Global Field Service Leadership Lessons from 24 Years at Tetra Pak

Ryan (Host): Jean-Claude, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you with us today. I’m really excited. So I’m just going to jump straight into it. How we like to start these conversations, we really want to get an understanding of your professional career. So, you you spent 24 years at Tetra Pak, starting back in 1991. You moved through several roles from spare parts and field service management to senior technical service leadership.

Could you just walk us through that progression and how those early experiences sort of shaped the leader you became?

Jean-Claude: Yeah, I’ll do that. good afternoon, Ryan, by the way. Thank you for having me in the show. The beginning of my experience in Tetrapak, that was after my first job, actually, I had a first job doing development for cans, tin cans. And then I said it was time for me to move and I was interested to move into a more customer-fronting position. And I got this in Tetra-Pac, that was next to Paris, to move, we were supposed to move to east of France.

Become field service manager for the the eastern part of France. And for me that was great opportunity to join a different company. I didn’t know anything about Tetra Pak at that time to be honest. But dealing with customers and having my team of technician to support those customers was for me a great opportunity. So this is how it started, I mean just easily. And I discovered the service world and the customer support, which fit very well with who I am basically. I’m really a service minded person, whether it is privately or professionally. So that was a good fit. And then, know, it came naturally. After two years, East of France, I got a call, say, well, why don’t you come back to Paris? We want you to expand a bit your responsibility. I say, yeah, okay, let’s do that.

And then, well, what about spare parts? That came about a year later. said, yeah, spare parts exciting, let’s have a look. So that was really about taking opportunity when they were coming step by step. And I think the spare parts position was a trigger for me. Because at that time, led a big project.

We call it direct deliveries, where basically the aim was to close the inventory in France and have spare parts delivered directly from Sweden to final customer. With a lot of resistance, but also a lot of potential improvement from customer service perspective, but also from saving perspective. And this kind of big project, and that’s a learning for me, is giving you an international exposure. It’s not that you know only people in your country or in your area, but suddenly you have exposure.

So that was one. And actually at the end of this project, I told my boss, well, you know what? With this project, I’m out of work. So what’s the next step for me? I said, don’t worry, we’ll find something. And then I took the field service responsibility for all old France, which was another step, moving officers from one place to another.

Again, that was extended my leadership role and the responsibility also from Rizal perspective. And it came again naturally. There was nothing that was pushed. It all came naturally. And then a couple of years in this role, my boss knew that I wanted to… I was a candidate to go abroad, to move to another country, to experience something different. But there was one stage and that’s also part of the learning.

My boss was promoted to another role. And then I raised my hand, I said, well, I’m candidate to become technical service director, which was what my boss was doing. And this is where you believe, I didn’t get the job, but you score points because you raise your hand, people recognise you have the potential to do that, but it’s just a bit too early. So sometimes having a no, if you take it positively, has a good impact on your career.

But we can talk about it a bit later. And then after this whole, my new leader called me after a couple of years, said, well, you know what? Czech Republic, the MD in Czech Republic is looking for a technical service director. Would you be interested? I said, Czech Republic? Yeah, let’s do that. So we had a quick trip with my wife to make sure everything was OK. Even so, some people in my family told me, but are you crazy? You want to bring your kids to Czechoslovakia?

Well, it was Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia, it was over for a long, time. And then we moved there, we had a great time with the four kids. From professional perspective, was very exciting. The level of the field service engineers in Czech Republic is absolute, and Slovak Republic is amazing. Very, very strong people. And you learn, you implement some of the stuff you have learned in your previous job, and you implement new stuff, you try to adapt.

After the Republic, again, I ran a couple of projects with a regional impact in Europe. And then I was offered to move to South Africa. I said, yeah, South Africa, let’s do that. This time, I didn’t bring my wife to South Africa just to check the location. But that was great as well. We really had a good time. I discovered a new continent. was also in charge of West Africa and East Africa with offices in Nigeria, in Lagos and in Kenya in East Africa. So that was again a great experience, different work, but great. And then, Cole, well, Jesse, it’s time to come back to France. Technical Service Director is leaving, we need you to come back. So, okay, we’ll come back. lot of tears from the family because the stay in South Africa was short, but this is what you have to do.

