Welcome to the launch edition of Leadership Matters where we ask leaders around the Pacific Zone about for their insights and advice about leadership matters to support our continuing journey of personal and professional development.
In this edition, we hear from Vice President Field Services Howard Bowland, who is responsible for the growth and development of the services business in the Electro-Sensitive and Electro-Intensive industries and business in this zone. Howard's team delivers the technology services that enable organisations to improve their operations and digital transformation sustainably and effectively. They provide service innovation through lifecycle services and creating great customer ownership experiences.
Prior to his current role, Howard was leading the portfolio development of Intelligent Edge and OEM services for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. During this time, Howard led a team that delivered new portfolio development and innovation for the service business in a worldwide capacity, based in Houston from 2016-2018. Before that, Howard was the Vice President and General Manager for Hewlett Packard Enterprise in Asia Pacific and Japan from 2010-2016. A 20-year veteran of the technology services industry, Howard has also held management roles at Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation, as well as marketing positions with XP Software in the USA and Australasia.Â
What motivates and excites you about your role at Schneider Electric?
The really exciting thing about my role at Schneider Electric is the opportunity to take people on a journey of positive change. The business and market are transforming, and the Services team plays a critical role in the achieving the company’s strategic agenda.
What makes you most proud of your team?
The attribute that makes me most proud is the resilience I see while we are making these changes. The ability to focus on the core business and create innovation that will help us succeed in the future takes a lot of determination and trust.
How do you see the market for Field Services evolving in the next 5 years?
The market and our customers are really looking for us to provide them a very different ownership experience. This includes shifting to customers not really owning the gear at all and signing up to a service outcome enabled by connecting infrastructures to the Cloud, enabling them to only pay for what they use. They are expecting us to be well aligned to their operational and business success as measured by them.
How does Field Services support our leadership in Electricity 4.0 in the Pacific Zone?
When we connect the customer's infrastructure to the Cloud, we can help them achieve greater levels of asset performance and ensure that when the power arrives at its point of use, it is fit for purpose and delivered effectively and efficiently. Using digital twins for the customer’s network, we can model changes and create simulations that deliver more effective operation and avoid dangerous situations such as arc-flash incidents.
We’re one of the leading companies in the world when it comes to sustainability. How is your part of the business contributing to this leadership?
One of the key areas of focus for my team is managing the obsolescence of aging infrastructure with our customers. This renewal process can include ECOFIT solutions that avoid large scale scrapping of equipment and lengthen the asset’s useful life by re-using large parts of the infrastructure. We can also monitor the key indicators of aging for transformers and identify refresh priorities and those that can deliver more service life. A key environmental benefit we deliver is the elimination of SF6 gas by upgrading the customer to a circuit breaker system based on air, which eliminates a very dangerous greenhouse gas in a safe way.
Describe a ‘customer first’ moment that you’ll never forget.
I remember an incident prior to working at Schneider Electric. An occasion when a customer suffered an outage in a primary data centre that caused them to move to their backup data centre, which then failed as well. Both outages were caused by technology faults from the company I worked for at the time.
We migrated the customer over a weekend, with the team working around the clock. People were diverting shipments of equipment from the airport and loading them into their cars to deliver to the site. We set up an on-site management team to work with the customer for the duration to get the work done.
The customer was a listed company that needed to report to the stock market that Monday morning. So, it was a highly charged environment with a lot at stake. We successfully completed the work on time, and you might expect the customer to be angry and switch away from us. In the end, they were so pleased with the crisis response that they doubled down on products and services from our business and a long and constructive relationship was established.
My takeway is simple: it is not whether a problem occurs, but how you behave and act when it does. This is what the customer remembers.
Which of our other values resonates with you most and why?
A few of the values resonate strongly. One I would point out is Learn Every Day. A key attribute that has helped me throughout my career has been curiosity. To really question and understand why something is the way it is can reveal an enormous amount of value. Both from the ability to learn about something new and to also understand what is causing the situation to be how it is, and then contemplate how better it could be managed or changed.
What makes someone a leader?
The ability to simplify and provide clarity for their people. In business we are often presented with complex challenges that might seem to be in conflict. For example, we are challenged to grow the business rapidly and profitably across several areas. So, to simplify this for our teams and provide a clear vision as to why what we are doing is important and what to focus on will provide the leadership that they need to help them perform. Filtering out the pressure you feel as a leader and giving the team the space to get the job done is important.
However, in the end, if you need to drive change then the one thing that must be in place is belief. Your belief as the leader and belief in the change from every member of your team, and their team, right through to the last person in front of the customer.
Who has influenced you most during your career and how?
Throughout my career so far, I have found that every experience has an influence. Even the most difficult leaders can create a profound influence in my development, especially building resilience. On the positive experience side, I once worked for a manager that truly influenced my approach to leadership and business. It was my first role outside the country operation and required me to manage the business results of several countries, and work with key stakeholders from other areas outside my control.
My manager had a very useful ability to separate business from personal life that enabled difficult conversations to be had in the office without impacting personal relationships. He encouraged me early on to work with the most difficult stakeholders and the first time they asked for something I should say yes even if it was painful for me. This proved to be effective, and it was paid back with a constructive working relationship.
What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
Early in my management career (before I knew it was actually leadership) I learned that knowing how to do something was less important than understanding human behaviour. The advice I received was to think about ‘why do people do what they do, when they know what they know’. This human aspect of motivation and behaviour is powerful aspect to understand as a leader.
You cannot be expected to do every role in your team better than the people in your team. Your job is to enable them to perform and understand what environment or motivation they need. Whenever I have been able to achieve good results it is because I had a great team. Understand the WHY.