're mentioning or sustainability as well. And the need for having reliable resilience type of business operations. All these are really common kind of themes. And you can pull a lot from these commonalities.

Sarah - 00:06:21:

Yeah, I love that because we talk a lot on this podcast about, I think we have far more in common than we do differences. Yes, there are those unique layers that are from region to region or industry to industry, but there are these common set of not only challenges, but objectives. And I just think as human beings, we have more in common than we do our differences. And I think it's really cool that you've had the opportunity throughout your career at Schneider to work in all of those different places because you learn so much. And I also think I mentioned to you when we were prepping to do this podcast together that I've had quite a few folks from Schneider on the podcast. Many of them have really good tenure with the company. And I always say that to me is evidence. Anytime someone has been... In a business today for 10, 15 plus years, it's indicative of an organization that is giving people the opportunity to grow and evolve and innovate within the business instead of feeling like they need to go somewhere else to do that. So I love that you've had those opportunities in your role. Okay. When we think about the digital landscape today, can you just start by talking a little bit about your view of what are the biggest opportunities?

Alban - 00:07:41:

Yeah, at Schneider Electric, we see two major trends around the world. And it's the need for electrification on one side and the need for digitization on the other side. And this is to help overcome some of the world's biggest challenges today around climate change, around energy transitions, where people, but also and especially businesses, need way more energy than they needed before. And there's also a global equilibrium shift that we've seen since COVID with really the need to simplify supply chains, have more local and regional kind of presence. And so these are really areas of key opportunities with the underlying also need to accelerate decarbonization. You see all these pledges for front end zero. And you mentioned the Time magazine like ranking as well. So these are very important. And we see this cross segments in the market. It's infrastructure, it's data centers, it's commercial buildings, even residentials. They're all experiencing the same disruption that is brought up by the need for more energy, but also for cleaner energy and more reliable energy. If I use one example, it's in where we see most of this is in the data center world, where the need for capacity that is linked to the explosion of generative AI and so forth is really leading to a big expansion in this area. Also, you can find in the news several. And we're building plants very close to this trend to make sure that we are building the right level of modular prefabricated type of infrastructure to help sustain this type of energy transition and doing this in a very standard way and also in a very digital way. So these require quite a bit of disruptive methods, if you were to be able to handle the uptime of these data centers, but also make them more energy efficient.

Sarah - 00:09:36:

I'm just thinking about when it comes to the customer perspective, what are some of the expectations that they have of Schneider as a digital business?

Alban - 00:09:48:

Yes, it's both in terms of being able to deliver, of course, on time these technologies, but it's also ensuring that we have a very strong foundation for cybersecurity, for data security. These are always top of mind when it comes to those expectations.

Sarah - 00:10:07:

It's interesting how within Schneider, there's this intersection of some of these major trends and themes, right? So we talked about the sustainability piece and the time recognition. We talked about electrification. We're talking about digitalization. And then obviously our focus is service as well. And there's a huge aspect of that really interesting and exciting time to be a part of the business. That being said, it's never just about the excitement or the opportunity, right? There's always hurdles and challenges that come along with modernizing the business, keeping pace with customer needs and with external situations and really having that culture of continual innovation. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges or hurdles and how you and the business are working through those?

Alban - 00:10:59:

Yeah, I think one of the biggest hurdles around digitization is having all the layers of a business organization, understand the importance of this digital transformation, not only at their core business process, because typically we see the first adoption of digital and AI is going to be around their core business process. But it's also looking at it from their building infrastructure or their plant infrastructure and looking at the needs here for digitization and giving the impact that they are looking for also from a sustainability standpoint. Some of these hurdles come often from a lack of information. So that's one thing that we work a lot on is on the thought leadership, of course, but it's also one to one with our customers around these conversations and then also addressing concerns about cybersecurity and data security.

Sarah - 00:11:52:

Yeah, that's probably a piece that at least in some of the events that we've attended together or that sort of thing, it isn't maybe talked about as much as it needs to be. Is that concern of in this digital world, if you want to be able to leverage the technologies that exist to provide uptime or to add value to the customer experience, it requires that connectivity and there can be some valid concerns in that regard. So how are you at Schneider kind of working through those concerns with your customers to put them at ease and to make sure that you can progress forward?

Alban - 00:12:30:

Yeah, and a lot of it sometimes is to draw parallels with their current business processes and what is the environment of cybersecurity and data security for their standard business processes. Everybody in their HR function, for example, is using some kind of a connected and online tool. And it's really showing, drawing those parallels and showing that pretty much from a building infrastructure basis, we're pretty much using the same type of technologies and approaches to cybersecurity and data security. This goes a long way in terms of addressing these concerns.

Sarah - 00:13:03:

Okay, that makes sense. Yes, it's a different application within their business, but it isn't necessarily a different world than what they're used to entirely.

Alban - 00:13:12:

Exactly.

Sarah - 00:13:13:

Okay. Now, what about the other thing that I want to talk a little bit about is the need we have as the digital transformation continues or becomes more and more refined or more and more intelligent to upskill employees to be able to navigate that world, embrace digital, and even the need for maybe different roles than we've had in the business before, that sort of thing. So when you think about that gap that can exist between how fast the digital world is moving and then how we need to keep up as businesses from a talent perspective, how do we keep pace with that? And what are some of the changes that you think companies need to consider?

Alban - 00:13:55:

Yeah, and this is a topic, we call it the digital gap. This is a topic I feel very passionate about. And because unfortunately, we really see that actually all generations, it's not a generational aspect, but all generations to some extent struggle with the digital transformation and the evolutions there. And sometimes it really starts with very simple challenges with efficiently using software applications or new technologies and new software technologies. It reminds me of very early on in my career, I was a software engineer and I read a book which was called The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper. And it's a very interesting book kind of explaining why people are struggling so much with using software or using new technologies, because in the end, the people who have been designing those have not thought too much of the users they're looking at, right? And not everybody is an expert. There's a definite digital gap. And it comes also by sometimes having a lack of access to learning or even sometimes the motivation to learn about these critical new skills, be it digital, be it AI, be it cybersecurity. So one thing we do at Schneider Electric, for example, we're very fortunate to have excellent learning platforms that we use, both internal and external learning platforms, and where we put really programs towards digital upskilling. And now not only about... And all topics are digital, right? And we cover cybersecurity. Of course, we cover all the type of AI and other types of key, also ethical conducts. It's very important in this environment. So we have a full digital citizenship program and we call it Digital Boost. And we're really looking at what is our baseline of competencies here and what is the digital gap and then getting... And our goal is to get over 90% of all our employees worldwide to really undergo this digital upskilling. And this is actually something that we report on Schneider sustainability impact. So it's available externally as well. And it's part of that program to have the digital upskilling. So there's a real motivation and excitement that goes with this and is an example on how to address this digital gap.

Sarah - 00:16:07:

I was just thinking as you were explaining some of the things that program covers, there's, depending on the role within the business you're talking about, there's areas where an employee is really going to need to learn to use a new tool, right? They're going to need to have a fundamental change to how they perform their role. But then there are these other topics that they might not need to be personally firsthand involvement in, but they need to have an acumen about. So cybersecurity, you might have, if we just think about a field service engineer, they might not be directly involved in anything related to how Schneider puts its cybersecurity practices in place and all of that. But if they're on site and a customer says, but what are you doing from a cybersecurity perspective? And they just say, I mean, that's not going to give the impression you want to give of having at least that baseline knowledge and that acumen to be able to understand. The concepts and understand the approach, even if it is outside of their core role. So I think that whole idea of providing actual upskilling in skill where it's needed, but also providing context and knowledge beyond that person's role is really important to help them understand that bigger picture and to help them engage appropriately with customers as well.

Alban - 00:17:30:

And for us, it's an essential knowledge for everybody in the company. And it includes our field service people. It also includes our executives, right? We call it essentials training. Everybody goes through this every year with a very big focus around this topic.

Sarah - 00:17:47:

Yeah. Now, are there any roles that you see on the rise that as the business evolves throughout its digital journey, are there new roles that are becoming more prominent or that you're thinking about how the business will need to hire for those things, etc.?

Alban - 00:18:04:

The more we have roles at the intersection of the business application, but also a very strong understanding of the IT environment. And it's able to bring these two elements together is an area that we're looking for. Connectivity, cybersecurity on one side, and then also data analytics and AI on the other side. These are some of the two critical type of roles that for our digital connected services, we're really looking to strengthen.

Sarah - 00:18:34:

Yeah, you didn't necessarily say it this way, but just to sort of paraphrase, you made mention of the fact that digital transformation is not just an IT initiative. It's a business initiative, right? And so to your point, we have to bring those worlds together in a way that everyone can get on the same page and find the path to what's most valuable, etc. So that makes sense. Okay, so when you think of the big wins at Schneider, so stories of connected customers that you feel the company has executed very well, what stands out from those stories in terms of is there a common through line or is there a common approach? Like what helps take all of these things we're talking about conceptually and make it a success in reality?

Alban - 00:19:28:

Yes, at Schneider Electric and in our business, we manage millions of assets worldwide with connected customers in the U.S. and in the rest of the world. There's a few common elements to winning and to having a great relationship. And first, it comes from really having a known sponsor in our customer organization who's really getting it and is able to transmit this vision and is helping the digital transformation at our customer company. The second one, and we mentioned it, is really having both the business contact and business relationship, but also the buy-in and working very closely with the IT department. So that both on the business side and the IT side, we have a strong understanding of what is the vision, what are we trying to achieve. And when you have this recipe of sponsorship and then putting at the same table the business and the IT, then you are able to... Overcome those hurdles that we talked about. And now you are able to really have some very, very nice stories. And for us, it's all about ensuring reliability and resilience of an infrastructure. And so we have plenty of success stories there where we have remote engineers, remote agents looking and identifying changes in the patterns and behaviors of, for example, an electrical system. And it's able to quickly contact the facility and the customer and say, hey, we have noticed a change. And we're able to dispatch, for example, our field service representatives before it becomes an issue. And an issue can be a power outage, which causes big business impact and lost revenue. But it can be worse and it can some situations can lead to fire and all this, with much bigger consequences there. So really, we have plenty of stories from these assets that we manage around the world of being able to really anticipate and then predict some type of behaviors and address these concerns.

Sarah - 00:21:27:

Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. And I think understanding what that recipe looks like for success in any business is really important to being able to not only replicate it, but recreate it as circumstances change in the technology that is accessible or what the customer needs are, etc. When we hear stories of digital gone wrong, I've heard plenty of these at some of the events we've both been at. Do you feel like there are any common missteps or mistakes that companies are making today with the approach they're taking to digital transformation?

Alban - 00:22:06:

Yeah, you can pretty much take the opposite of the win characteristic I just mentioned. And things go wrong typically when there's a lack of understanding and a lack of adoption of those digital technologies, taking too much of a weight attitude, which can have some consequences, and also the lack of planning around IT and cybersecurity. So that's where things can go wrong a little bit. And I think one story I had mentioned in one of my keynotes was the story we have of working with a facility manager in Mexico and introducing these technologies to be able to do continuous type of thermal monitoring, for example, where you monitor the temperature of equipment or electrical infrastructure. And unfortunately, that site didn't adopt the technology fast enough. And there was a big event, right, where with power outages and major business revenue loss and all this, and really this resulted, I mean, just the business, the power outage and not having the revenue, but also it cost a job to this facility manager and for not having adopted and having the technology in place to be able to prevent this type of things from happening, that's areas where taking a wait and see type of attitude can be problematic versus the success stories we talked about earlier.

