Episode 278

In a session from Future of Field Service Live in Cologne, Germany, host Sarah Nicastro welcomes back Daniel Trabel, Director of Field Service EMEA at Thermo Fisher Scientific, to discuss how critical a company’s talent strategy is to service today and why it demands creativity and a willingness to break free of the status quo to be successful.

Daniel is a passionate and visionary leader with a strong track record in clinical diagnostics, life sciences, medical devices, and biotechnology. Before joining Thermo Fisher Scientific, he was a Service Manager at Waters Corporation in Germany South, served as a Service Engineer at Cochlear, and held various key positions at Bio-Rad Laboratories.

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The Show Notes

Daniel - 00:00:00: I think what is also beneficial and probably is not seen as the first thing, typically the traditional engineers, they go to the instrument and fix the instrument and they think they're the smart and the master engineer. But there is more. I'm always trying to say that to my teams that you don't need to fix the instrument, you need to fix the customer. But around the instrument, there's a lot of more things. So you need to have this conversation with the customer. You need to make sure that at the end, the customer is happy and I think there is a part of soft skills that women have more than men.

Sarah - 00:00:38:

Hello, welcome to the Unscripted Podcast, where you'll find discussions on what matters most in service, leadership, and business transformation. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. Let's jump in. I'm going to welcome my friend Daniel from Thermo Fisher Scientific to join us. We can sit.

Daniel - 00:00:55:

Yep.

Sarah - 00:00:55:

And so the topic of talent already came up in both sessions this morning. I knew it would. It's one of the most common challenges and most discussed topics. And so Daniel and I are going to talk about modernizing the field service talent approach to drive greater diversity and greater impact. So before we get into it, tell everyone a little bit more about yourself, your background, your role, anything you would like to share.

Daniel - 00:01:28:

Yeah. Hello, my name is Daniel Trebel. I'm part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, leading the field service organization in EMEA for the division instruments and enterprise services. My background, I started as an engineer a couple of years ago at electronics, and then I went over biomedical engineering into management because I figured out I was not the best engineer. I'm just joking, but I wasn't willing to work on my weaknesses this is not the end. I went into management roles and then five years within Thermo Fisher Scientific. For those who don't know the company, Thermo Fisher is the market leader in medical equipment and laboratory equipment things. So basically, we say we deliver to our customers everything for the lab, except the lab. So basically, a one-stop shop, 120,000 people worldwide, 44 billion of revenue. So it's a relatively big company.

Sarah - 00:02:18:

Pretty small company.

Daniel - 00:02:19:

Yeah, pretty small. Yeah. I'm living here not too far away, three hours drive in Hanover. I have twin girls, so that's also why this topic is so important for me, because at the end, I don't want to have them just pretty. They also should like to be strong and empowered personalities. And that's why I'm also pretty, let's say, enthusiastic about that topic we are speaking about today. Thermo Fisher®, in principle, the service organization, we have a division, a service division in the company. It's not the only service organization. There are some other divisions where service is embedded in the division and currently, we have the biggest growth rates in the company. Exactly to your point, we are over-pacing the instrument business massively, double digit every year. And that's also part of the strip for the next couple of years. And that's why it's so important to speak about this topic today.

Sarah - 00:03:07:

Yeah. So just out of curiosity, that consolidation of service into one division, I'm sure is partially to fully leverage the opportunity that service represents. But is it also, as I mentioned this morning, eliminating any silos from the customer journey? So making sure that the approach is holistic.

Daniel - 00:03:26:

Yeah, indeed. As a customer, you could have instruments from one division, could have instruments from another division, and always need to call different phone numbers. You have a different process behind, and it's so complex even for us to understand the company. So how can we ask our customers to understand how we work? So that's why we want to harmonize this. And at the end, also to look into synergies to find a better way to have the same tools, to have the same processes, and at the end, also the same seamless customer experience.

