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With service becoming more and more integral to business strategies across the globe the role of the service leader is equally becoming increasingly crucial within successful organisations. Nick Frank, Principal Consultant and Founder of Si2 Partners explores what makes a great Service Leader...

For Service leaders wanting to develop their talent, or companies wanting to recruit new talent, knowing the competencies required to achieve your business goals is vital.

To start, we need to define what a ‘Service Leader’ looks like, smells like and tastes like, similar to a fine cheese it is not one dimensional.

As with most things in life, what defines success is often contextual.

In defining service leadership, we have identified four relevant perspectives.

1. Business Evolution;
2. Service Evolution;
3. Organizational Structure;
4. People or the individual.

Business evolution

Businesses are constantly developing and pass through different stages such as start-up, maturity or transformation.

What we find is that many companies run into problems when their business context changes due to economic realities, and their leadership cannot adapt fast enough.

As a service leader you will consequently need to be clear on your current and future position aspiration.Successful leaders need to be able to demonstrate different competencies depending on this business context. As a service leader you will consequently need to be clear on your current and future position aspiration.

For example, if you currently work for a start-up or a business at its early stages, it will be critical for your long-term career development that you acquire a higher level of business acumen. In a larger more mature business, leaders will develop change management capabilities which are essential for business transformation.

Service evolution 

The overall business context of the company drives the service evolution, inevitably putting new demands on service leadership.

Breaking this down, we observed four generic service strategy steps, which describe the journey of companies when evolving from product focus to service orientation:

1. Product life cycle; Ensure equipment availability
2. Product performance; Optimize performance over the lifecycle
3. Process support; to help the customer in improving their business processes
4. Process Outsourcing; perform processes on behalf of customers

This evolution is influenced by the mix and maturity of customer profile(s) and will impact both the breadth and depth of competence requirements.

For example, looking at how leaders deal with segmentation, a company focusing on solving product issues will segment their business by-products and geographical markets, whereas companies focusing on business outcomes will segment in terms of customer value.

Understanding the service evolution context is probably the most important area to consider when hiring/developing future service leaders.

Organisational structure

Increasingly, service organizations are being managed as a stand-alone business where companies see it as a strategic driver of growth with its own Profit & Loss responsibility. Led by a single Service leader with subordinate sub-function leaders, business acumen becomes more important than the technical knowledge of service.

The more traditional cost focused service organizations are often organized along functional lines with leaders for Field Service, Technical Support and other ‘technical’ teams.In contrast, the more traditional cost focused service organizations are often organized along functional lines with leaders for Field Service, Technical Support and other ‘technical’ teams.

Here technical expertise is more important.

The difference between the two business needs is profound. Having the wrong person in a leadership role can become a major barrier to growth. It is not that they are a poor performer, but that their skill sets and temperament have not developed to be effective to overcome a particular business challenge.

People or individual

As companies develop internal talent or search for new talent externally, Service Leaders may come from a non-technical function and/or background.

For example, Sales people are increasingly being asked to lead service organizations because of their commercial background. Alternatively, the current Service leader might only have worked within a specific organizational context such as Field Service or Digital Marketing.

The impact in both scenarios is that an individual is being moved or promoted into the position, shouldering new accountabilities with a different and/or limited traditional, service knowledge.

As service organizations become more sophisticated and require a leadership team with a diverse mix of competencies it becomes more important to be cognizant of the complementary expertise required as well as how it fits into company culture and people strategies, processes and aspirations.

Linking context to competency

Competencies are the parameters we use to describe the capabilities of people.

Within service, we have identified 30 of these competencies which can be grouped under leadership, management, personal attributes and technology (in the digital context). Successful service leadership comes from conscious adoption of these competencies to the business context and service maturity you operate in.

Coupled with a genuine understanding of your current/aspired structure, values and culture will enable leaders to create an organizational environment where people can succeedCoupled with a genuine understanding of your current/aspired structure, values and culture will enable leaders to create an organizational environment where people can succeed. So how can we use this insight when recruiting new service leaders into your teams.

One of the most powerful factors applied in the selection of competencies is undoubtedly the job/position requirements. To support this and to provide a summary overview, we found it was possible to distinguish four functional groups, Service Sales; Service Delivery; Service Excellence and Service Innovation.

Each of these groups include a complete set of relevant accountabilities.

For example, for Service Sales we include customer management, sales management, business development and product development. In total, one position should ideally include 5-8 clearly articulated and prioritized competencies.

The mix of these competencies will depend on the context we have discussed and in combination, will be used to develop job descriptions that more accurately reflect the needs of the business, rather than an intuitive perception of what the business leader thinks.

