Episode 308
In this heartfelt episode of UNSCRIPTED, host Sarah Nicastro sits down with Ged Cranny, Senior Consultant with Konica Minolta's International Service Business, as he reflects on his remarkable 45-year journey in field service on the cusp of retirement. From navigating the evolution of service from cost center to strategic advantage, to insights on balancing technological innovation with human connection, Ged shares candid perspectives on leadership, diversity, and the enduring importance of customer relationships. Whether you're a seasoned service leader or rising through the ranks, this conversation offers valuable wisdom on building successful service organizations while maintaining the 'family feel' that makes field service special.
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Transcript:
[00:00:11] Sarah: Welcome to the UNSCRIPTED podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Nicastro. I am joined by a good friend today, mister Ged Cranny, who is going to share with us some of the hard-earned wisdom that he has gathered over an extensive career in field service. Ged is currently Senior Consultant for Konica Minolta's International Service business. He's been with Konica Minolta since 1999 and was himself a field service engineer before that. We're going to talk about some of those things. But, Ged, you are set to retire in just a few weeks' time, which is a momentous occasion. And so, thank you for agreeing to celebrate that by coming on the podcast and having a talk with me. And, welcome!
[00:01:07] Ged: No problem. Thank you for inviting me.
[00:01:09] Sarah: Absolutely. So, before we get into our discussion for today, just tell everyone a little bit more about yourself. Anything you want to share about you, your background? You know, we're going to talk a little bit about your early career and some of the things you've learned along the way, but what else should folks know about Ged before we dig in?
[00:01:36] Ged: I grew up in a place called Middlesbrough, which is in the Northeast of England. And it's a steel and chemical town, so it's built on the furnaces of the steel making and the salt underneath that created the chemical plants along the river. It's a little bit out of the way, so as the chemicals and the steel industry reduced, obviously, the job market became a little bit harder, and people tend to move away from where I live to get work. You know? Example is my son lives in London. He's never worked in Middlesbrough, went away to university, and never came home. Oh, he does come home now and then to see me, but, obviously, not to work. I'm married to Dee and we met each other when she was working at the company I worked at. So, she left for a while, and then we bumped into each other again. And she offered me free food to go to a wedding with her, just as friends, and the free food was really nice. So, I decided that she was really nice. We got together, and we've been together now, I think we've got our 40th wedding anniversary coming up in just over just under two years. I left school to sweep up on the steelworks. At 16 years old, I left four months before everybody else left because a job came. And as I said, jobs were hard to get. So, my dad had already I come from a very traditional family, so my paperwork was always open before I got home. And my dad found out I had a job, and he'd already rang the school and told them I wouldn't be coming back. So, I start I came home on the set Friday night, started on the Monday. And I'm not joking. They taught us how to sweep up on a steelwork, which is a hilarious thing if you ever been in a steelwork. I left there, and you're going to laugh now because I'm really shy in the background. Outside of work, I have two personalities, a work personality and an outside of work. And I'm actually quite shy outside of work. And I didn't talk to people. So, unless I was on a football pitch or a sports pitch, I was really quiet. And so, I went to into retail just so I'd learn to talk to people. Plus, I wanted to learn to drive, which needed me not to be on shifts so I could work during let's say, drive during the day, sorry. Work during the day and get my driving lessons on the weekend. I passed my driving test. I saw an advert for a printer engineer job and saw this thing, magic words, you get a free car. So, I lied in the interview that I didn't just want a car, and, I got the job, in print in 1978, in the summer of nineteen seventy eight, and it's been the best thing ever. I've been all over the world. It's really good. So probably talk about that as we go.
[00:04:37] Sarah: Yeah. But,
[00:04:37] Ged: , yeah, it's cool.
[00:04:38] Sarah: It's so funny.
[00:04:39] Ged: That's true. I love sport.
[00:04:41] Sarah: Yeah. All sports?
[00:04:44] Ged: Actually, I like watching different types of sports because I like to see the dynamic of the team, and I think the dynamic of the team comes into the dynamic of work, and that's one of the things that I hold. There's a little secret a lot of people won't know about me is, and I have been honest with people who do know me close to me, is I'm actually dyslexic. So, the reason my dad wanted me out of school was I wasn't going to do many exams.