Sarah - 00:03:52:

Yeah. I did a podcast a while back with a gentleman from Dell, and someone told me that this analogy wouldn't translate in Europe, but I found that it has. So we'll see what you all think. So at Dell, the process that he has led is pretty much what you're talking about. So to consolidate the service function, but also to break down any silos that existed. Because as I mentioned earlier, what they were finding is that they would have a specific function that was really strong, another that was weak, another that was in between. And the overall customer experience was lacking despite them excelling in certain areas. So they really wanted to, like you said, bring that harmony. And the way the analogy he used is we need to focus on winning rings, not trophies. Because at least in American sports, if you have like a most valuable player of a game, they get a big trophy. They're winning because they were the most important player in the game where if you have a team that wins a championship, so the Super Bowl, that's football. I wasn't saying that to you. I was actually saying it to myself because I'm reminding myself. Or the World Series, baseball. When a team wins those, they all get a ring. So his idea is we need to be thinking about service as one big team. We need to be approaching it as one big team. And we need to be celebrating wins when we've won across the board, not when one function or one player has done an outstanding job. And I really like that analogy. Has nothing to do with our session, but here we are. Okay. So we talked this morning in both sessions, talent came up. But I want to get your take on what has changed and therefore what needs to change in organizations' approaches. And we're going to get into some of the specifics of what you've done, but just what's driving this? What do we need to respond to?

Daniel - 00:05:47:

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things changed. The 63 BC point, that's definitely something which also applies to service and to the talent market, because it looks like the attrition rate went up during or after COVID. People, because of the situation, they're all vulnerable situation at home, the private life. And they think about, I mean, there are struggle with many things. And then sometimes this is a catalyst later at the end to make a decision to change the job. And that is a problem for every organization. And that on top of the change of the generation, of generations that has a complete different motivators, different expectations from a job versus an aging population, especially in service. And let's say that the risk of losing all the experience into retirement, that all makes this so critical and complex to, let's say, drive into the future. And ensure that you have a stable and solid and working well population in your service organization.

Sarah - 00:06:37:

Yeah. Okay. So there's that talent dynamic. Now, what I also want to talk about before we get into what you've done is the need or really a significant opportunity to increase diversity in how would you describe the benefit of diversity and its importance?

Daniel - 00:06:55:

Yeah, I think there are studies that diverse teams have a higher throughput. They are more innovative because they don't think all the same. And I think Einstein said that already ages ago, that an evening where everybody has the same meaning is a lost evening. And that applies also to a setup of a team. I did that already in the past, tried to bring different personalities together just to have this exchange, this discussion culture. And I think you also need to have that in your service teams because you look and approach a problem from different angles and if you don't do that, you probably don't come to the solution quick enough. And this, in my eyes, is a big benefit.

Sarah - 00:07:29:

Yeah. I'm going to generalize for a moment, but there's a couple of things that I see as common related to what we just talked about. When it comes to the talent landscape, I see a lot of companies who exert a lot of energy complaining about it and not necessarily doing anything differently to address it. I don't know if that's because they don't know what to do and they feel stuck or if it's because they hope if they wait or complain long enough, it will somehow fix itself. And then from a diversity perspective, there's a good amount of organizations that I think know diversity is important. So they make sure that they're saying the right things and telling the right story related to their efforts, but they don't necessarily believe in it. And so they're either not achieving real results, or they may be hitting targets that have been set for them related to diversity, but not focusing at all on actual inclusion and leveraging the benefits of having that diverse mindset, skill set, approach, etc. So you've taken both of those challenges, looked at the opportunity within them, and use that to really get creative and do some things differently to yield some very positive results. So can you give everyone kind of an overview of what that's looked like. And then we'll dig into some of those specific points.