In summary

Great is defined by a number of contextual factors, therefore, the consideration of the competencies required and the weighting of each is going to be essential to be able to articulate the right job profile for a given context.

Whether you are developing the capabilities of an existing employee or hiring externally, our recommendation is to ‘go slow to go quick’, meaning take the extra time to consider your context at the outset of your search. Companies’ likelihood of finding and developing great service leaders in the B2B world will be greatly enhanced.

If you would like to know more about the competencies that define great Service leaders, than you can download our white paper by contacting the authors at dag.gronevik@servicepeoplematters.com, richard.cowley@servicepeoplematters.com or nick.frank@si2partners.com

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Nick Frank, Managing partner at Si2 Partners, looks at the trials and tribulations of sourcing the talent to drive your field service organisation forward and asks why are we not doing this better?

Delivering on business objectives demands that we really understand and acquire those capabilities that help us differentiate from competition. Indeed, the same is true for us as professionals as we look for own next steps in our career. Yet matching needs with people is still recognised as one of the biggest challenges for employers and employees alike.

The reality is that for business in general and in the area of service business specifically, finding people who can deliver (experience, knowledge, qualifications & competencies), are highly motivated (right career move, location, salary, benefits & company) and fit (industry, company values, team they will be working with) is a major management headache. The impact of getting this process wrong can be a costly, time consuming, an emotionally draining exercise and frankly devastating on objectives.

Why is it like this?

Successful companies ideally manage their talent acquisition through a balance of succession planning, external hiring, or interim positions. This journey is complex and fraught with organisational, political and external challenges to deliver a robust and effective talent management framework. In this age when data, analytics and connectivity technologies threaten to disrupt many industries, the pressure to introduce new capabilities has never been stronger. Increasingly, service leaders are frustrated that to find talent whether it’d be sourced internally or externally is taking too long and with minimal choice.

This is why in trying to find great people, companies traditionally turn to head-hunters who rely on their respective contact base to provide suitable candidates. Whereas many head-hunters have developed dedicated expertise in finding well defined positions in areas such as IT, Finance and HR, very few if any, provide the same level of contacts, expertise and competencies in successfully searching for the modern service professional. Instead, head-hunters turn to the now infamous LinkedIn website as their primary tool for finding people.

 

Interestingly though, if you have ever tried to search for service people using these types of recruitment tools you will discover that it is very difficult to pinpoint the type of positions and qualifications you require to fill your vacancies.

One of the main stumbling blocks is that service is such a wide generic term that it identifies 1000’s of unsuitable candidates.

Using company job titles seems a good idea, but often although these might make sense to people within the business, they bear little relevance to the outside world. The result is that recruiters are forced to search for candidates with vague, irrelevant job titles which are difficult to match on the main social media platforms available today.

Alternative approaches such as on-line job boards have other challenges. Frequently job descriptions are not clear and easily understood. Recruiters do not know which talent match the ‘Service’ brief and are often overwhelmed with the volume of response, because many candidates apply based on their belief they work in the ‘Service’ industry, yet often are completely unsuitable for the job.

In summary, companies often end up waiting up from 9- 12 months to successfully fill Service Leadership positions!

What can we do about it?

With above in mind, it is possible to reduce the time it takes to hire good service people by more than 50%, through following three very simple rules:

1.Job descriptions:

Organisations are good at producing job descriptions that suit their internal HR processes, but these are often not easy to translate into the terminology used in the wider world. Don’t fall into this trap! Make sure the job description you develop meets both the internal company needs and for the recruiter is geared to the language of social networks.

2.Work with people who know Service:

Working with professionals who deeply understand your business environment and needs, will be far more effective in terms of time and quality.

They will enable a more relevant job description to be developed as well as widen and enrich the search to allow candidates from seemingly unrelated backgrounds to be identified. Very few internal recruitment teams or external head-hunters truly understand the ‘Service’ space, or the wide variety of terminology used by service job seekers.

 

3.Be involved:

Make sure that you are fully aware of the type of people being searched, so that you can ensure it is focused on the right experiences. Close teamwork between client and recruiter has been shown to significantly reduce the time it takes to identify great candidates.

By following these three simple guidelines, you will not only find people faster, you will find better qualified talent that will enrich your organisation as well as significantly reducing your recruitment costs. They also can be applied to those professionals looking to develop their career paths.

These guidelines have been developed over many years participating in the hiring process of service professionals across many parts of the world.

Whilst conceptually, fairly straightforward, they are not so easy to follow and execute. With technical and service business talent at a premium and the adoption of on-line search through social networks is transforming the recruitment process.

Good definition thorough understanding the service “space” and feedback throughout the recruitment process have become critical to successfully finding the nuggets of gold in the ocean of working humanity.