Sarah - 00:23:22:

Yeah. No, it's interesting the idea of, I totally agree with you, the wait and see approach can be detrimental. At the same time, the other thing I see companies do is they want to race so quickly to get to the most sophisticated use cases of the technology without getting some of the fundamentals in place. And that can be problematic as well. And I think a lot of that stems from the point you brought up, which is, are the stakeholders aligned? Is everyone on the same page about what the digital journey needs to look like and how the company is going to achieve those objectives? Because if we're looking at it as just an IT initiative, it's going to fail. We have to be thinking about it as that overall view.

Alban - 00:24:06:

Can we see, if I can complement what you're saying, we really work on our relationship with our customers to really be those trusted partners, right? And we go over this setting up these foundations to be able to have success in the adoption of these technologies.

Sarah - 00:24:22:

Yeah, for sure. Now, one of the areas I think companies are either racing ahead to or rolling their eyes at is AI. It's coming up everywhere, headlines, podcasts, events, a lot of hype. I'm curious your perspective on the topic of AI and is it worthy of all the buzz? Is it overhyped in any way? What is your take?

Alban - 00:24:45:

Yeah, and as anybody, I'm sure, you know, I'm spending a lot of time these days learning more about AI and also like using it on a daily basis pretty much. It's an interesting question. I would draw maybe a parallel and maybe I'm going to date myself here, but to the internet, right? End of the 1990s, you had a foundation, a technical foundation, right, of the emergence of the Internet and all this. And a lot of hype around all the applications that you could have on this. And there were a lot of startup companies and all this and a few ended up thriving and then but many ended up not continuing. And I think it's sort of the same thing with AI, right? You have a baseline of technology and the disruption that this technology is bringing to the market. And then on top of that very sound foundation that is here to stay, of course, you have a lot of different experiments of different startups applying AI to different areas. And then figuring out what is going to work and what is not going to work. So I think we're going to see a little bit of this, but it's a revolution. It's a foundational technological that change that just like the Internet is going to be the basis for every transactions in the future.

Sarah - 00:25:57:

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I agree. So when you think about what the next five years might hold, what do you envision for Schneider's digital journey?

Alban - 00:26:07:

This has been really some of the great experiences that I've had, like joining Schneider Electric 25 years ago. And I think Schneider Electric has always been a pioneer in the adoption of digital technologies in the domain of energy management and industrial automation. We're very focused in our strategy and applications areas. So really, our future is actually focused on the adoption of these technologies and making sure that these are making an impact for every business and every people around the world. To make the most of the energy, our energy, to make the most of our resources. That's what we're very excited about. And that's why I'm very excited about to work at Schneider Electric and with our customers to really leverage digital AI applied to energy management, applied to industrial automation and improving sustainability and efficiency overall.

Sarah - 00:26:59:

And you have that TIME magazine recognition that you have to uphold and continue to defend. So that's important work to do, though. And you can feel good about coming to work every day and making an impact.

Alban - 00:27:11:

A lot of it comes from doing this inside Schneider Electric and applying these principles of sustainability inside Schneider Electric, but also helping our customers and helping the societies apply the same things that we're also applying internally. So it's kind of this combination of things that makes Schneider Electric pretty unique.

Sarah - 00:27:31:

Yeah, yeah. 25 years with the company, and we talked about some of the different roles that you've held, a lot of the different places that you've had the opportunity to work. What would you say is the biggest lesson you've learned over your career thus far?

Alban - 00:27:48:

Yeah, and actually our conversation around the adoption, right, of digital technology and the wait and see. I think one of my biggest carolists and maybe a summarize in a quote I always use from Michael Jordan. He says, some people want it to happen. Some people wish it would happen. And then others make it happen. You always want to be on the side of those who make it happen and building a reputation for service excellence while forking the talk. So that's really has been the focus of my career is to really understand what people wish or want to happen. And then really applying myself and my teams and my businesses to making these strategies and visions happen. Now, I have also a more personal example is my wife and I have learned to leverage the power of two. So we've led parallel careers our entire life. Together, we've accumulated like 50 years of professional career. And so we have supported each other through the ups and downs of having two, ever challenging roles and also building a family. So that's another aspect of more personal of the career lessons.

Sarah - 00:28:51:

The power of two. I like that. Yeah. As someone who is still in the thick of it, and my kids are almost eight and nine right now. So it's we're still doing all of that. And you definitely need that support. It makes a huge difference.

Alban - 00:29:03:

Absolutely.

Sarah - 00:29:05:

Alban, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. I really like the Michael Jordan quote, and I think it is really important today to walk the talk, like you said. There's always going to be challenges and hurdles, but the companies that use those as excuses, consciously or subconsciously, to stand still, are very, very quickly falling critically behind. So there's ever more reason to take action, like you said, and work through the challenges and figure it out. So I love that perspective and appreciate you coming on and sharing.

Alban - 00:29:39:

No, and really appreciate our conversation. And thanks again for having me. And I really love your podcast. So congratulations on running a very, very successful podcast.

Sarah - 00:29:49:

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. And it was a pleasure. You can find more by visiting the home of the UNSCRIPTED podcast at www.futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening.

Episode 275

In a session from Future of Field Service Live in Cologne, Germany, host Sarah Nicastro talks with Jelle Coppens, Product Domain Expert of Service and Repair at Electrolux, about how the company is working smarter to maximize the impact of its workforce.

Jelle has been with Electrolux for six years, starting as a resource planner for Electrolux Belgium and quickly becoming involved in the company's digital transformation. His expertise led him to join a project enhancing technical solutions across Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Denmark.

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

Episode Highlights:

[04:04] - Before adopting a new technology, the biggest pain points for Electrolux were inefficiencies and lack of visibility in field operations. Jelle and his team planned technician schedules but couldn't track progress or respond to cancellations effectively, leading to wasted time and frustrated staff. By implementing the IFS service management solution, they connected their systems, improved resource planning, and minimized travel time, allowing technicians to focus on their strengths.
[15:36] - Implementing the IFS PSO (Planning and Scheduling Optimization) allowed Electrolux to significantly reduce idle time and increase productivity. This system integrates with the company's FSM app, giving resource planners real-time visibility into technician progress. When cancellations happen, Jelle and his team have streamlined the process to fill gaps quickly, ensuring efficient scheduling. Moreover, a dedicated gap-filling team has boosted visit rates by 8% in just a year.
[28:13] - Maximizing resource utilization offers exciting potential through creative solutions like online training platforms and stock-taking tools. By encouraging technicians to use idle time for short refresher courses or inventory checks, businesses can enhance efficiency and productivity. Exploring and sharing best practices with other companies can reveal even more opportunities to optimize and make the most of every resource.

Episode 275

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro talks with Clinten van der Merwe, SVP and Head of Global Service and Project Management at TOMRA Recycling, about moving away from the “aftermarket as an afterthought” mentality, his North Star process, and the importance of storytelling in creative influence. This session was recorded at Future of Field Service Live in Cologne.

Clinten is a well-established Senior Service Management and Leadership Professional with vast global experience leading significant business transformation and optimization initiatives. He excels in addressing complex business challenges and implementing process and cultural changes to enhance organizational effectiveness. Throughout his career, Clinten has contributed to companies like Rapiscan Systems, Alubat Middle East, Multi Glass and Mirror, and Glass South Africa.

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

Full Show Notes

Sarah: Hello, welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. So before we get into it, I know we did our brief introductions, but tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, the business, whatever you want to share.

Clinten: Just easy to understand. I'm Clinten. I'm South African, and it's not a Dutch surname, it's an Afrikaans surname. So born in South Africa, grew up educated. Straight after school, I thought the best career for me would be in accounting. So I started accounting and then found out it's pretty boring and then started looking and then obviously entering the service industry. Worked in various industries from auto glass right through to building glass applications, architectural, then in aerospace, where I worked for quite a number of years in aerospace and defense industry. And back in 2016, moving up to Germany, where I currently reside with my family and now working for TOMRA. Joined TOMRA Recycling just a little bit two years ago. Very exciting industry to be in. TOMRA is a Norwegian company, provide different types of applications. It's on a collection side, for the ones of you that live in Germany or Netherlands, when you take your fund back to the shopping centers, those machines are coming from our collection division. We are on the recycling side. We actually provide sensor-based NIR technology type equipment that waste management companies use to sort different types of plastics, paper, which is quite trendy at the moment, especially from sustainability point of view. But also a very fast-growing type of industry that we see, especially due to regulate changes and sustainability is a major priority for a lot of corporations at the current moment.

Sarah: Okay. Just to frame our conversation for today, we spoke this morning about the move to outcomes-based service. You and I talked about the concept of aftermarket as an afterthought. That tends to be true in a lot of organizations where they still use that terminology of aftermarket service. A lot of times, aftermarket and afterthought can be synonyms. And for TOMRA, where are you at in that journey? And how are you thinking about, as a business, how are you viewing and thinking about service?

Clinten: Maybe I'll go back. I think a lot of us know in the 90s, they actually said, there's no place for field service going forward. Just due to the fact that people will manufacture stuff, they'll throw it away, buy a new one, manufacture, throw away. Guess what? It's actually been completely the opposite. And I think that's what's making it exciting. Although a lot of companies are still stuck in that traditional way of thinking. The mindset is still traditional, the culture is still set up in such a way that it's not really driving that change. We're still looking at processes that are still designed for just call Mr. Or Mrs. Fix-It, I'll go fix it, and everything goes well. When I joined TOMRA, because of the growth of the industry, I remember my EVP said to me during the, because I asked him, where do you want me to focus on first? And the first focus was catching up because the market was growing so fast. It was selling so many units and service took too long to actually transform. When I started, the first thing I started doing was looking at our organization and looking at how do we actually get a compelling vision and mission that we can design within the organization that looks sexy, that looks accommodating, that we can bring service more to the forefront. I got my team together. Some of my team members are here today as well. Got the team together and we started hammering it out. What does a mission look like? What does our customers want? What does the organization want? How do we embed everything within our DNA? Like, how do we do this? And this is why we started then with our mission, which is really a good tool for you to use as well internally and driving that mindset change of it's not aftermarket, afterthought. Service should be on the forefront of driving everything because we are involved in every facet of a business, although we are very complex. So if you speak to a CEO or CFO, they don't want to understand because it's too complex. So how do we actually change that mindset of making it a little bit more in bite-size? Not be too detailed or in the weeds, daily weeds, but really taking that back to your organization and then sharing that and also sharing the good news of what service really means.

Sarah: Yeah. And I think part of that complexity that people don't necessarily want to understand is that it's intangible. It's a lot easier to understand the products, the line items. It's a lot harder to understand the intangible value of service and everything that can represent. When you came in and you started trying to set the strategic vision, what were the biggest hurdles you faced when it comes to the legacy mentality or culture?

Clinten: Changing that mindset, I think, was in some cases a culture shock for different parts of the organization. What is really nice about service, and I think you all can resonate very well on that, is the fact that we are quite resilient and we're quite adaptable to change. Service is the easy one to convince. The most more difficult is that's upper-level management, your sales teams, your operation teams, your R&D teams, because there comes the tricky part. And you're 100% right. It is a complex organization. But if I look at 2019 BC, before Corona, companies didn't really think of service in such a way as a real revenue driver and as the unique selling point for your products. And when COVID happened, actually, companies then started switching around. And I know one of the companies before this total service revenue was only 30% of their total annual revenue. When COVID hit, it became 55% of annual revenue. Suddenly, the CEO started now understanding what service means and why service is very important, especially for a sustainable business platform. And I think this is really the tricky point. For me, it was more of how do we design that strategy? How do we break it down, you said, in smaller pieces that is understandable for the organization? Because if you come up with a big area, you are going to lose your audience. This is where we looked at, this is our strategy that we want to achieve over five years. And I'll get to my 10-year aspirations. And how did we break that down to come into what is our strategic priorities for this year? Small five, maximum five strategic priorities, which each of my direct report owns. And I have cross-functional support to drive that. And through that, we actually have a win situation. And we tick the box. Great. This is now in. We fixed the baseline in certain areas. Now we can grow and develop. Next year, we get together. We start doing the next strategic for that next second year to build further. And I think this is really important. Don't be too far. Otherwise, you lose the audience.

