Nick Frank like many has been spending more time with his young family during the pandemic and says there is much to learn from a child's perspective as we move through and beyond Covid-19 in service.

 

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself any direction you choose..."

 - Dr. Seuss

 

Dr Seuss children’s books are famous the world over and as many of us mix work with home schooling, we can appreciate there is so much to learn from a children’s view of the world. Maybe you are now getting to the point where you can start to learn the lessons from your pandemic experience. Maybe you are now getting to the point where you can start to learn the lessons from your pandemic experience.

 

5 LEarnings the Field Service Sector Can Take From the Covid-19 Crisis

Here are the top five lessons learned we have heard, which I am sure will be added to in the coming months: 

1. We can move fast when we want to!

It has been amazing at how fast companies have adapted to working remotely and in a new operating reality. One manager we talked to told us how a major equipment manufacturer rolled out an Augmented Reality Solution in 3 days, taking risks that they never would have thought in the pre-COVID 19 world.  It just goes to show what organisations can do when they have clear vision and purpose.

Talking to a cross section of managers, it also becomes clear that the most successful had already been building a culture of flexible working and innovation. This has allowed them to react effectively to the challenge. One hopes these successes should re-enforce companies’ ‘can-do’ beliefs and increase the pace of innovation. Although the road has been tougher for those conservative companies who have been slower to embrace digital technology, the cliff edge nature of the crisis has created the ‘burning platform’ required to drive change. For these companies it will be a real leadership test if they can take the bold decisions required to increase their dynamism and not revert back to type.

2. Communicate, communicate and communicate is a vital success factor

Research has shown that those organisations that are most successful at thriving in difficult situations, do so because they have the support of their stakeholders. In this crisis, we continually hear leaders talk about the importance of communication to employees and customers. Remote working has forced managers and team members to review not only how they talk to each other but recognise why communication is so important!

It has also forced many companies to think more deeply about their customers success and even the success of their industry. Working with their stakeholders to make tough decisions about what can and cannot happen. For example, how to solve customer issues without having and engineer on site. We even spoke to an Aerospace Maintenance Solution provider who decided to offer free of charge their Helpline to their competitors’ customers, because they had the capability and these customers needed support.

 

3. Flexibility and Agility are key to survival

What has surprised me is how many industrial companies have somehow kept moving ahead and utilising their field resources. Although most are running below capacity, many have been agile and fortunate enough to maximise resources. Some examples:

• Print equipment manufacturer switching service resources to priority industry such as food packaging
• Switching field staff to technical support roles
• Using down time for product training and even role out of new service systems
• Working with employees around using vacation time to minimize the economic impact.

A challenge for many is how to incorporate this new found agility into the culture of the company in a sustainable way.

 

4. Gaining a true understanding of the value of digitalisation

Many companies have had a crash course in Digital. Not so much in the technology itself but the value of the technology. For many OEM’s it is understanding how it is possible to solve customer problems through remote/digital access, having a 360 degree view of the customer situation from the home office or simply how to work collaboratively as a team.

From the customer side there is a greater appreciation of how technology can be used to keep their plants running or become more effective. Where IT security was a concern, perhaps now greater effort will be made to allay these worries.
For all parties a new openness to the use of technology presents a great opportunity to change the way we work together.

5. The best prepared have naturally built resilience into people and organisations

One of the major lessons learned has been to see the difference between a fear driven reactive approach to dealing with crisis, to one that comes from an inner resilience and is more step by step. Those with the latter mindset, in a strange way welcome the crisis as it has reinforced what their companies have to get right to survive. They perceive the change in attitude to risk, digitisation and people as a tremendous opportunity to be grasped.

As we speak, we are seeing new commercial and leadership learnings starting to evolve. However, it is clear that the companies that build on these lessons will emerge from this pandemic crisis stronger, fitter and more agile. NOW is an exciting time to be in business as we must scale new heights in innovation and effectiveness in order to survive.

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Further Reading:

• Read more articles by Nick Frank @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/nickfrank
• Read more articles about digitalisation in service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/digitalisation
• Read more articles about management in service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/management
• Read more about Si2Partners @ https://si2partners.com/
• Read more about the Service Leaders Network @ https://serviceinindustry.com/2019/12/03/why-we-created-the-service-leaders-network/

Things seem to be slowly loosening up.  How is your service and support team gearing for how to best support your customers moving forward?  Would you like to know what your peers are thinking? Dave Bennet, VP RevTwo and his colleagues are hosting a survey to assess how we are approaching building the new normal. Here he outlines their thinking... 

