Published on LinkedIn: The Easy Way, Part 2

Here's an article I hope you enjoy: http://ift.tt/1ooqt4U

Published on LinkedIn: The Easy Way, Part 1

Here's an article I hope you enjoy: http://ift.tt/1k8Xi7v

Published on LinkedIn: Four Reasons To Beware Of "We Don't Do That Here"

Here's an article I hope you enjoy: http://ift.tt/1kSOvHO

Here's the original post.

Recommended Reading: "The computer auto-route didn't do what I expected!"

Here is a great article about why computerized routing programs frequently generate "optimal" results that folks don't understand, and thus "aren't good": http://www.optaplanner.org/blog/2013/08/06/FalseAssumptionsForVRP.html

Shortest routes: Not always best. Fewest trucks: Not always best. Focus on time slots before capacity: not always best. No crossing routes: not always best.

Good route results usually look something like this:

This is why NP-hard problems (like routing) are **hard**. :)

Recommended Reading: Heartbleed vulnerability may expose your passwords.

Want to know if your favorite sites have been patched? Test them here:http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/

If you use Chrome, install the Chromebleed extension to get notified when you use a site secured by openSSL: http://lnkd.in/djYXMRM

Recommended Reading: Wikipedia has changed their font and layout.

It makes my eyes bleed. The serifs in the titles are sharper, and there is too much white space in the content. Ugh.

http://lnkd.in/bi3BPT9

Continued Beatings Found to Increase Morale

AUSTIN --

In an ongoing study, researchers at the University of Texas released results indicating that, indeed, the beatings shall continue until morale improves. And improve it did!

2013 Most Motivated Student, future CPA

Using a scientifically sound approach, researchers at the McCombs School of Business divided incoming freshmen into three accounting classes: a control, one with occasional light beatings, and another with regular, intense sessions. Researchers were unable to make the study double-blind, as the sampling was obvious to any outside observer, as well as the participants.

After analyzing their results, and comparing individual performances to the wider average, a strong correlation was discovered. Workers, er -- Students in the third group demonstrated higher skills aptitude, and an increased motivation and ability to learn the material quickly. They also displayed higher group creative skills, and paradoxically, an statistically relevant increase in days absent.

Researchers plan to evaluate future scenarios, including applications in IT departments, variations for middle managers, as well as pilot programs at local elementary schools.

Coors Light Wins Gold Medal in German Beerfest

DRESDEN --

In a surprising turn of events, American-style light lager Coors Light was awarded a 2014 Dresden

2014 Best Water Gold Medalist -
Dresden Beer Festival

Beer Festival Gold Medal yesterday.

Named "beste Wasser" for 2014, Coors Light topped other well-respected entries such as San Pellegrino, Evian, and Perrier. Judges reported that "although FIJI was a close second, Coors Light was the bottled water that offered the most flavorful rich body". While it was only able to weakly compete in the clarity and color segment, Coors Light astonished the judges with its sparkling character, ease of drinking, and its bold flavor notes of goat piss and old wallet. It was found to be most useful for rinsing the palate and spitting between samplings of actual beer.

Malaysian Plane Found in Australian Maintenance Hangar

PERTH --

Australian aviation authorities announced today that crews have located the missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 after over three weeks of globally-coordinated search efforts. The missing aircraft, which vanished from air control radars on March 8, was discovered by maintenance technicians early this morning in an Eastern Australian maintenance yard.

"It's the damnedest thing, you know?" says hydraulic inspection tech Cooper Ashcroft. "I'm off signing for a load of kero, trying to finish up this scheduled service, and all my crew is standing around gobsmacked looking at the bird."

According to hangar foremen, the aircraft arrived the morning after it went off radar for an unscheduled C service. Instructions were made to repaint the craft as a Qantas flight, but overhauls were hampered by what appeared to be a full cargo hold of baggage.

Area Cable Guy Reportedly Early to Appointment

DAYTON, OHIO --

Today, resident Dave Wilson was surprised to hear a knock at his door at approximately 9:50 am. Upon answering, he discovered it was a local Time Warner cable technician showing up for Wilson's 10 am-noon installation.