For more information on recruiting Great Service People, contact Dag Gronevik, Richard Cowley or Nick Frank on how to ‘Build your Service Capability’ at info@si2partners.com or call +44 208 144 6452.

 

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Nick Frank & Dag Gronevik of Si2 Partners explore the importance of face to face contact in management and ask if more business leaders should consider moving away from traditional training methodologies towards more free-flowing, dialogue based means of communication within their teams...

Winston Churchill stated ‘Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war’ This great leader understood that people can be influenced in two ways: either their minds have been opened or their heart broken. Opening minds requires talk, exchange of views and reflection. The ‘fear’ alternative of forcing conformity through hierarchies is in the long term destructive.

As a leader, what’s your style? Jaw Jaw or War War?

In today’s world this is a serious issue, as business leaders struggle to keep up with the technology whirlwind that is engulfing every aspect of our lives.

Leaders need to figure out how they adapt to the changing environment around them and in particular how their organisations and people can evolve.

Traditionalists tell their people they must change, offering incentives, assuming that people know exactly what is expected of them. Most people recognise that in world of the millennial and the internet, this approach is becoming less effective. Human beings are a contrary lot and cannot be told how to THINK. But how they THINK can be influenced by what we SAY and what we DO.

As Churchill knew, the way to change is to talk without fear of conflict.

In our own experience as business leaders, we have always placed a strong focus on communication, and in particular on meeting our people eye-ball to eye-ball. In hindsight the easy part is to meet, but how to turn this into true engagement?

In management speak, leaders turn to techniques such as ‘Off-Site’ meetings, ‘work shops’ or 1 on 1’s.

However, having worked as business leaders ourselves and now providing expert support to others, it is clear that to be successful, leaders must transfer control and responsibility to the team to find the solution for themselves.

 

Bluntly put, it means stop using PowerPoint material and similar to control direction (& remember details) and instead, start to think on your feet to develop free flowing yet structured debates. This is an approach many business leaders do not feel comfortable with, but it is critical if you want to engage people to change.

We call this slightly chaotic yet structured approach to group problem solving the ‘Boot Camp’. It is where a cross section of different individuals come together as a team to solve complex problems where the solution is not clear to all. It’s not meant to be a comfortable cosy environment, but one where everyone is challenged to find solutions under time pressure.

But how to achieve this outcome? There are at least five key areas to focus on:

[ordered_list style="decimal"]

1. Problem Definition and Outcomes: It may sound an obvious starting point, but clearly defining the problem, the business context and the expected outcome, is key to bringing smart people together to solve problems. In our experience don’t be afraid to take your time in this process, as it is the start of aligning your teams thinking and language behind a common challenge. Be very grounded in your approach so people find it relevant to their roles. A good way to think about the context is to define what is working in the business, and then what is not working. Break the problem into 4-5 related discussions about real tangible issues your team faces. In our experiences, the more tangible you make the discussion through use cases and everyday examples, the more you will channel the energy of your team towards the outcome you desire.
2. Generate Energy and Curiosity: This is where preparation really pays off. From the way you prime and prepare the participants, to the environment in which you work, all will help you engage interest and action. Most important is to remember that energy comes from people who talk and are active in the debate. Avoid lengthy detailed power points, in fact try to do without. Not using supporting material requires far more detailed preparation, but the result is an environment where the conversation, discussion and decision making, seem to effortlessly move towards your objectives.

3. Debate and Create: It’s when people are talking that they can create solutions together. Plan out the types of discussions and debate, which will move the participants towards your goal. Create opportunities where people can engage with each other. Bring in external perspectives to challenge thinking and the current paradigm. Invite input from customers or suppliers to build focus and urgency. Above all do not be afraid to alter the agenda as you move through the process.

   As long as you have a very clear view on the outcomes you expect, you can flex the conversation to suit the circumstances and the energy of the participants.

4.  Create Allies: It’s important to remember that building relationships will magnify the leaders impact on the business. Avoid the ‘yes, but’ syndrome and emphasise the positive. It is the alliances and relationships that are built that are critical to your success. No one person can change an organisation. Getting to the key influencers through creating a critical mass of thinking is vital.

5. Articulate Results: Great conversation will come to little, unless it is captured and channelled into actions. It is extremely powerful when the participants articulate the outcomes and present to senior management team. This brings focus to the collaboration, as well as a bit of edge to your event.[/ordered_list]

If you would like to know more about the Boot Camp process that helps you create engagement and commitment to tough business problems, please contact Nick Frank or Dag Gronevik through info@Si2partners.com

 

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Nick Frank and Dag Gronevik of Si2 Partners joined Kris Oldland for our latest podcast where the talk was all about KPIs, in this excerpt we look at whether KPIs should be under constant review...