And again, great time in France. was tough. That was probably the toughest time in my career from pressure perspective, expectation perspective, customer relationship. But this is where you learn. And then after four or five years, probably I say, well, it’s time for me to move. And then I moved to Italy. Kind of different whole, but with a global reach, really global. mean, covering the whole world. More from supply chain perspective, but with an interesting business on second hand.

And then at the end of the time in Italy, my contract was over. There was nothing planned. So I said, you know what? If there is nothing for now, I’ll go back to France and look for another job. And then this is another part of the story when I moved to China and built it. So it all came naturally. There was nothing that was for, there was no plan, just opportunities coming and choice you make when you have an offer, when you have an opportunity.

Ryan: I really appreciate the openness and honesty there as well. The thing that really stands out to me is obviously your experience in your international journey. So like you said, you’ve been across France, Central Europe and China at Seydel as well. You’d kind of briefly touched on adapting, but how did your approach need to change as you move between these locations? So what stayed consistent in the way you operated and what had to be completely adapted?

Jean-Claude: Well, I think it’s really a question of mindset. You must be humble. You are discovering a country, you are leading a team that know the country and customer much better than you do. So don’t come with, I mean, being sure that you will nail it, you know everything and you will fix it because it’s not gonna work. So really, when you arrive in a new country, you must be extremely humble, you listen.

Listen to your team, listen to your colleagues, listen to customers, try to understand the context. And there is also something we discuss often with my kids and some of my colleagues. When you join a new country, are always surprised by people’s reaction. And many people are then judging, but these guys are crazy. Why are they doing that? And instead of judging, if you start to understand.

Then that puts you really in the mood in the culture of the country because you will not change this country. And when you are gone, back home or to another country, they will not care about yourself anymore. So this is really a lot of humility and openness, curiosity, and definitely not judging, not judging, being trying to understand why people are doing differently and why it’s working in different way in different country. And that’s really the key for me.

Humility is absolutely key and curiosity, willingness to learn.

Ryan: Would you say that sort of surprised you? said so at Czech Republic how it was different, how things got down and just amazing, you know, and that surprised you when you first went out there?

Jean-Claude: Yeah, and this is, I think that’s a great example of understanding. We were very surprised. That was in 2000, quite a long time ago in Prague. And sometimes we were entering a shop to buy stuff and you had the feeling that you were disturbing the shop attendant. And if you think about it from the old communist time, people were not there to sell. They were just having a job from eight to five and then going back home.

So having a customer could have been kind of disturbing, oh, I have a customer now. So again, instead of complain, why are these guys acting like that? You say, well, okay, I understand. That’s probably part of the background. So that’s just an example of Czech Republic. But again, you are surprised in other ways is field service engineers in Czech Republic are really high engineering level. They’re not fixing problem, they’re solving.

And that was for me a big difference compared to, I mean, France had a lot of great technician, but the approach to problem solving was completely different, very high level. Maybe I can, we’ll talk about it maybe later during the day, during the discussion, but I have also some other example from Czech Republic. But this is a kind of change again, difference you need to accept, don’t fight, because it’s a lost fight.

But try to understand and act accordingly.

Ryan: Would you say you built some sort of practical playbook for landing in a new region and just improving performance, say, over the first 90 days?

Jean-Claude: Yeah, well, actually, I wrote such a playbook. I just thought about it. My MD in Czech Republic, he asked me after I took over, said, you know what, you should write a kind of, what do you do during your first 90 days when you enter a new role? And I did that document. I don’t know what it is now. I don’t have it in my file. I don’t think so.

Ryan: Did you publish it at all?