[00:05:09] Ged: I learned very, very quickly, it's not it’s not a bad thing. It's actually a talent. Yeah. I see the world differently. And especially when I go into management, I definitely see the world differently. I would sit in a room thinking, am I the only idiot in this room who can see this is easy? I'm not saying that.
[00:05:28] Sarah: I don't know if we've talked about this before.
[00:05:30] Ged: Yeah. Yeah. It's a diverse thing to have in a room. You know? We talk about diversity, but let's not just talk about, gender diversity, nationality. Let's talk about thinking types as well. Because, you know, as I said, you know, I see numbers. Somebody was joking the other day, I was talking to a new guy, and he walked through the door, and he said, has he hit with any numbers? And the guy said, he's just said something to me, and he just went whiz, whiz, whiz, whiz through the numbers. And he said, we would sit in a PowerPoint presentation. It'd be 20 slides. And on near 19, it says stop. Doesn't match with eight number eight. And he said, all he says is he sees patterns. He doesn't see numbers. He sees patterns. And you'd go back to number eight, and the number was wrong. And we'd also say, I go, how'd you do it? And he says, well, can't you do it? So, it's I'm not saying everybody has the same thing and that everybody has the same way. But I also because I was in a galactic way, classed as stupid. Remember I've got a brother. I don't know if I ever told you this, but I've got a brother whom NASA came and picked up and took to America. So, you know, all my teachers expected me to be version two, you know, of him, I. E. One play one better, and I could play football. And I think that helped in the management thing.
[00:07:01] Sarah: Yeah. Absolutely. That's really interesting. So, one thing I want to say really quick is we did a podcast a while back with a gentleman from Phillips named Tristan Lavender all about neurodiversity. And to your point about, you know, diversity is very important, and we know that, but it isn't, you know, any one thing. I mean, that's what makes it diversity. Right? And we need to think about the ways that people are wired differently and what that means in terms of, you know, one, what superpowers that gives. But also, what accommodations we need to make, in terms of, you know, eliminating bias.
[00:07:45] Ged: and making them be included.
[00:07:45] Sarah: and able to thrive in in a work environment. So it's a really good episode to check out if anyone's interested in that. The other thing I was going to say is, I get asked a lot, like, how did you get into field service? And I'm like, well, I, like, happened into it. I mean, I don't know. And it's always funny when I talk to people about how they got it. You know, to you, it was a free car. Right? Like, that was the hook. And then here you are all of these years later, absolutely love it. And there is something so special about it, but it's something that, like, it's hard to describe to someone that hasn't been in it. And it's even harder to, I think, paint a picture of if someone doesn't understand what the world of service is. , so the way we all sort of serendipitously end up here, but then fall in love with it, I just think is really interesting. So, let's go back, Ged, to you started in your first role as a service engineer back in 1978. So, I want to ask you two questions. One is, what is, I mean, I'm sure there's many, many things that have changed, but what is one thing that's changed that you wish hadn't changed since then?
[00:09:08] Ged: I think that it was more of a family that I came into.
[00:09:15] Ged: So, I spent fourteen years with these people. I actually shut the branch down. It was my first ever round of redundancy. So it was really, really hard, but the company who made me do it realized that, you know, if you're going to train somebody how to do this, you've got to give them the hardest one to do first, I think. But it was that sense of a family. And I know we all talk about these silos and things like this. But there wasn't a silo. You know, I had my badge as engineer. People had their badges as administration. People had their badges as sales. But we all mucked in together. You know, give you an example, our office was a real outlier office. We decided we were a tax dodge because nobody ever came to see us. And we decided the building was really bad, so we all chipped some of our money in, and we spent our weekend cleaning the place, and we painted it over many weekends. And when people came down from head office, we had the nicest office. And it was because it was it was it was our togetherness. It was our family. When you get into that corporate, it becomes faster. It becomes regimented. People have the guards up at the doors and such like. And service are the ones who want to open the doors. You know? If you serve, there's a there's a clue in what we do. It's that team mentality. You know, I go back to the sports thing. It's about that collaborative. It's about this team mentality. So, we would always come out, and I take that from where I was. So that's one of the things I feel that's been lost. You know, we didn't just go to work. You know, I was in at work at 07:00 in the morning because I like being at work, because it's part of family. I was in at work at 07:00, eight o'clock at night. I think when I came in 1999 to Konica, it was the first time that I had a weekend off. I hadn't been on holiday since '78. It was ingrained into me, Saturdays, Sundays. If we needed to work, we worked. I've seen me I've seen me in the office at 02:00 in the morning in the before Konica Minolta and back in the office by six, seven o'clock because we had something big going. So, yeah, I think I think that's one thing that I would say it was bad. It is missing. But you try and recreate it in your teams. I'll try and make sure that was happening in teams. One thing that I don't miss is health and safety was, a word. You know, my second week, so the second Thursday, I rolled the car off. If we'd have been wearing seat belts in them days, and if you'd had headrests, I'd be dead. In fact, I didn't have seat belts and headrests. I ended up in the boot of the car. The window smashed down. I went out the back window, but the car had stopped by the time I went out the back window. So, I literally just fell out, and guess what? I worked overtime that night.