"I'd just come out of the can, and I hadn't even put pants on," explained Wilson. "The doorbell rang, and like magic: there he was."

"It's been really great today. The tech hasn't had to leave yet, he hasn't fallen asleep, and I think he has all the equipment I ordered. Plus, my internet is on. Also, he left me with a working remote."

Sources were able to confirm that the technician did indeed have all the needed equipment for Wilson's 2 DVR + high speed internet installation, and he additionally did not leave any tools or debris behind after he was finished. Citing company policy, sources were unable to confirm or deny whether the technician did indeed arrive early.

Four Reasons To Beware Of "We Don't Do That Here"

Part of consulting is suggesting new (and hopefully better) ideas and processes. You'll suggest new metrics for tracking performance, or a training program that provides refreshers on a regular basis. These will often be welcomed with open arms, but not always. If your experiences are anything like mine, you'll eventually hear someone in charge say "We don't do that here."

Keep an eye out for this phrase. You'll typically hear it from people in one of two camps:

The Myth of March Madness Productivity Loss

Hey sports fans, here we go again. The NCAA men's basketball season is coming to a close, and the annual tournament is about to begin. It's time for mass media to start spouting off articles about the billions and billions of dollars the American economy loses due to this event. What a load of bull.

Does March Madness create some distraction in the workplace? Sure it does. Just like Christmas shopping season, Labor Day's 3-day weekend, and the Super Bowl. These cultural calendar events aren't happening live on CBSSports between 9am and 5 pm, so they don't get any press.

Where do these productivity loss numbers come from? Well, the LA Times estimated the 2012 tournament caused $1 billion in foregone output.

And as long as we are going two years back in the Wayback Machine, this Harvard Business Review post is a wonderful example of an academic who writes 600 words and doesn't ever tell you a damn thing.

Everyone else is reporting from the annual study by Challenger, Grey, and Christmas, which was predicting $134 million in lost productivity in the first two days of the 2013 tournament. Columbus Dispatch cites a figure of $1.2 billion per unproductive hour this year. Considering this is a three-week tournament, that's $140 billion in potentially "lost" productivity and wages. This seems high. Whatever, we'll accept it.

The US annual nominal GDP is in the neighborhood of $17 trillion. The "lost" money is 0.82% of our annual GDP. It's less than a rounding error.

What can't be attributed to a rounding error is the increase in camaraderie. Employers should welcome March Madness: it's an externally hosted and funded event with national 24-hour TV coverage that they can use to perk up morale. It's office appropriate and nothing foul to object to. Few, if any, big businesses are savvy enough to take advantage of this slam dunk. They could easily guard those three points of morale instead of letting it dribble away. This is a major missed opportunity "overtime". (OK, enough bad basketball puns, I'll go away now.) 

Sports: A socially acceptable time for upset grown men
to stand in public and make farmyard sounds as loudly as possible.

Recommended Reading: Six Common Complaints about Field Service Software

Here's an article I hope you enjoy: http://lnkd.in/b_vT9Et

The Changing Role of Field Service

I stumbled across this Q&A video today. It's a good review of the forces changing the market segment in general. Aubrey Fox, Product Manager of Trimble Work Management, discusses the pressures to which field service businesses are adapting.

What do you think? Agree or disagree with Trimble's view?

Convert Your Mistakes Into Opportunities and Wins

I made chicken gumbo last night for the first time. Bonus points for cooking, right?

Om nom nom.

Not quite. Gumbo was not on the menu. I was trying to make chicken soup. Considering that I had already made the soup and canned it last fall, it should have been a no-brainer. Right out of the jar, it was a little bland. Unfortunately, by the time I was done adding vegetables, and underestimating the amount of water the rice would soak up, and generally not paying attention until it was time to eat...we didn't have soup anymore. Whoops: that shouldn't have happened.

Marketers rejoice: a little rebranding and poof! Dinner is a win again.

I recently read a Forbes article about this very topic. Everyone makes mistakes, but converting those mistakes into opportunities is a valuable skill. It's useful in the workplace and the kitchen, and a whole host of other places.

Keep your eyes out for these chances. One way to be prepared is to think though the worst-case scenario for your actions and decisions. If the worst case happens, you're ready. If not, you're still prepared to bounce back from anything that did not go quite as you had planned.

