In this episode, Mark McBride-Wright sits down with Iain McKechnie to explore the human side of engineering, where values like safety, care, and inclusion take centre stage. Drawing on years of experience across academia and industry, Iain shares stories of mentorship, bold career shifts, and the importance of designing systems not just for efficiency, but for the people who use them. From assembling diverse teams to embedding reliability into service-based models, the conversation invites listeners to reimagine what leadership in engineering can and should look like.
Together, Mark and Iain unpack how curiosity, empathy, and a commitment to impact can reshape the way we approach engineering challenges. Whether it’s rethinking physical assets as services or ensuring that no one gets left behind in the design process, this episode offers practical insight for professionals, educators, and future engineers alike. Tune in for a powerful reflection on building better systems, and a better profession, from the inside out.
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Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Hello. I am your host. Mark McBride Wright of the safe leader podcast, I’m delighted today to be joined by my next guest, Ian McKechnie, Director of Strategic Partnerships at the advanced services group at Aston Business School. Ian brings over four decades of experience at the intersection of engineering, academia and industry transformation at ASG, he leads their engagement with manufacturers, looking to evolve through Servitization, moving from product led to outcome based business models. Ian has worked with more than 350 manufacturing firms across the UK and internationally, helping them lock over 10 million pounds in new service revenues. He’s also co author of service Servitization applied, a book capturing 30 real world case studies that show the tangible impact of advanced services thinking with a background in consultancy, economic development and academic research stretching back to the 1990s Ian’s career tells the story of constant reinvention, partnership, building and impact, and I am delighted to welcome you to the safe leader podcast. Ian.
Iain McKechnie 1:15
Thank you, Val. What a lovely introduction.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:19
Well, you’ve had a great diversity of career, and you and I met for the first time four or six weeks ago. I can’t really remember when we came to Abby’s dinner from defangel innovation. She hosted a dinner in Glasgow, and you and I were were sat next to one another, sat near one another. I recall at the at the table,
Iain McKechnie 1:43
we were, yes, that was a fantastic night. I think there’s been a lot of interest generated from Abby’s dinner, and this is just one part of it. So,
Mark McBride-Wright 1:55
and you made you made you made a big trip, didn’t you? You traveled up from was a 10 hour round trip. Wow, and but, but from your accent, you are from, well, we’re both from that, that that from Scotland, aren’t we?
Iain McKechnie 2:12
Yes, I started off in Scotland, but I left there in 97 and been back occasionally, but I’ve always lived either overseas or down south England. Tell us
Mark McBride-Wright 2:25
a bit about your journey then to get to where you’re at now. So you started your career in engineering over 40 years ago. What’s take us back to the young Ian, you know? What first sparked your interest in the in the sector and evolve into more of a business entrepreneurship side of things. Okay, well,
Iain McKechnie 2:43
I grew up in a place called East Kilbride, which is about nine miles south east of Glasgow, and my father actually, he served an electrical apprenticeship with Rolls Royce and Bentley. So I always had this fascination not with the Rolls Royce side of things, because I thought they were a bit too niche. But the Bentley with the racing history was what fascinated me about one man building a racing car, and then the whole journey that that went on and the East Kilbride were fortunate. We had either Rolls Royce, the Aero engine manufacturer, or we had the National Engineering Laboratory, which was UK Government, the top R and D lab in the UK. That was the route that I took for 20 years. I had five different careers within that 20 years, but that was where the background was from. My father, with his passion for the the automotive
Mark McBride-Wright 3:38
and what were those five different careers? Then take us through the evolution
Iain McKechnie 3:42
production engineering, and then I moved into information systems. I then moved into I was a metrologist for four years, and then did hydraulic system design, and then I was seconded to government in London for four years to help with manufacturing strategy.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:59
And so often in an engineer’s career, there’s that technical backbone, and then there’s a point in which it starts to drift or or beyond or away from that, that sort of core, you know, of the of the technical focus. And was that government role that for you? Then,
Iain McKechnie 4:18
yes, it was part of. It was about helping UK manufacturing companies become stronger at R and D and bring in more. What was European funding for the joint what they used to call framework four, framework five, framework six, etc. Now know this horizon program, but when the UK was able to participate fully, my role was to help encourage engineering firms in the UK to participate with European partners, whether that be other larger industries, smaller industries, or academia, to get involved in projects that then had a beneficial impact to society, whether that was through the technology or the revenues that were generated that employed. More people. So that was where the crossover came up.
Mark McBride-Wright 5:04
And how do you find then, business owners, small business owners, in in manufacturing, in engineering, are are making use of opportunities that are available to them, through through mechanisms like that, to the mechanisms that exist today.
Iain McKechnie 5:21
Okay, there are lots of smaller, medium sized companies in the UK that do participate in what would be known as Innovate UK type funding programs. So Grant Park funded contribution from the company, contribution from the government to help deal with riskier research that needs to be kind of shared risks. So that happens. My experience of companies at the moment is that when we’re looking to engage companies, every organization out there, whether it’s an academic institution, whether it’s a consultancy, they’re all looking to compete for management time. Okay, you’ve got the management team within an organization. They need to try and grow the business, generate better revenues. I’m coming along and saying, Can I have a conversation with you? So I’m competing for the time that they can be using in the organization. I’ve got to then have a very compelling story to get their attention, to get them to have that conversation in the first place,
Mark McBride-Wright 6:25
and how do you hook them in? Then it sounds like fishing, going fishing, and you’re trying to deal it in in
Iain McKechnie 6:33
part. But I think that’s where I’ve been very lucky. So the crossover between the the engineering background, I was involved for three and a half, four years in economic development, having worked in three, four different universities, it’s allowed me to have that empathy. So I can walk into a manufacturing company and I can immediately empathize with what they’re doing or the processes or the machinery or the products. So that makes it very easy for me to have that initial conversation. What I’m trying to do is really turn their head 180 degrees. I’m trying to say to them, stop thinking about your product and start thinking more about the customer. And that’s when it becomes interesting.