[00:12:17] Sarah: Wow.
[00:12:19] Ged: I still remember it. And now I worked overtime the night after. So, the health and safety side of things was, you know, let's go and get a beer. You survived it. Let's go with it. And I think nowadays, to be real thinking about, wait a minute. You know? Why are we putting somebody in a car? So whenever I got anybody new in the business, especially trainees, even as fast as driving, just they didn't get a car until they spent a few days out with us with them driving and us taking them to the worst places you could possibly take them and telling them how to get through certain you don't have these things in America called roundabouts.
[00:12:53] Sarah: We do have some, Ged, just not as many. Yes.
[00:12:57] Ged: Not as many. So, we have these things, you know, multiple. So you take them out and you do that. And one of the things, it sits in in the back of there. I don't want somebody having the experience that I had. Yeah. So, yeah, health and safety would be a negative to that as well.
[00:13:10] Sarah: Yeah. Now what is a change, a major change, that you've been thrilled to see?
[00:13:18] Ged: Service coming from being not spoke about in the sale to being right front and center. Service turned into a profit center. So very much, you know, I have to blame the Americans for this because two American companies started buying up in my industry, in the nineties, and then we were profit centers. And one of the eye openers was the fact I went to Florida. I was really lucky. I went out to Florida as one of the managers, and I met the CEO of the business. Whole business came out. He was having a fat break, and he came around the car and started talking to us. And he went, you guys are the most important. Now words are words. But he flew to a UK to a board meeting, and he heard that we were on a training course. And everybody was cleaning the place as you would because the new boss is coming, and he's going to be in the head office. And I heard the commotion in the reception because we were just off reception. And he said, are my service guys here? And they went, yes. So through there. And the first people he came to see was us. He came and sat down with us, and it was the whole group, not just the 14 of us. And he sat down. He'd remembered all of the 14 guys who'd been over there, their names, whether somebody was in his ear telling us telling him, okay. But he said that, and it lifted the team. It he told us we were going to be profit centers. He told us we were going to be front center of the business, and he and he lived to that. And yeah, I've sat in meetings now where sales have struggled talking to a customer, and you started talking service and the customer has bought because of service, and that's cool. That's a big change for me.
[00:15:05] Sarah: It is.
[00:15:05] Ged: Yeah. And we never go back in the box.
[00:15:08] Sarah: That's right. What is one thing about field service that you wish more people understood?
[00:15:18] Ged: I think I think to be perfectly truthful, it's more complex. So people are just saying it's, yeah, let's get a screwdriver out or let's you know, you're an engineer. So this is what's really upset me about the fact that in ’94 or ‘95, I went to America and saw female engineers. And came back; I won't tell you what my manager said to me at the time when I told him that I wanted female engineers in the UK. You’d probably turned me off right at this moment in time for not fighting hard enough. But, trying to sell that engineering isn't just for white males.. It's for it's not just for people who've been to university. Actually, some of the dyslexic who never get there have got the brain and the wider brain to be able to do what they need to do. But, again, I'll give you an example of something. And this on this was only 2012/2013. Sent my guys (and when I say guys, you know, it's like that's my just wording for people, male, female as well). But I sent my guys to a university/college, the two things together, recruitment show.