Sarah: Yeah. When we chatted, Clinten. you said when it comes to setting strategy, you want to think about what is aggressive, but attainable, inspiring, but relatable. Can you talk a little bit about looking at your remit through that frame and any advice you have on what strategy setting works that meets those criteria? Like, how do you achieve those objectives when you're laying something out? Obviously, you're talking about one year at a time, five things max. Any other advice for making it? Aggressive, but attainable, inspiring, but relatable.

Clinten: Again, a lot of the information that we get from customers are filtering through from our service organizations. A field service engineer sees a customer seven times more than a salesperson in a year timeframe. It's a known fact. And this information needs to come back to the organization. You need that information to build that strategy on where the areas are. Also need to fully understand where are your weaknesses. And weaknesses is a fantastic thing. I think in a previous service event, somebody brought up that, how will you improve if you don't know where you are going wrong? And that's really important because using that information, put the improvements in place and then convincing customers that things are working and working with those customers. Once your customer is your best speaking partner for the rest of the organization, when there's trade shows, I can share that we had a previous trade show and we only had good comments with what is happening in service and they speak to all, at all levels of the organization, so these customer feedback is absolutely important, and that really helps you to get that strategy in place and then get buy-in from others. Look, there's something happening within service that actually places you a little bit more on the forefront. And it helps them with the influencing. And it also helps me now to, as I said, quite an aggressive timeline for my 2035 vision. It helps me already to influence our board on what is going to be our investment needed over the next 10 years to reach that. And again, not just coming and say, I need 20 million investment in service. It's really just, listen, next year, maybe we have a million. The year after that, just chipping away at it. And then using that, as you said, as your business case starts growing.

Sarah: You might know you want 20 million over the course of however long, but you're not putting that all out there at one time. You're making it more digestible by having your bigger strategy, but sharing in a more pragmatic manner. I love the point you made about weaknesses. I always say the only difference between, challenge and opportunity is perception. And I think the same is, could be said between weaknesses and growth, right? If you can understand where you're weak, it gives you the opportunity to grow and be better. If you turn a blind eye to those weaknesses, you don't have that opportunity to improve and to evolve.

Clinten: Just to add to that, Sarah, the thing for me is, we all know SWOT analysis. I turn around and call it a toes analysis, which means rather focus on the threats as well as the weaknesses than on your strengths is important. You need to keep that as a baseline. Your opportunities will come at the end of the day, but really focus on the TO area, because that for me is really where it will help. What is the threats coming in from the market? And especially what I do quite often is, I do quite a bit of benchmarking, looking at benchmarking reports from different service industries, which really help you to see into the future what is coming. And we know there's a wave of skill shortages, people not, you can't find skills anymore. I mean, there's a lot of, everybody of us here today probably have field service roles open that we can't fill. In some cases, more than a year open. And this is threat that's coming to us as service industry. But we, instead of us just going, trying to hammer out the traditional way of let's get hiring, let's pay people more, let's do this more. Instead, what is it that we're going to do to really adapt to this? Because if the skills are not there in 10 years, you're going to be selling the machine, but you're not going to get the service. And just imagine you that are also a customer, if you buy a car, you best car on the market, want to pay top dollar, but you're unable to get a service technician to fix the thing for you. This is something that keeps me awake at night.

Sarah: Can you talk about your North Star process and the importance of that?

Clinten: Our industry is extremely fast growing, fast paced, as I mentioned before. And it's really a fantastic industry to be in. We talk with a lot of people, sustainability is important. Having circularity built in, in everything we use is extremely important. Although if you get onto the ground level where our people work, where our customers work, it's filtering through the waste that we generate every single day. Then it's not that sexy anymore, right? Although you're doing a fantastic job, you're doing a great job in terms of helping customers to sort through, turning that waste into a value for them, as well as building in that circularity. So it's fantastic. However, skill sets as well as people are lacking. And how I looked at this is we need to change. Because even we run a lot of university events where we want to attract new talent. And we speak to people. First, people, when I come to your field service, first question, can I work flexible work hours? A hundred percent. And it's, yeah, you can. But if you are three weeks in a field sorting out a customer site, you can't come home two days after that and tell the customer we'll come back again in three days time. It's not sustainable. But this is the viewpoint. And that made me think of how do we adapt rather than adapting to that? So I use the phrase always. How do I make sure that I have a field service engineer, to support the industry 24 by 7, working at their own flexible time, sitting in a coffee shop with their flip flops on fixing a machine? How do we get to that? And that's where I set the North Star. Our North Star vision is really related to how can we make things more sustainable for service? How can we make things more sustainable for our customers? Also giving a bit more leverage to our customers that we are a 24/7 organization, but not be able to parachute an FSE every five minutes onto a site because skill sets are not there or the people will not be there. So this is where we set the strategy that by 2035 will be fully digital, which is very ambitious. I know. And when I had that conversation and I shared that with our sales team, the eyes went, but as I mentioned before, the challenge is that we are going to have these, we don't want to sit in 10 years time selling machines, but unable to support our customer.

Sarah: Yeah. And you have to think big going back to the title of the session and some of what I spoke about this morning, if you are only focusing on incremental improvement, you're not going to be where you need to be 10 years from now. How would you describe the role and importance of storytelling in your process of setting the vision and then creating the influence to sort of get people on board with that vision and help you ultimately execute?

Clinten: Maybe a question, when you have customer, let's say customer compliance, normally it's the rooftop every time it comes through right up to the CEO level sometimes. But how many of us do share good customer comments coming back for that CEO? That's where it starts already. Start influencing there at your senior leadership team, sharing the good news. And I can tell you it's turned around already that we have about more than five good compliments come through. We have maybe one escalation now that gets top level. Escalations will happen. In any organization, it will happen. Something will go wrong. But we should not have that negativity towards what service need to fix this. And this mindset, I had to change for myself because in my previous organization, actually, I had some skip level discussions with some of our senior VPs. And I went to our HR VP and we asked her, what do you think of service? Straight question. And the question of the report back was, I think it's our get out of jail free card. That's really compelling to tell that to your people that you are only here to get the company out of sticky situations. That's not what service should be. We're not a get-out-of-jail-free card. We should be really in the forefront of using that success stories that we have and using that influencing skills and market ourselves. Also, what I've seen is we are all weak and I count myself in. I don't have marketing skills. I think I should have done an MBA on marketing. I should have because we need to market ourselves much better. And this is something that I'm adapting to at the moment is looking at how can we get marketing in place. And I know larger organizations already had a transition to have marketing individuals, service marketing already embedded within their service. But I think this is really also a key point in terms of how do you develop? How do you put service aldi? Because I can tell you in future, we will see that capital investments will become more scarcer. And you're going to see as a service will be taking a much more forefront because we see that in our organization. If you have as in as a service, you actually have more control over that product because then you look at sustainability. How can you get some of the components back? Do refurbishment on it. Send it back in, which lowers your costs, which helps the environment and which drives a lot of areas of modularity as well as if you design something that's modular, you don't need to send somebody there to fix it. Ask the customer to plug and play, send the old one back. You have a repair center. That's the type of thinking that you need to think. But it's one of the things that we do in TOMRA very well is our service department is embedded from gate zero process in our product planning, which is extremely important that you have a service individual there that can ask to keep on reminding people. How would you think we need to service that? Just questions like this so that you actually can start designing equipment that's serviceable and sustainable for the future. And it can actually help you drive some of that strategy, so.

Sarah: I think the point you make about marketing is really interesting and important because going back to the point about storytelling. So I think storytelling is a really important skill, not only in marketing, but especially in marketing. But when you think about how this applies to service, there's a few different facets. So one is related to what you're talking about in terms of sharing those good stories along with the escalations, which, as you mentioned, are going to happen because you want to tell a more accurate story of what service means to the business. It isn't just the problems. It isn't just the get-out-of-jail-free card. It's all of these good things as well. That's how you end up telling the story of the potential and the possibility and the growth opportunity, etc. There's this storytelling component that you as a function have to do upward to get the investment you need, etc. Then there's the storytelling aspect to the market, to the customers, probably where you're thinking about the marketing. And this is a really big challenge in this space because we tend to not have a marketing function. So we go to market in internal language. I will never forget a conversation I had with a gentleman a few years ago. He was so frustrated and I felt for him so much. But he was saying, we've invested in IoT, but none of our customers want to buy it. Because they're going to market saying we've invested in IoT and here's why you should care. The customer doesn't care. They're taking their internal language and trying to sell it externally. And it's a failure every time. It's the same thing. It's just, again, flipping the narrative. You need to be able to think about, here's what we're doing internally, which we have to educate ourselves on. But what that means to our customers externally is what we need to go to market with. And then you have storytelling from the perspective of the talent landscape. How are you telling the story of what it means to work for your business today and in the future? How are you creating a compelling story that people who don't know what field service is, will want to buy into and become a part of? So it is an incredibly important skill. And I think your point about marketing is a good one because there's a lot of different applications for that skill set to help leverage the different places you need to be telling those stories, not just with the customers, but beyond that.

Clinten: And Sarah, that's the biggest killer for any strategy or losing gravitas in a business is once you fail. Once a customer says, service is presenting something, it means nothing to me as a customer. And that negativity then goes back to the organization again. Then you start losing that innovation, especially in service, where you want actually people to be more innovative.

Sarah: Yeah. Going back to your big vision for 2035, I want to break this out into a couple components. So you mentioned that you believe as a service is going to be the future for TOMRA. And I just want to kind of reinforce some of the things that you touched on in terms of how you think about your... I can't remember how you worded it, but your technician sitting in the coffee shop and flip-flops doing their work, right? I'm sure for some people that sounds far-fetched, but it isn't necessarily, right? And so I think this idea of as a service, right, maintaining ownership. The other benefit of that, if you remember what I spoke about this morning is, if you maintain ownership of those assets, you avoid the issue with not being physically on site to do service, right? Because at that point, when you're maintaining that ownership, it doesn't matter how you're guaranteeing the uptime or doing what needs to be done. The customer is paying you for the uptime, not the how of it, right? A lot of times, it's when we're trying to implement some of these technologies that allow for that 2035 vision for the technician, under a more traditional relationship, then we start to run into some barriers. So anything else you would say you're thinking about that is going to be key to making that 2035 vision come to life?

Clinten: Yeah, this is really the trick question. How do we get there? We are really looking at what is our customers' challenge and pain points today. And our customers are faced with similar issues. They also have engineering staff on site. They also have a churn of staff coming in, coming out. Skills are dropping. And I know, speaking to customers, they're looking at the future of having fully autonomous waste management plants. Just imagine everything dropped off, everything runs through. Somebody sits at home with a mobile phone just looking at the production process. And that's how we want to look at it. Because it is going to be a challenge to have the tangible. They pay, break and fix. Somebody arrives, speaks to the customer and replace that with the intangible of you actually having that proactive support that can actually give a heads up to somebody that something will go wrong and then obviously commercialize this. And this is part of our incremental steps that we are going to bring in. We're already looking at there are some more tougher regions. We're due to safety concerns, which you don't want to send people. And this is actually an ideal area for us to start using this as a proof of concept for us and start building this out over the next 10 years. But I think it's really just using that information coming in. But you need to have the right digital tools and you need to have the right processes in place. A lot of areas, making sure that you have a lot of automation in your processes. If you don't have that basics grant work done, any tool will fail. Any application that you will implement will fail. So that's basically where we are focusing on making it more standardized, easier to adapt, not over killing it, because I also speak to a lot of organizations where they have every tool under the sun, every applications, but nothing speaks to each other. So I don't know what's worse, not having it or having it. But this is where you really need to be careful of using something very quickly. Go too big, too fast. But at the same token is really just using the customer experience to drive some of this. And again, who's going to stand against, you know, an organization if customer needs something and you can provide that solution to them.

