Last Mile Worker

Why do I want to change, who said anything was wrong with my stack of papers and sea of Excel files?   We solve problems, that is a key characteristic of any successful service organization, if it isn't broke why fix it?   Often, when discussing a transformation from paper or cobbled together systems to a cohesive digital approach, folks struggle with the gap between what they currently do and how digital tools can help.   You really need to look at where the pain points are in your organization and how these compare to your business objectives.   Consider writing down these points on the whiteboard in no particular order, spend a few days shuffling and consolidating into a prioritized list.   Once you have the "why" and the "what" identified, the old remaining step is "how".   Some of the most popular observations over the years have been; Slipping through the cracks :   you know, not the major muscle movements, instead those little i

Where have all the people gone?   Seems as though some carbon shaping anomaly stripped our workforce of skilled individuals. When you take into account service is not young workers "first choice", single digit unemployment, and a significant number of retiring workers, we have a trifecta of challenges facing our labor businesses.   Not to mention many of our workers seen to be progressively ratcheting up "over scale" pay.   We are between a rock and a hard place proclaims Overwhelmed Oscar, what should we do? Many may be comfortable with contingent motivators, those narrowly designed areas of focus for employees.   While focus is good, when used to motivate it inhibits the power of the right side of your brain.   If you are motivating service personnel, responsible for creatively solving problems, you may consider switching to intrinsic motivation.   Focusing on this practice is straightforward, it requires effort towards; autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Avid Andy begins to wonder if he may be schizophrenic.   Or could it be a sign of true genius when he can see a problem from all sides? Andy was reflecting on a service meeting that happened last week.   Conversation was around our ability to objectively measure things and make better decisions. At the center of almost any measurement environment are the fundamentals of math. To determine priority or influence, it seems logical when dealing with inanimate objects like sensors, assets, and sites in a portfolio to move towards "point-based systems". The real dilemma for Andy seemed to comes when we begin scoring humans and letting pre-determined algorithms establish an individuals path. Our service meeting quickly changed from tactical to philosophical discussions and one of the technicians, Pragmatic Paul, made mention of a black mirror program (Netflix) named "Nosedive".    In this futuristic episode, an individuals score dictates their behavior and those

Consistency [kənˈsistənsē] | the achievement of a level of performance that does not vary greatly in quality over time   It seems just like that itch which never seems to get scratched.   We know, with the highest certainty, that providing a consistent and reliable experience for our clients is paramount.   This idea of delivering consistent service was not new to Avid Andy, he and his team seemed to grapple with this year and year out.   Inconsistency in many ways can be directly correlated to inefficiency, both in the office and in the field. While you wouldn't think it, Overwhelmed Oscar is one hell of a weekend racer.   The winner is rarely the person achieving the highest top speed in the straightaway, instead the person which creates a rhythm and underlying confidence by executing the same each and every time.    So what is the difference between racing and business? Focus. When you are strapped behind the wheel the distractions are low and objectives are cle

The "social sphere" was blowing up this morning mentioning our WeHelpU service company.   When influential Irene heard the news she was ecstatic; "our efforts are finally paying off"! Irene began to sift through the myriad social channels, skimming the posts and tweets.   It did not take long for her feelings of jubilation to shift to absolute horror as the context of their newfound "viral" popularity had flooded the Internet.   Apparently a customer had started a thread of conversation regarding one of our field workers, for now let's call him dumb-a** Dan. Dan had been hired a couple of months ago and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. However with the new liberation in the state of California, Dan was observed by a customer toking away in the parking lot. Our customer's tweet read "my highly skilled field technician is in the parking lot getting high before working on my facility, wonder how this will turn out"? So it starte

The year is 2028 and the leadership team was gathering for our annual "forward - back" meeting; a key component of our culture reinforcing the commitment to trust and transparency. Technocrat Tom starts off by reflecting on the impact of our decision to transition to conditions-based service delivery, leveraging IoT and intelligent systems. Tom reflects back over the last decade and shares his thoughts: The fact is our customers have always trusted us, we have taken great efforts in building relationships and always doing the right thing.   Over the last decade, learning models leveraging the data which we facilitated by installing IoT devices, are shifting the "system smarts" from the service provider to the intelligence-based solutions (ironic).   We had to change the customer perception of us from being only the tuba player to the band leader, essentially anything they need to run their facility.   Here is how we transformed: Trusted service