Mark McBride-Wright 7:17
And is this then what underpins Servitization. Tell us a bit about
Iain McKechnie 7:24
Servitization. So very simply, it’s about adding services to support a product in use. I like to refer to as perhaps a way to make your customers more successful. So if you’re selling them a product, rather than selling the product, why don’t you find ways to add more services, and perhaps you retain ownership of the product, but you deliver it as a capability. So you’re really getting into their value chain. You’re helping them focus on their customers, which allows them to make more revenue. So it’s about adding value across that supply chain.
Mark McBride-Wright 8:01
I see, I see, i i My brain is putting on my small business owner hat and thinking about the services that we offer equal engineers. And it’s we don’t make things, we don’t make physical things, but we make, we design experiences training courses. You know, we take people through a learning experience, and then that’s a pseudo product, I guess, because you’re selling a time that people then buy to attend a session, and then they experience something, and then that’s the end of the engagement. But actually shifting it more into, say, our membership model, where we’re available for consulting or advisory or a co partner alongside the leader who’s trying to make culture change from within. That’s the Servitization of our training products. I guess. Am I thinking that
Iain McKechnie 8:54
right in your situation, Mark, what you could be looking at is perhaps the pains that your customers have in terms of either the experience that they have, so it was something that didn’t particularly work for them. Was it something in the way that you communicated with them in advance of it, or post training? Was something that they then struggled with, maybe applying that in the day to day role? So all of these things, we’ve got frameworks that have been developed by the research team at advanced services group, and we then use the tools and the models and the frameworks to help put that into context. So what we’re really talking about is business model innovation, so taking your business model and thing other opportunities for us in here, and secondly, what organizational change might be required in order to deliver more value to your end customer or your clients.
Mark McBride-Wright 9:50
That’s really interesting. But one of the courses I attended was the government funded help to grow initiative, and it was, I think, I think I can’t remember if it came out the back of the pandemic. It was that sort of funding batch that that came out, but it was a really good, good training course that did exactly what you’re saying, in the sense, that encouraged business owners, us as business owners, to think about our business models, whether or not we even had a business model, and introduced us to some of the some of the theory and some of the models I I find myself now living in the US, like thinking back to some of the case studies that were used in that training course of organizations that tried to go about tapping into the US market, and things that did work and things that didn’t work. So I guess there’s an element within all of this of sharing lessons or raising awareness of knowledge, and how then, what sort of services? Then does the advanced services group, the ESG, offer to business owners like myself. Okay,
Iain McKechnie 11:01
so it’s perhaps worth putting it into contact mark. So we have the advanced services research group within Aston Business School. So that’s Birmingham in the UK. Professor Tim Baines is the number one academic in the world for the term Servitization, not advanced services. We’ve got Professor Ali big Delhi, who’s very high up in world citations in terms of business model innovation. We’ve got Professor Andrea Schroeder, who looks at the digital side. So we’ve got this cohort of academic lead, global leaders in the research field. And what we do is we then use their research models and tools and frameworks, and we create material then that can be then consumed by industry. So we tend to work with we’ve got a group of 10 global firms at the moment to help contextualize it, the J 54 billion annual revenues between the companies. So large organizations, they employ 228,000 people between them. But what they’re doing is they’re consuming our research, and we are supporting and mentoring them as they go through the transformation journey. So the genesis of our work really comes from the core team within Aston Business School. We have the advanced Services Group Limited, which is our vehicle for engaging with industry. So we have two hats on. We have a relationship with the university. We have the company that is led by Paula Cresswell. She’s the managing director the company, and she then engages with industry, with the partners, whether the small companies, global companies, whether the UK, Europe, the US. We operate globally. We don’t have any barriers to where we can play. And it’s really about trying to understand the business challenges. So the starting point is always that conversation. You know, what are you trying to achieve? What are your barriers? Where you get environmental and performance improvements. Where might you get productivity improvements? So that’s a good starting point for the businesses. And then we’ve got a system that we go through, that we tease out a lot of the material that will then help them achieve what they want.
Mark McBride-Wright 13:16
For people who are founder, CEOs running a business, it must be quite cathartic, almost, to have that level of support or advisory or, you know, frameworks that they can look to and think, Well, how, how does, how I have been leading and developing and Growing till now, fit into what’s there and how, how does it help me get to the next step? What do I need to adjust how I’ve been doing? Is the classic, you know, what got you to where you are now won’t get you to where you want to be next? Yeah, and I’ll phrase, I
Iain McKechnie 13:57
think you’ve had one really important point. Tim and I back in I joined Tim in 2012 to help grow the group, and in about 2014 we were approached by the global vice president of innovation at Gigi attires, from Akron, Ohio. And he said, Tim, I’ve read your first book. I’m going to be in the UK. Can I come and see you? So he came, set up the appointment with Tim. Came to see Tim. I met Jim eikner On the day, and Jim said, Look, I’m a global VP. I love what you’re doing, but it’s a very lonely place. You know, I’m in this I’m in this role. I see value in it. I just don’t know how to start the process. And when I know how to start it, I don’t really know how yet to do it. So what he did was he worked with Tim and Allie. At the time, we set up what was the global partnership, because it was about getting these peers into a very safe space where they could talk and discuss about the challenges. Yes, Jim started lighting what he called Little fires across the globe. It was picked up by Luxembourg, of all places, and that then started as a little spin out company from Bucha to test providing tires by the kilometer. So rather than selling tires, provide truck customers with tires by the kilometer so tires as a service. Company now employs more than 500 people.