Jean-Claude: It was communicated in the company, that was just in the company, internal. And then it was shared with new technical service director, say, okay, this is kind of reference. It was basic one, not 100 pages. It was much, much smaller than that. yeah, this is, I wrote something, but again, I don’t have it anymore. Now, in the first 90 days, for me, the key is you need to build trust with your teams, with your colleagues and start with the customers. I don’t think you can make a huge change from a result perspective in the first 90 days, but you can screw up badly if you don’t build the trust with your team. So this is really the priority. Really listen, understand and your team must understand who you are, what you are expecting and where you want to go.

Making sure you will have their back whenever it’s needed. You will be always available for support. And if you manage to build this trust during the first 90 days, that will, unless you do something really bad, that will last during your all stay. So that’s really for me the priority. That’s about relationship first, not financial resulting issue. That for me doesn’t work.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s amazing. It would be really helpful if you could get hold of that practical playbook and share it with the world, I guess. Yeah. I’m also really intrigued to understand more about how you’ve measured performance and tracked operations. So there was a point, you were market support and logistics director at Tetra Pak.

Jean-Claude: I will try, I will try.

Ryan: You touched on earlier, you helped build a global second hand renovation equipment model. This really intrigued me, know, what did that teach you about getting more value from equipment and sort of what was the most overlooked lever for extending asset life?

Jean-Claude: So a bit of context, at Tetra Pak at that time, basically 40 to 50 % of the equipment were not sold but leased to customers. So there were equipment coming back and there was kind of bad habit either not to take care of this equipment that was staying in a warehouse for years and no one was taking care of it or doing a quick fix and giving it away to a new customer. While there is business to be done, this equipment have high value. So that’s a bit of context.

So we had equipment coming back and we didn’t know what to do in a structured way. Every country was doing something different. We were losing money. So it was not very efficient. really the project was to drive something that was professional from a second-hand equipment perspective. That’s the first one. The second is we like to tell ourselves that this is for sustainability. I don’t have any example that second-hand businesses run for sustainability.

This is run for business, to make money. But the key element for me is you make equipment affordable for new customers. Small customers that are dreaming or were dreaming of Tetra Pak equipment, they could not offer the new one. And suddenly you make a second-hand equipment from Tetra Pak affordable for them. And that is building very strong customer loyalty.

Again, you have access to all the Tetra Pak world, is fantastic for a customer, which would not be possible with a brand new equipment. Now, it’s not coming without complexity, because you have equipment coming back and you have customer needs. And if you have a wide portfolio with many configuration or specification, it’s very difficult to match.

What you have in stock and what the customer needs. So which is creating complexity, which is creating cost and in some cases we have to recognize we cannot make it profitable. So we have to be careful, we have to manage properly and when you rent equipment and we were not very good at that time doing that, you must make sure that the equipment is maintained and operated properly. Because we were receiving equipment back from customers which they were in terrible condition.

And sometimes it was not even worth looking at remanufacturing because it was just too costly. It be the cost of a new equipment. But that was a good business. Again, not for sustainability, but getting new customers that cannot afford a new piece of equipment or customer wanted to test a new product, a new package size, and then you can use an equipment you have in stock.

There is always opportunity in second hand, which is very interesting that was like more than 20 years ago, a bit less than 20 years ago. But now if you look at all manufacturers, even in a B2C, you can find second hand equipment for everything. is buying iPhone? mean, many people are buying iPhone second hand because it’s much cheaper than, and they have access to iPhone. This is exactly the same logic.

Ryan: On average, what would be the lifespan of this second hand equipment?

Jean-Claude: Typically Tetra Pak machines at that time were lasting 20-25 years. They were very strong, well maintained, they could last that long. But machines that we were selling at second hand, that was probably after 5-10 years of use, sometimes a bit less, if the customer was not successful with his machine, then you had another 20 years. But of course,

It depends very much on how well it is maintained and operated in the coming years. And of course, it depends very much on the design of the equipment. My last job, was in the food service business with equipment that are much, much cheaper, not the same level of technology. The life, I mean, we talking about eight, maybe eight, nine years, not more than that at Tetra Pak that can last with, I mean 25, 30 years, absolutely no problem if they’re well maintained. So it depends on the business you are in, where some equipment may last longer than others.