[00:16:58] Ged: And at the end of day one, I dropped in, and I said, nobody's coming to that stand. Couple of feet will come just to nick badges. I said, okay. What are you telling them? We can't get them into the stand. And then I looked at the stand, and I looked at the late HR lady, and I went, this says, male. Doesn't say anything female. But I said, right. Service is about speaking to people. It's about empathy. And I went, not being funny, out of the male and female. Right? Men are secondary. Second massively. It's about being able to use your brain because it's about there's mathematics in it. Alright? Not being funny, there's no difference. And I said, actually, most of the ladies I know are as good at myself, not better, than most of the girls I know. And I went, it's about organizing, being disciplined. It's about, you know, getting out on a morning, getting in the car on a cold day when you do and you don't want to do something. And I said, anybody can do that. We can train that. That's a trained habit. I went, why is this not more written? So that somebody comes on. So, we rewrote it on the evening, and we were giving out flyers, which basically said, do you like talking to people? Do you like Solving people's problems? I do you like, you know, being organized with self-discipline, doing, you know, doing what you need and delivering? And suddenly, we got more diversity coming towards us. Now okay. One of the big questions, how many lady engineers do you have? Not many. It's so suddenly pushed away. So, we had to restart the stories. But what I like to see is there are more diverse people coming into our business, and the fact that it should be open to all because it's not just one skill, and everybody sees it as one skill.
[00:19:01] Sarah: Yeah. It’s about so much more.
[00:19:01] Ged: No turn the screwdriver, lefty, turn the screwdriver, righty. That's not how it works.
[00:19:08] Ged: Logical fixing. I think an engineer's job with the screwdriver in his hand, we've done it on training courses, and it always ends up with a maxim of 25%. Seventy-five % is that problem solving, thinking. It's that it's that getting yourself disciplined. It's about customer and looking after customer.
[00:19:27] Sarah: Yeah. No. That's a really good point. Now here's another one. So, the pace of change has picked up tremendously since you first entered the world of service. So what is your view on, you know, the importance of innovation and how companies and leaders need to stay relevant and stay competitive?
[00:20:02] Ged: Can I come at that from a slightly different angle?
[00:20:04] Sarah: Sure. Of course.
[00:20:07] Ged: Right. I keep hearing people telling me about solutions. And they usually link that to software. And, you know, I work in a company where we sell solutions. But when I asked you know, in the past when I've asked people, and I said, okay. It's a solution. To what? So my thing I would say is build your strategy on where your business needs to be to be profitable. Build a strategy where you can put yourself separate from your competitors without hurting your profitability, but excelling in front of your customers. You know? Always look to excel in front of your customers. That's the key. You know? Often, it might be slightly less today. But if you measure over ten, fifteen-year period, it'll be greater because, actually, then customers become loyal, then customers stay, then customers become trusted with you. And I think too many people buy a piece of software and think that it's the solution. Now we just move on to the next problem.
[00:21:19] Ged: It's got to be an enabler and an accelerator in your strategy.
[00:21:25] Ged: So whenever I'm talking to someone, I always go back and say, what's your strategy? What are you trying to achieve? Okay. So where's the hole that this software solution is going to fit? And I think that's the bit. You know, innovation is great. Innovation just to be trending. It's dangerous to your customers. It's dangerous to your employees. It's dangerous to your profit line.
[00:21:57] Sarah: Yeah. I agree and I think that's a really good point. And I think when it comes to, if I understood you correctly, like, when it comes to how to stay relevant, stay competitive, you're saying, like, that needs to be centered around customers. Right? I mean, what do customers need? What you know, we just chatted about this a little bit before we started recording, but, you know, your observations early on of how what customers needed was shifting, right, and getting ahead of that. So it isn't just about, you know, keeping pace technologically. I mean, that's obviously completely different today than it was, you know, even ten years ago. Right? But it it's about staying close to your customers and those relationships and understanding, you know, what their challenges are.
[00:22:56] Ged: So, the most important thing, Sarah, is to understand is where does your product fit in your customer's journey and their customer's journey? Because if it doesn't fit, at some point, you become irrelevant to that customer.
[00:23:09] Sarah: Right.