Apparently a battle ensued last night between Influential Irene's hair and pillow as her golden locks now looked as if she had just stuck her finger in an electrical socket.   Business travel was not Irene's favorite; however, she understood how important it is to get out of the office.   A nice hot shower, that would get everything back on track.   Much to her dismay only cold water flowed from her shower nozzle.   Torn now between frustration and empathy, as all service companies know that electro-mechanical equipment fails.   Hotels highest profile items, hot water, power, and no bed bugs should be checked and double-checked.   Now the actions, or in this case lack thereof, will likely cost this organization immediate and long-term costs. As Irene made her way downstairs the roar of complaining guests filled the lobby.   How is it possible that this happened?   Conscientious technicians typically correct these errors during their testing or observing phases.   Her

The room was filled with conversations regarding how special each of our operations are in providing superior service to our clients. In the corner, trying to blend in with the furniture, reluctant Ruth was hearing every fourth word as her consistently negative attitude was impacting her comprehension.   Each participant, searching for that elusive silver bullet, which would allow their customers to see them as irreplaceable.   Ruth remembered that time when her father, skeptical Sam, asked that she conduct an experiment with him one fine afternoon. It was really quite straightforward, Sam placed a clear glass of water in front of Ruth and asked her to put her finger in the middle of the glass. Now the trick is, commented her father, when your finger leaves the water, and a hole remains, you are irreplaceable. Having just a couple of years in the service business, it was hard for Ruth to grasp what her father Sam was really telling her.   Ruth, a committed naysayer, was not s

The look on Oscar's face was as priceless as a kitten looking into a fishbowl.   Those jubilant feelings were evaporating quickly as overwhelmed Oscar began to consider his response to the customer simple statement of "you mean you are not always going to send Johnny to my site anymore?". Today, in many cases, the fact that a worker actually "owns" a customer is one of the primary reasons Oscar ended up with his nickname of overwhelmed. It is next to impossible to drive superior service performance to our client while balancing the customers favorite worker. We have known all along that this delicate balance of a preferred worker per jobsite is important to attract new workers and maintain long fruitful relationships. Why? No doubt a relationship with the customer is very important. Can you honestly say if you had the information; where the equipment was located, site nuances, access codes and ladder positions, would you continue this same ridiculous practi

Okay already, do I have to say it?   Are you really that insecure?   Avid Andy's mind began to flashback; jumping the safeties because you did not understand how to read a schematic, manually forcing the new-fangled VFD at 60hz since the "last system" never changed speed, blaming that new magnetic compressor for the lack of cooling in the building (due to its size) ... by the way where do I check the oil?   Each one of these, and there are countless other examples, have the same root issue:   humans.   You can see the frustration flood over Andy's face, very similar to that of Charlie Brown as he endured tireless teasing from Snoopy.   It seems convenient, especially as time causes our opinions to become increasingly cynical, to respond with "they just don't give a crap".   Reluctant Ruth, the epitome of cynicism,   shouts out, "possibly you should hold a mirror up to yourself, this issue has stood the test of time, it squarely lies on the shou

As influential Irene entered the dispatch department this hot July afternoon all that she heard was the tapping of keyboards.   The energy felt like a controlled, almost clinical environment.   It wasn't that many years ago when the sense of chaos, wrapped in genuine human concern for our clients, filled the room with a much different feeling.   Could it be that our ambitions to become more efficient, by leveraging technology has simply created a reason for us not to communicate verbally with one another?    Hasn't the idea all along been centered around our ability to spend more time with our customers? Making each and every one of them feel as if they are our most important client?   Certainly I'm not suggesting we go back to big chief tablets and number two pencils.   Yet, we need to reflect and strike a balance between digitization and delivery. By pure coincidence, avid Andy was composing a memo attempting to give his opinion, without trying to be dogmatic, o

Having endured another restless night, Oscar reaches for the alarm.    His mind wanders as he recalls the nightmare which seems to be top of mind, even as the sun peaks through the windows.    Their service company,   WeHelpU was in court defending their position regarding the data breach at the "TrustMe nuclear plant".    They,   like many other service providers, WeHelpU jumped on the IoT bandwagon a couple of years ago.   It didn't take long for Oscar to become overwhelmed, current situation aside, what about the thousands of our other customers? A couple of years ago, in 2018, we established   rules of engagement to prevent us from being in this situation, where did we fail? Air Gap | at first we were very disciplined to only install non-intrusive monitoring.   As our skills and knowledge broadened we started making exceptions.    Hey, we can save some capital if we just connect to the existing control system? Cellular | whi