Yes, yes, yes. But the design as well, actually. We talk a lot about design for cost, design for manufacturing, design for service, and there is also design for remanufacturing, which is not the case. Even design for service, it’s reality in very few companies. So design for remanufacturing is not in, maybe a few companies, but not many. But you can plan that, the ability to remanufacture in a cost-efficient way.

If it’s included right at the beginning during the design phase.

Ryan: One thing I always like to discuss is how service leaders measure success, what KPIs they’re setting. I just want to understand which KPI or success metric, whatever you want to use, do you think is most overrated in service? And on the flip side, which one is most underused as well?

Jean-Claude: Okay, so I would say probably depends very much on the maturity of your organisation. My first job as field service manager in Tetra Pak, at that time the question we were asking ourselves is, should we really invoice service? So we’re invoicing spare parts, but service really should we invoice? So, and we say, yes, we must invoice service. We are bringing value to customers.

And there were basically two KPI that I remember at that time was utilisation rate, how well are you utilising your field service engineers? And the second was invoicing rate, how much of the hours spent at customer are invoiced actually to the customer. That was really at the beginning. This is why I say level of maturity is very important. And I believe even today, there’s many companies that are not invoicing all the service to customers.

Some are very advanced, some are kind of in between, and some are not much advanced from invoicing perspective. So this is a bit of history. Now today, I would say there are two types of KPI. One that is very popular is first time fix. But I think for me, something that is more important is time to restore or time to fix. And I will illustrate.

If you think about first time fix, you can wait two or three days before sending someone on site because you want the top expert to be there and make sure you fix it first. There is another option. And so this is your measure. Okay, first time fix, it’s okay, but the customer has been waiting.

Again, it’s just to illustrate my way of thinking. The other option is well I have a technician available it may not be the first the best one that will solve for sure but I will send it on site and I have a very strong support I can use remote support to help this guy and I know he will sort it out and then and maybe I will have to send a second guy and that it’s not good because it’s cost but I know it will be solved quicker than if I wait for the right guy to be to be on site so I would rather go for time to fix or time to restore rather than first time fix. Now, there is something that we miss. All these KPI are still very much internally driven. Of course, time to restore is good for customer, but I think we miss a bit of KPI that are really customer-oriented. For example, we talk about OE, we talk about

TCO, when you have a maintenance contract with the customers, how much do you improve the OEE of this customer over the length of this contract? How much are you reducing the TCO for this customer? This is something that for me are more relevant and much more difficult to measure most probably, but now with the data we have, that’s something we can do and that’s something that we should use more than internal KPI. Of course, we need to report internally.

But service is about bringing value. So let’s make sure we create value, we bring value to the customer. Measuring again, two example, OEE or TCO when we can measure it. That for me is more important.

Ryan: And we will touch on this later, the OEE programmes that you were a part of. How did you go about measuring that just while we on it?

Jean-Claude: Well, actually at Tetrapak, same for CIDEL, we had on board software or computer basically that was measuring the line efficiency. Some customers have extended more sophisticated equipment, but we had the ability to measure performance from our equipment. And actually back in 20, that was probably around 2009, 2010, we had already a basic system onboard on our filling machines. And I remember for one customer, we were able to extract the data overnight and on Monday morning, the production manager had the line efficiency of the last 24 hours with a key issue that had been found, the main issue, the main stop on the line. So luckily, we had this kind of system that allowed us to monitor very precisely the performance.

Ryan: Yeah, excellent. Another thing, so you’ve led a lot of, you know, some large service teams across the board at Tetra Pak, SIDL, Marmon, Link. What leadership behaviors make the biggest difference to performance when you’re looking at field engineers, technical support, service operations?

Jean-Claude: Well, I will get back to trust.

I would say trust is an absolute necessity. If your team doesn’t trust you, then you can do whatever you want. It’s gone. Better look for another job and then for the company to look for another leader. the team must make sure that you will have their back. that’s kind of absolute whatever is happening. If there is someone to be blamed, you are the one to be blamed.