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Take part in the survey now by clicking the following link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/fieldserviceprioritiespostCOVID19 

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Building the New Normal of Field Service

As we talk to service organizations, different technologies are getting a closer look now more than ever. We can group their post-COVID technology thinking into these areas:

1. Do more Remotely. There are a bunch of tools out there that enable an expert to talk to and see what someone in front of a machine is doing. They can use their own expertise to tell the user what to do. Some are just using the equivalent of Apple’s FaceTime.
2. Artificial Intelligence. Using AI to help call center agents, field service engineers and even end users to help solve problems, with the goal of reducing site visits and improving repair efficiency.  Some AI solutions focus on call center, some focus on the end user.  Some are web based, some aren’t.  Some can be used offline. Some use bot technology. 
3. Augmented Reality/Merged Reality. There are tools that enable an expert far away to actually draw or input on a screen with a person in front of a machine so they can not only tell the user what to do but show them how to do it.  
4. Building up Organizational knowledge. Companies that don’t didn’t have troubleshooting guides for their equipment are now building them. Some are beefing up their knowledge bases so that they have articles that provide more reach and cover more problems.  Some companies are actually building their own “learning tools”.
5. There is even more of an emphasis on implementing more training and apprenticeship programs. The Silver Tsunami was seen as a challenge before COVID.  Now the pandemic has brought this problem to the forefront.  How to leverage expertise, from supporting customers to training customers and technicians, will be an important component of any strategy moving forward.

As a technology partner for service organizations, we have also noticed that buyer behavior is a little more uneven than before.  Some organizations have decided to “pull in their horns” and wait for things to settle down.  These organizations are generally waiting to see what the others do.  The “Early Adaptors” are rapidly investing in these technologies because they have always been the first to buy.

The founders of RevTwo have more than 80 years’ collective experience working with service and support organizations such as yours.  We certainly have our own opinions on what you should be doing to adapt to the post-COVID world. 

But we (and everyone else) want to know what you think.  So we put together a simple 10 question survey to try and find out.  It timed out at about 2.5 minutes to complete.  Please take the time to do so, and we will publish the results in our next post.  Your organization as well as your customers can benefit by understanding how the rest of us are planning to deal with this new reality.

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Take part in the survey now by clicking the following link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/fieldserviceprioritiespostCOVID19 

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Further Reading: 

• Read the exclusive fieldservicenews.com eBook Ten Thoughts for Service Leaders Planning Recovery @ www.fieldservicenews.com/White-Papers/10-thoughts-for-recovery.pdf
• Read more about the impact of Covid-19 on Field Service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/en-gb/covid-19
• Read more about remote assistance in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/remote+assistance
• Visit the RevTwo website @ revtwo.com
• Read more about Artificial Intelligence in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/artificial+intelligence

Aston University’s Professor Tim Baines reflects on how the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has meant that he has had to re-evaluate his predictions from 2019 as industries rapidly pivot and shift their priorities and why servitization has a role to play in that recovery.

People don’t like to admit their mistakes and professors are no different. Indeed, we like to believe that we give more attention to the science anfacts than others may do. But I was wrong. Late last year, I wrote a piece that predicted that the three priorities for manufacturing business in the 2020s would be about responding to the challenges of poor productivity and climate change, and grasping the opportunities of digital.

Servitization's role in Covid recovery

I think it’s now quite safe to say that although these will remain important, priorities will shift towards the recovery of the economy – in particular the recovery and rebuilding of industry large and small. I also think that we will start to pay more attention to embedding greater industrial resilience, in an attempt to insure against similar disruptions in the future. It’s early days, but how might we do this?

My earlier judgment seemed sound at the time. I based my prediction on what I saw, was told and read about. I rationalised that there were three principal forces driving change, and my logic went something like this:

The UK, among other western economies, has an historical problem with productivity, we work too many hours to generate the level of wealth we create and this adversely affects growth something that everybody is keen to address. The evidence of climate change is becoming more acute; it can be seen in the melting ice sheets in Greenland and raging bushfires of Australia.