Mark McBride-Wright 15:27
Wow. Okay, okay, I see, I see so manufacturing shifting into services, which is what serviciation is. And then when the when the creative juices get flowing mentally, all the ideas start coming. And then you, well, in this example, you’ve given you spin out companies, um, conform, have you? Um, so I’m interested in bringing in the theme then of you know where, where we see change happening within engineering, in the world of of safety. So has there ever been any innovations in the world of safety, either physical or mental health, that you’ve that you’ve helped support?
Iain McKechnie 16:08
Well, one company that springs to mind, they they made or manufactured the the safety chairs that you see in high rise office blocks or in hotels, you see the yellow safety chairs at the ends of corners and hotels.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:34
Oh yeah, like evac chairs, evacuation chairs. So yeah,
Iain McKechnie 16:38
evacuate International. Jez was the managing director and a company near Birmingham. That’s their business. They so the innovation started in the US, and then migrated the license that into the UK, and that’s they then featured as one of the SMEs in my case study book.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:56
Ah, okay, okay, yeah, for the listeners that want to find out more then about it, tell us a bit about your book and your what you’ve authored.
Iain McKechnie 17:05
Well, the book was only really a part of an evidence process. Mark. So we had, we had secured, when I first joined, Timmy, had secured about 800,000 to help us work with some small companies in the region to test his models and frameworks that then led to a 1.2 million type program, rather than getting an evaluator, and I decided to write the book of case studies to show real evidence, and we published 200 copies of it. We took that back to the funders. It was evaluated by government agencies, and then that then led to a 2.4 million pound program, which was so we were scaling all the time, but the 30 case studies, they covered companies employing between seven and 80 people a short 18 month period, we helped them generate just over 10 million in new revenues. So the small companies are very agile. They can take decisions very quickly. So a back chair International was one of these, one of these companies, so small world, when you see them out about but that was a big safety innovation for, I think anything over three stories, I believe, in the UK, you have to have one of these chairs.
Mark McBride-Wright 18:17
Okay, okay, so yeah. I mean, it sounds like you’ve you’ve supported transformation across 1000s, hundreds or 1000s of firms, or either directly or indirectly, even through the case studies that you’ve profiled and talks that you’ve given. So how do you find when it comes to then? So you’ve got to experience lots of different cultures within different organizations. How do you find inclusion showing up in those spaces, and how it affects innovation and service excellence? How does an inclusive culture best contribute? Have you ever seen any examples, even in your case studies where a diverse and inclusive team has led to a demonstrably better Servitization achievement. Yes,
Iain McKechnie 19:13
I have Mark and probably what I’m not going to name the company, but we’re a packaging company in south of Birmingham, and I was doing some work with the managing director, and his view of the company was that it was a fantastic company that a great product, the great customers, but he was interested in being innovative and just making sure that he wasn’t missing any opportunities. So I arranged a small workshop. I asked them to get eight people from across the organization, and I picked the roles, not the people, but the roles. We brought these people together. I run what we call a pains and gain session. So it was basically post it notes. Everyone has posted notes. Give them all to the. People, and we give them 10 minutes to write down all the pains that they thought they had with either the product or the customer. And we got 56 in 10 minutes. And he was blown away, because as far as he was concerned, he had a perfect organization. But what was happening was this group had never met before, so we were I was building a coalition of people I thought had to be involved, ie the inclusive nature of innovation, bringing people together. It was about the roles, not the people, and bringing them together to think about the organization and the challenges that they had. Now, fair credit to the company, I went back two weeks later, and about a third had already been addressed. But pains were within the organization, because one department was passing something here, and they were doing something with it to pass it to this department, they were having to do two things to pass it back to this department. So there was a lot of wasted time and effort within the organization, but that group had never met before to discuss it. So it was about being very open about you need to build this internal coalition. You need to bring people together. And there are two people that I can think of immediately that foster, perhaps that approach within me, way back into the Midway back. But it was all about looking at the people, not the roles. It’s about that, bringing them into the family, feeling inclusive, being central to understanding people, and what drives
Mark McBride-Wright 21:30
people. Well, let’s go there. It sounds like you’ve had an influence in the history then, or in your in your training and and so what? What was it that popped into your brain there that you said you can think of two in the past,
Iain McKechnie 21:44
two people, one, unfortunately, is no longer with us, but William Miller, or William Miller, worked with me, nel and I was doing a lot of engineering work at that point in time. He was a scientist, and we we socialized. We had a great relationship. We played football together, and he brought me into his team. So it was all about information systems. So it was a totally different world from where I’d been involved, tangential, you might say, but he he saw something in me that he wanted to foster, and he built that, and he built that, and he built it. And we ended up then socializing on a Friday evening, and then it ended up with his family on a Saturday evening, or it was a Sunday afternoon with his family going a walk. Willie looked after the people within the group were about 1820, strong at that point in time, and it didn’t matter who you were, your banker will have looked after you like a member of family and and that always stuck with me, and it passed away probably 20 years ago now, 1520 years but it still sticks with him, because that was that that really gave me a step up and a kind of confidence boost in terms of what I could then do and help people. And the other one is Martin Watkinson, who was head of strategy at the Open University when I worked there, and there’s still a lot of confusion about it. He told me it was South African saying about never say anything that’s unnecessary, untrue or unkind, and that was Martin, through and through. Now, when you look back, there are some people attribute to a poem, some people attribute to an earlier poem in the late 1870s of that ilk. But nevertheless, whoever came up with that unnecessary, untrue, unkind, it sticks, and that’s how I like to treat people and and that’s what I think that I bring. But that’s because of perhaps the support I got from Willie and the mentoring I got from Martin.