And if there is some reward, that’s for your team, not for yourself. So don’t fight for yourself, fight for your team, for the company. that would be the first one. And then of course, it’s empowerment. Give more responsibility. that’s something I delegate to your team. that was key learning for me is you delegate the power, you never delegate the responsibility. So you delegate the power, your team has the power to decide, but you remain responsible of whatever is happening. So trust, empowerment, delegation, and then you need to be present. Even in a senior role, leave your office from time to time, as often as you can, be on the field, spend time with your field service engineers, go for lunch or dinner with them.

Just make sure they know who you are, you care about themself. So it’s really, I don’t think there is anything magic. And maybe from one country to another, there may be different needs, but that’s for me really the foundation.

Ryan: Obviously it can be very demanding for these engineers in the field. We’ve had a lot of people talking about you expect them to work till they burn out, know. In your experience, what are the most effective ways to improve that end customer experience without pushing field engineers to burn out?

Jean-Claude: Yeah, that reminds me that I often said to my field service engineer, you know what, I don’t envy you. I would never work as you do, living Monday morning and back home on Friday evening. That’s not for me. I would not do your job, which has kind of admiration for, strong reward for what they are doing. Now, there is not one field service.

You have some people working in field service and they have to do several jobs every day. Then you have some guys doing one job a day, then one job a week, and then a job that can last several weeks. So the need from these guys are very different. The guy doing several jobs a day is probably at home every evening. Of course that’s stressful because it’s a short period of time and you need to do a lot. And the guy who is, I mean, three weeks, six weeks out of home, because traveling on the other part of the world, that’s a completely different level.

And then from one field service engineer to another one, it’s completely different. The need is completely different. So again, I don’t think there is anything magic. It’s about understanding people, understanding needs. And you know, some of the guys after two weeks, you better send him back home because then something will go wrong. And some guys, must monitor very precisely the hours they are doing.

Some are so much committed to the customer that they will forget that they need to rest, they need to sleep, because then after they will take the car to go back home. So you need to be extremely careful in the way they are behaving. So again, it’s very individual. I don’t think there is something that works for everyone, but really a mix of attitude and behavior that you need to adapt to your field service engineers. And you need to, as at the end I was not managing directly field service engineers, but through field service managers, you need to make it very clear with your field service manager that they are responsible for the well-being of the technician.

And sometimes you need also to protect them from customers, because customer may ask, no, I’m sorry, the machine is not up, you don’t leave the office, you don’t leave the plant. And then you have to pick up your phone and say, I’m sorry. The guy is exhausted, he needs to rest, he will come back tomorrow. So again, he’s really caring. If you care about your team, they know you will have their back, they trust you, then that makes things much, much easier. And sometimes you have to be tough as well and say, I’m sorry, you need to stay another day because this is not fixed.

If you need support, will provide you support, but I need you to stay another day. So it’s not about being always nice. Someone told me one day, if you want to be nice with people, you should sell ice cream. And we are not in this kind of business. So yeah, sometimes you have to be tough as well. Tough with customers, sometimes tough with your team when something is not OK.

Ryan: Yeah, and that caring and understanding must go a long way to team retention as well. So say for example, if there’s a field service manager or a leader who is losing good engineers, what would you look at changing first? Would it be, you know, pay, workload, the tools, the training they get in?

Jean-Claude: So I’ve been very lucky in Tetrapak, people were extremely loyal. We used to say that they have a blue blood because of the, sorry, they have like injection of Tetrapak in their blood. So they love the company and they were very few leaving the company. Now, if you have good engineers leaving your company, there is definitely something wrong. It’s probably not only one thing.

Unless, you are completely out of market. Salary is usually a short-term motivation. You get an increase, you are happy. One month later, you forget about the increase. So it’s more about recognition. That’s a story from a long time ago. That changed a lot. Again, my first years in Tetra Pak, when we were field service engineers on customer side, and then there were sales team visiting the same customer, it was very seldom that they went to the workshop and say hello to the technician. That was two completely different worlds.