Customers and consumers are becoming more sensitive to the environmental impact of consumption, and supply chains are being restructured. Meanwhile, digital innovation is all around - whether you see it as IOT, Industry 4.0 or simply a new App - and its adoption within industry is being widely advocated.

What my logic did not account for was the seismic shock of a pandemic. Business has changed in a way none of us could have foreseen; borders have closed, travel is banned, staff are in isolation, society is in lock-down, working from home is the new norm and the kids are off school! Business activity is polarising; some factories are being mothballed, while those that service the food and healthcare sectors, for example, are exceptionally busy. Indeed, governments are intervening in ways unimaginable since, in many countries, the Second World War. At this time, I know it’s difficult to look beyond the next few weeks, but it is important to look forwards, albeit with a little care and sensitivity.

 

"Resilience is key and business models based around services are more conducive to achieving this..."

 

Economic activity is essential and it must recover. Undoubtedly, there will be many government initiatives to kick-start the economy, but how do we rebuild the manufacturing industry to be more resilient to future shocks, whether these shocks are health-related, trade-related, or indeed from the adverse effects of climate change. Quite clearly, the same as before is not sufficient. We have a unique opportunity to move industry forward and adopt business models that are better-aligned with the new world we will enter.

The 1900s and early 2000s were dominated by production-consumption business models, exemplified by mass production, Henry Ford and the consumer society – make, sell, dump. Feeding a growing world population, ruthless in its consumption of resources, servicing hungry global markets and all too often insensitive to the impact on the environment. This was not sustainable, and now many sectors have ground to a halt.

While mass production of course is still alive across some sectors - food and medicine to name a few - in other sectors this lockdown has shown that we do not need cars, airports and shopping centres to the extent we used them. As such, there is a great opportunity for services, delivered remotely and consumed locally, which help to build the quality of our lives without the need for consumption. If industry can build new business models on this basis, we will also create a truly resilient economy.

So, I believe that resilience is key and business models based around services are more conducive to achieving this. But what could such services look like in practice? In my next blog, I will reflect on some of the businesses that are making great progress in this space.

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Further Reading:

• Read more articles by Tim Baines @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/timbaines
• Read more on servitization @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/servitization
• Read more about Covid-19 in service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/covid-19
• Read more about the Advanced Services Group @ https://www.advancedservicesgroup.co.uk
• Read more about the World Servitization Conference @ https://www.advancedservicesgroup.co.uk/wsc2020

In this highlight from the Field Service Podcast Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News and Kevin Green, former CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation discuss what the impact of Covid-19 will be in terms of market disruption...

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Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts and look for Series Five, Episode One 'Kevin Green on Leadership, Strategy and the Economic Impact of Lockdown' for the full episode...

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Can we Look forward to a New Normal that is Better than before?

In the last few months we’ve seen such rapid changes in such a short amount of time. There is often talk about disrupters entering a market, but the truth is that perhaps the biggest disrupter our civilisation has ever seen is not a new emerging technology or organisation but the Covid-19 pandemic.

Across the conversation with Green on episode one series five of the Field Service Podcast we explored a number of different aspects to what breeds agility and adaptability into an organisation. We discussed the crucial role of leadership, strategy, people and processes reflecting back on the positives that have emerged as companies have been forced into action to survive the global lockdowns and the economic tsunami of recession, they look set to trigger.

Perhaps the simplest question, has the most complex answer. It is also the question on everybody’s lips. What comes next? What does the new-normal of tomorrow look like?

“When we look at the impact of disruption a classic example of this will be what happens at the end of this year,” Green states.

“If you take a cultural analogy, you know, the adaptive organisation will say ‘okay, what have we learned from this? How do we adapt what we do in light of that [learning]?’

 

The challenges we’ve all been through in recent months, surely it would be criminal to not seize the learnings from this time as Green suggests and build a better, brighter version of what we had before the lockdowns came?

 

“Actually, we found that we can have 90% people working from home and we can still deliver the product, we can do some amazing things, using technology as a tool so how do we structure our business going forward? Do we continue to have people working at home, perhaps we have half the people and we can get rid of some office space because we don't need it anymore?

"That's a demonstration of an organisation which is learning and developing and taking the experience of this crisis and trying to build on it and use it for good. What you will find though is that some other organisations will just revert the type. The lockdowns will eventually be lifted and everyone goes back to work and we carry on in the same way.