Field Service Goes Social

I've been writing Field Service is Not Hard for a couple of months now. That's been long enough to realize two things: that Blogger is the armpit of blogging platforms, and that no one really gives a damn about what I have to say. Both things are OK.

I've decided to step up my exposure a bit. I've gone completely social, and I'm doing it the easy way. I've gotten accounts for the blog on a number of social media platforms, and linked them using IFTTT to automate posting. Not sure how well this is going to work, but I'm hoping it doesn't muck things up too badly. Hopefully images and captions come in across platforms.

Feel free to follow me! Oh, and don't bother following them all -- the content will just be duplicated across all the platforms.

Blogger: http://fieldserviceisnothard.blogspot.com
WordPress: http://fieldserviceisnothard.wordpress.com
Twitter: @tj_field
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Field-Service-Is-Not-Hard/518548561600105
Tumblr: http://fieldserviceisnothard.tumblr.com/

NERD ALERT: Google DID Change Search Results Layouts, You're Not Imagining Things

Yes, your Google search pages may look a little odd this morning. Apparently if I read Forbes more often, I'd have been aware of this a week ago. They've done away with underlining links (which has been the standard approach since forever) and ads no longer have that yellow background.

Mashable has more about the changes, including some comparisons. I'd post my own, but I can't get the old results to appear.

Look Like a Genius By Sticking To What You Know

Image credit: Hyoung Chang;
The Denver Post

Yesterday, I stumbled across a 2008 opinion piece written by none other than Warren Buffett. In the piece, he publicly states his commitment to move from 100% US government bonds to 100% US stocks. Now if you recall, 2008 was not a good year for anyone aspiring to be just like Mr. Buffett. The markets were tumbling, financial institutions were going up in smoke like a pack of escaping ninjas, and every week my boss was calling his broker to move another 10% of his portfolio into cash. Good times. Real good times.

In the midst of this, a ballsy Buffett comes out and basically tells everyone, "Hey, I know there have been quite a few people eaten by sharks swimming out here, and many of you are scared to get in the water. You know, historically speaking, swimming is not very likely to get you eaten by a shark, so I'm not worried about it. I just wanted to let you know I'm about to do a kick-ass swan dive." At which point he stripped down to a resplendent yellow Speedo and jumped in like the help at Casa Bonita.

Ten days later or so, I bookmarked a Motley Fool article titled "What to do when the DOW hits 7500" (this from a 2007 high of 14,000+). I still have that bookmark on the main navbar in my browser. Why?

Try Ignoring the Task at Hand In Order to Focus On It

I've written recently about several unconventional ways to boost productivity with a minimum of added effort, including procrastination as a motivator. I accidentally discovered another one today.

This tip comes from that internet cesspool known as 4chan. If you're not already familiar with 4chan, don't bother looking into it. Trust me: it's the original source of LOLcats. Gawker describes its most popular forum, /b/, as a good way to melt your brain. And for god's sake, don't click that link at work; you've been warned.

4chan is also known for The Game. The rules of The Game are simple:

1. The Game is an abstract mental game with millions of active players. In fact, everyone in the world is playing it right now.
2. The objective of The Game is to avoid thinking about The Game.
3. Play is continuous and never stops. You are either losing (when you are thinking about The Game), or not losing (when you are not thinking about The Game).
4. Players who lose The Game (by thinking about it) must tell other people that they have lost.

I lost The Game. Presumably, so did the entire psychology department at a New York college where Cory Antiel turned it into a 27 page paper. How does this help anyone be more productive?

Conquer your anxiety and increase performance by setting multiple little goals

Ten years ago, Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi gave an excellent TED talk on the concept of "flow", or the heightened awareness and cognitive ability some people can create for themselves when working. It's a great concept, but unfortunately, I can't always go with the flow. For someone as mentally disorganized as

So...much...frustration...

me, flow comes and goes. Sometimes I'm on fire, other times I can't scrape myself away from reading articles on CNN.com or Lifehacker long enough to remember to eat lunch.