Sarah: What's interesting, Clinten, and something you said made me think of this. So you were talking about the difference in this world where in a break fix environment, everything's very visible. The technician shows up to fix what's wrong. They interact with the people, they leave. I don't think that's what a customer wants. They want the outcome. Right. But we're very accustomed to that physical experience. Okay. So one of the things that's interesting about the shift to outcomes for me is we talk a lot about like the customer wants ease. They want simplicity. They want peace of mind. They want the outcome. But they don't only want that. Right. Because the outcome is intangible and invisible. Really, if it's just always there, it's just always happening. So they actually want the outcome and they also want insights into how the outcome is achieved. So it comes back to storytelling in the sense of as you work toward that 2035 vision. You need to be thinking about how do we achieve the outcome in this new way of working and this new customer relationship. But how do we use storytelling to show the customer the value that we're ensuring, protecting, providing. Even though they don't see us doing it. Because they're not going to want to pay you if they don't have that context. They want the context. It just needs to be very simple and it needs to be in their terms. So we avoided X amount of downtime through this technology. We eliminated the need for an onsite repair through this, right? And understanding to your part earlier, what's the cost associated with that to them? And how can you then illustrate the value you're providing their business, even though they're not seeing you doing it? It's really interesting to me that we have to think not just about our ability to provide the outcome, but our capability to showcase in very simple value-oriented terms, how we've done that. So the customers understand where their investment is going.

Clinten: So in the aerospace defense industry, customers there were very much about uptime. So we had to sign up to service level agreement with 99% uptime availability, 15 minutes response, one five-minute response and a three-hour repair time. That's how critical it was to them. Just because and they only pay for throughput, throughput through the machine, how quickly and how is the safest way they could get a check-in luggage onto an airplane identified, fully secure. And that was the outcome that was there. Although it had the challenges where you couldn't connect to an airport remotely. So you actually had to throw people at this. But that taught me a lot of things in terms of what is the outcome that customers want. And this is what I've seen. In TOMRA, they require only uptime availability at the highest level. When I say level, sorting capacity. If something drops below a certain threshold, machine should be giving a signal through. This material dropping below this, you get a technician remotely to change the parameters slightly up. You send a quick report to the customer, say, Mr. Customer, just to let you know, you don't even know. Customers don't even know that this has happened. This is your percentage back again. And that's how we want to try to change the intangible is really sharing that a customer can see they get much better yield from the waste that goes through their plants. That's a few basics. But it's really just in our case, customers don't care if they only care about is that machine available? Is that machine available? Is it running? Is it running at their highest available parameters that's needed to get a better yield for them? Yes, they enjoy that. When I pick up the phone, I want to have the FSE there. With a service level agreement or without a service level agreement? They just want that machine to be fixed. And I think this is where we also need to think of, I see this as value add for customer at the end of the day. I think we all charge our customers, travel, accommodation, plus then the labor hours on site, plus this. Imagine you go to a customer and say, instead of me investing in Lufthansa, I'm not charging you, but you will pay for the hours that we actually do this proactive service for you. And that's where it comes down to, is really saving money and cost to our customers, that overall total cost of ownership, but getting to a place where you can actually put on a piece of paper that you're guaranteeing a certain level of uptime availability, being that 99% according to this target.

Sarah: Okay, you said just around two years, you've been in this role and you're creating this vision, you're working toward shifting the mindset, navigating the culture, managing change. I have to imagine there could be hard days, days where you might feel like you're fighting an uphill battle or anything like that. How do you stay positive and motivated to continue to push toward that vision?

Clinten: If you are frustrated with things quickly, you should not be in service. That's my advice. We are in service because we have a lot of resilience. Even if it is whatever happens in organization, you need to stay cool, calm, relaxed, and make sure that things happen. If you're unable to do that, like I said, then I would go back being a bookkeeper or an accounting department. I think this is one of the key learnings for me. And on top of this is, yes, there are frustrating days when things doesn't go according to plan. Yes, there are frustration in terms of some decisions that's been made that you haven't, but you need to adapt to it. You need to maybe just give that some thought. I think very younger in my career, I was one of the type of service managers that will take on everything. And I think I was the guy with that cape on. And if something goes wrong, I will make sure it gets fixed. And as I progressed through my career, one of my mentors said to me, you know what? You are too deep in the weeds. And because you are so good at what you are doing, you'll never move up in your career. But in the weeds is where I'm comfortable. That's where I am. Yes, it makes frustrated, but the most rewarding is getting something back on track, getting a customer to say, oh, fantastic work, Clinten. Yes, we had a problem, but you guys have sorted everything out. That was rewarding. Ultimately, what I also try and encourage my service team is don't get too stuck in that daily weeds because then you're starting to really losing perspective of the bigger picture. You have to take time out. And this is what I'm doing. I take enough time out to actually look at things. Are we progressing? How are we going according to our business plan? Asking questions, speaking to different people in the organization. And if I get really frustrated, I go see customers that are very happy with our service. It's also good to speak to those customers and just get a positive view back again.

Sarah: I think it's a really important point. And it sounds very simple. You have to keep time to look at the innovative things and think ahead. It's not easy to do at all, though. It is very easy to get consumed by the needs of the business today and just lose that track of time where you need to be thinking ahead. And so I think, though, you making time for that and you prioritizing that balance is what will be the difference between you hitting that 2035 vision and another company not being where you will be at that point, because it is incredibly important.

Clinten: It's also important to keep on transforming yourself. Prior, like I said, 2019 BC, I think this photo was, I think, taken then I was about 120 kilograms. And when COVID started striking, I still did work remotely from home, but I actually started running. Now, just imagine, I was 120 kilos. When I say running, I was walking 10 meters and then running five meters. But it progressed over time. I would have never thought I'm a runner, but today I'm running. I looked at my own health mentality, all of this type of areas, and it actually then starts helping you to think much more clearer of what it is that you want to set up. I think it's really, really important. Otherwise, we as service get pulled into the weeds too deep, too much, makes you frustrated. It doesn't give you job satisfaction. And you really need to look at, and then people start seeing that because they see that you are stressed. They see that you are under the cushion. And then nobody wants to kind of speak to service because they're scared you bite their heads off. So if you actually start transforming that much higher, keep the positivity, suddenly your CEO says, that's quite, I'm surprised that service is actually showing much more positivity in an organization. So it really starts from the top.

Sarah: Yeah, and I think if you want to be able to maintain that resilience in what you're trying to accomplish at work, you need to take care of yourself. You have to prioritize that as well. Clinten, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Episode 274

In this episode of the Unscripted podcast, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes Teresa Carneiro, Field Service Engineer at STEMCELL Technologies, for a conversation about what drew her to field service, what she enjoys about the FSE role, the realities of being a young woman in field service, and her perspective on how her career might evolve.

Teresa, a 24-year-old from Portugal, recently completed her master's degree in biomedical engineering following a bachelor's in the same field. Due to limited career opportunities in Portugal, she sought work abroad and aimed for Germany. For the past five months, Teresa has been working as a field service engineer in Munich for STEMCELL Technologies.

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

Full Show Notes

Teresa: I guess I can say as a young person's perspective that the companies that are investing in creating flexibility and creative environments and that are promoting professional but personal growth as well and that provide a safe space for learning are definitely on the right track. Believing in young people and their skills is crucial as is giving them a chance even if there are other candidates with more experience. We've all been there, everyone needs their first opportunity to show their worth. And ultimately the companies that claim that they are working hard to attract this new talent hold significant power, and including the younger generation.

Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. I'm really excited about our episode today because we're going to be diving inside the mind of the new talent that you all are seeking. I had the pleasure to meet today's guest at the Future of Field Service live event in Cologne in June, and it was wonderful to have her there to get her perspective, but also to see the people flocking to her and offering her jobs. I'm excited to welcome to today's podcast, Teresa Carneiro, who is a Field Service Engineer at STEMCELL Technologies. Teresa, welcome to the podcast.

Teresa: Thank you so much, Sarah. I would first like to thank you for inviting me for your podcast and for working so hard to give young women a voice in this industry.

Sarah: It's my pleasure.

Teresa: So I can start speaking a bit about me?

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. Tell anything you want to share about yourself, your background, and then we'll get into some of the points about how you landed in field service and what you're enjoying about it.

Teresa: Sure. To begin with, I am 24 years old and I'm from Portugal. And previously, I've just been finishing my master's degree in biomedical engineering. And before that, I've done a bachelor's in the same area. And unfortunately, in Portugal, it isn't very appealing for young people that want to start their career right now. I've only looked for jobs outside of Portugal, and my goal was to work in Germany. Currently, I've been working as a field service engineer, as you mentioned, in Munich for the past almost five months now in a company based in Vancouver, Canada called STEMCELL Technologies, which is mainly focused in improving research reliability and making researchers' life easier overall.

Sarah: Okay, excellent. What was interesting about you attending the Cologne event specifically for folks that are listening that weren't with us in person, we had a session with Daniel Turnbull from Thermo Fisher Scientific. And Daniel's actually been on the podcast before. So if any of you wanted to go back and listen to his interview, you could. But he was there to talk about some of the very specific steps that Thermo Fisher has taken beginning in Germany to improve diversity in their field force, and specifically to bring more women into field engineer roles. And so it just was very serendipitous that you were in the audience because you were able to kind of lend some firsthand perspective and so I reached out to Teresa after the event and said, our audience as a whole is working toward that objective and really struggling to figure out the best ways to bring in young talent to bring in more diversity to bring in women specifically. And so I know that they would value hearing from your firsthand experience. So here we are. So as you said, you've been in your field service engineer role now for about five months. So the first thing I want to talk about is, what attracted you to this role and this work?

Teresa: I think I would like to start by saying that one thing that I felt that was really lacking throughout my whole university experience was having some real examples of what it is possible to do after you finish your studies. And of course, you can do your own research, but having real life examples and people to talk about how their daily life actually looks like gives you a much clearer idea of what your own life can look like if you choose that path, but short story short, I had a friend that was working as a field service engineer. And when he described it to me, I thought that might be something that I really like to do, actually. This would give me the opportunity to travel, to be exposed to different environments. And it seemed like the type of job that is different every day, which for me was really appealing. And so that idea, I guess, just persisted on my mind. And when I graduated, I only searched and applied for these kind of roles. And eventually, STEMCELL believed in me and in my background. And here I am.

Sarah: Yeah, that's wonderful. But it's interesting, we have had a lot of conversations on the podcast about that. Oftentimes, the way we position it is field service has a branding problem. First of all, it's not a specific industry. It's a collection of a bunch of different industries. And that can be challenging. But also, it isn't a career that not only is it not shown by example in settings, like you mentioned, but oftentimes, it's hard for people to even picture what it is or what it could be. And so without having someone in your life personally, that is doing it and saying, hey, you might actually like this. It's just something that I don't think lands on a lot of people's radars. And so I think one of the challenges companies have is figuring out how do we create more awareness of this whole sort of career path for people earlier on in their education in their lives, so they can see some of that potential. So another thing we talk a lot about on this podcast is that traditionally or historically, companies have hired field engineers based on previous experience. And we have talked about the fact that those experienced engineers are becoming harder and harder and harder to find because they're aging out, they're retiring, there's just fewer and fewer of them. And so that companies need to become more adept at hiring talent that has potential and then training up and providing that experience. And I know you said to me that when you were applying to roles, you did really feel that not having previous experience was a barrier for you. So can you just share a little bit what your experience was like in that regard?