“That is a classic example of an adaptive learning organisation, versus one which isn't responsive to its environment because it won't see the opportunities that the crisis has created for it and won't learn from this and won't adapt. We'll see a lot of organisations, just go back to doing things it as they’ve always done them.

“However, I think there will be other organisations that saying ‘hang on a second, there is some real good stuff that we've learned here. We've used technology differently, our staff have operated in different ways and we've given them more autonomy. Why don't we build on that and use it as we go forward?”

The challenges we’ve all been through in recent months, surely it would be criminal to not seize the learnings from this time as Green suggests and build a better, brighter version of what we had before the lockdowns came?

 

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Further Reading:

• Find the full episode of this interview and the entire back catalogue of The Field Service Podcast @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts
• Read more about Leadership and strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about the impact of Covid-19 on Field Service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/en-gb/covid-19
• Connect with Kevin Green on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-green-221a7522
• Follow Kevin Green on Twitter @ twitter.com/kevingreenwnc
• Buy Competitive People Strategy @ Competitive People Strategy: How to Attract, Develop and Retain the Staff You Need for Business Success

Marc Tatarsky from FieldAware argues the case for a Field Service Hub as part of a field service strategy. 

Field service organizations of all shapes and sizes are continually challenging themselves to create new sources of competitive advantage, and a Field Service Hub might be the answer. Through our many years of experience working across numerous industries, we see a direct relationship between the effective use of technology and creating a competitive edge.

 

Using Technology in a Service Strategy

When service teams actively use technology, it leads to better-served customers. At FieldAware, we measure overall Field Service Maturity across two dimensions – technical maturity and operational maturity. We find time and time again, utilizing an open and integrated service platform is the crucial source in bridging these two critical threads together, enabling organizations to stand out and deliver world-class service.

In a previous article, I discussed the power of extending the service organization's impact through the integration of back-office systems. Fully integrated service solutions enable organizations to consolidate field-based work from multiple internal and external sources, as well as data from back-office systems into one operational platform. A world-class field service management (FSM) solution provides teams with the core features to address demand management, work planning, technician enablement, work order debriefs, operational management, and analytics & reporting. 

But what happens when service departments want to address new/emerging market trends or want access to cutting-edge technologies. Does this mean they have to rip out the old system and find a new one? Or wait until their current all-in-one solution provider develops (or acquires and integrates) a robust ancillary solution themselves? 

Enter the concept of a Field Service Hub, fueling an age-old debate of best-of-breed solution vs. all-in-one-platform. In today's modern cloud infrastructure, coupled with easy integration and intelligent business systems, arguably, the pendulum has swung back in favor of a best-of-breed approach. A Field Service Hub builds on the best-of-breed model, allowing a service organization to gain maximum flexibility and agility. It bolsters a team's ability to innovate service delivery capabilities without disrupting the integrated "core" system and workflows.

 

So, what is a Field Service Hub?

A hub is a best-of-breed approach to delivering a robust, highly configurable, open service platform. It offers the "core" capabilities that organizations need to digitize their field service operations and is architected to integrate. Think well-designed – open, integrated, and configurable. These attributes allow organizations to adopt and access new, modern technologies quickly and future proof their investment. Teams can freely and cost-effectively extend the value of their "core" platform without disrupting the base system and integrations. Service leaders can take on new market advancements such as IoT, AR, advanced communications, dynamic forms, predictive analytics, and other emerging trends to meet changing customer demands.

 

What can a hub do to create a competitive edge?

A robust hub provides access to a range of complementary best-of-breed solutions that are pre-integrated and offer a seamless end-user interaction. It enables service leaders to implement new technologies and quickly employ field service specific use cases relevant to the technology. Even better yet, it also provides open access to enable customers to integrate their chosen best-of-breed solutions should the vendor not already have one available.

Imagine having your fully integrated service workflow further transformed with an Uberized technician tracking and advanced communication tool that seamlessly leverages details about the work order, the customer, work history, technician, and other "core" system details. The new enhancement effortlessly improves transparency to the end-customer. Or, switching to a dynamic forms capability that allows you to instantaneously deploy new or revised work protocols or regulatory checklists to all field workers at the touch of a button. Or, deploying a remote diagnostic and training app that allows you to address an aging workforce or new market requirements to work remotely. Many of these capabilities are only partially (if at all) available in the most robust, expensive, and complex all-in-one enterprise solutions. Yet, a hub can affordably provide best-in-class access to these features.