Daniel - 00:08:54:

Yeah. So, I mean, at the end, first of all, we identified we have a problem. And I'm not the only one. I'm sure almost everybody here can echo. So we thought we need to make something different. We need to find a way to attract a pool of candidates which are not our typical part of the service team. And it turned out relatively quickly that the silence is around female in service. And there is also a big opportunity because there is many women which are not thinking about service or probably not understand what service is about. And the other side of the metal, maybe fear that they are in an environment where they are male-dominated or the requirements are so high that they can't match it. And the difference between women and men is men tend to apply on everything which at least gives you 50% of the requirements confirmation. While women typically look if they meet it 100% or they can even give something more before they apply to a position. And that's because of it's little small things but makes a difference. So that was the initial thought on that. And we really tried to understand, okay, how we can start the process of attract women. And we figured out relatively quickly that it starts with the job ad. The job ad typically was designed for, we searched for field service engineer. So pretty already male-dominated the words. And all the requirements we want to see. 20 years of experience, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. So it's something which doesn't apply for, I would say, 80% of the people you hire at the end. But it really shrinks your possible pool of talents and applicants significantly from the very beginning. So we thought of how we change this one into a more, I would say, low level, but also more open in terms of the language. So that was the point we started with.

Sarah - 00:10:37:

Can I just ask, who has reviewed and updated those job postings within the last 6 to 12 months or more recently? It's interesting when you start really reflecting on, again, goes back to storytelling in a way. Like, we know what all of this means. We know why we're using particular language or why we're pulling out particular skills. But if someone who doesn't know our industry, our company, that could potentially be a good fit, we're reading this, what would they think? Would they identify with any of this? Would they see themselves as a potential candidate? It's important to really start asking some of those questions and really digging into that and thinking, right? Because then that brings you to what we're going to talk about next, which is, okay, so we have all of these requirements, which are real, which have just been in this job posting for 15 years that maybe aren't even needed, but we've just kept them there because they've been there. And how could we start thinking about recreating, redefining things in a way that we can have some of this change? So you started with reflecting on the requirements, the wording, and thinking as a group. There was different folks involved in that process, really reflecting on how would this be perceived? Who are we maybe leaving out before we even have... That's the point is, before you've even had an opportunity to assess whether you think they could add value to the organization. If they're reading it and dismiss it, you don't even have an opportunity to determine if they could be a fit. So as you were doing that, and as you were looking at the wording and what you might need to change to attract a broader pool of candidates, how did that lead you then to also think about how you needed to redefine the roles internally to create what you felt would be a job posting that had a broader reach?

Daniel - 00:12:27:

Yeah, so first of all, go back to the initial part. The team we put together to identify the changes of the job ads was basically people from the field management, but also TA, HR, and also we tried to put some women into this conversation. And then we identified an external tool. That's a really

Sarah - 00:12:44:

good idea. Straight to the source. Yeah, what do you think? Yeah. Good, smart.

Daniel - 00:12:49:

So that was smart, yeah. And we identified an external tool which allowed us to create a score based on buzzwords, based on male or female-dominated words. We were able to tailor the job ad and then we implemented this also in our REC approval system. So the system now doesn't allow you to post a position if you don't match a score of at least 90 points. This is a company strategy now. So that means we are not able to post something when we are not meet the strategy and the things behind in terms of the way of thinking while posting this. I think that is a big change and that allowed us really to align with a strategy on all levels without having a conversation about that. Because you need to, otherwise you will not get the position approved. And then secondly...

Sarah - 00:13:35:

Sorry, can I interrupt one more time? Maybe not the last time, but once again. I want to just emphasize that point because there's a gentleman that's been on the podcast a number of times. His name is Roy Dockery. He's been at some different field service organizations and he's written a book on service leadership. But he has spoke at a lot of events about this topic. And I think he had a lot of really good advice before the industry was really ready to listen, if that makes sense. But the point you're bringing up about having this be a cross-functional process from the beginning is important. Because one of the challenges that he met early on was within the service leadership team, they defined the challenge. They needed to sort of change. But they didn't really loop in HR and recruiting. And even though. I think they even updated the job posting at one point. But the teams still weren't accepting a broader reach of candidates. They were turning away people that they would have wanted to interview, etc. Sometimes you can work against yourself if you're not looking at it from the perspective of not just the service leadership, but HR, recruiters, etc. To make sure everyone understands what the talent challenge is, what you need to do differently, and what steps you're going to take in each function to get a different result otherwise, you might have great objectives, but someone's out of the loop that is a really important piece of the puzzle. That's all.