I've written in the past about the benefits of the Easy Way and using the inherent pressure of intelligently procrastinating to get more done in less time. For me, these result in a controlled (maybe even forced) flow state. Unfortunately, these tactics occasionally have undesirable side effects.

LinkedIn hits a home run by granting publishing access to everyone

Two weeks ago, LinkedIn announced that it would open it's publishing platform for all its users. No longer shall it remain the exclusive territory for brilliant minds such as Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Conan O'Brien to be able to push their musings to us via LinkedIn. Over the next weeks and months, all 270 million LinkedIn users will have that magic pencil icon available.

This guy writes for LinkedIn...and soon you can too.

I enjoyed reading the Influencer articles, but on the whole, they failed to connect. Richard Branson's ten island sustainability challenge was a great example. Sure, I understood what he was trying to communicate, but really? Not only is the post woefully short on details, but the thing reads like an advertisement. Does anyone else have the means to work with most of the Southeastern Caribbean countries? Oh, I know: I'll just buy ten private islands and do it that way.

Conan's satire was more useful to me than that billionaire bunk. 

Now the filthy unwashed masses of LinkedIn have the ability to post. This is a masterful move on LinkedIn's part. It's brillant, and here's why:

I Am the Laziest Person on the Planet. You Should Be, Too.

I am soooooooooo lazy. Level 60 Procrastinator. For any of you that stayed current with World of Warcraft after 2008 or so, yes, I know the level cap is 80 now. Or is it 85? I don't know: I'm too lazy to look it up. I was also too lazy to max out my skill in Procrastination. I'll do it later. Maybe.

This works for me. I still get stuff done. It's even usually on time. Not always, though. Example: I intended to write this post three weeks ago.

Anyway, I'm probably one of the laziest people on the planet and I think you should be, too.

Stupid people, or design flaw?

I haven't been in consulting very long, but I've learned a valuable lesson already: You should always plan for everything to go completely off the goddamned plan. Sometimes this happens during the testing phases, and the project fails integration testing or no longer matches the business goals. Typically, this just pushes go-live back a few weeks or months (don't just blindly set a new finish date!!), but worst-case, you go back to the drawing board.

"This isn't so bad -- you should have seen the one last week..."

Other times, you literally have multimillion-dollar aircraft smashing into the runway just as they  commit to final approach. This is why system design and process design are important: prevent plane
crashes and project train wrecks. This post is inspired by an article I read about very stupid employees.

Surprisingly, the article wasn't about stupid employees, or in that case, stupid pilots. It was about bad design.

NERD ALERT: Using Vim to convert an XML statement into 1 tag per line

I'm currently working on a task to document some integration messages. They are in a text file, all on one line, and I need to add them to a Word doc.


Oh, and all the tags need to be on their own line. Example:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"><soapenv:Body><get_stuff ><user><now>2014-02-10T09:42:04-07:00</now><company>fieldserviceisnothard</company><login>yermom</login><auth_string>80fa892c2facKe0bp3n1Se6cdc2f</auth_string></user></get_stuff></soapenv:Body></soapenv:Envelope>

This SUCKS.

Or at least it did. I downloaded Vim for Windows.  I used this search and replace pattern:

I am an Organic Mechanic Completionist

I am an Organic Mechanic. No really, I am. Plus, this has nothing to do with growing tomatoes or changing the blinker fluid in my car.

Read about it here: http://randsinrepose.com/archives/organics-and-mechanics/

He also has another article about Incrementalists and Completionists. Completionists believe that it's worth the time upfront to get something done RIGHT and not have to come back in three months. That's me, too.

Read the articles. Next time you work with someone that can't seem to move past his perfect plan on paper and see the crumbling shame of reality which piles up around his project, remember that he's probably a Mechanic (and an Incrementalist to boot).

Reward Failure to Encourage New Ideas

I've been kicking around a draft article for a few weeks now, based on the topic of "failure as a means of success". Even now, that concept sounds like bullshit every time I read it.

It's not. It's one of the best ways I know of to spur continued innovation, excellence, and personal/professional growth. Thomas Edison has been quoted as saying that he had not yet failed, but he had invented over 10,000 ways to NOT build a light bulb.