 

Why is a hub so powerful?

A well-designed hub reduces an end-user organization's risk of maintaining integrations. Maintenance is the responsibility of the hub provider. Service organizations pick and choose the capabilities they need and gain significant cost savings by only paying for the service provided vs. investing in a comprehensive implementation and stand-alone solution. Furthermore, a hub can be specifically tuned and priced for the mid-market or emerging enterprises, providing access to sophisticated field service capabilities that are easy to implement and deliver rapid ROI.

A service platform, fully integrated to back-office systems, is traditionally viewed to have a minimum shelf-life of 5 to 10-years. However, as we know, now more than ever, markets are volatile. There is constant disruption from technology advancements, new market entrants, globalization, and regulatory changes. Business models must be more dynamic than ever. This required flexibility puts pressure on this investment horizon, especially if a solution is not able to adapt and keep pace with new technology or changing business needs. A Field Service Hub reduces the risk and enables service organizations to continue to gain value from their core FSM investment while swapping and adding satellite applications to facilitate change and adapt to new workflows and business models.

 

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Further Reading:

• Read more News and Features from FieldAware @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/fieldaware
• Visit FieldAware's website @ www.fieldaware.com
• Read more by Marc Tatarsky @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/marctatartsky
• Read more about digital transformation in service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/digitaltransformation
• Read more about field service strategies @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/strategy
• Read more about technology adoption in service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/technologyadoption

A specialist recruitment platform initially conceived to help fill the service talent gap took on a new significance as an urgent post calling for medical technicians meant the project was fast-tracked to market. Mark Glover uncovers the story behind ServiceMax's Field Service Finder and its extraordinary five-week turnaround.

 

We are living and working in unprecedented times. All aspects of life are being affected by the pandemic: work, travel, holidays, live sport on TV.

Covid's Impact on the field service workforce

Of course the return of football is rather trivial compared to the health and financial impact this virus is having. As I type, news feeds are reporting Germany’s dip into recession. Indications this normally robust economy is wobbling will send tremors across the rest of Europe and beyond. In the UK, a financial crash is said to be inevitable and in the US the economy is showing significant signs of a downturn, fuelled in part by 26 million Americans losing their jobs as companies take actions to reduce bottom lines.

In service, technicians hardest hit are those in industries locked-down such as hospitality and retail. It means many have been furloughed or made redundant.

It’s another blow to a recruitment pool that has historically always struggled to attract and identify new talent. Field service positions are specialist, they require knowledge across a range of skills and are difficult to fill even without a global pandemic. Service - and I appreciate I’m sweeping broadly here - essentially exists to fix things, but it requires a highly-skilled and technical workforce to do so.

It wasn't always like this however. Post-war optimism and the 'baby-boomers' generation flooded the blue-collar market learning trades that secured a job for life. Now, the US, like the UK, are today seeing a large chunk of their workforce drop off as this generation retire. This decline has left an alarming employment gap that might not be an abyss, but with the advent of Covid-19, it’s looking a lot deeper than before and some sectors are feeling the pinch more than they ever have.

However, for the medical and biotech industries, there are challenges not in reducing staff numbers but significantly increasing them to cope with accelerating service requests.

Medtronic are a medical device manufacturer who have seen a substantial increase in demand for equipment such as ventilators which has in turn increased the need for service technicians to install and fix them. Theirs is a specialist field and even before the pandemic, finding those with appropriate experience and knowledge to service the assets was difficult.

"The site went live on May 4, the result of an extraordinary five weeks of development, testing and refining and more testing..."

As part of a recent recruitment drive the firm reached out on LinkedIn, publishing a post that directed people to their specialist vacancies, hoping it would touch a niche slice of a workforce they desperately needed to engage. The post was noticed by ServiceMax’s Stacey Epstein. “It was something of an urgent plea for volunteers and skilled workers to visit their own internal career page because they were desperately needing help,” she tells me over a Zoom conversation one afternoon, a week after the firm's most recent product launch. 

ServiceMax's Field Service Job Finder is a platform connecting talent with demand across critical industries but even before this pandemic, the project had been in the pipeline for a while, an idea sparked by the aforementioned issues in service recruitment and confirmed following a piece of research from Forrester Consulting, commissioned by ServiceMax looking into the drivers of digital transformation in service.