Mark McBride-Wright 23:54
It shows you how important mentoring showing up for people when they are in their formative years, or in a in a change in a change in a situation where they’ve maybe changed as well, changed location, moved. I’m always careful to try and not make it sound like just when we’re younger and we’re going off to do a degree or an apprenticeship, that that’s the only time in life where we can be open to new structures, and, you know, to design us and how we then lead. Because it can happen at any point in life. What I do find when, when we deliver our training with our trusted 10 exercise, is that if we don’t have any changes in our life put upon us, or that we actively choose to make happen, then we just get into the everyday running of how our rhythm of our life, and we start to narrow and narrow and narrow, just because life’s busy, right? And we’ve got our friends that are around us and we Social. Specialize with our kids, friends, parents and what have you. And all of a sudden you find yourself in your, you know, late 30s, early 40s, whatever with. You know, friends that you’ve you’ve not connected with for years. Or, you know, life, life narrows unless lightning bolt moments, as I say, happen, which mixes things up. So, you know, a year ago, when I, when I got the opportunity to move to New York, when my husband got a promotion and we relocated, that was one of those moments for me, because, you know, I was just in my rhythm, running my business, doing my thing, and it’s required me to, you know, build up a whole new set of people, whole new set of connections. So what advice would you give to people, or if you, if you do find yourself in a situation where you’re in fairly steady state with your with your life, personally and professionally, how do you bring in that, like shaking it up a bit, you know, that diversity of perspective.
Iain McKechnie 26:07
Well, your mention of training there. Mark was a really good one in 97 after, you know, I was 20 years at any L, I had a job there for life if I wanted it. I had a pension, all the stuff that goes with it. Yeah. And one day, driving through town, I heard the Clydesdale Bank offering stop start pensions. And I thought, Uh huh. So banks always do something because there’s a lot of research that’s going into it, and there’s potential money for them. And it made me realize that people were becoming more transient. So I was there in a 20 year career at a pension pot, and I’m thinking, I’ve got a job for life. Within three months, I was a senior lecturer in limited University, move country, wow, went for a two year contract, and then I moved to the Open University on a two year contract. Then I moved to Cranfield University on a two year contract. I then, because my rationale for it was that if I moved on a short term contract, a it made me perform. And secondly, if I made a good job of it, then they would want me to stay. They would find a way to make mistake. When I moved to join Tim in 2012 I moved on a two year contract. That was 13 years ago. Yeah, you know. So I think taking that step that just go beyond that comfort zone a little bit and eliminate one of the guys there, Kevin, feeling Kevin and I still keep in contact, localized, but it was a culture on Ireland that caught me out. I couldn’t understand the fact that things took days or weeks to happen, right? Such a more relaxed kind of Lacey, fair approach. In Ireland, I was on the West Coast loving Limerick, music, culture, you know, everything was it, and it helped me slow down. Okay, run a two day training program once for me on achieving process improvements through designing experiments. It was probably the best course I’d ever been on. And I still think of Kevin’s training when I’m trying to think of the work that I’m doing with other companies now in Dresden. He’s a consultant over in Dresden at the moment, we still keep in touch, even though that was I left there and kind of mid 1999 so just over 25 years ago, but Kevin and I still keep in touch. I learned so much from Kevin and his team with an island. It’s just a vision. Go for change.
Mark McBride-Wright 28:37
Go for change. So bring, bring that change into your life, if you, if you can, I think there’s an element as well of, if you’re, if you’ve got more, if you’ve got less, degrees of freedom personally, and you have to be quite anchored and fixed, then there’s ways to still get it with that’s quite an extreme way to do it, to move, move country, and change which, which both of us have, did have done, but you can how, how would you go about bringing that into if you feel like your business is getting a bit stagnant or a bit stale, or, you know you need to innovate a bit more, but you’re and you find you’ve got a team of people that the you know you want to cultivate ideas. You want ideas to be coming forward, but they’re not necessarily that forthcoming. How? How do you how do you innovate?
Iain McKechnie 29:33
Okay, so the I was having a conversation, I hosted a business, the elites, on Wednesday evening this week, and one of the economic specialists was there, and I was having a conversation with them about careers, and it reminded me that I went through, although I was 20 years at any element, through five different disciplines, but it was four years at a time. First year was learn it. Second year was make it better. Third year was, enjoy it. The fourth year was look up and look out,
Mark McBride-Wright 30:02
right? Okay,
Iain McKechnie 30:03
fresh, even though it was still with the same organization. Now it’s different with where I’m at, Aston, with the advanced services group, because they’re at the leading edge of research. Everything is evolving. So I never that we’re we’re always in this space where they’re leading the way. Yeah, the innovation is following, and therefore trying to understand how to capture the research and turn that into useful material that can be then absorbed by industry that can create impact, because the research is only valid if you’ve got a line of sight to impact. So that’s why, perhaps different where I am now it
Mark McBride-Wright 30:41
is, it is one question. It’s one thought I had when you were describing the focus and the team that you had around. Where do you ever get pushback from industry thinking, well, this is all lovely and theoretical, but yeah, this, this is hard to show up in my day to day practice, you know, and how, how can you do research on businesses from an academic perspective without inherently having them involved at the core as well? Or, I guess you do, and that’s actually your role, is to convene that and build these groups that you were saying, yeah, so you’ve
Iain McKechnie 31:19
got two parts to your question there, Mark. So I think let me answer perhaps the second part first. So when Tim, so Tim and I met at Cranfield University, we were both working there at the same time. And he wrote a book called made to serve. And he worked with five large, industrial, well known UK companies, so Xerox rolls, Royce, Alstom trains, Goodyear man, truck and bus, and he worked, and the reason he focused on them was that they were identified as having more than 50% of their revenues coming from services. Okay, that was what he wanted to investigate. And this is what led to the topic of, you know, Servitization as a term was coined in 1988 by our academic researchers. But Tim’s interest was, how can I work with industry, understand what their requirements are to transfer to grow these revenues? Because you might get 3% selling a truck, you might get 30% margin if you’re providing it as a capability and a service, yes, how do you move? So it’s all about productivity, to your earlier point about how do you go about it? That kickback, we probably had eight years of kickback from industry because it was very conceptual. I was using research money to fully subsidize the companies to come to me. I was paying to the marketing companies to get people to come to breakfast events. It was hard. What turned it circular economy, sustainability, environmental performance, okay? People in these areas realized that we had a business model blueprint that allowed them to articulate to their investors, to their board, to the people, why they were going to change and how they were going to change. Okay, that was the tipping point.