Off topic: Nikola Tesla, Edison's one-time employee turned competitor, and most vocal critic, didn't manage to build a light bulb. Instead he created the Tesla coil, whose high-voltage/low-amperage thunderbolts can be harnessed to make beautiful 8-bit music.

Back on point: I never got my "embrace failure" spiel written.

Schedule an appointment

(This post is two of six in a series.)

As, I pointed out in the title of this blog as well as my first post, field service is not hard. There are about 6 steps in the process. Some are more important than others, but without quality execution at each level, your field service quality will be poor.

Part 1 was to make a sale, not a promise. Today, I'll be talking about scheduling an appointment. Of course, this can't just be any appointment: it has to be one you can keep.

Booking and scheduling is pretty easy in general. Doing it correctly, though, is difficult.

Make a sale, not a promise

(This post is one of six in a series.)

As, I pointed out in the title of this blog as well as my first post, field service is not hard. There are about 6 steps in the process. Some are more important than others, but without quality execution at each level, your field service quality will be poor.

Step 1 is to make a sale, and not a promise. I've never been in sales. I don't like selling (and I sure as hell hate being actively sold to). I am a looker, a shopper and finally a buyer; I proceed in that order at my own pace. Don't push me, Mr. Shitty Suit Car Salesman.

I hate tyops!

Readers --

Those of you who know me are aware that inaccuracy, ambiguity, and incompetency are three of my targets for global eradication. But none of them hold a candle to the GRRRR-inducing effects of typographical errors. I caught one in a previous post. Feel free to point them out in the comments next time.

Grammar Nazis are welcome here. (Actual Nazis, no. Go away. Heil scheiße essers!)

Reader Horror Story #1: Cox Arizona, Home of the 7-hour Install

Today's Field Service Horror Story comes from sunny Phoenix, AZ:

In January 2013, I moved. I called to transfer my Cox HSD and DVR service, and requested a Self-Install. I was told that option was not available and that for some reason, due to the packages to which I subscribed, a $50 "Professional Installation" was required. I was unsuccessful in getting the CSR to bend on this, and chose not to escalate it. I had to coordinate this with work, as the installation required me to miss some time at the office.

My install was scheduled for an AM appointment, January 21, if memory serves correctly. The contractor arrived on time at 8:05 am, after pre-calling to confirm I was available. I walked him through the property, and showed him the three existing RF outlets that I would be using as well as the location of the ground block and house box enclosure. So far, so good.

The tech disappeared for a few minutes to connect my service at the tap. I took the opportunity to help him out by connecting my modem using coax I had available and plugging it in. It came online immediately. Again, so far, so good. 

I came out of the bedroom to find the tech on the phone with Dispatch, swapping my DVR in the living room. He stated that my DVR had failed and was not displaying any video on any channel.

Excel Pro Tip: How to round numbers to the tens, hundreds, or thousands place; not just integers

I just discovered a neat trick for estimating numbers in Excel. This was done in Excel 2007, but should work in the newer versions.

I was working on some retirement account projections, and projecting various growth levels for 1, 5 and 25 years in the future. I was getting some incredibly specific numbers, but that is what happens when you raise a number to 1.075^25th power.

I wanted some ambiguity in the model so that I had nice round numbers. This has real-world applications in consultancy. Unless you're sitting down with Pat the Accountant, no one cares that you're reducing costs by $34,946. Just tell Larry, the jackass Director of Fleet Services, that it's going to be $35 grand per whatever. He's probably not listening anyway, and is just trying to figure out how to retreat back to his office before anyone needs him to actually do anything.

You can even build in your estimates to a certain round number, such as $40,000 -> $50,000 with no results in between.

Here's how to do this in Excel:

• Start with your number, preferably formatted in dollars (if you're working with money). I don't like the accountant formatting except in special cases; use currency instead.
• In a new cell, use the ROUND function. The number of places you round to will follow the cell.
• Normally, we would round money to two decimal places. Sometimes you want to round it off to the nearest dollar. Zero will give you integer values.
• If you want to round to tens, hundreds, or some other decimal place to the left of the decimal point, use a negative number.
• In the example below, I've rounded my 25th power of 7.5% value several different ways.
• You can also use ROUNDUP or ROUNDDOWN with a negative value. In the example, anything equal to or greater than $30,000.01 will round up to $40k.