Daniel - 00:14:56:

Yeah.

Sarah - 00:14:56:

Okay. From there.

Daniel - 00:14:57:

From there. So then it was about the role because, I mean, I mentioned Generation Z, but also the flexibility. Women as well as the young people are expecting from a job to be at home, I don't know, every evening in a field service organization. A normal job typically is difficult, especially when you deal with a big area to serve on. We reviewed our job profiles and identified opportunities in high-dense areas where we have a high-dense installed base. And we decided to go a route where we develop so-called pod areas for preventive maintenance, installation, qualification services only to reduce the travel ratio significantly and also lower the requirements because repair activities are out of scope for the new hires. And that gave two benefits. One benefit for sure, we can open up for a broader number of people to apply for. But secondly, also, we freed up more capacity for the existing engineers to focus on corrective maintenance. We also opened up for new roles for women, which is a very important part of the job. It's a very important part of the job. And it's also an important part of the job at the company. And it's also an important part of the job at the company. And it's also an important part of the job at the company. And just an example for Germany, because we're here, we opened up six roles, six of those new roles, and at the end we filled four with women. That's something I didn't, I didn't expect in that time.

Sarah - 00:16:12:

Yeah. So I want to go back to a couple points to make sure we don't go too quickly through them. What I want to point out is I said a lot of companies are spending a lot of energy complaining about the talent challenges, but not making impactful change to address it. This is an example of looking at what you had been doing, identifying the areas where it was falling short of the goal, which is to fill these roles and fill these roles with more diverse candidates. Understanding how the way that it had always been done was falling short based on what the current objectives are and making change. You didn't sit there and say, well, but we've always done it this way, but we have this qualification for repairs and what should we do about that? You got creative, came together, said, what if we did this? What if we did this? You eliminated a barrier to entry by separating the preventative maintenance from the repair work because there's different skills that are required certification for the repairs. So that's a really important point because are there things preventing you from bringing in talent without experience or without certain qualifications that is good talent that you could train and have be a valuable part of your organization? And is there a way to remove that barrier? The other thing is, this gets tricky because I'm a woman, I'm a mom, and I'm really passionate about being a woman and a mom and having a career. However, I would also say we have to be really careful of making, too broad of generalizations when it comes to women, right? And I'm not saying you did this. I think actually it's very smart because you are right that if a woman chooses to have a family, the likelihood that woman will want to be a technician traveling is not impossible, but it's certainly less. Some women, I was interviewed at an event last year and I think the guy that was interviewing me got really angry. It was live because he said, we were talking about this topic though, like, specifically women in service. And he said, well, we need more women because we just need more nurturers. And I was like, not all women are nurturers. Not all women are mothers like, we can't just drop women into a specific category of... Anyway, do you understand where I'm coming from? So I think as we go through this process, we have to be careful to not misrepresent. We have a woman with us today who is a field engineer who does travel. And if you don't mind me sharing, we had a chat at lunch and you were saying, I wonder what it will be like when I may have a family in the future. However, right now, you enjoy the travel piece. So the other thing is, by separating these roles, and you also mentioned it isn't just women, you could have just people that want more flexibility. And so you're opening up this option that exists for women or anyone who doesn't want to travel, who wants to have that more flexible environment. And also, as you have success, like you have bringing more women into the organization, even if it's initially in that role, you then have the ability to potentially have them come into field engineer roles that are traveling, if that's something that would be compelling. But again, storytelling, it comes back to being able to create these different narratives that people can see and learn from and identify with, and then look to open that up to whomever could potentially fit. So I love what you've done, though. You've eliminated the barrier to entry with the certification by creating this new role. You've given the option of a lot more flexibility, which obviously led to you being able to bring four out of six roles were filled by women.