Consulting 675 decision makers globally the research revealed, rather shockingly, that 97% reported challenges in sourcing talent with 49 % citing challenges identifying candidates who have the required knowledge and expertise. The issue was obvious but how to negate it?

ServiceMax and their customers straddle an array of industry verticals so they already had the audience (or “eyeballs”, Stacey says) for such a platform, however they needed to find the right partner who could provide the infrastructure.

Krios already ran their own recruitment portal. The site is tailored for the gig economy linking freelancers to a range of requests covering graphic design, translation services and web design; a blueprint similar to ServiceMax’s idea but on a different level of vocation. The two firms met, Krios were able to commit and the project quickly spun into action. The site went live on May 4, the result of an extraordinary five weeks of development, testing and refining and more testing. It was much earlier than was planned - but sparked by Medtronic’s post, the relationship the two had anyway (Medtronic are a ServiceMax customer) and the impending pandemic - the site was fast tracked to market. “It was literally seeing that request on LinkedIn,” Stacey explains, “and knowing it was a customer and that we’d already been talking about what we could be doing to help our customers with the skilled worker gap issue, we said, ‘we’ve got to do it now.’”

There are plenty of Medtronics out there, struggling with a challenge the likes of which they have never experienced and conversely, never planned for..."

So they did. To date, traffic has been steady with over 4,000 new users and exceeding 7,000 page impressions and while the majority of users are US-based the site is seeing traction globally being viewed in over 40 countries.

I suggested to Stacey we keep in touch, that I would like to monitor the site’s progress. Beyond the user metrics, I said, it would be interesting to see what comes to the surface after a month or so; to see what service companies are now looking for. It could offer a clear barometer of where service recruitment is, what jobs are available and what skills are being asked for – a glimpse of the new service workplace as the pandemic leaves its legacy.

But for now, this was a project that came from a glance at LinkedIn and a realisation what affect this pandemic was having. Stacey tells me when she saw the post she was pretty sure Medtronic would probably not be the only firm blinking in this new Covid dawn. Sadly, she’s right. There are plenty of Medtronics out there, struggling with a challenge the likes of which they have never experienced and conversely, never planned for.

COVID-19 is unprecedented and changing the very fabric of what we once knew as ‘normal’. For service to survive – and eventually thrive – it needs to pivot and flex; to absorb and react. This starts at the ground - in recruitment and the next generation.

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Further Reading: 

• Read more about recruitment in service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/recruitment
• Read more about Covid-19 in service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/covid
• Read more about more about empowering field workers @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/managing-the-mobile-workforce
• Read more about ServiceMax's Field Service Finder @ https://www.fieldservicefinder.com/
• Read more about Medtronic @ www.medtronic.com 

In this highlight from the Field Service Podcast Kevin Green, author of Competitive People Strategy and former CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation lists five key considerations that he believes can lead an organisation to establishing an adaptive culture. Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News hosts.

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Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts and look for Series Five, Episode One 'Kevin Green on Leadership, Strategy and the Economic Impact of Lockdown' for the full episode...

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The Key Ingredients to an Adaptive Culture? People and Processes

In any kind of change management process there is a deep rooted need for establishing clear processes and outlining the reasons for change in a clear, concise and transparent manner at all levels. However, this is particularly crucial when trying to change something as firmly embedded within an organisation as its corporate culture. The culture of a company is as fundamental as it gets when it comes to the core ethos that exists across all areas of operation.  

Tackling such a change requires significant understanding of both where you are and where you wish to be so you can effectively plot a path from one to the other. In episode one of season five of the Field Service Podcast, Green outlined five key considerations which he believes organisations looking to establish such change should be aware of.

“I think there are five things that most organisations, if they're going to build an adaptive culture need to know,” Green explained.

“The first of these is to create a clear, coherent purpose. Why are we here? What are we doing? What do we stand for? This should be something that stands the test of time so people can see it's not just about money, it's about something else, something more fundamental to why the business exists.

“Secondly, I think you've got to define, embed and live the values. You've got to really make sure that the values mean something, and that people understand them. You can’t just impose them, you must engage people in a conversation so that they feel they own them. They [the wider team within the business, must feel they] are part of the organisation that's created them.

The third consideration Green outlines revolves around who you hire within your leadership teams.

 

"You have to make sure you recruit talent and that you don't get obsessed with superstars..."