The Easy Way

In all areas of life and business, including field service, there is usually an "Easy Way". In everything I do, I am either actively or subconsciously looking for the easy way. I LOVE the Easy Way. I think there is an Easy Way to do nearly everything. Except maybe picking up trash in a roadside ditch. If I had to do that task, I'd outsource it to a group of people with plenty of time on their hands and pay them as little as possible; nothing if I could. Wait -- that's a prison labor crew. Someone else has already figured out the Easy Way for that.

It has been said that people either "have it", or they don't in many aspects of life. Some people have innate math and language skills. Others have charisma and people skills. A lucky few have all of the above. These are traits and abilities that we are born with. The Easy Way is no exception. You can't magically make someone who isn't an Easy Way person into one. My dad is a great example. I spent my childhood watching him turn routine household projects into something akin to prison labor.

For example, we once had to move a load of firewood approximately 20 feet. It was stacked in the bed of his pickup. He opened the tailgate, grabbed two or three pieces of wood, walked across the garage and stacked the wood on the floor. He then turned around, climbed back into the bed of the truck and repeated the process. He says "Come on, son, this wood isn't going to unload itself!"

Meanwhile, I am watching this, thinking, "What the heck? We could not possibly make this any harder or slower." My teenage mind was highly motivated to get back to whatever flavor of adolescent summer nothing I was doing before being recruited for firewood duty.

I suggested a bucket brigade: he would stand in the truck bed, hand me a couple pieces of wood; I would then stack it. This went great. We even optimized the process a few minutes later when Dad discovered he could toss me the wood, which eliminated my walking. This worked well until I whiffed on a piece and completely annihilated my big toenail. (TIP: Do not wear sandals when throwing around chunks of oak.) We switched spots and restarted the process soon after my toe quit throbbing.

How does this cute anecdote relate to anything worth reading? By applying a tiny bit of intuition, I created an efficient, labor-saving (nearly zero walking), robust (injury-tolerant) process: the Easy Way.

I believe there is an Easy Way to do almost everything. Signs of the Easy Way:

• Labor is reduced, accelerated, or optimized without an increase in difficulty or effort.
• Tasks are specialized; no one worker completes the entire process chain unless absolutely necessary.
• The Easy Way process has the same beginning and end states as the original Hard Way, thus no changes to the preconditions or outcomes are required.
• The Easy Way process improves on the metrics already used for the original process outcome, such as duration, cycles per day, or fulfilled SLA commitments.
• Interprocess cycle times are typically (but not always) reduced; overall cycle times should be less than or equal to the original process (as required in Bullet #1).
• Preparation steps may add to the overall steps in the process chain, but they must save time and/or effort in a subsequent step.
• Potential risks that would impair or halt the process (injury, subtask failure, etc.) are easily identifiable to both workers and outside observers, and have intuitive solutions which creates built-in robustness.
• It's the Best Way, and it is self-optimizing. You should figure out minor tweaks as you familiarize yourself with the new process. Major changes mean you didn't have the Easy Way the first time.

Got a business degree? Does this sound familiar? It should; the Easy Way is basically Taylorism, but in moderation. Taylor laid the foundation for scientific management. I would call the Easy Way "intuitive optimization." If you have to stare at the problem for hours and puzzle out some brilliant enhancement, you're probably wasting time. If it comes to you in a flash, try it. Fail fast and change technique if it doesn't work, and get the job done. Randall Monroe's XKCD brilliantly explains why:

 

If you need help reading the chart, the upshot is that if you try to save an hour doing your taxes next year, you can't spend more than 5 hours optimizing the process without needing over 5 years to get that time back. On a smaller scale, spend more than a single day's effort to "Easy Way" a single minute out of a daily task, and you will need more than 5 years to recoup the time invested. 

Part 2

Earlier, I wrote Part 1 of this article to define the Easy Way, my method of intuitive optimization for processes in both the home and workplace. Part 2 will discuss some real-world applications, and clarify the difference between an Easy Way change and a project.