That has changed a lot. Now people are really equal. We talk to each other. It’s completely different. But that’s tough one. mean, from motivation perspective, they don’t feel the recognition. So again, if you have good people leaving the company, there is something wrong and not only one. Probably salary is one, recognition maybe another one. Development, opportunity to do something different are definitely the key ones for me. But again, if good people are leaving, there is something in your company that is not working. Sometimes it can be culture of the company. Manager is micromanaging, which is very hard for a field service engineer. If they are a field service engineer, it’s because they don’t want to their boss on their back every day. So they must feel that they really have the freedom, the autonomy.

To do the job, not to have someone on their back. So again, there is not one magic bullet, but a number of actions, and you really need to understand what’s going on. In many cases, I don’t know about your example, but HR or managers are doing an exit interview that is going through what’s going on, why are you leaving? And then you can probably, if you dig a bit deeper, if people are really honest, you can identify a few reasons why people are leaving and then make sure you fix it. But there is not one answer. Again, it depends very much on the context. And I will give you an example that context is the business context, the company context, but can be country. Some countries, mean, US was an example a few years back. If a guy next door was offering a few bucks more per hour, the technician were leaving.

iI’s just about the money. But then that can change, I mean, six months later. Some other countries, it’s more about the wellbeing in the company that is more important than others. yeah, again, not one magic bullet, depending on the context.

Ryan: Yeah, a bit of a cultural difference there as well. Yeah, definitely. One thing I’m really interested in understanding is your experience using different tools and technologies. So for instance, as Vice President of Marmon Link, you improved service levels through automation. What exactly did that look like? And I’m interested to know what areas saw the quickest operational wins after being automated.

Jean-Claude: So, again, a bit of context about Marmon Food Service Technology. Marmon Food Service Technology is a company that is providing commercial kitchen equipment. If you go to a quick-serve restaurant, Burger King, McDonald’s, for sure there will be equipment from Marmon Food Service Technology that is preparing your burger, your drink, whatever it is. And Marmon is selling not directly to customers, but through distributors.

And then when I joined Marmon, that was about one year after the factory moved and the distribution, the parts distribution center in Europe moved from Germany to Czech Republic. So when I joined, the basics were not all in place. So this is where I really had to focus on. And then the customer focus was in my opinion, not where it should be. So either from customer service, from spare parts distribution.

Spare parts management, there was a lot to be done. Now, if you want to improve the situation, you need to understand what is customer expectation. When I was in my previous hall, that was about speed of delivery, service level. Customer wanted spare parts, 98 % service level within 24 hours. When you work through distributors, it’s a different ballgame because they have their own stock.

So it’s more about being sure they have 98 % or 100 % within a week or two weeks and that’s good enough. So if you don’t do that, you may aim for a target that will not fit your customer needs and then you will not get the result you want. And then you go step by step. Better inventory management, better forecasting for the customer service is automatic invoicing.

All the reports you can get also from your activity. by the way, the feedback you get from customers. it’s, yeah, listen to your customer, understand what they really need. And sometimes they don’t know what they need, which is also interesting when you ask some customers, how are you evaluating our performance? We don’t really, but you are not bad. You are not the best, but you are not bad. So when you are clear about the expectation, then you can build the tools or sometimes not big tools, just basic stuff like automatic invoicing. For whatever reason, some people believe invoicing could not be done automatically from SAP and of course it is. So again, understand where you are, what is the expectation and then make sure you can improve step by step. But again, it depends very much on what your customer needs. And of course the capacity of your company, what you can do and not do.

Ryan: Yeah, yeah and that’s a big part of the digital transformation that you’ve led as well. So what sort of tech do you feel is most impactful for companies that are looking to you know, influence their own digital transformation strategy today because it’s quite a buzzword at the minute of infield service operations. So people could be looking at mobile apps, IoT sensors, AI, you know, what do you feel is the most impactful today?

Jean-Claude: Again, that will depend very much on the level of maturity. There is some… I don’t have again an answer, I’m still thinking about it. I will say a word about AI, but I will start with something else. Remote support, remote video assistance. We launched it with CIDEL in 2017. And that was fantastic. That was fantastic for discussion in the C-suite, in the boardroom.