 

“You must hire and develop managers who are good people, managers who can coach and develop people,” Green adds.

You don’t want management who take the attitude of ‘I’m the boss I tell you what to do’ in a traditional instruction-driven manner Green explains, commenting “It's more about listening, engaging, developing, helping people learn."

The fourth consideration is again rooted in finding the right people that will thrive in the type of environment you are creating. “You have to make sure you recruit talent and that you don't get obsessed with superstars,” Green comments “Make sure that people fit the culture. [This way] you find managers and leaders and other talent that are going to thrive in the environment you're creating.”

The final consideration Green outlines is process orientated. “You really need to focus on how the work actually gets done,” he asserts.

“For example, is it lean or agile? There's lots of tools out there, which are all about empowering people to work locally to improve things. An environment of continuous improvement where people's views are listened to, where they can come up with solutions to the problems that customers and people are having with the product or service is hugely important.

“If you follow those five things, you're pretty well along on journey of moving from a mechanistic culture to one which is much more adaptive and responsive to customers wants and needs.”

 

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Further Reading:

• Find the full episode of this interview and the entire back catalogue of The Field Service Podcast @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts
• Read more about Leadership and strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about the impact of Covid-19 on Field Service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/en-gb/covid-19
• Connect with Kevin Green on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-green-221a7522
• Follow Kevin Green on Twitter @ twitter.com/kevingreenwnc
• Buy Competitive People Strategy @ Competitive People Strategy: How to Attract, Develop and Retain the Staff You Need for Business Success

In this highlight form the Field Service Podcast, Kevin Green, former CEO of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation and Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News focus on the potential upside of the crisis we've all faced together during the global lockdown as they ask if at the end of all this hardship we could in fact emerge stronger?

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Want to hear more head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts and look for Series Five, Episode One 'Kevin Green on Leadership, Strategy and the Economic Impact of Lockdown' for the full episode...

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The Galvanising Effect of Rapid Evolution at times of Crisis 

There is no doubt the pressure of global lockdowns has forced organisations to change. There simply wasn’t adoption for most businesses to ‘stay calm and carry-on’ as the popular British meme suggests.

Business survival as the world went on temporary hiatus was more in line with dynamic Darwinian concepts than steadfast stoicism. It was not the largest organisations that found themselves at safe enough distance from harm, just look at the aviation sector for evidence that the pandemic has taken its toll among industry heavyweights and minnows alike, it is those who were able to adapt the fastest.

Yet, dare we say it in the light of such a wide reaching tragedy that has touched the lives of almost everyone on the planet in some way shape and form, but there is equally an opportunity presented here for organisations that have the innate ability to adapt enclosed within their corporate DNA.

In fact, it is perhaps the responsibility of those organisations capable of doing so to thrive now as we plot a path back towards whatever it is that will be our ‘new-normal’. We need them to do so for the sake of kick-starting floundering economies. We need them to do so because this whole saga is in desperate need for a silver lining.

Green certainly sees that there are opportunities to establish more dynamic cultures within our organisations and that those who do so will flourish. However, those who fail to do so may face a future of extinction rather than evolution.

“The way most organisations change is when they're in crisis,” he explains.

 

"One of the great things about change is that if your backs are against the wall, it's easier to make big calls than if you're trying to change in an organisation in a more evolutionary, type of way, in a more incremental manner...”

 

“As we've seen in the recent health crisis, lots of organisations have made very quick decisions and changed at pace because they've had to, there was absolutely no choice, but what you find is most organisations don't change. When I was at the Royal Mail as HR director, we were losing a million and a half pounds a day. So we had to change, we had to change at pace. That galvanises people and they make choices that would have never been choices and decisions that wouldn't have been made in normal circumstances.

So, one of the great things about change is that if your backs are against the wall, it's easier to make big calls than if you're trying to change in an organisation in a more evolutionary, type of way, in a more incremental manner,” Green adds.

However, while the onset of Covid-19 has forced rapid change within many organisations, for those companies with a more rigid leadership structure, Green warns that evolving into a more dynamic organisation can take time, something some companies may find scarce.

“If you're a new leadership team and you've inherited an organisation which is very, very mechanistic and top down, then it [establishing a culture change] takes time. It is not an easy thing to change your culture. It is about involving people. It's about engaging people. It's about trying to manage people, but in a different way.