[00:23:10] Ged: Right. So, you know, I joke with people now that we don't sell printers. We sell digital input and digital output devices. So I have this theory in life. It's probably wrong, but it works for me. And that is that there's four or five different types of customers. I actually read something the other week that somebody else has said the similar sort of thing, and they were talking about the different, you know, the sixties children, the eighties children, the yeah. The ones since 2020, and saying that they want to be spoke to differently, but there's also that culture fight in between them all inside your own businesses and inside businesses. If you're not relevant to your customers, it doesn't work. So each one of them wants to use paper in a different way, but you can't suddenly turn around to, right, we are a digital company. So if you don't if you want to deal with us, then you've got to come in digitally. Well, great. But customers have a choice. Unless you're working with the government, pretty much you have a choice. So give the customers that choice. So if somebody wants to come in analog, scan it in your machine. It becomes digital in your systems. When the customer needs that to come out, then it's safe. It goes back through the machine. It goes into analog, post it to the customer, how the customer wants it. It can actually send it electronically, but store it differently, all the different things. So, you know, just silly word. It's a digital input, an output device. And people are, like, looked at us like we were crazy six, seven years ago, and we were saying, well, you know, don't say print that that, say, digital input. It's loud. Right? How would you do that? Well, because people, you know, have this bad thing about we kill trees. And we don't, actually, because trees are planted so that they're, , the food for the machines and, you know, recycle paper and such. But the most important thing is you're reacting to where your customer is And your customer's journey. So where are they on their digitization, as everybody calls it? Where are they on their eco? Where are they, and where are their customers? Where are the niggles? And how do they process, and how do you fit into that? And that's the most important thing. Start to understand which piece of the jigsaw you fit and how important you are to that business. Because the more you understand that, the more you can give to your customer, the more that you give to your employees to make them excel in front of your customer. And that's the most that's really important, allowing your employees to in to perform really well in front of the customer. That's a manager's job, help your person perform to their best.
[00:25:53] Sarah: Absolutely.
[00:25:54] Ged: Does that answer the question? Or was it bit too offside?
[00:25:56] Sarah: No. It is. It does. And, actually, you just said, you know, it's a manager's job to allow your people to succeed. Right? And that brings me to another point, which is, if I had a dollar for every time I've heard someone say service is a is a people business, you know, I would, I would be rich.
[00:26:20] Ged: You'd be rich.
[00:26:21] Sarah: And I agree wholeheartedly. I mean, I really, really do. So I'm interested you know, we are in and expanding into the AI era. Right? And I don't think that will change the fundamental truth that service is a people business, but it will change what that looks like. Right? And so what are your thoughts on how we continue to prioritize people and humanity in parallel with, you know, that technological innovation?
[00:27:00] Ged: I probably go back to what I've just said, which is speak to your customers. Not all your customers want to talk to a bot. You know, I get you know, again, I have a mobile phone like everybody else in the world. I've been with my mobile phone company for, like, fifteen, twenty years, same one. Not because I'm lazy, but because, you know, when somebody gives me good service, that's fine. But I got into a loop with the bot the other day, and it got really annoying. And I'm digital. I'm a very digital person. Right. Yeah. I was so angry at the end of it. I actually was so
[00:27:42] Sarah: you can just feel your blood pressure rise. You know? It's crazy.
[00:27:46] Ged: Just kept answering stupider and stupider questions. But if you're going to do these things, test it yourself.
[00:27:57] Ged: And don't just test it today and go, right, sign it off. Keep testing it. Keep knocking on the door. Have reviews of what you're doing and how you're interacting with your customer. Go and see your customers and sit in front of them. Do you use our portal? Yes. I do. Or, no. I don't. I don't use the portal because it's annoying. Right? Okay. Why is it annoying? You know, the whole idea of this is to make it 24/7 easy for you to use. You know? It's more profitable. It helps us to be more profitable. But I think if you're going to set these things up at this moment, don't just set it up because it's going to make you more profit. Make it so that it makes your customer journey better. Make it so that it makes your engineer journey better. Make it so that it makes, you know, people's interaction with your department better so they want to come more. They want to they think you as a trusted adviser. Because remember, the more you use the bots, they become your trusted adviser. And if they're stupid, no good. Remember, it's always said when I was growing up, the first sale is won by sales. Thereafter, it's service. Salesman just walks in. Yes. He'll have some negotiation to do, and he'll tell you that it was the best thing in the world. But after that, it's the service. Now I've had customers over the years who I had some who literally rang up as I came to Konica and basically went, you didn't tell us you were leaving. And I went, I'm not allowed to. And I went, but we're allowed to write to you and tell you we're coming. And, and I went, you are allowed to write to them, but I'm not allowed to take you. People buy from people.
[00:29:42] Ged: So remember that. With the automation, make it make the feeling that your customer isn't on a boat ride in Disney, that they're going to get splashed at the end of it. Make them feel like it's, you know, the ingots ding gets ride or ingots ride. And it's going to be really exciting at the end. And there's a shop at the end. I wouldn't sell them more.