For three years, nothing happened. There was no drive from customers, neither push from us to make it happen. And then COVID came. And then from Friday evening to Monday morning, everybody was asking for remote support. Suddenly, the cybersecurity issue were not an issue anymore. We need support. We need you to be able to look at our equipment remotely. And that was same for training.

Remote training was not really in the mood before COVID. Now, if you look at companies, what is the proportion of training that is done remotely or through webinar? It’s probably 90%. Only some high-level leadership training or high-level, mean, procurement, technical training is done face-to-face. The rest is all remote. So this is, for me, the first step of the technology.

Now remote support is still not so much implemented because people tend to go back to what they used to do. They like to see people, they like to see a technician on site because there is other benefit that just fixes the problem. It’s so a bit of coaching, a bit of training on the technician, a bit of advice on the equipment. But we don’t use the technology and the barriers are not only from customer perspective but very often internal barriers.

This is general. Now, AI. There are many opportunities to improve what we are doing today in all service organisations, but we should stop talking about AI. AI is a tool that will help us be even better. But first, you need to identify your pain point. Where are you facing? What’s your issue now? What do you need to deliver better service to your customer, to bring more value, to make it easier for your team?

And then if you start that way, then you will find that there are some tools, even stuff very basic, where AI can make it even stronger. But don’t start with, what do I do with AI? This is a wrong question. The question is, what do I need? Where am I weak? Where am I good at? I need to improve and what is it that I need? I mean, of course, one of the first ones will be the chatbot probably that you can all do. Now, is it really what your customer wants?

Maybe yes, maybe not. So you need to be careful that before investing in anything that you’re really addressing the customer need. And never forget that also if you use this kind of new tool supported by AI that you have to look at the business part. Or am I going to invoice or to charge for those services? Because investment in tools are extremely high. That’s a lot of money for which we struggle to find a good return on investment for the time being. So if you don’t include the business dimension in the implementation of new tools, then you may face a problem. You will never get the green light to invest in a significant amount of money. So again, depends very much on where you are in terms of maturity and what are your pain points. What way you do not fulfill your customer expectation or customer needs.

Ryan: Really insightful there about the use of AI as well. I spoke to Sandy Laird who’s at RRC companies and she was talking about the use of robots and AI to fix solar farms, maintenance parts of solar farms. And she said, it’s good, they can just see it and fix it, but they’re not understanding the fix. They’re not understanding the solution, and that’s the trouble. it can do something for you straight away, but without anyone really understanding what it’s about, it can lead to quite a drop in efficiency and almost laziness from that side.

Jean-Claude: Yeah, absolutely. And it’s not an answer to everything. mean, in some cases, for engineers working in very difficult environment, they will not be able to have access to their phone, to wherever it is, because it’s just not possible in where they are working. So again, make sure you invest where it really makes sense to invest, not to be like all the other companies. It may not work.

Ryan: Okay Jean-Claude, we’d to save the final few questions for sharing your insights, advice, best practices with the listeners. So if a service manager wants better results in the first 90 days, what are your top three practical moves here? I feel like we’ve kind of touched on the understanding part already. I wanted to, there’s a few more practical steps we can take here.

Jean-Claude: Well, if it’s the question is for a field service manager that has been in place for several years, asking him to improve in 90 days, I don’t think that’s gonna work. I mean, unless he’s not the right guy at the right location, because again, there is no magic bullet. Again, if you have not improved for two or three years,

Why would you improve suddenly in 90 days? Unless you miss something very serious. Or you make a coup. You say, okay, this is a product I can sell to one customer. That’s good business, good revenue, good margin, but then you will never sell it again. So it’s going to be short term. So I don’t believe that someone in place, 90 days, a miracle will happen. It will not.

And now if it’s a guy taking a job, 90 days, I would not expect this person to improve the financial result. He may improve considerably the atmosphere, the dedication, the engagement of his team and the recognition by customers, which will lead to an improvement. But again, the beginning is not about making your 90 days is not about making your P &L right or better. It’s about making sure that you understand in which business you are in.