For me, I hate folding and pairing socks. I have an Easy Way for that. Before I match the first pair, I strip out whites from colors, all-whites from white with logos or gray toes, and so on, placing them into separate work queues. Random matches are paired if I serendipitously find them during the sort. While this increases the overall number of tasks, it significantly decreases the seek time to match a single sock. (This is the part where a programmer will give us a more effective sock-sort algorithm in the comment section.)

Cable techs: When running multiple new drops or outlets, leave the spool at the splitter location and run the cable end to the destination, rather than the reverse. This saves time spent carrying a heavy reel around inside the customer location. For the company, this reduces on-site time as well as potentially lowering medical costs and lost productive days (lifting injuries) and insurance (accidental damage to customer property).
 
In field service, your Easy Ways should be those that improve the customer experience and/or reduces cost while simultaneously reducing the effort required from technicians and staff. No one has all the Easy Ways in place yet, so keep an eye out around your fleet. Anything that takes more than just a few hours of effort is not the Easy Way. That's a project by definition in many organizations. It might have merit and positive value, but it's not the Easy Way.

Optimization and automation projects have a tendency to run away from the original estimate, usually because they are poorly scoped and constrained. "Make it better" is not a very good definition of "done". Be careful not to start implementing such a groundbreaking initiative that it becomes all-consuming without a worthwhile return. The Easy Way should never take longer than the original task. That's doing it wrong, doing it the Hard Way (again, courtesy XKCD):

For example, a past employer of mine once invested roughly 12 weeks, 4 full-time IT and operations team members, and unknown dollars into an initiative to save 30 seconds per truck roll for each of our 600 customer-facing cable technicians. At a generous 8 stops a day, this was 20 minutes per tech per week saved at the expense of 1,920 man-hours.  

At first blush, this seems excessively wasteful, until you do the math. Assume that IT staff and fleet trucks cost roughly the same to operate per labor hour, which conveniently they do. Close enough for demonstration purposes, anyway (typically more than $30/hour and less than $80):

Input effort:
1920 hours x 60 = 115,200 minutes invested
Output gained:
30 seconds per visit x 8 visits/day/tech = 4 minutes/day/tech
4 minutes/day/tech x 5 days/work week = 20 minutes/tech/week
20 minutes/tech/week x 600 techs = 12,000 minutes/week saved
Payback period:
115,200 minutes invested/12,000 weekly minutes of vehicle operation saved = 9.6 weeks.

This was certainly a worthwhile project. Even if the company was staffed by nothing but sandbagging sandbaggers, and was only completing 4 stops per day per tech, the project would have paid for itself  in under 4 months.

This was a classic field service project: drive less if you can; otherwise, don't. We didn't increase our late arrival rate, and saved something like a million dollars in fuel the first year. It was a good cost-cutting project. We saved a significant fraction of the time required for a repeating task. However, as I said before, it was not an Easy Way optimization.

The Easy Way is much subtler, and saves a great deal more time and money with limited upfront cost. Keep your eyes sharp for Easy Way opportunities. They're everywhere. They're often easiest to find in manual work, repetitive "grunt" tasks on the computer, and the household jobs you hate the most. If you are not an Easy Way person by nature, listen very closely to your team member that constantly asks "Why in the world do we do it this way?" If your answer is "Because we've always done it like this", there is likely to be a better, more efficient process: the Easy Way.

Readers: Send In Your Field Service Horror Stories!!

Yesterday, while researching how to not do electrical work wrong, I stumbled across a wonderful showcase of code violations and assorted horror stories. I can't remember the link, but here's a similar one: http://www.qualhome.com/HorrorStories. Here is another: http://www.house-whisperer.com/Nightmares.

I'd like to host YOUR horror stories about field service. Some of you may have had a bad experience with the phone installer, cable guy, or plumber. Of course, field service is not limited to home services. If you have a problem with the delivery guy, or your gardener, let's hear about it. Since this blog focuses on how NOT to do things wrong, your worst examples could be our best story, and become a featured article!