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Want to know more? Check out our Podcast with Nick and Dag on this topic here

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KO: Why are KPIs so important to driving a business forwards?

DG: First of al I think KPIs have one fundamental role and that is to drive behaviour. One of the risks with KPIs, as many people have realised is that they are interpreted and perceived as a controlling measure. But if you look at it from a driving the business perspective it really is all about driving behaviour.

To be able to link that behaviour you are looking at with strategy, budget,what the competition is doing, what customers are expecting... It’s quite a tricky cookie to crack but if you do it right, it is very powerful. One of the things people tend to forget is that we say Key Performance Indicators, there is the word Key in there, so people mix Key Performance Indicators, with performance indicators and it becomes a bit of a soup of KPIs. We should be really targeted on the ‘key’ word.

KO: It is a bit of a hackneyed phrase now but ‘what you can’t measure you can’t manage’ comes to mind. Is it really that simple, that we need to be measuring these things so we can improve?

NF: Actually that’s an old Peter Drucker phrase, but also I think it is quite often mis-quoted. Because he was also of the opinion that yes, you need the measures to gauge and give feedback on performance but actually there are things, part of performance that you can’t measure when your dealing with a person. In fact one of the key roles of a manager is to be able to provide this feedback to their people that can’t be measured or quantified.

[quote float="left"]The really big challenge that we are dealing with here is people and how people react. I think a lot of managers forget this because many managers equate measures with control.[/quote]The really big challenge that we are dealing with here is people and how people react. I think a lot of managers forget this because many managers equate measures with control. They want to control their business, they want to control their people, they want to prove to their bosses that they really know what they are doing.

So they measure everything and they tend to look at what has happened rather than predict what is going to happen and I think this is a mistake that many people make, they have too many and they are always looking backwards.

KO: It’s that rear view mirror approach - i.e. you can’t drive a car forwards competently, if your constantly checking the rear view mirror. 

You’ve both mentioned influencing behaviour and influencing people, but KPIs are essentially all about cold, hard numbers, and that is a very rational and logical way of looking at what is not always a logical and rational issue, because people are different and not so easily quantified.

Is that the big challenge in terms of getting the right KPIs - in that we can’t just base our decisions on percentages all of the time?

DG: I think you have certain measure that are unavoidable, especially financial ones, that are measuring trends which are very important to keep there year-on-year, but you might also have KPIs that you might only keep for one year.

For example, a short term project or program or a local project that you want to monitor and give more visibility to. I think that is also an area where you can keep KPIs. But I think it is important to keep that perspective of the long term measure that you can actually see trends, because if you can manage that well, then you also have control of your business.

KO: So are KPIs something that should be under constant review?

DG: I think that you will alays have a core set of KPIs as I mentioned but other than that yes I think so. You have an agenda that you review every year, you have an operational plan and as a support to that operational plan you need good measures to track progress.

Also they [KPIs] allow you to communicate to the organisation, if you are behind - what could be the reasons? Then you have activities supporting all these measures and KPIs so you can actually address the issues quite quickly and effectively.

KO: What is interesting here is the fluidity you describe, that whilst of course you have your solid KPIs at the heart of the business, in addition to that there is this layer of shifting metrics that are adaptable to where the business is at any given time. For me that is something that can be often overlooked, it’s almost like KPIs are carved into stone tablets some times.

On a similar subject let’s talk about the different KPIs that you would set for the team compared to those you would set for management...

NF: I think as a manager you want to be in control of the business, you want to problem solve and you need a level of detail and that’s part of your job - to be able to drill down from high level metrics to the operational metrics in order to do that and in order to answer the questions from your own management.

That’s very different from what you need to do with your people and what you need to do to drive your people. I’ve found if your talking to field service engineers their eyes just glaze over if you start talking in too much detail.

They are just really interested in what they can impact.

[quote float="right"]Managers are one set of stakeholders, but the people who work in your team, who work at the coal face, they have another set of needs and it’s important to recognise that they are different and to actually find the measures that motivate them and they can do something about[/quote] Therefore, it’s actually very important to separate out the two. It comes back to what Dag was saying at the beginning, there is a reason we do this it.

It’s to drive the business forward and be more effective in terms of our processes but also mainly our people.

Managers are one set of stakeholders, but the people who work in your team, who work at the coal face, they have another set of needs and it’s important to recognise that they are different and to actually find the measures that motivate them and they can do something about - so that if they take an action they can actually see that they are impacting how the business is working.

You really should think of them as two different sets of stakeholders therefore you should separate out the different sets of KPIs.

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Want to know more? Check out our Podcast with Nick and Dag on this topic here

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