“It's about creating, but also some of it will be about dismantling systems and processes. You need to take apart ways of working, that have been in place for many years. Changing a culture is something that has to be deliberate, thoughtful, and well executed. It's not something you can just swap overnight and expect everyone to behave differently. In fact, if you do that, you’ll end up in chaos.”

What is certain though is even if your organisation leadership is based in a top-down, mechanistic style of approach – there has never been a more pressing time to address this and begin introducing more modern, dynamic approaches to leadership within you organisation then right now.

 

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Further Reading:

• Find the full episode of this interview and the entire back catalogue of The Field Service Podcast @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts
• Read more about Leadership and strategy @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/leadership-and-strategy
• Read more about the impact of Covid-19 on Field Service @ https://www.fieldservicenews.com/en-gb/covid-19
• Connect with Kevin Green on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-green-221a7522
• Follow Kevin Green on Twitter @ twitter.com/kevingreenwnc
• Buy Competitive People Strategy @ Competitive People Strategy: How to Attract, Develop and Retain the Staff You Need for Business Success

Kris Oldland, Editor-in-Chief, Field Service News talks to Ashok Khartham, CEO M-ize about why the challenges we are all facing in the fallout could see a drive towards field service companies embracing the gig-economy and how that could work

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Want to hear more? Head over to our podcast library @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts and look for Series Five, Episode Two 'Season Five, Episode Two: Ashok Khartham on Connected Customers Being the Missing Link to Fully Connected Field Service'

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Treat Gig workers like You do Your own field service engineers

There is one topic which is dominating all conversation at the moment. That is, of course, the current COVID-19 pandemic and how we plot our path back to full recovery. 

One of the suggestions that has been forward in a number of conversations around this topic is how the gig economy could play a pivotal role in that road to recovery.

At Field Service News, we have been talking a lot about the potential of the gig economy for some time before the pandemic took hold but now with many, many field service companies seeking to re-establish control and catch up on the thousands of lost service hours the tapping into the gig economy is becoming a very real prospect as to the only way many companies will be able to get through the sheer volume of capacity requirements they face. 

However, the big challenge is if you're tapping into that gig economy market and other forms of third party labour you are putting your customers in the hands of a workforce that will likely have a broad knowledge base now have a broad skill set.

This can be fine for a large majority of jobs, but what happens if the gig worker comes up against an issue that is more specific to your organisations assets that they simply couldn't be expected to resolve first-time out? 

 

"As we all know, the gig economy and independent contractor usage is growing..."

 

A second service call means increasing costs at a time when cash-flow is stretched to a breaking point already.

This potential increase in the use of the gig-worker in the field service workforce and the need for easy transmission of data and information that can assist in fault diagnosis and steps to resolution has really amplified the need for solutions that can deliver knowledge where and when it is needed. 

"As we all know, the gig economy and independent contractor usage is growing," commented Ahsok Khartam, CEO, M-ize on a recent episode of the Field Service Podcast describing a recent case study they had just published with Electrolux. 

"Initially, when they started deploying our knowledge management solution, they started with their authorised service technicians. However, one of the things they quickly found is they needed similar knowledge access for all their independent technicians that they are starting to use.

"Having that knowledge access has helped Electrolux as even though gig workers may not care as much about the productivity [of the parent company], providing knowledge management systems has still led to a better customer experience. If that product with their brand name is fixed faster than they are providing better customer experience and enabling third parties where they don't have access to they won't technicians offers a better availability of service an reduces the time it takes to resolve the issue."

Here Khartam makes an excellent point. Form an outside-in perspective we must remember the customer cares little if the engineer that turns up to resolve their problem is a third-party employee or part of your internal workforce. All they will remember is how quickly you were able to resolve their problem. 

Investing in the right tools to empower the gig-workers to do just that could be a very wise move right now.  

 

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Further Reading:

• Listen to the full podcast @ www.fieldservicenews.com/podcasts
• Read more about the gig economy in field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/gig-economy
• Read more about Digital Transformation @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/digital-transformation
• Read more about connected field service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/hs-search-results?term=connected+field+service
• Find out more about M-ize @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/all-about-mize
• Connect with Ashok Khartham on LinkedIn @ www.linkedin.com/in/ashokkartham/
• Follow M-ize on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/mizecom
• Buy Competitive People Strategy @ Competitive People Strategy: How to Attract, Develop and Retain the Staff You Need for Business Success