As folks began to gather for our weekly Monday morning meeting, you could feel the tension in the room.   Last month we lost an unusually high number of customers and pull through service work.   Unfortunately, we have been slipping for the last few months.   Sitting across from me , Influential Irene looked out of sorts,   normally very upbeat, she instead looked quite perplexed.   Arguably we provide the most professional service around, maybe we are too good?   What if we just think we are fantastic, easy for confident service folks, and we are not that great.   Feeling himself slip into a black hole, overwhelmed Oscar decided to take a breath and wait to see what Andy had to say. Trying not to feel defeated, Avid Andy began to wonder which matters most to our clients, superior service performance OR the perception of superior service.   Knowing that he needed to address the team and get them back on track, Andy listed the attributes which seem to be at the intersection of

Avid Andy sits comfortably with fingers on his temples struggling to determine ways in which connected systems, combined with varied levels of AI, can make his service company money.   Seems the harder he concentrates on the topic, the more he churns out insipid, shallow ideas.   If his clients, and even Reluctant Ruth, believe that IoT is the future, why is it so damn hard to put numbers to these investments?   Influential Irene is quick to point out a few considerations, unfortunately they are all related to adding cost to PM's; a proposition which could negatively impact the lifeblood of the organization (annuity stream) and would likely be a push, or even a loss, to existing contracts.   Assuming that we could flip the majority of our contracts to full-risk, combined with relevant and actionable information from assets in the field, we may be able to reduce cost for the client and increase our margins.   Even Overwhelmed Oscar seemed to be in agreement with this strategy.  

Perched at the entrance to the small retail shop, influential Irene patiently waits for the opportunity to help a fashionista find the perfect combination of clothes and accessories.    Avid Andy, a seasoned HVAC tech smirks as he passes the shop on the way to his gate, amused by the idea of "clothing accessories" in general and the fact that Irene is outside the shop wearing a light parka in the middle of summer.   Everything about that brief slice in time points to curious conditions constraining the ability to look at things differently and deliver service in a unique manner.   A retail shop, with no external load and minor internal load (as those incandescent floods for product were changed to LEDs months ago) has the air conditioner at capacity with absolutely nobody around except poor Irene.   While not my area of focus, why isn't this place adopting a bricks and mortar based non-sales attendant model with tags on merchandise and digital retail accounts on the c

As overwhelmed Oscar sits in his office, surrounded by piles of overdue work order tickets to review and material orders to procure, his heart yearns to give the customer anything they want, yet the tools at his disposal make it difficult. On this relatively ordinary day Oscar receives a phone call from a marquee customer. This new customer has multiple locations and has asked for just three pieces of information every time a person visits their sites to perform service or maintenance. Oscar gathers his thoughts as he prepares to discuss this seemingly small challenge with reluctant Ruth, the dispatcher who has been with the organization for decades, Ruth can be a bit of a curmudgeon. Oscar does appreciate the inconvenience of gathering unexpected information both for the field worker as well as the back office.   A seemingly great example of ending up between a rock and a hard place. In a world of perfect harmony where all customers, work orders, and requests are exactly the

" I wonder if today will be different thought Influential Irene, praying that she would not be barraged with questions throughout the day.   Overwhelmed Oscar, only two weeks with the organization is filled with anxiety just knowing he can't remember everything he's learned.   How do I process payroll again he asks himself as he works quietly for hours hoping to hide his incompetency" .   If there was a mechanism, one which would point them in the right direction, to help them with every day "in the moment" questions.   Even if everything was static, new and tenured employees alike simply forget details, especially those tasks which are done infrequently.   The amount of time spent and frustration endured each and every minute of the working day is significant and often happens without any visibility.   Natural language processing and chat bot technologies are emerging as strong candidates to help us all address this life-long challenge of relevant

Are you familiar with the pigeon theory? It goes like this, a pigeon is standing on a rooftop and looks over her shoulder just to see a cat poised and ready to have a quick feather filled meal. The pigeon has occupied this roof so many times that she turns a blind eye to the impending danger.   Well, despite her confidence you can probably predict the conclusion. If not, I encourage you to read the history of Eastman Kodak, Blockbuster, as well as many other organizations that simply refused, were scared, or too arrogant to reinvent themselves.   They simply paused when they should have pivoted. Service organizations are ripe for change,   we have not fundamentally disrupted the way we deliver service for decades.   Digital transformation, and the myriad definitions which accompany this latest business trend, is not referring to your sophisticated use of Microsoft Excel.   Instead we find ourselves contemplating the appropriate use, application, and insights of data being col