[00:30:08] Sarah: Yeah. Well and to your point earlier, you know, technology is an enabler. And, you know, one of the things that, I think is exciting about where we are right now and, you know, this is, again, we were chatting about this before we got on. Right? The journey that Konica is on with IFS to, you know, automate a lot of things without taking away from the importance that the people are playing. That's the thing that's exciting to me is there's so many opportunities within field service to apply these tools in a way that truly is helpful. Not saying it's easy and it's not different, but it's, you know, it's not taking away from, you know, the special role that the hand plays. It's taking away a lot of the inefficiency or, you know, unnecessary stuff around it so that they can do what they do well when it makes sense. Right? So I think that has to be the focus. Right? It's not, you know, how much can we get rid of or how much can we replace, but how much smarter can we work. Right? And that's they're very different things.
[00:31:21] Ged: I think to be perfectly truthful, so one of one of our things has been a remote by default. Before COVID, 2017/2018, I know we were talking about it, and it's starting to accelerate. We've had the IoT in our machines for since the eighties.
[00:31:39] Ged: But really bringing it together, bringing the tools together. But that brings a different type of problem.
[00:31:46] Ged: Because we talked earlier, how would you get people in the service? You know? How would you get that diversity in the service? How would you get people to come to service? And, you know, it's hard. When I talk to people across all industries, everybody says, yeah, everyone wants to go and sit and play with a computer. Nobody wants to be an engineer, because the first thing they think of, they're going to have dirty hands. It's going to be horrible. They're going to be cold. They're going to be in a field. There's lots of different types of engineering to think about. And where we've got all these people, you know, the average age is growing in all the industry, all the people I talk to. So let's get that knowledge. You know? I'll be honest. At twenty years old, I decided I didn't want to be carrying a tool case around When I was 60. And so I was going into management, and these people are getting to the fifties. It's a hard job. It's hard work. It's hard labor. Now bring that and start now taking the knowledge that then we can use to in enhance the world of our engineers For our customers as well. So, the bots actually talk to them sensibly, and it gives them the right information for the people who want to just look up the information.
[00:32:57] Ged: And it makes sure that it enhances what they do. So we changed the name of a of a scheduler to an exception handler And then sat down and said, right. Okay. Your job is not just to go, oh, somebody's shouting at me today, so I'm just going to make this call better. What we say turn around and say, right. Why is somebody shouting at you? Why did this call get to a point where, contractually, the customer's not happy with us? Why is it capacity? Is it, you know, we missed it. The system's not set up right. The algorithm's not right. If we set if we fix it today, we fix it for a hundred days, two hundred days. And now people are starting to see the benefit of what they're doing. They're getting more excited about that. Yes. It frees up time, but then when that time frees up, guess what? They're starting to do things in the shift left piece and And then using customer skills for more complex problems that the bots can't solve and things like this so that we then become proactive with the customers. And are we there? No. We're on a journey. Will we ever get there? I hope not, because I want that journey to continue forever. Because different types of customers will, as we said earlier, will come in with different types of needs. We'll hopefully break into different types of markets, which ask us for different and more complex fixes. We can use our knowledge of the past with landed with tools to give the service of the future. And I think this still needs human knowledge. This still needs the right things. If you just go for cuts straight away, yeah, your accountant's going to be happy. But five, six years' time, you're going to be walking a tightrope.
[00:34:45] Sarah: Yeah. For sure. I agree. Okay. Two more questions. The next one is, what is one lesson you've learned in your career the hard way?
[00:35:10] Ged: I think it is you're never as clever as you think you are, and always try and learn. Don't just sit with your peer group and learn. Go and sit with customers. Go and sit with engineers. Go and sit with people's departments that work with you and tell them how your department reflects because it's how you reflect. And I think however good you think you've got, get somebody that can tell you you're not as good as you think you are And be willing to take that on board. I think years ago, I when I was hiding the dyslexia and things, I would get grumpy and defensive. So I think my learning thing is not to get grumpy and defensive when somebody tells me that I'm ugly. You know, if one person tells me I'm ugly, laugh at it. If two people tell me I'm ugly, start thinking I'm ugly. When the third person tells me, well, maybe I'm ugly to them, maybe there's somebody else in the world. You know? Fiona waiting for me.