Daniel - 00:19:50:

And it's an option, by the way. So we still have other positions people can apply, everybody can apply for. We also have women in those positions. So it's just an option.

Sarah - 00:19:58:

It's not like you're saying this is women only, or this is the only option that a woman can apply for. But you're being smart about identifying what are real barriers, removing them so that you can open yourself up to that broader talent pool. So you had that initial success. Now, what I want to talk about next is this was just in the initial setting that you first tried this. You brought in four out of six in those new roles were women, and they very quickly started advancing. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Daniel - 00:20:32:

Yeah, so at the beginning, for sure, there was some fears and some uncertainty also in the existing team because people had the feeling that, okay, if they don't serve the PMs anymore, they need to travel more. But at the end, it was basically leveled. So there was no big change for the existing team. And we also, by the way, we had one or two guys who went away from a normal field service world into such role. And by that, it was male, by the way, because they decided to reduce their travel to spend more time with the family. So that's also the other side of the metal. And it's positive that we offered that for them as well to ensure that we keep them in the organization. That's important to retain the team. So we had a couple of, let's say, concerns in the beginning. And it was also difficult in the beginning to get these positions on the same level in terms of are they seen as a full engineer or are they seen as a second-level engineer? So in terms of, let's say, low level. And it turned out after a while, because of their day-to-day activities only on those specific activities, that they became pretty, pretty fast subject matter experts. Now they are seen as the experts for their specific activities. And they are mentors for engineers which are going into other roles. And they train those people just after a year or two years of learning curve. And that's something which is quite interesting as well, because typically we have an onboarding time and a time to productivity about two years. So it takes pretty, pretty long to get to that point. And with that, we were able to even shortcut this time frame because we really reiterate the same activities again and again and again. I mean, it's a psychological thing. After seven times, you have it in your mind, so you will not get it out anymore. So that's part of the benefits as well.

Sarah - 00:22:05:

Okay, so you had folks come into those roles that became trainers. You had folks, I think, advance into leadership roles, correct? So I bring this up because I think it's important for us to think about a couple of things. One, if we're focused on diversity for the right reasons, is it represented at different levels of the organization? If we're focusing on diversity just to broaden the pool of frontline workers we can bring in as candidates, we're focusing on it for the wrong reasons, right? We need to be giving attention to where that stands across different areas of the business, different levels of the business. And the other thing is, part of the reality of today's talent landscape is people want opportunity to advance. They want to see how they can grow their career with your organization. So as you bring these people in, you need to be thinking about, okay, what are the opportunities, right? How we want to retain the talent as a business, not in the role that they came into the organization in. So making sure that you're looking for ways to understand those folks' unique skills and then map them to different needs within the organization. The other thing I wanted you to share about is you were able with the introduction of the preventative maintenance role to eliminate that certification for repair. But then you also were able to offer that internally if people want to get that certification once they've come into that initial role and then go into a repair role.

Daniel - 00:23:32:

Yeah, and that's not the only puzzle. So we also have a competency framework, which is some kind of, let's say, guideline for everybody to see, okay, what I need to do to go for the next step. And this is for the technical path, but it's also for the leadership path. We have a couple of those people who applied for internal roles for full field service activities, and they got the roles because they are super smart, super trained already. And it would be nonsense not to let them grow in the positions. And it's a proven track record now. Also, secondly, because you mentioned that, as an example, Germany is now led by a woman, the whole service organization in Germany. She started as an engineer a couple of years ago in Switzerland, went to a supervisor role and led the second-level team and now is taking care of the biggest service organization we have in Europe. Same goes for Spain. So we also here have a woman. She started in the customer care organization, moved over to field service, and then now is leading the field service organization in Spain. So there is opportunities, and we are not yet there where I would like to see. I'm not going for parity. That's something I don't want to look for because it's not a target you should set. But we need to increase our mindset. We need to change our mindset in terms of how we evolve the whole organization. I think now we have 13, 14% of women in the organization still is too low and would like to see more. But yeah, it's something which is a path and we're not yet there. And I mentioned is a vision. You need to think about the vision and not about the barriers and the problems. But you need to have some kind of sprint activities in between. And then you go for the next and the next and the next. So it's the salami tactic we spoke about. I think that's exactly the way we need to follow.