Mark McBride-Wright 33:15
So, is there a way then, how, how? Yeah, so that that inherently then brings in sort of like cultural changes and behaviors within an organization as well, like convincing, influencing, upwards and sideways and all directions. How? How did you find the How did you find the shift from like, a very anchored traditional culture that is, well, this, we make things. That’s what we do. We’re manufacturing. We make things. Where did you find it quite resistant to change? Or actually, did you find Well, yeah, let’s embrace this. Let’s try something new. Because your point around your own self discovery, around being in a career. For a long time, things have moved away from that, and now it’s more you have multiple careers. You know, I’ve been reading a book recently where the author makes that point. You know, jobs of the industrial age that were the company will look after you when you retire and you get a company pension with guaranteed income, etc, etc. That all sort of evaporated in the 1980s as we moved into the information age, which is what we’re in now. And we have to take ownership of our own destinies and our own our own employment and income essentially, as we get older, but there’s but a lot of people aren’t in that place discovering entrepreneurial ism to try and achieve that for themselves, and that’s why we’ve got an overburden on like the NHS and Social Security and things like that, because we haven’t been doing good financial planning. Learning at school and what have you. So I’ve lost track of my question there.
Iain McKechnie 35:09
Well, I could, I could give you a response to the earliest part of it, I think part of it about communication and using examples that people would resonate with in their everyday life. So do you use Spotify?
Mark McBride-Wright 35:25
I use Apple Music. Okay, and do you pay a
Iain McKechnie 35:28
subscription for that? Yes, right? So you’re consuming something, you’re not owning a physical asset. You’re consuming something, you’re consuming a service, yes. So Spotify did the same. If you have a look at Spotify revenues over the years. It does that because what they understood was that it was about taking away the pay from the customer. They didn’t want to have a CD collection or an album collection or iPods everywhere that were running out of memory. What they realized was that streaming was a way to reach people when it suited them, so they were designing it as a service to people. And when you start looking around, you know, Uber is mobility as a service. Spotify is entertainment or music as a service. Netflix, you stream, you you buy entertainment as a service. So all of these as a service models are all around us, yes, but we don’t apply them to a day to do role when we make things. So we need to try and get away from making things and moving into using things. So that really helps with the circularity and sustainability
Mark McBride-Wright 36:39
just thinking that, yeah, it plays right to their message, because it’s about how you the Goodyear example that you gave, the tires are then automatically booked in to be coming back and recycled or whatever, rather than just going off to landfill, because it’s a service, and I’m paying for X number of kilometers, And then there’ll be a trigger point when the original product needs to come back to the manufacturer.
Iain McKechnie 37:06
Well, it’s an interesting nuance mark, because actually the value was not about that. The value was in them, understanding what was important to the customer, and the importance to the customer was up time of that truck on the road, moving from A to B, because if that customer got the goods from A to B on time and it was reliable, they were able to make money. What good year did was they bought a company that had drive over tire readers. So imagine a truck and a yard and there’s a red light and a green light on the balls. The truck drives over the tire reader. It checks for temperature, pressure, any cuts or gouges on the tires. So you might have 16 tires on the rig. It drives over. Nothing wrong. The green light comes on. That truck is very unlikely to fail at the roadside, because it’s been before it left the yard. If they do spot anything low pressure, overheating and maybe a brake binding, a cut or a gouge on the tire, the headlight goes on circles in the yard. It’s repaired and replaced. Best place for them to do easily with all the tools and equipment is there within minutes. That’s all about customer uptime. That’s what they care about. They also care about fuel consumption, because every half a mile per gallon probably makes about 20% difference to the margin. So they’ve got the tires at the right pressure, at the right temperature, without cuts. We’ve got this environmental benefit. So it’s not just about having the tire to recycle it. It’s about making sure that you’re providing the customer with the uptime, which is the reliability. That’s what they’re after.
Mark McBride-Wright 38:49
Fascinating. So where, where? I mean, obviously this is the million dollar question for you all the time. Where do you see in the in the years to come, with AI and everything coming in. Where do you see Servitization or areas that haven’t had it thus far? Is there any emerging areas that we need to keep an eye out on, or we have been challenged as consumers?