Teresa: Yes, of course. I think it is very curious because ever since I actually joined the industry, I have heard all sorts of companies saying exactly how hard it is to get young talent in their teams. But 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 this industry. And even when you come across some entry-level jobs, they often ask for years of experience. Yeah, it can be a bit discouraging to find that most job ads require some sort of years of experience. And especially this type of role, because I feel that this type of job, you need lots and lots of training, regardless of your previous experience, because of how specific it is. And I truly believe that recently graduated students can bring a lot to the table. We are used to learn so many different things in such short time-frame.

Sarah: Learning was your full-time job for the last however many years.

Teresa: And the amount of detail we can retain is also really high, which I think is essential in this type of jobs. For me personally, and coming back a bit to your original question about my experience, I was doing research before and I knew I wanted to transition to this industry. And fortunately, I have found a job that allows me to keep in touch with this research environment. As I've said, my company focuses mainly in helping researchers. And so for me, being able to bridge this gap between industry and research makes me feel really accomplished and that I'm doing something meaningful. And yet again, young people can bring so much more to the table than it might seem at first sight.

Sarah: Yeah. And you made a good point when we were chatting. You said not only what you just said, which is people that are coming out of school are really in that learning mindset, but also that they're moldable, right? When you have someone that has 10, 15, 20 years of experience, they're also coming into the role with maybe some bad habits or some really firm opinions that if that doesn't fit the new role have to be overcome. So there's clearly pros and cons. But as we've stated on this podcast before, I think companies that refuse to see the need to recreate that process and how they're looking and what they're willing to do to train internally are really going to fall behind. All right. So I think one thing I wanted to ask you on that is, so for STEMCELL where you landed, what was different in their approach? Was it just that, like, were you applying for those roles, even though they were asking for experience and you didn't have it? Or did you just not apply? And then for STEMCELL, were they just not requiring experience?

Teresa: For me, at first, when I started to apply for jobs, I would be very specific. If I don't meet the requires, I would not apply. And then I started to understand that I cannot go this road and I need to apply and then prove myself in the interviews because my curriculum might not be what they are looking for. But if they meet me, I might change their minds. And that's what happened. So for me, I had not only the experience side of things, but I also had the language side of things because most ads asked for German, which I also don't speak very well yet. And so STEMCELL did ask for German and I cannot remember, but they might have asked for some years of experience, nothing crazy. And I applied anyway, because I figured, what do I have to lose? And I encourage young people to do the same. And whenever I'm talking with friends that are searching for new jobs, I always say, apply even if you don't fit every requirement. Because it might change their mind when they need you and talk to you.

Sarah: Yeah. No, it's a really important point. And I think there's obviously research that shows when we're talking specifically about trying to bring more women into field service roles, women are less likely to apply for jobs where they don't match all of the criteria. So one, I'm really glad that you did that anyway. But two, companies need to think about the fact of who they are leaving out when they're creating their job postings. Okay, what I wanna talk about next is, I know you're still pretty early in, but what do you find you enjoy about the role?

Teresa: I would say that my favorite thing so far is having the opportunity to be exposed to different labs. This early on in my career, I believe that having the opportunity to create so many contacts and be exposed to so many different environments is a big advantage for me and a great learning opportunity. Of course, the traveling that this implies is also a big highlight for me as I do love traveling and having the opportunity to visit countries, not only Germany, but also other countries in Europe is also a big plus for me. In this job, I also like to talk to people and establish communication with our customers. I like to see this job not only as servicing machines, but also listening and understanding our customers, which in my case are researchers. And I think this is where my previous experience in research really gives me leverage because I can relate to them and I can understand their urgency. And I guess the other thing I would like to mention is the flexible work hours. I like that not every day is the same. Like on the same week, I can have some days working from home, others traveling, and also some days in the labs. So not having that regular nine to five job at this point is also one of the reasons this role is so appealing to me.

Sarah: Yeah, those are all great things. And you also mentioned earlier, and I think we hear this a lot, particularly when you think about, generational differences in the workplace. There was a point in time where, and some leadership and companies are still in the mentality of pay being the only thing that matters, right? That was the most important thing. It was really the only thing. Obviously it remains very important, but you also mentioned earlier that for you, because you care so much about the research world, having this role that kind of builds that bridge gives you that sense of purpose. And I think that's something that we hear a lot with younger talent. That they want to feel like what they're doing matters. They want to feel like they have a purpose. So again, it doesn't have to be your particular industry. It can be a number of industries. I mean, service in so many ways is what keeps the world running. But I think for organizations who are trying to reimagine how they're positioning roles and how they're hiring for roles, keeping in mind that money isn't the only thing people are looking for. They're looking for flexibility. They're looking for that sense of purpose. They're looking for some of these different things. It's really important to balance out that employee value proposition to bring in different people.

Teresa: The younger generation is more and more concerned with work-life balance than the previous generation was definitely.

Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. And so flexibility plays a big role. And so does, and we're going to talk about this a bit as well, leadership style. There's a lot of different elements to consider. But before we get to that, what challenges have you faced?

Teresa: Would say that so far I've not really faced any big challenges. As I've mentioned, I've just started not even five months ago. So far, everything has run pretty smoothly. However, all of my visits so far have been joint visits as I'm still in training. And I guess that another thing that might make me feel more comfortable and secure is that I work mainly with research labs. Where in contrast with field service, there are a lot of women working. I feel that compared to other industries, this one might be a bit easier to fit in as a woman, even though all of my field service colleagues are men. I would say that the only comment that has stuck in my head was nothing big, but was when I visited a lab with my manager the other day and I was introduced by him to the lab manager as the new person responsible for their lab. His first comment to my manager was asking, if he would keep tagging along regardless. Of course, this makes you think if the customer is going to trust you or because of my age or whatever, they might be a bit skeptical of my skills. But then again, it can be that they are just happy with my manager's work. And when you're happy with someone's work, change is not always seen as a good thing, you know? Yeah, I don't want to make any assumptions. But it was the only thing that I could think of.

Sarah: Yeah. No, and I'm really glad that your experience has been positive. But we did dig into this a little bit when we were chatting because I think your feeling was more so that that comment, if anything, had to do with age versus you being a woman. And it doesn't necessarily matter. But I do think your observations are spot on. And I think the reason that I wanted to ask this question isn't to make any assumptions or anything like that, but more so just remind folks that when you're trying really hard to bring in new talent, we can't get them in the same place and then stop thinking about it and assume everything's going to be great. We do have to think about what is that experience like for them. And that brings us to a bunch of different points. When that talent is different in any way from the traditional talent, we do need to think about, okay, are they being welcomed by internal teams? Are they being treated well by customers? We need to think about the leadership. So your manager in that moment, when that was said by a customer, that person's response, matters a lot. You know, if they make a joke about you, you could feel a certain way versus if they show confidence in your ability is you're going to feel more empowered. These all seem like these very little things, but for a new employee that is already new, so there's always that getting adjusted and maybe being a bit nervous. It's a new role. It's a new experience. They're different somehow than the existing or traditional workforce. These little things can matter a lot, particularly if they're occurring on a frequent basis. I think it's really important for managers to stay tuned into what is that experience? Is there, and the way I'm asking you what challenges, managers should be asking all new employees on a regular basis. How are you feeling? What are the challenges? Is there anything you need help with? Because these aren't things either where every employee is going to come running back and say, so-and-so just said this, or this made me uncomfortable. Oftentimes they'll keep it quiet because they're trying to fit in. Right. But then it can cause challenges. So I'm really glad that your experience has been positive so far. And I just bring this up because I think it's an important point for people to think about. That being said, is there anything, knowing that you've had a very positive experience, is there anything you think is helpful to share that you feel your company has done well to make sure that you feel welcome, you feel enabled, you feel prepared to, do those visits and learn and eventually get out on your own?

Teresa: Yeah, I can start by saying that from the first moment, still during interviews, my manager expressed a good concern regarding me being a woman. Like he included a woman during the interviews, even though she was not in field service, he wanted me to feel comfortable. So there's always been that concern and I do really appreciate it. I've been really feeling protected from the get-go and I feel that my company's culture is overall very welcoming. One thing that I really appreciate is that my team, everyone is super available to include me and have me joining customers visits. They always take extra time to explain and train me properly. They never make me feel like a burden or like I'm delaying their work or making them stay longer or anything. I think that the other thing that was also reassuring is that I was never given a time limit to when I need to be ready to start going alone. So my company has always reiterated that I will only continue. I go alone when I feel comfortable and ready. And that's, of course, super reassuring because I can take my time and be very confident before I start going alone.

Sarah: Yeah. Two things on that. And one thing I want to say, I don't think you'll take offense to this, but I think when you say concern, that word could be a little bit misleading because it almost gives a negative. It's more awareness, I think, is what you mean.

Teresa: Exactly.

Sarah: Because it wasn't concern where he was worried. It was concern where he was conscious of wanting you to be comfortable. I think there's just a way that can be done very well. And there's a way it could be patronizing as a woman. Do you know what I mean? And so I just want to point that out because those, again, are the little things that matter a lot. The other thing I wanted to say is knowing that in their job posting, there was small experience requirement that you didn't meet, but you were obviously brought on anyway. So in the training process, have you felt that as a challenge at all? Or do you genuinely feel like you are just as equipped as someone who would have come in with any experience?

Teresa: Yeah, I definitely think that with all the training, I've had two intensive training weeks in Canada in the headquarters. And with that, I feel really equipped. And all of the subsequent joint visits also made me sure that I'm ready. I feel that, as I've said before, the training is so specific that even if I've had previous experience, it would not help me necessarily with this equipment. I don't think that would make such a difference. I don't know, maybe in a few years when if I choose another job, I will have a different take on this. But for now, no, I don't feel that having previous experience would make that be of a difference.

Sarah: Yeah, I would imagine that is accurate. And I think it's just another important reminder for people of how many great candidates they're leaving out if they're continuing to hold that requirement, even when it is specific. Now, going back to the conversation at the Cologne event and the previous podcast with Daniel, there are instances where, if you remember in his conversation, they were saying that there was a specific requirement that they have for their role. That is one of the reasons, a certification, one of the reasons that they had previously required that experience. And so when they realized, though, that that was a barrier to bringing in people that didn't already have experience, they split the role to where there was more of a truer entry-level role where that certification wasn't necessary and they bring people into that role, then they can certify them while they're working to be able to do the second piece of that as well. So my point being, if there are true requirements like that, there's always a way to provide them or to work for them. It's just a matter of companies being very stuck to the way they've always done it versus being willing to reflect or to try something different. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, Teresa, is your views on empowerment. So we talked about enablement, you coming in out of a school setting, you feeling like you are being trained well, you're being supported well by your teams, you're not made to feel a burden. You can take the time you need to feel comfortable going on your own. But I think the other important piece, particularly today, is leaders who are focused on this sense of ownership, the employees feeling confident to do the job well, but do it in their own way and bring their own personality to things, bring their opinions and ideas to work, et cetera. So what are your thoughts on that?