How to get featured :

• Send your story to:
• Keep descriptions as brief as possible, but include the relevant details. If that means an 800-word diatribe, so be it. Don't forget to include the company name, and any contact information you may have for them.
• Include pictures of the problem; PNG or JPEG format, no larger than 1 MB filesize each. We will resize them to 1024x768 resolution if they come in larger.
• Include names of the people you've already contacted.
• Let us know what resolution you're hoping for. If we can find contacts at the organization, we'll do our best to pass your story along.

If your story is posted here and you get satisfaction, let us know! We'll post a follow-up showing the improvement.

Procrastination cost me $250 yesterday

That’s right, I had to spend a lot more money than I had intended, and it was directly due to procrastination. Damn it! I know better!

Here’s the story: our 18 year old dishwasher finally bit the bullet and needed to take the trip to the appliance heaven. We shopped the outlet stores, but the scratch and dent special was not what we needed. I didn’t feel like wandering around the big box stores at 5 pm, so we headed home.

We found a screaming deal online from Lowes. $500 Frigidaire dishwasher for $369 with free delivery. Caveat: Only available in the store in the ‘burbs that is 22 miles from me. Boooooo fail, thumbs down.

“Fantastic, we’ll pick it up tomorrow” I said to the Fuhrer wife. Ooh honey look though, the webpage says only good through January 14th.

I assumed that was some web marketer’s attempt at creating urgency to make a quick sale. Creating a sense that one could miss out on the special: it’s Marketing 101 (well, actually MKT 300 in the Arizona State University course catalog).

In stereotypical dumbass fashion, I missed out.

Monkeys and Lion Tamers

A key component of an organization's field service team is its personnel. I'm not a micromanagement expert or wonk, nor HR guru, but I understand people and their motivations. (In the aggregate, that is. I've sometimes been called just close enough to autistic to excuse my occasionally odd interpersonal interactions.)

I've struggled in the past to explain to managers why they have headaches with certain employees. These are individuals that exist everywhere, with slightly different presentations. Some of these employees seem to be unmotivated by career progression, and simply shit all over the place in the course of their daily assignments hoping to drum up an incentive. Others constantly take a cavalier attitude to changes in process and policy, preferring to "wing it" their way, frustrating management who is trying to implement some new (and usually half-baked) idea. 

I call these two groups of people Monkeys, and Lion Tamers. These people are at the extremes of extrinsic (Monkeys) and intrinsic (Lion Tamers) sources of motivation.

Field Service Is Not Hard (Really!)

There are lots of business problems that are hard. Multinational tax minimization and terabyte-scale database management are hard. Field service is not one of these. Field service is not hard.

What is field service? For the purposes of this discussion, I'll take a fairly broad position: Field service is delivery, followed by execution. It's that damned easy.

OK, maybe not quite that easy. Since I don't have any business textbooks handy (and I can supply my own buzzwords without them), I'll invent my own definition of field service: any business segment that requires the business to send employees to the customer location, rather than bringing the customer in to a retail location. For simplicity, and to reference my core area of experience, think "Cable Guy". Not that terrible Jim Carrey movie; I mean your run-of-the-mill overworked and undertrained coax jockey.

We're not just limited to the cable guy. Plumbers and electricians do field service. Pizza Hut, Ray's Florist, and Walgreens all do delivery as a major segment of their operating models, so they are all familiar with the challenges and opportunities of field service. HP, Dell, and other server manufacturers operate field service departments with occasionally ridiculous response time SLAs. (This is not usually the type of field service I'll be talking about.)

So, I've defined it. But just how do I get off declaring that it isn't hard? Trust me, you already know it is difficult, because more likely that not you have already been shafted by poorly executed field service. Ever sat at home for ten hours waiting on your Dish installer? Pizza in 28 minutes or it's free? Still waiting for that contractor to show up to finish the tile on your bathroom remodel? Being consistently late on customer commitments is not only a sign you're struggling with your field service objectives, it's also a great way to piss off customers.

At a high level, field service consists of six relatively simple steps, some of which offer options. I'll cover these more in-depth in future posts:

• Make a sale, not a promise
• Schedule an appointment
• Roll a truck (or don't)
• Be on time (or close enough)
• Do it right (or get out)
• Make the customer "happy enough" (or find yourself doing it again until they are) 

That's it. Go.