Iain McKechnie 39:14
Okay, so we tend to operate at a level of manufacturing where we are not perhaps sector specific. At the moment, however, we are seeing significant opportunities in the HVAC, so heating, ventilation, air conditioning. Why? Because people are providing cooling as a service or heating as a service, or ultimately, in the home comfort as a service, whether it’s hot or cold. So there’s a lot of research going on in that area. At the moment, we’re seeing a lot of interest in the health sector. So you imagine a surgeon in the operating theater been handed in a piece of equipment that’s been told that single use only, yeah, but that surgeon knows that he or she could use that 10 times all it needs to do. Be cleaned properly, and it can come back into use. Obviously, procurement teams in the NHS Trust, because they buy a new price. And also, the other thing that’s stopping it is the manufacturers in the US or in Asia trying to sell as many of these single use items as possible. We don’t want to be buying more things. We want to be getting more use of the things that we’ve got.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:22
Yes, yes, yes. So there in like, with that mindset, then any entrepreneurs listening to this should be on the lookout for opportunities of, how can we create a service out of this product, manufactured product that is used. That’s what your brain must think in that way. Now all the time
Iain McKechnie 40:48
it does. That’s a good thing and a bad thing, but the good, big positive from it is that stop thinking about the product and start thinking more about the customer. What? So can we get an example, Microsoft? What we all use Microsoft? What I probably use 3% of it. Why am I paying for 100% of Microsoft? What I don’t need? All the functions I’ve got provide me with the capability I need, and I will pay you forever. You know, think about the customer. Don’t think about the product. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 41:22
okay, that’s good, good, good, good advice. I’ll be applying that to my to my training review then, or our product service review. Okay, quick fire questions already. Yeah, right. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received,
Iain McKechnie 41:44
just do it. Just, you know, Nike came out with the with the slogan, but I think apply anything that’s innovation related, just do it.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:54
What’s one project or collaboration you’re especially proud of?
Iain McKechnie 41:59
Perhaps the one was when I wrote the case study book. But it wasn’t the book itself. It was a project 1.2 million. Delivered everything against objectives. I brought in two point 16 over budget, and really started changing minds within industry. That was what was so successful and kind of proud thing for me.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:21
What’s one skill every transformation leader should perfect
Iain McKechnie 42:27
communication,
Mark McBride-Wright 42:30
coffee or tea. Coffee
Iain McKechnie 42:32
only. I haven’t had tea for 50 years.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:35
Oh, wow. What’s your go to? Way to unwind after a long day?
Iain McKechnie 42:40
Well, I’m very fortunate where I live by I’m on the outskirts here of the Yorkshire Wolds and the Yorkshire Moors. So jump in the car. Roof, off, go for a ride.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:53
Lovely. If you could sit down with any historical industrialist or academic. Who would it be?
Iain McKechnie 43:00
Well, that’s an easy one. James Watt, the innovator and engineer,
Mark McBride-Wright 43:06
what’s a recent innovation in manufacturing that’s caught your attention?
Iain McKechnie 43:13
The positive side of AI, so we do a lot of work with the voice of the customer, so going out and actually doing customer interviews. Technology nowadays allows me to just record it on my phone. I come by, I download it into a transcript. I then use Genie or any other AI, GP chat, GPT, any other platform, dissect it, but asking the right questions in our research context, which then gives us the value in the insight that’s that’s a good side of AI, rather than all the stuff that you hear in the use.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:49
What’s one book or resource you recommend to clients or colleagues?
Iain McKechnie 43:53
Okay, can I use? Can I suggest to mark? Yes, you can. I’ve got to plug this one, because that Servitization strategy, if you can see that Tim and Ali and Carol, they wrote, is spanning 10 years of Servitization activity and industry and the matching research paradigms and models of work. Another one I’ve got, Blue Ocean Strategy, fantastic book. I read it the first time, and it was valuable to me. When I looked at it through the lens of business model innovation, it became a totally different book altogether. I’ve written all over it. I’ve got examples in the case done. It’s fantastic looking at it through a different lens. Okay, really enjoyed it for that reason.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:42
What’s the most surprising thing about working with small medium enterprises?
Iain McKechnie 44:54
They’re all different, and they all I think it’s the heritage that really excites me. Marthas, i. You know, we all, we all want to be innovative and look forward. But, you know, I’ve got into some of these small companies in Birmingham. And there was a lady painting the enamel on a medal that was being used for Buckingham Palace to give out. And I just looked at it, and I thought it was just a little logo that was been drawn on it. And then they asked me to look through the magnifying glass, and it was a horse with a soldier on the horse, and and they were drawing the the blade with a single hair on a airbrush. Wow, that. And they were training people, you know that is a skill that perhaps only one or two people will ever have. In the light, you know, the number of people that can do that is so small you see behind the scenes at all of these companies. So everyone will give you a different dimension.
Mark McBride-Wright 45:56
And finally, what’s one piece of advice you would give your younger self just starting out in engineering, oh,
Iain McKechnie 46:07
probably travel more and learn more cultures first, I think I probably stayed the 20 years was the right thing for me at the time, looking back, I would do Different. So my daughter, at the moment, she’s a teacher, but she then she taught Scotland, she then taught Madrid. She’s currently teaching in Bangkok. You know, she’s she’s doing it the other way around. She’s doing all the traveling first. And I think she will then have a long established career wherever she ends up. But I think I would have probably done it
Mark McBride-Wright 46:38
that way. That’s great advice. Great advice. Well, really enjoyed our chat today. Ian, thanks so much. If people want to find out more about your work, get in touch with you. How did they do that?
Iain McKechnie 46:52
Very simple, just advanced services. Group.co.uk, you’ll find all the team there. All our assets and materials are there. We have a huge repository of evidence and case studies that we use. There’s a current study coming out that’s going to, I think, be very disruptive for UK productivity, and that’ll be launched in October this year. So what’s this space
Mark McBride-Wright 47:15
fantastic. And with the new industrial strategy just coming out, then what a better time to never been a better time to to be getting into that. So great. I’ll certainly be be be downloading that. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Ian
Iain McKechnie 47:31
mark, it’s been a pleasure, and thanks for setting this up. It’s been a real entertaining afternoon for me. So thank you and enjoy your evening in New
Mark McBride-Wright 47:41
York. Thank you. Speak soon. Bye. Mark you.