Teresa: I think that at this point, at least for me, this question's answer is highly dependent on who my manager is and how much freedom do they allow. And I've currently so far been really lucky with my current manager because there is no micromanagement whatsoever. And of course, this gives me all the freedom I need to organize my day, organize my trips in the way that it suits me best and makes me feel more comfortable with it. And I think that the sense of ownership that you mentioned comes mainly from, of course, being given the tools that you need, but also having the freedom to explore the way you're most comfortable doing things and tackling issues in your own way, even if it's not the way other people are doing it. I guess instead of just being told how I need to approach services, I have also been given space. And actually, I've been highly encouraged to, ever since my first training in Vancouver, I've been highly encouraged to find the way that it's the best way for me to carry the services. I feel that in that sense, they really invest on making the employees feel that they can do the things on their own way and everyone can have a different way to do things as long as they're doing it. I guess they are done well and on time.

Sarah: Yeah, there's standards, but then you're given a creative freedom to build your own relationships and bring your own personality to it. And I think this correlates back to some of the things that you have said that attracted you to the space or that you enjoy about the role. You find a sense of purpose in what you're doing. I think it's really hard when you have employees who have that sense of purpose and they have drive and they have passion about what they're doing, but then you have a manager that's telling them basically to be a robot and to do things in this uniform fashion and no, I don't want your ideas. This is how it's done. Then you're not creating an environment where one, those people are going to want to stay, but two, they can have the impact they're able to have on the customer experience. Yeah, I would point people back to there was an episode of the podcast that was with Venkata from Bruker Nano, and we talked a lot about his leadership style. And I just feel like this idea of... I love empowerment and that building that sense of ownership is so important in actually getting the most of today's talent once they've come on board. So I'm really glad that you're having, again, a positive experience, though. That's good. Okay, Teresa, so when you think ahead, I know, again, it's still early on. So some of these questions are probably a little hard because you're like, I'm still getting up to speed. But I mean, obviously, you have your own goals and dreams and objectives and whatnot. So when you think about the potential growth that could exist for you for a career in field service, how do you envision that?

Teresa: As you've said, to be honest, like, of course, I've given some thought to that. But as this is my first job and it's super early on, I've mostly been taking the opportunity to learn as much as I can right now. And once I'm more settled, I'm sure I'll give way more thought than I have to this question. But to quickly answer, I think that over time, I just hope that I'm given more and more responsibility, that I am trusted by my team and that perhaps I'll be able to train people when it comes to it. And of course, the possibility of managing a team would also be interesting. But then again, I'm not saying that I'm staying in this field forever. But yeah, it's a possibility and it's interesting possibility.

Sarah: Let me word it this way. When you came into STEMCELL when you interviewed, when you came on board throughout your sort of orientation and training, like, have they presented to you what growth could look like? Or is it still just focused on this role specifically?

Teresa: I think it's pretty focused on this role specifically, but I do have some close examples that started as field service engineers and now have higher positions in the company. They are always open to that. But I've also been given this advice, which is. If you don't want to be a field service engineer for the rest of your life, don't do it for more than five or six years. Otherwise, you might want to be stuck at this.

Sarah: Yeah.

Teresa: And you don't not, I might want to explore different roles. I don't know. But I think there is a possibility to grow within the company. At least that's what I feel right now. But yeah, it's not on my plans in the near future, at least.

Sarah: You're getting situated.

Teresa: Yeah.

Sarah: That makes sense. I think this is just another thing that we hear a lot in conversations about talent is that particularly younger talent coming in, they want to progress. So it doesn't mean, I mean, you're five months in, obviously. I'm not saying you're there yet. But it's important for companies to have the understanding that, again, historically technicians or engineers would come into the company and they might do that role for 30 years. We need to understand that the majority of talent today is not going to want to do that. They're going to want to do it for a few years and have an opportunity for growth and evolve. And so number one, I think just understanding that reality is important in how we or how they orient their organizations to account for that. And then number two, there's been different conversations I've had of how companies are working to show new hires that potential when they come in so that they know it's there, they can work at their own pace, they can be as motivated to progress or not, but that they know that that potential exists within that organization versus them being in that role for a couple years, getting bored, and then jumping to a different organization. So it's just another point to consider, but it's also good to hear that you're not like, I think there's also this misperception that young talent has this unrealistic desire to just come in to a field service engineer role and be CEO in six months. You know what I mean? And it's also maybe dispelling that myth that you're saying, hey, right now I'm just focused on doing this job well, and then I'll think about what's next.

Teresa: Of course, of course. But don't get me wrong. I'm not thinking about growing right now, but of course, there's something that's an ambition, of course. But I know these things take time, and I'm not in a rush. And as I've said, I'm taking the opportunity to learn as much as I can right now, and that's my main goal now. But of course, that's on my mind, and I think it's good for people to be ambitious.

Sarah: Yeah. It's also another important point back to the importance of good leadership, because a lot of those conversations... Sure, someone can show you a chart, when you're getting hired, of what the different growth potential is, but that's not relevant at that moment, right? You're focused on coming in to do the job you were hired for. It's having those close, having that relationship with your leader, having those interactions, having them not just saying, are you doing a good job? Great. But how are you feeling? What are your goals, et cetera, over time? So yeah.

Teresa: Of course.

Sarah: Okay, so here's maybe a tough question for you. We talked about some of the things that you enjoy about the role and you're young. So have you thought about how the things you enjoy a lot now could change in other phases of your life and how you might navigate that?

Teresa: I think that this is where you want this question to go. I think that when I picture my phases of life, what's next or not next necessarily, but in the future is having a family eventually. Of course, this is the kind of job that makes you think how it will be when you have a family because we have to travel a lot. And so whenever I meet someone in this field with a family and especially with little kids or babies, it really inspires me and makes me think that it is actually possible to have and do both. However, of course, I have no idea how my life is going to look like in a few years. And I don't know if I will enjoy traveling as much as I do now, and especially spending so much nights away from home. Finding out that some companies, specifically Daniel that you've already mentioned, are already investing in finding solutions for people that do want to be in field service, but do not wish to travel as much as it usually implies. Is really heartwarming. Like it gives me hope that companies are more invested and creative in finding solutions for different types of people and in finding ways for more flexibility in these fields. And still in this topic, 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.

Sarah: Absolutely, yeah. You said when we were talking about this, yeah, it's a consideration, but it's just as much a consideration for my partner as it is for me. And I love that. Now, I will say I get inspired hearing you say that because it shows the change and the growth in thinking. I'm 42, I have two sons and I have traveled throughout my career. And I am still often asked in 2024, who's taking care of your children? And I'm like, their dad. You know? And it's unfortunate, but it is still very much a reality. And I think that's why I wanted to bring it up. So there's a few important things we talked about. Number one, and I said this at the event, I think, I have been asked questions before as a woman and as a mother of, you know, well, we need more women in service because they're nurturing or we need to think about this or this. And we need to be very careful of assuming that all women want to have children. That's just not a reality that we should assume for a variety of reasons. That's number one. Number two, to your point, we need to be creative and think about how we bring in more flexibility and more options to field service roles for everyone. Because the only way that this continues to evolve and get better is if it's possible for anyone to do it. The more we think about it through the lens of how do we make it easier for women? All we're doing is reinforcing the mentality that it's a woman's job alone to have that consideration. I read this quote recently. I think I shared it on LinkedIn. It made me think so much, but it said, giving women more opportunity in the workplace without expecting more from men at home is not empowerment, it's exploitation. And I absolutely love that. And that's coming from someone who, at least for my age, is in a pretty egalitarian relationship. But the beliefs, the things that are really deeply embedded are really deeply embedded. And we have to continue to challenge those. So I'm really glad that you bring up that point. And also really glad that you said, my partner is thinking about this just as much as I am. The other thing I wanted to reinforce that you said is for a woman or a couple that does choose to have children, it also doesn't automatically, mean they don't want a role where they travel. Yes, some people might decide they don't want that anymore for any reason. Some people just get sick of it, even if they don't have kids. Or they might decide one doesn't, whatever. But to your point, you said that when you see people doing it, it's inspiring to you. And so I also want to kind of reinforce for listeners, there is no rule that says once someone has a family, they don't want to travel anymore. So I think the lesson here is, one, not to make assumptions. And two, to think creatively about how we can build different options into the work structure so that it can fit. A variety of different needs, and we can have the greatest success possible. Bringing in good talent and retaining that good talent through different phases.

Teresa: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for complimenting what I said in such a clear way. Yeah.

Sarah: Well, I'm very passionate about it as well. It's a really layered topic. And I will admit, I've admitted this many times, as a mom, I do have guilt for being gone. And I'm not saying I should. I'm just saying I do. And so when I'm away from my family and there's stuff going on here and someone makes a comment like that, it's not easy to just brush off always. And so I think that I want to see that change. It doesn't help anyone to continue to reinforce that thinking. And I think there's, with your generation, a huge wave of change coming because of the work that my generation and others have done, right? It's we're building on it, but it just takes time, so.

Teresa: Of course.

Sarah: Okay. Any other advice you would offer companies who are really working hard to bring in new talent? Things you can think that they should do, things they shouldn't do. From your perspective, having recently gone through this, is there anything we haven't touched on that comes to mind that you think it would be good for folks to be thinking about?

Teresa: I don't, of course, have a recipe or anything about what should or shouldn't be done, especially because I'm so new to all of this. I might have some more insights. As I gain more understanding of this industry. But I guess I can say as a young person's perspective that the companies that are investing in creating flexibility and creative environments and that are promoting professional but personal growth as well and that provide a safe space for learning are definitely on the right track. Believing in young people and their skills is crucial as is giving them a chance, even if there are other candidates with more experience. We've all been there. Everyone needs their first opportunity to show their work. And ultimately, the companies that claim that they are working hard to attract this new talent hold significant power in including the younger generation. I don't know. It's also very good that companies are showing more and more concern in having a more diverse team. And for example, I think that for including women, it might be easier to look in the younger generation as we've discussed. There are way more female engineers, for example, nowadays than there were before. So if you really want to make a change, you need to go on all fronts. And also one thing that I think that field service industry can take advantage of is that they're offering a different type of routine compared to more traditional jobs. And I believe that nowadays young people are craving for a more fast-paced environment. They are keen to learning from different environments at the same time and from different people. And so having a more diverse experience overall is appealing to young people. And I think it's something that field service can bring. I think that highlighting this aspect of the job might be a good way to attract young people.

Sarah: Absolutely. So I feel bad going back to something because that was such a good conclusion. But I did just think of one thing that you brought up that I want to touch on because I think it would be helpful for listeners, which is you mentioned in that variety. So you just kind of mentioned it. You said that you travel. Some days you're in the lab. Some days you're working from home. And so I wanted to ask you, is that because you're in training or will that be the same when you are on your own? Will you still have days you're working from home and you'll have days that you're traveling, days that you're in the lab? And is that something that will be the same throughout?

Teresa: Yes. The routine will be almost the same, meaning there are really no routine. But I will have days at home, which might involve getting some paperwork done or getting involved in some other projects that a company might have going on. And then, of course, travel days sometimes take the whole day. But yeah, days from home are also good because, of course, you're not looking at your computer waiting for an email to drop at all. So it also gives me the opportunity to explore other hobbies and gives me some free time that I think that in a regular nine-to-five job, again, you wouldn't have the chance to explore this other side.