Remember the encyclopedia Britannica, and the pivot when Wikepedia started to replace what we always knew as the truth?   Please don't get me started on the Internet, essentially for many service organizations; popular in just the last decade, somehow has wormed its way into us believing that everything we read on-line is fact. What about all that stuff crammed between our ears, do we discount all of our experience and know-how because the Internet told us so? The service industry is certainly doomed if we allow the corpus of knowledge to be developed and propagated by a small group of programmers residing in Silicon Valley .   H*** many of these folks couldn't tell the difference between a phillips and flat head screw driver. Consider action now to help future generations carry on our years of service quality and expertise.   The cost for you to get started on this journey is minimal, here are some thoughts: Start every meeting, office or field, asking attend

First, it's important to establish some definitions to be used within context of this discussion. Within the category of "things I need to take care of" I group actions into two buckets; reminders are those items which I estimate will take me less than 10 minutes to accomplish, tasks are associated to projects which have dependencies on other people and other tasks. By far the most dynamic of these two are reminders and when properly managed yield the most significant reduction in anxiety and have the greatest impact on personal productivity. Tool selection is critical and should have the following attributes and features; add reminder in less than 10 seconds edit reminder in less than 10 seconds journal or comments specific to reminder as many things evolve over time search for current and historical actions platform agnostic, conveniently passes information between desktop, tablet, mobile device operating system ag

Our ability to gain perspectives, which influence our decision process and accelerate customer value, is getting exponentially better with the passing of each day.   Your connected systems / IoT aspirations are visceral and supported by logic.   A few suggestions to help you wrap your head around getting started on your journey: Move the needle If you had to choose just a couple of business conditions, which when altered could impact your entire operation, what would those be?   The best way to accomplish this is not to think about what or how will gather this information, instead focus on why these are so important to your business. Most of the time these answers may be found stitched into the intuition of yourself and your teammates. Think big – start small We often get trapped within ourselves and only think about things which we know we can measure or explore. This new world of connected systems opens myriad opportunities to examine and leverage information in

Digital transformation has affected us all spanning; enterprises, small-medium businesses, and even our individual lives.   Locating available technologies does not seem to be the issue, instead our challenge remains relating digital tools to your business demands.   Hop scotching from one tool to another will frustrate users, burden you with siloed data, and erode your productivity.   So what is a poor guy (or gal) to do? Effective digital transformation leaders need become "quilt makers", those who have expertise in putting together the best in class and most relevant technologies producing the perfect techno-quilt.   The thread is spun from a keen understanding of components, along with their short and long term impact.   When the technologies are stitched together they produce a flexible and best in class solution.   For those technical folks:   containers and micro-services, with a large dose of domain knowledge, will be imperative.   Start your journey by allo

Can you really measure performance?   I think it is possible to measure performance, but stop thinking about the individual. Instead performance should be derived from the experience that you are delivering to your clients. Hey now, stop the presses, you mean that performance is not a smile sheet with a bunch of ratings on it that you fill out once a year so a person may receive their bonus? Certainly feel free to stick with that pencil whipping process that doesn't seem to achieve anything except; "congratulations on your "acceptable" performance this year, great job".   So what is it that makes this set of conditions so complex? It falls squarely on our ability to measure customer experience and our delivery of services in an objective and tangible manner. Talk about a heavy lift, we need to first listen to our clients and understand what really makes them excited, then we need to devise measurement environments which will allow us to quantify that e

What it must be like to be a utility in 2017.   Please do not let your angst toward utilities prevent you from reading this narrative, the business conditions which utilities are facing creates an opportunity for all service organizations. Amidst the significant change we are seeing in alternative energy, distributed energy resources (DER), and virtual power plants, a fundamental action remains on base load management and optimization.   While the utilities are trying to determine how to best pivot after years of monopolies and significant asset investments, service companies should be doubling down on ECM efforts.   Those of us already familiar with performing service in commercial and industrial markets will be in a good position when the time is right for us to enter into the emerging DER service vertical.   Storage technologies, and as important the inter-connecting control systems, are changing rapidly, providing fantastic innovation and ultimately reducing costs.   When you t