E028: The Human Side of Engineering
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Hello. I am your host. Mark McBride Wright of the safe leader podcast, I’m delighted today to be joined by my next guest, Ian McKechnie, Director of Strategic Partnerships at the advanced services group at Aston Business School. Ian brings over four decades of experience at the intersection of engineering, academia and industry transformation at ASG, he leads their engagement with manufacturers, looking to evolve through Servitization, moving from product led to outcome based business models. Ian has worked with more than 350 manufacturing firms across the UK and internationally, helping them lock over 10 million pounds in new service revenues. He’s also co author of service Servitization applied, a book capturing 30 real world case studies that show the tangible impact of advanced services thinking with a background in consultancy, economic development and academic research stretching back to the 1990s Ian’s career tells the story of constant reinvention, partnership, building and impact, and I am delighted to welcome you to the safe leader podcast. Ian.
Iain McKechnie 1:15
Thank you, Val. What a lovely introduction.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:19
Well, you’ve had a great diversity of career, and you and I met for the first time four or six weeks ago. I can’t really remember when we came to Abby’s dinner from defangel innovation. She hosted a dinner in Glasgow, and you and I were were sat next to one another, sat near one another. I recall at the at the table,
Iain McKechnie 1:43
we were, yes, that was a fantastic night. I think there’s been a lot of interest generated from Abby’s dinner, and this is just one part of it. So,
Mark McBride-Wright 1:55
and you made you made you made a big trip, didn’t you? You traveled up from was a 10 hour round trip. Wow, and but, but from your accent, you are from, well, we’re both from that, that that from Scotland, aren’t we?
Iain McKechnie 2:12
Yes, I started off in Scotland, but I left there in 97 and been back occasionally, but I’ve always lived either overseas or down south England. Tell us
Mark McBride-Wright 2:25
a bit about your journey then to get to where you’re at now. So you started your career in engineering over 40 years ago. What’s take us back to the young Ian, you know? What first sparked your interest in the in the sector and evolve into more of a business entrepreneurship side of things. Okay, well,
Iain McKechnie 2:43
I grew up in a place called East Kilbride, which is about nine miles south east of Glasgow, and my father actually, he served an electrical apprenticeship with Rolls Royce and Bentley. So I always had this fascination not with the Rolls Royce side of things, because I thought they were a bit too niche. But the Bentley with the racing history was what fascinated me about one man building a racing car, and then the whole journey that that went on and the East Kilbride were fortunate. We had either Rolls Royce, the Aero engine manufacturer, or we had the National Engineering Laboratory, which was UK Government, the top R and D lab in the UK. That was the route that I took for 20 years. I had five different careers within that 20 years, but that was where the background was from. My father, with his passion for the the automotive
Mark McBride-Wright 3:38
and what were those five different careers? Then take us through the evolution
Iain McKechnie 3:42
production engineering, and then I moved into information systems. I then moved into I was a metrologist for four years, and then did hydraulic system design, and then I was seconded to government in London for four years to help with manufacturing strategy.
Mark McBride-Wright 3:59
And so often in an engineer’s career, there’s that technical backbone, and then there’s a point in which it starts to drift or or beyond or away from that, that sort of core, you know, of the of the technical focus. And was that government role that for you? Then,
Iain McKechnie 4:18
yes, it was part of. It was about helping UK manufacturing companies become stronger at R and D and bring in more. What was European funding for the joint what they used to call framework four, framework five, framework six, etc. Now know this horizon program, but when the UK was able to participate fully, my role was to help encourage engineering firms in the UK to participate with European partners, whether that be other larger industries, smaller industries, or academia, to get involved in projects that then had a beneficial impact to society, whether that was through the technology or the revenues that were generated that employed. More people. So that was where the crossover came up.
Mark McBride-Wright 5:04
And how do you find then, business owners, small business owners, in in manufacturing, in engineering, are are making use of opportunities that are available to them, through through mechanisms like that, to the mechanisms that exist today.
Iain McKechnie 5:21
Okay, there are lots of smaller, medium sized companies in the UK that do participate in what would be known as Innovate UK type funding programs. So Grant Park funded contribution from the company, contribution from the government to help deal with riskier research that needs to be kind of shared risks. So that happens. My experience of companies at the moment is that when we’re looking to engage companies, every organization out there, whether it’s an academic institution, whether it’s a consultancy, they’re all looking to compete for management time. Okay, you’ve got the management team within an organization. They need to try and grow the business, generate better revenues. I’m coming along and saying, Can I have a conversation with you? So I’m competing for the time that they can be using in the organization. I’ve got to then have a very compelling story to get their attention, to get them to have that conversation in the first place,
Mark McBride-Wright 6:25
and how do you hook them in? Then it sounds like fishing, going fishing, and you’re trying to deal it in in
Iain McKechnie 6:33
part. But I think that’s where I’ve been very lucky. So the crossover between the the engineering background, I was involved for three and a half, four years in economic development, having worked in three, four different universities, it’s allowed me to have that empathy. So I can walk into a manufacturing company and I can immediately empathize with what they’re doing or the processes or the machinery or the products. So that makes it very easy for me to have that initial conversation. What I’m trying to do is really turn their head 180 degrees. I’m trying to say to them, stop thinking about your product and start thinking more about the customer. And that’s when it becomes interesting.