Sarah: Yeah. No. And I wanted to go back to that because a lot of times we think about these roles as even if it isn't travel, like get on an airplane or get on a train. It's just like in the car. It's Monday through Friday or whatever the schedule is. It's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Right. And don't get me wrong. There's different service environments based on different industries. I understand that. But I do think maybe in your industry, that sort of variety is more naturally occurring. But even for those, it isn't where there's this daily demand for service job after service job. Thinking about is there a way to rotate or split work where you can build in some of that variety, where maybe two days a week technicians or engineers are doing remote service from home. And three days a week, they're traveling or something like that. Again, going back to your point of just being conscious that flexibility, that creativity, that variety is very important. I just want to challenge people to think about, I believe there's always a way to provide more of that. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to do things differently or you're trying to fit today's talent into a very outdated mold. So I just wanted to go back to that because we're seeing more of that. I think that as companies adopt more remote service capabilities, they can have engineers working from home a couple days a week doing remote service and then be on site. And I think, again, we talked about travel can be incredibly exciting for a while. But I think for some people, it will get old regardless of what the next phase of life looks like. So just having options for different ways to different roles to offer different ways to build schedules, different alternatives is, I think, really important for the future.

Teresa: Yeah, me too. And that's why I mentioned Daniel's work, because that's the most familiar work I've been with so far. And it's really what I hope in a company. And it's creating that space for you to be comfortable with whichever phase you're in and having that flexibility. So you're not traveling all the time or you can spend some time troubleshooting at home. You might also like that. So, yeah, given that choices, it makes you happier. And overall, I think that having your employees happy makes your customers happier. So it's all a big cycle.

Sarah: I just thought of one other question. We're going to keep going. This is going to be like a three hour episode. I'm just kidding. Last one, I promise. So there's major, major buzz everywhere right now about AI. So I want to ask from the perspective of a young field service engineer, how do you feel about AI?

Teresa: I feel that AI can be a really good tool if you know how to use it. And if you are aware of its limitations, I think that it's still evolving. I have to be honest, I'm not an expert in the subject, but we did discuss some really interesting things in the event we met. And there were discussions of having these interactive videos where you can ask questions because we're training. Everyone knows that if you don't have customers that have that specific machine and you don't go there very often, you might forget. So having, I think that AI can be a really good tool for training, for example. But of course, you need to acknowledge there are limitations, at least for now. It's not 100% reliable, of course. And everyone needs to be aware of that.

Sarah: It's not something that makes you fear for your job.

Teresa: I think it will complement my job. I don't know if it will grow fast enough. I'm sure it will grow very, very fast, but I don't know if it will grow fast enough or, again, I don't know if it will be 100% reliable ever. So I think that having the human input is always good and it can be a great tool to complement that work. But yeah, I would like to believe that we are still needed in the long run.

Sarah: Yeah. I agree a thousand percent. I don't see a time, regardless of how sophisticated it becomes, that we don't need to think about it as how it complements human effort versus overtakes it. But I was just really interested to ask your perspective because it's something that I think sometimes, and maybe it's more threatening for people that have been in the workforce longer that see it as such a massive change. But I think it's important for us to think about how we put people at ease of looking at it as a tool to help them in their roles, not looking at it as a threat. Okay. Thanks for letting me ask you a bunch of questions that I was curious about. I absolutely loved it. I appreciate your perspective. I'm very excited to see where your career takes you because you're going to do amazing things and we'll definitely love to have you back at some point.

Teresa: Yeah, thank you so much again for the invite. I really enjoyed our conversation. It's always great to hear your inputs. I think we have very similar intakes in some of the main topics. So it's good to have this podcast to have continuity in these topics.

Sarah: Yes, thank you for being a part of it. I appreciate it.

Teresa: Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah: You all can find more by visiting the home of UNSCRIPTED at futureoffieldservice.com. I will try and make sure we link in the show notes the episode that we did with Daniel at Thermo Fisher and Venkata at Bruker Nano that we mentioned in this episode. The Unscripted podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. And as always, thank you for listening.

In a session from the Future of Field Service Live Tour in Stockholm, Sarah speaks with Darian Ari, Director of Nordic B2B Solution and Implementation at GlobalConnect, about being a young leader, taking chances on new talent, and tackling the service optimization trifecta of enablement, empowerment, and execution.

With deep expertise in IT and Telecommunications, Darian's practical skills make him a standout leader. He excels in critical business management and strategy, optimizing operations and driving growth while prioritizing employee satisfaction, coaching, and a positive organizational culture.

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

Watch the video here

Full Show Notes

Darian - 00:00:00:

First and foremost, I think it's really important that we spend a lot of time on recruiting our talents and our future talents, which is something I believe we're really missing out on, is the fact that we are always looking for the one that has the most experience or particularly the educational background to perform the job. And I can tell one of the main reasons why I have elevated my career so fast is because I got the opportunity to take over a team and 90% of the team had resigned at that point of time because of bad conditions. So I had the opportunity to recruit 20 new people, field engineers into my team. And I actually put all my eggs on the underdogs, the ones that nobody believed in, the ones that didn't particularly have the educational background or the experience, because I took my time to actually invest my time and focus area on learning them and getting them on boarded instead of expecting them to come and do the job without any notification at all.

Sarah - 00:00:57:

Hello, welcome to the UNSCRIPTED Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. Okay, so we have Darian Ari from Global Connect, and we're going to talk about the service optimization trifecta. Before we get into that, tell everyone a little about yourself, your role, and what the company does.

Darian - 00:01:23:

Sure. Hi, everyone. Daren is my name, 26 years old, living in a small town outside of Stockholm called Västerås. I am currently the Director of our Nordic Smart Connect department. We are allocated in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. And GlobalConnect basically works with fiber optics and delivering network services to B2B customers. So everything from cybersecurity to fiber optics to smart solutions for IoT devices. And yeah, basically everything from A to Z when it comes to networking. And that's kind of it.

Sarah - 00:01:53:

Great. Okay, so we're going to talk about the importance of enablement, empowerment, and execution. Can you talk first about in your role and your organization, why service optimization is important?

Darian - 00:02:07:

Yeah, well, sure. If you would ask me this question just a couple of years ago, I think the answer would be very different significantly. But I would say it's the increased customer demands that has made sure that we need to focus on optimizing the increased customer demands, which in that turn, the customers also have really high demands on laws that they need to follow when it comes to networking and security overall. They have their demands towards their management team that they need to secure up some stuff. We've seen many good examples recently of companies being hit by cybersecurity attacks, which have lost millions and millions just because of the fact that they have not taken security or optimization into consideration. And I would say this puts us as a service provider in a really tricky position, because when they actually recognize the issue and try to solve it by buying a new product or optimizing their current solution, it is always under criticality. So this means we always have to work not proactively, but reactively with the customers and designing their solution and what they actually need under production. So instead of working with the portfolio that we have that we sell towards those customers, it is rather impossible to do that at the moment. Since every customer is unique, they are expecting different stuff based on their organization or what they are doing overall. So I would say that's the biggest challenge to optimize during rollout.

Sarah - 00:03:21:

Okay, so are you saying there's a lot of customization in the solutions that your customers are using?

Darian - 00:03:26:

Well, exactly. And the demand difference quite heavily from customers to customers. And especially when a customer all of a sudden receives an attack or needs to do something critical about their current solution. The product portfolio that you're offering on the market is not always dockable into what they are looking for. So basically optimizing and developing under production, that's the tricky part currently, I would say.

Sarah - 00:03:48:

Okay. All right. So if we start to break these things out, if we talk about enablement, what's your perspective on considerations there based on what you are trying to accomplish?

Darian - 00:04:01:

Well, to be honest, Roy said it really well. First and foremost, I think it's really important that we spend a lot of time on recruiting our talents and our future talents, which is something I believe we're really missing out on is the fact that we are always looking for the one that has the most experience or particularly the educational background to perform the job. And I can tell one of the main reasons why I have elevated my career so fast is because I got the opportunity to take over a team. And 90% of the team had resigned at that point of time because of bad conditions. So I had the opportunity to recruit 20 new people, field engineers into my team. And I actually put all my eggs on the underdogs, the ones that nobody believed in, the ones that didn't particularly have the educational background or the experience, because I took my time to actually invest my time and focus area on learning them and getting them onboarded instead of expecting them to come and do the job without any notification at all. So spend more time on actually utilizing your time to get them up and running. Because in that way, you can always form them more easily since they don't have any background of any other cultures or any other aspects that may interfere with what you want to achieve with them. And trust me, the shots that you get as a leader when you put your eggs underdogs, when they are up and running and actually performing really, really well, that is unmatchable. So that's the first step. And then secondly, one of the things I would say, Sarah, is knowledge management. Provide your employees with a career path. And I think all of us can relate to that. I wouldn't go to the gym every day if it weren't for my mental health or my physical appearance of something I want to achieve by going to the gym, right? And the exact same goes for the employees, right? They want to work to achieve towards something. Even if it's a salary, it's a new position, new responsibility area, provide your employees with a clear career path. And in that way, I would really say that you could enable them of sacrificing a lot to achieve what is necessary to get there.

Sarah - 00:05:48:

Yeah. I mean, certainly, it's a difference with today's talent versus historically. People were happy to stay in roles for five years, 10 years, 20 years, and that's not the case anymore. How did you find your underdogs?

Darian - 00:06:01:

Exactly what Roy said. I didn't let anyone take the decisions for me when they sent in the CVs, if they were suitable for the job position I was looking for. Most of them that I recruited didn't actually, rough to say, but they didn't have the mental brain there to actually do the school part of it. They were hardworking people that just wanted to get outside and get a chance. So the way I did it is actually that I spoke to many of the consultancy firms that we're working with, and I asked them to send me all the CVs directly, went through them all. And even the way if I didn't like the CV because of some soft skills or some hard-coded skills like fiber optics, I took a chat with them. I had a one-hour session, took them to a cafe, just talk about life, what their expectations are, what they have done before. And you could find some really, really golden employees by doing that.

Sarah - 00:06:42:

So I think this is interesting because what you're talking about is something that many aren't doing yet, right? But I do think to Roy's point, the idea of hiring based on years of experience is quickly becoming extinct. Now, what I'm curious about is, so I understand you went through the CVs yourself, so you weren't letting someone cast people aside for you. You wanted to make those judgment calls yourself. But when you go and sit down with these people who aren't the typical candidates that maybe the recruiters would have passed along to you, what are you looking for? Like, how are you yourself assessing whether you're willing to place a bet on them, right? Because I'm assuming you're not going to bet on just anyone, right? Like there's something you're kind of looking for. How did you assess those meetings? What were their particular skills or behaviors that you were looking for? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Darian - 00:07:35:

Yeah, sure. And first and foremost, I just maybe a bit to my self background. I have a bachelor in computer science and my job at GlobalConnect is my first job. I haven't been working in any other company before. And I actually started as a field engineer myself five years ago. That's how long I've been at the company. And one of my primary attributes when it comes to working, no matter what position I'm in, is that I always want to be the best at what I'm doing. It doesn't matter if I clean the floor or if I manage 100 people, I always want to be the best at what I am. And one of the factors that plays into that is the communication skills. So that was one of the things I was really, really looking for the ability to communicate, honestly, of course. So there's a famous quote that says, if you want to really know a person really well, take them to a cafe and let them order something, right? So if they take a lot of time on their self to make a simple decision as if they want a coffee or a cake, then you probably should back off from hiring them because it's a decision that doesn't really matter.

Sarah - 00:08:26:

The cafe was a test.

Darian - 00:08:27:

The cafe was a test. Exactly. But I love people. I love different kinds of people. And I don't base my employees on the fact what they have done before or what kind of experience they have. What I'm looking for is what are you able to produce and what are you able to contribute in this setup?

Sarah - 00:08:40:

Okay, so you feel good about the bets that you've made?

Darian - 00:08:43:

Really well. It took me to where I am because we actually flipped the department at that time and reduced CapEx by 80%. So it was the first time in 10 years that it happened in Global Connect. And I can tell you it was purely hard work and dedication to utilize their skills. And I think that's one of the things as well, Sarah, that they didn't really see me as their manager or the leader. I was actually carrying the load with them during that journey, invested in them with a lot of stuff, invested it in, and they felt really tight as a team.