[00:36:21] Sarah: Yeah, it makes me think I just had a conversation with someone recently, and I thought this was such a good point. You know? He said that, I’m someone who thinks that a big part of my job is challenging the status quo, but I can't do that if I don't welcome people to challenge me. You know? And, I thought that was really smart. Right? It takes, I think, time and confidence to get to a point where you're comfortable with that. But ultimately, you know, you are better when you can reflect on those points. So yeah. Okay. And last one, can you share one of your proudest moments?
[00:37:30] Ged: Yeah. It's going to sound weird this, but I left The UK two days before the COVID shutdown. And I left my team because I moved from the business to the hit the HQ in Germany, and they thrived in the COVID, which was the hardest time ever.
[00:37:57] Ged: You know, I was in workshops with different people from different companies talking about how frightened everybody was. They thrived. They grew, but they're doing a fantastic job. They took me out the other night. I'll be honest. They took me out the last Tuesday night to say goodbye six years after I left them. Five, six years, sorry, after I left them. And, I told them the proudest moment was seeing them thrive in probably the hardest time I've ever seen for service, come out the other side, battered, beaten. They kept all the engineers. They kept the customers, they've started to grow the customers again, and they're doing a great job. And their thinking styles have changed, and I just told them that there's no prouder moment than seeing your team go to a higher level than you could have ever taken them, and they did it by themselves. So that's the proudest moment.
[00:38:55] Sarah: Well, that is that is a really good moment, Ged, but, also, you played a role in that. They were able to do that without you, but that's in part because of the impact you had had, undoubtedly. So, you know, it's like it's probably similar to watching your child, you know, excel at something and feeling like they're doing it on their own. You know, and you played a part in that foundation. But, you know, the pride you have in watching them apply it. Right? And, yeah.
[00:39:37] Ged: Most important most important thing, you know, is team. It is it is you know, if my engineers hadn't turned up to work each day, I had 84 at this peak, I think, about 84,000 printers to go and fix. Trust me. That's the day they could bring the white jacket. They put my arms around my back, fasten it really tight, and put me in a nice padded room because it's not going to happen. These guys put themselves out. We had this thing called the beast in the east in the UK a few years ago. That was the first time we'd ever shut service down in the time. So some of the engineers, one of them had an off road, really good off road car. So he rang the engineers, and they drove to a hospital because they knew the hospitals were under pressure. They stayed all day, and they were actually helping with patients, moving patients about, helping the people in the place. They stayed on the hospital, and the hospital rang me two days later to say, your engineers were fantastic. I said, no. No. My engineers were off the road. And they went, no. No. No. Your engineers came to our hospital because they knew our staff would be down. They helped with fixed there were some printers that were down, so they fixed the printers. And then what they did was they made sure they helped ground the hospital.
[00:41:00] Ged: And I just went, wow.
[00:41:02] Sarah: That's awesome.
[00:41:03] Ged: Yeah. Absolutely. And it's to me, that's that there were moments where I just sat there and just went, you're the luckiest guy in the world. You are the luckiest guy in the world. And, genuinely, I've met some great people along the way. You included. Mike, who you're going to talk to later. But I met some great people. There are things in people you don't want, but there's a lot of good things in people. You take them and things from them. And, you know, I've been really lucky. I've had some great people mentor me. I've had some great people just chat with me and keep me going. And I've had some unbelievable, unbelievable people work with me, work for me, and just excel in front of the customers. So that's the proudest moment.
[00:41:48] Ged: Oh my god. I'm gushing.
[00:41:50] Sarah: Well, Ged, listen, it has been an absolute honor, , not only to have this conversation with you, but to get to know you , to spend time with you, to become friends. And, you know, I know that you have some fun adventures planned and you and Dee are going to enjoy some travels and some good times. But I also know that you'll be around the service community. You couldn't stay away if you tried. And so, you know, we'll certainly stay in touch, and , I have a feeling you'll appear again on the podcast at some point. So, thank you very, very much for everything, honestly.
[00:42:35] Ged: No problem at all. Thank you. Thank you for this chat and thank you for all the support over the time.
[00:42:39] Sarah: Absolutely. Alright, Ged, okay. So, you can find more by visiting the home of the UNSCRIPTED podcast at futureoffieldservice.com. The podcast is published in partnership with IFS. You can learn more at ifs.com. As always, thank you for listening!