Sarah - 00:25:01:

Yeah. And I like the point you brought up about not striving for parity necessarily, because you don't want to set these arbitrary goals. And I think that is one of the traps, at least in the US, DEI gets a ton of heat right now, because it's just seen as sort of a checkbox exercise, etc. On the flip side, a lot of people say what you measure gets the attention. You could debate that however way you want. But I think the important thing is, the intent is diversity for the benefit it brings, not just because it's important, or just because we don't want to be perceived as not being diverse. And so when you're coming at it from that perspective, because you really believe how it can benefit the business, that is the important piece. I'm curious, you kind of mentioned the challenges with some of the existing engineers who were like, we don't want to travel more or being concerned about how that would impact them. I'm also wondering if you can speak to how did you prepare as a leadership team to make sure that the experience of those, that first wave of new candidates coming in, you certainly wouldn't want to bring them in, have them be treated poorly, because it's a big change or not feel included and then leave, right? So how did you prepare for that?

Daniel - 00:26:16:

Yeah, so the whole strategy was aligned with the whole management team. So really narrowed down to the line managers, the individual line managers. And then it's super important to have this one-on-one conversation, have this exchange between the teams. And typically when you change something in your team, you have the four phases starting with a storming phase. That's relatively normal, especially when you add something which was never there before. And in those cases is something completely new or is just a male team and then a woman comes in. But interestingly, because of the alignment upfront and everybody was following the same strategy, it was relatively quick that the people adapted and they also realized, okay, there is a couple of more things they bring in, which we probably don't know. But just to let you know, we have servicing instruments, which are pretty application focused as well. And many of our new hire women came from former customer positions. They have a lot of experience on the application side, which they brought in to the team. And so they extended the pool of skills in the team and they helped the colleagues to learn something about the application. And that at the end really, let's say, changed a little bit of thinking. It's not because she's here because she's a woman and it's invoked to have no woman in service. But really brings a benefit to the whole team and also helps me to do my work better.

Sarah - 00:27:29:

Yeah. But if I remember from our chat, you were also prepared. Like. You talked about some of the what-ifs, right? Like you were prepared as a team to not tolerate any nonsense if it came about. Because that's part of it is you have to be, everyone has to be on board. Everyone has to be willing to address behaviors that could come up that are not good for that new environment.

Daniel - 00:27:52:

I mean, we have an ethics program. Everybody needs to be trained on a regular basis on that. And it's part of the company culture. We have women BRGs. So it's really a strategy, it's a corporate strategy. It was probably not so applied for service because of the, let's say, traditional approach, but it's part of our DNA, I would say.

Sarah - 00:28:10:

Yeah, and I think also having the line managers of the new individuals, whomever they are, make sure that they're fostering that good one-on-one relationship and asking, how are you feeling about things? What challenges are you having? What's going well? What's not going so well? To try and encourage them to be comfortable being open about anything that might be coming up. Because there can be issues. I've talked to so many women in service who have shared crazy stories. But there can be issues within the organization. There can also be issues that come up in customer interactions, right? Which can get a little bit trickier in some instances. But you have to be willing, whoever the employee is, to protect them, to act on their behalf, etc.