Sarah - 00:09:08:

So you mentioned there were a couple of things you did differently. One was how you brought them in and who you placed the bets on. You also mentioned that you did a lot of the onboarding sort of yourself. So can you talk about with people that didn't have prior experience, how did you sort of equip them to be ready to go out into the field?

Darian - 00:09:27:

So I can tell you some of the people that we hired had basically no knowledge at all of what fiber optics or networking or data comm is. I actually invested a lot of time when I got the role as a manager for the department, the first six months, I built an onboarding program, which was bulletproof and that my grandma could understand, basically. So we started really, really slow, to be honest. And it was on a stupid level that when I even explained it, I was like, anyone could understand this basically. So we started really slow. And then of course, some of the people that we hired had really good experience of what they had been doing before, but they particularly didn't have the educational background for it. So they could also be a supportive functions for the new ones to onboard them and get them up and running as soon as possible. And I didn't actually have the luck to have people in the department that was senior. I had two guys left when everyone resigned. And I really utilized them in a really good way to actually onboard some groups of the people that we hired at that point of time.

Sarah - 00:10:19:

Okay, so can we talk a little bit about empowerment, right? So that's sort of maybe a progression, if you will, of enablement. So you have this new team green to the organization. You yourself are young and you're taking on this new leadership role. How are you looking at empowerment and what factor does that play?

Darian - 00:10:38:

There's one thing that I have really invested a lot of time and budget in, and that is actually sales. What I'm saying is that we should empower our employees with the ability to not only perform their day-to-day duties, but to extend over that and be the face outwards for the company. There is this thing called Selling Service, as it's called. So the example is really, really simple. Say, for example, that you go into a store and you want to buy a shirt and then you enter the store and the store manager comes to you and says, hi, sir, what are you looking for? Yes, just a shirt. Absolutely, sir. I hope you have the best day of your life. Can I ask you for what kind of event? And then you probably would say some ceremonial part for the work. And they say, well, sir, here's the shirt. And then usually our customers buy this tie with it. It goes really well with the shirt. So if you're interested, go ahead and you buy the shirt and you end up buying the tie as well. When you leave the store, if somebody would ask you, did that person sell you something or did they provide you with service? What would the answer be? Service, service. I said service myself as well. So that's what I'm trying to say, right? Every employee within an organization have the responsibility, to act as a salesperson towards the customers. They are the one out there doing the job. The salespersons are just basing their offers on some product portfolio that we have. And the same goes with the IT or field engineering department. So empowering them, I can give you a really good example of it, is that we had a challenge where we actually had a really nice price for the one that not working as a salesperson leading to the most sales lead in the organization after this session we had. So one of the technicians, for example, what they can do is that when they are visiting some customers and they are supporting them with some incident that have occurred and they can solve by themselves. And they are basically saying to the customer, well, you don't buy Wi-Fi access points from GlobalConnect, which means that if you would have done that, we could have supported you via us coming out there, taking three hours, we could have done it remotely. And they'd be like, whoa, does this exist? Yeah, well, sir, we 30 minutes SLA, and everything is solved if you buy the access points from GlobalConnect as well. And that actually led to a sale. That is just an example of many that we can utilize. Like, employees to empower them with the ability to perform more than their regular day-to-day duties. So selling service, that is my mythology I'm living after. And it also gives a really good customer experience because just with the example with the tie and shirt, you felt that you got service and the customers will also feel that they have received service instead of you selling them something. So in short, yeah.

Sarah - 00:12:57:

Yeah. Okay. Makes sense. And I think that idea of empowering those employees to sell service, again, it goes back to the skillset. It requires a different skillset than maybe the technicians have traditionally had. Now, what about execution? So if I'm being honest, listening to your story, you have this new team who you're placing bets on, right? But you have customers that are going to demand execution. So how do you make sure that they get what they need, even though you're sort of taking some risk in doing things a different way?

Darian - 00:13:34:

Well, I think that's also a matter of strategy. I think what lays in the foundation of executing towards the customers and internally is a good strategy. But we had a discussion earlier as well. I think just having a strategy, we've seen many failed attempts of management presenting fancy PowerPoints, numbered charts of what the strategy means. But to actually portion it up to something that is digestible for each and every department is really important. And that is something I have utilized really well is what does this actually mean for our department or you as a field technician, engineer or solution expert? And yeah, you are right, sir. Of course, we were putting a huge bet on them. But if we look at the team now, for example, they are really well skilled with the technical parts that they are doing, of course, and they are getting the support needed to always evolve for the future. And I will always say that. So when it comes to strong customer experience, culture eats strategy for breakfast. So culture always goes first. And then the strategic part is, of course, as important. But I wouldn't say it is in close to what the culture can do with the customer experience or the execution overall of it.

Sarah - 00:14:31:

So you mentioned GlobalConnect is your first role coming out of school. You started as a technician yourself. You've moved pretty quickly through the ranks. And now you're in this leadership position. You said you're 26. What are your thoughts on the value of fresh perspective in this space?

Darian - 00:14:50:

That's a good question. I would say like one of the things that I really would like to implement in the new set is, of course, the way we are approaching the more traditional methodologies of being a leader versus the new modern types of things. It's really important for us as leaders to embrace the fact that there is a lot changing in the world. So adapting to a more modern and enhancing way of actually motivating your employees has significantly been different since a couple of years back. So embracing the fact that we need to be adaptable to those changes as well as a leader and not only expect that our employees follow what we have for kind of leadership methodologies.

Sarah - 00:15:27:

Yeah. What do you think, are there any experiences you've had that are challenging when you're with peers who have been in leadership positions for decades or situations like that?

Darian - 00:15:39:

Yeah. Well, so one of the advantages is, of course, the fact that me myself is the next future of leaders and I'm working with the next generation of field workers as well. So that gives me the ability to have the fresh thinking that they have as well to adapt myself after that. But I will say the challenges are huge, especially many of the field engineers that I currently have in the Nordic setup is my former colleagues as well. I've been working with them on the field and we've been talking shit about management together and all of a sudden I'm leading them. And then there's another aspect of it, which is even more challenging, is that leading leaders as a 26-years-old, that is a really big challenge for me. So sitting around the table and taking decisions based on the strategy and the future of the company overall, with having people around you that basically doesn't trust you, or that you don't get your voice heard, or that you're not considered to be a candidate that can bring the heat to the table. That's a really challenging situation. But trust me, there's nothing better than executing and succeeding in those tricky situations. So you still have to just accept it and go along and do the best out of it.

Sarah - 00:16:39:

Yeah, let the action speak for itself.

Darian - 00:16:41:

Exactly.

Sarah - 00:16:41:

Okay, so let me ask you this. What sort of advice, I guess, or words of caution would you say to someone who has a much more old-school leadership mentality?

Darian - 00:16:58:

To be fair and square, I actually like some parts of the old-school mentality, even though I'm really flexible with my employees when it comes to having remote works or being physically there. I truly feel that touching, feeling, and seeing each other face-to-face is really important. So that's one part that I will keep. But secondly, the only advice I would probably give is that pointing with your whole hand instead of leading the way sometimes isn't the most popular way of doing things today, even though it can be really effective if you are in a result-oriented organization where you actually need results and you're expected to deliver numbers. But otherwise, I would say that is something that really has faded away. And every time I try that approach, it always backfires. So that is one of the things instead of pointing with your hand, grabbing the load with the team and showing them the way is one of the things.

Sarah - 00:17:43:

Yeah. Good.

Episode 272

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

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

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

Full Show Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rainer: Thank you.

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

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

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

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

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. What about supply chain?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 271

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

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

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

Full Show Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hany: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 270

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

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Full Show Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode 269

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

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

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

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Full Show Notes

Sarah - 00:00:39:

Corrie - 00:01:17:

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

Sarah - 00:01:21:

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

Corrie - 00:01:59:

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

Sarah - 00:02:49:

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

Corrie - 00:03:37:

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

Sarah - 00:08:28:

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

Corrie - 00:08:39:

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

Sarah - 00:10:54:

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

Corrie - 00:11:12:

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

Sarah - 00:13:41:

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

Corrie - 00:14:05:

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

Sarah - 00:15:00:

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

Corrie - 00:15:34:

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

Sarah - 00:16:14:

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

Corrie - 00:16:35:

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

Sarah - 00:00:39:

Corrie - 00:01:17:

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

Sarah - 00:01:21:

Corrie - 00:01:59:

Sarah - 00:02:49:

Corrie - 00:03:37:

Sarah - 00:08:28:

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

Corrie - 00:08:39:

Sarah - 00:10:54:

Corrie - 00:11:12:

Sarah - 00:13:41:

Corrie - 00:14:05:

Sarah - 00:15:00:

Corrie - 00:15:34:

Sarah - 00:16:14:

Corrie - 00:16:35:

Sarah - 00:18:20:

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

Corrie - 00:19:07:

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

Sarah - 00:19:09:

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

Corrie - 00:19:19:

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

Sarah - 00:24:43:

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

Corrie - 00:24:54:

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

Sarah - 00:26:52:

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

Corrie - 00:27:09:

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

Sarah - 00:29:15:

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

Corrie - 00:29:23:

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

Sarah - 00:32:38:

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

Corrie - 00:33:09:

And being able to recognize

Sarah - 00:33:11:

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

Corrie - 00:33:21:

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

Sarah - 00:34:02:

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

Corrie - 00:34:19:

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

Sarah - 00:36:19:

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

Corrie - 00:37:35:

That's right.

Sarah - 00:37:35:

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

Corrie - 00:38:00:

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

Sarah - 00:40:34:

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

Corrie - 00:40:39:

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

Sarah - 00:42:14:

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

Corrie - 00:43:12:

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

Sarah - 00:43:50:

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

Corrie - 00:44:25:

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

Sarah - 00:45:31:

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

Corrie - 00:46:36:

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

Sarah - 00:47:50:

Yeah. Great.

Corrie - 00:47:51:

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

Sarah - 00:49:30:

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

Corrie - 00:49:38:

Yeah.

Sarah - 00:49:38:

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

Corrie - 00:49:55:

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

Sarah - 00:50:00:

That would be great.

Corrie - 00:50:01:

All right. All right. Take care.

Sarah - 00:50:03:

Corrie - 00:19:07:

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

Sarah - 00:19:09:

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

Corrie - 00:19:19:

Sarah - 00:24:43:

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

Corrie - 00:24:54:

Sarah - 00:26:52:

Corrie - 00:27:09:

Sarah - 00:29:15:

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

Corrie - 00:29:23:

Sarah - 00:32:38:

Corrie - 00:33:09:

And being able to recognize

Sarah - 00:33:11:

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

Corrie - 00:33:21:

Sarah - 00:34:02:

Corrie - 00:34:19:

Sarah - 00:36:19:

Corrie - 00:37:35:

That's right.

Sarah - 00:37:35:

Corrie - 00:38:00:

Sarah - 00:40:34:

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

Corrie - 00:40:39:

Sarah - 00:42:14:

Corrie - 00:43:12:

Sarah - 00:43:50:

Corrie - 00:44:25:

Sarah - 00:45:31:

Corrie - 00:46:36:

Sarah - 00:47:50:

Yeah. Great.

Corrie - 00:47:51:

Sarah - 00:49:30:

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

Corrie - 00:49:38:

Yeah.

Sarah - 00:49:38:

Corrie - 00:49:55:

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

Sarah - 00:50:00:

That would be great.

Corrie - 00:50:01:

All right. All right. Take care.

Sarah - 00:50:03:

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

Episode 268

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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