People know who you are or you want to work, they trust you and then you can move forward. But again, I’m not really answering your question. So again, relationship is the first one. And then again, if you talk financial performance, I mentioned P &L, but you must have a P &L during the first 90 days. mean, if you want to drive your business, if you don’t have a P &L, then you have a problem because you don’t know what to drive. So that would be probably the second one.

You may have to review your KPIs, are they really customer-oriented, did anything you to change, do you have any trend in the history, but that would be for me, it’s hard to do that in the first 90 days. 90 days if you want to meet people, your team, your colleagues, again, finance team, marketing, sales, supply chain of your company, and then customers, 90 days will fly very, very quickly. So I don’t think you’ll have much time to do. Anything significant otherwise. But after 90 days, yes, your plan should be ready.

Ryan: Finally, for engineers looking to progress into more managerial leadership roles, what skills or habits should they be building now so they can become high trust leaders later on?

Jean-Claude: Okay, so. I’m not a fan of career paths. For me, it’s more like HR ticking a box. And they are very theoretical. mean, they work in some ways, but they are very, very theoretical. I think for field service engineers, there are plenty of opportunities. If he wants to move to manager role, to sales, to project management, become an expert, they can do all of that. But they can also stay field service engineer for their whole life. I mean, some people like it.

And there is nothing else they want to do. So it’s okay if you don’t want to be anything else than a field service engineer. It’s absolutely perfect. Company loves it and they need it. We need people that will keep on doing their job, getting better every day, but still doing field service engineers. Now, if you want to move to a higher position, you will have to make choice. You will have to, and sometimes take bold decisions.

When you see opportunities, when you see possibilities, you have some time, raise your hand, hey, this is a job I like to take. And take the discussion with your manager, take the discussion with the director, whoever, with HR, but you have to raise your hand. Do not wait for the company to tell you what you can do. You have to take your destiny in your own hands because company will not do it for you.

The company will support and I have been extremely lucky to work with companies like Tetrapak and CIDL who are really investing massively in people development, whether it is leadership, technical, whatever it is. But again, if I hadn’t made some decision at some stages, I would not be in this position today. So it’s really, mean, your future is in your hand. Take the decision, take opportunity, say yes sometimes, say no, but you should be very clear.

And then maybe I would say a word, because we mentioned the international movement in the beginning, it works for certain people, it doesn’t work for others. So I don’t think it should be like an example, because it works for me and my family. But some people, don’t want to travel. They want to stay where they were born, where they grew up, and where they live, because it’s fine, and it’s absolutely perfect to do that.

Moving around, it’s coming also with some downside and you lose track of your family, not your direct family, wife or partner and kids that you stay very close. But the rest of your family is much more distant. You lose friends, you get new ones, but it’s different life. So it’s not all fantastic as 60, it’s different. I love it. I would not do anything different, but it may fit to some people and some others. So again, it’s back to make your choice, be clear about what you want to do.

And by the way, something I didn’t mention, know yourself. You should know who you are, what you are good at, what you are not good at, what you like to do, and what you don’t like to do. And that should drive, and this is something that is coming step by step and will drive your development. And if you have a chance in your company to have someone that can mentor you, that will also help you to guide you into various options. And I mean, opening your mind to a different world or wider world than the one you may see today. But again, it’s really about you take your destiny in your hands. That’s for you to decide. And again, take decision. No one will take for you.

Ryan: Amazing, so insightful. Thank you so much, Jean-Claude. It’s been amazing having you on today and I’ve really enjoyed this chat. You’ve shared so much insight, so much real world lessons as well behind service growth, performance improvement, and obviously leading teams across different regions. It’s been really insightful, thank you. To those listening, I hope this episode gave you a few ideas you can take back to your operation, whether you’re managing engineers, running support, or owning service performance. Yeah, so thank you all for listening. Jean-Claude, thank you again.

Jean-Claude: Thanks for having me.