Daniel - 00:28:48:

Yeah, I have a story from the lady. She's now leading Germany. I think one of her first activities on the customer side, she went in with a toolbox and the customer was staring at her. Are you the engineer? Is that your toolbox? Yeah. It was like amazing. Yeah, it was. Wow. Okay, it's a woman who was not expecting that at all. Well, other way around. I mean, if you have more traditional customers, sometimes still they have a bit of a barrier to accept that there is not a normal standard engineer coming. And the expectation is probably different. But if they make a good job at the end, I think they prove that also there is a way of change. You need to change your mindset also from a customer perspective.

Sarah - 00:29:24:

Yeah. Our podcast that is out this week is with a woman named Marianne Corey, who was most recently the president of a company called CoolSys, but she was with Johnson Controls for I think 28 years before that. And I was thinking of you because we talked about there's a balance of being resilient, having a tough skin, not being too sensitive from the woman's perspective. Like you're going to encounter things, right? And you can't necessarily fight every fight or be too offended by every little thing. But at the same time, you have to not just tolerate BS and just accept that's the way it is or it's the good old boys club or I don't want to speak up because I don't want to frustrate people. It was an interesting conversation to have with another woman because she was saying there is that balancing act between you can't just complain about every last thing, but you also have to pick things that you feel you need to stand up for.

Daniel - 00:30:23:

Can I add something?

Sarah - 00:30:24:

Yeah.

Daniel - 00:30:24:

I think what is also beneficial and probably is not seen as the first thing, typically the traditional engineers, they go to the instruments and fix the instrument and they think they are the smart and the master engineer. But there is more. I'm always trying to say that to my teams that you don't need to fix the instrument, you need to fix the customer. But around the instrument, there's a lot of more things. So you need to have this conversation with the customer. You need to make sure that at the end, the customer is happy and think there is a part of soft skillset that women have more than men to understand the needs of the customer because of this supporting and serving mentality. And also about because of the probably a little bit thin brain things and so on is they understand and they adapt and react in smarter way to bring down customers when it comes to an escalation. I think that is definitely also helping.

Sarah - 00:31:12:

Yeah. Here's what I want to want to really ask is what are your thoughts, thoughts about and advice for the businesses who are unwilling to get creative in the way that Thermo Fisher did to really make these changes, to not just reflect and say, oh, this talent challenge is horrible, but to really dig in and accept the reality, identify the problems. Find the solutions and put measures in place to really evolve and modernize the approach.

Daniel - 00:31:46:

Yeah, I think at the end, it's change. Everybody speaks about change. No one wants to, let's say, attack the change and no one wants to be part of the change. It's a human behavior, I would say. But if you don't do this, you will fall behind. Because at the end, if your workforce gets smaller and smaller, service is the glue. Service is not, let's say, part of the sales process. It's not just after sales. It's also pre-sales. It's also sales itself because it's a product. And we see the growth rates. And as I said, I'm sure Thermo Fisher is not the only company where service is outpacing instrument sales. So there is a specific need of having these people in service organizations. And you can't only look into AI. I mean, there's definitely something which might help us. And we probably don't know yet what AI will deliver us in 10 years from now. But you need to rely on people. It's a people business. And if you don't change and you don't go that route and you open your mind and you accept that you have to do this and then you act on that, you will fail. That's relatively easy to say.

Sarah - 00:32:43:

So you had this initial success, which you shared, and you've made a lot of progress since. You mentioned you're not really where you would like to see the organization, but you're continuing to work toward it. What is next in that evolution?

Daniel - 00:32:55:

Yeah, so one of the things we want to change is we want to find a possibility to combine the remote roles with the field roles. We have a digital remote team, which is almost 100% doing digital remote solutions with augmented reality, with AI support now as well. We just implemented a chatbot here with knowledge base functionality. But not having this dedicated, but having this combined with field activities gives two opportunities. One is to ensure that we keep the knowledge level because they are exposed to the instruments live in the lab or at other customer sites. While on the other hand, it gives the opportunity for the field team to decide, I go out of the field for maybe one week or two to align on the expectations in terms of work-life balance and flexibility. So that's something we are targeting now as a second step.

Sarah - 00:33:42:

Yeah, good. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.