Mark McBride-Wright 7:17
And is this then what underpins Servitization. Tell us a bit about
Iain McKechnie 7:24
Servitization. So very simply, it’s about adding services to support a product in use. I like to refer to as perhaps a way to make your customers more successful. So if you’re selling them a product, rather than selling the product, why don’t you find ways to add more services, and perhaps you retain ownership of the product, but you deliver it as a capability. So you’re really getting into their value chain. You’re helping them focus on their customers, which allows them to make more revenue. So it’s about adding value across that supply chain.
Mark McBride-Wright 8:01
I see, I see, i i My brain is putting on my small business owner hat and thinking about the services that we offer equal engineers. And it’s we don’t make things, we don’t make physical things, but we make, we design experiences training courses. You know, we take people through a learning experience, and then that’s a pseudo product, I guess, because you’re selling a time that people then buy to attend a session, and then they experience something, and then that’s the end of the engagement. But actually shifting it more into, say, our membership model, where we’re available for consulting or advisory or a co partner alongside the leader who’s trying to make culture change from within. That’s the Servitization of our training products. I guess. Am I thinking that
Iain McKechnie 8:54
right in your situation, Mark, what you could be looking at is perhaps the pains that your customers have in terms of either the experience that they have, so it was something that didn’t particularly work for them. Was it something in the way that you communicated with them in advance of it, or post training? Was something that they then struggled with, maybe applying that in the day to day role? So all of these things, we’ve got frameworks that have been developed by the research team at advanced services group, and we then use the tools and the models and the frameworks to help put that into context. So what we’re really talking about is business model innovation, so taking your business model and thing other opportunities for us in here, and secondly, what organizational change might be required in order to deliver more value to your end customer or your clients.
Mark McBride-Wright 9:50
That’s really interesting. But one of the courses I attended was the government funded help to grow initiative, and it was, I think, I think I can’t remember if it came out the back of the pandemic. It was that sort of funding batch that that came out, but it was a really good, good training course that did exactly what you’re saying, in the sense, that encouraged business owners, us as business owners, to think about our business models, whether or not we even had a business model, and introduced us to some of the some of the theory and some of the models I I find myself now living in the US, like thinking back to some of the case studies that were used in that training course of organizations that tried to go about tapping into the US market, and things that did work and things that didn’t work. So I guess there’s an element within all of this of sharing lessons or raising awareness of knowledge, and how then, what sort of services? Then does the advanced services group, the ESG, offer to business owners like myself. Okay,
Iain McKechnie 11:01
so it’s perhaps worth putting it into contact mark. So we have the advanced services research group within Aston Business School. So that’s Birmingham in the UK. Professor Tim Baines is the number one academic in the world for the term Servitization, not advanced services. We’ve got Professor Ali big Delhi, who’s very high up in world citations in terms of business model innovation. We’ve got Professor Andrea Schroeder, who looks at the digital side. So we’ve got this cohort of academic lead, global leaders in the research field. And what we do is we then use their research models and tools and frameworks, and we create material then that can be then consumed by industry. So we tend to work with we’ve got a group of 10 global firms at the moment to help contextualize it, the J 54 billion annual revenues between the companies. So large organizations, they employ 228,000 people between them. But what they’re doing is they’re consuming our research, and we are supporting and mentoring them as they go through the transformation journey. So the genesis of our work really comes from the core team within Aston Business School. We have the advanced Services Group Limited, which is our vehicle for engaging with industry. So we have two hats on. We have a relationship with the university. We have the company that is led by Paula Cresswell. She’s the managing director the company, and she then engages with industry, with the partners, whether the small companies, global companies, whether the UK, Europe, the US. We operate globally. We don’t have any barriers to where we can play. And it’s really about trying to understand the business challenges. So the starting point is always that conversation. You know, what are you trying to achieve? What are your barriers? Where you get environmental and performance improvements. Where might you get productivity improvements? So that’s a good starting point for the businesses. And then we’ve got a system that we go through, that we tease out a lot of the material that will then help them achieve what they want.
Mark McBride-Wright 13:16
For people who are founder, CEOs running a business, it must be quite cathartic, almost, to have that level of support or advisory or, you know, frameworks that they can look to and think, Well, how, how does, how I have been leading and developing and Growing till now, fit into what’s there and how, how does it help me get to the next step? What do I need to adjust how I’ve been doing? Is the classic, you know, what got you to where you are now won’t get you to where you want to be next? Yeah, and I’ll phrase, I
Iain McKechnie 13:57
think you’ve had one really important point. Tim and I back in I joined Tim in 2012 to help grow the group, and in about 2014 we were approached by the global vice president of innovation at Gigi attires, from Akron, Ohio. And he said, Tim, I’ve read your first book. I’m going to be in the UK. Can I come and see you? So he came, set up the appointment with Tim. Came to see Tim. I met Jim eikner On the day, and Jim said, Look, I’m a global VP. I love what you’re doing, but it’s a very lonely place. You know, I’m in this I’m in this role. I see value in it. I just don’t know how to start the process. And when I know how to start it, I don’t really know how yet to do it. So what he did was he worked with Tim and Allie. At the time, we set up what was the global partnership, because it was about getting these peers into a very safe space where they could talk and discuss about the challenges. Yes, Jim started lighting what he called Little fires across the globe. It was picked up by Luxembourg, of all places, and that then started as a little spin out company from Bucha to test providing tires by the kilometer. So rather than selling tires, provide truck customers with tires by the kilometer so tires as a service. Company now employs more than 500 people.
Mark McBride-Wright 15:27
Wow. Okay, okay, I see, I see so manufacturing shifting into services, which is what serviciation is. And then when the when the creative juices get flowing mentally, all the ideas start coming. And then you, well, in this example, you’ve given you spin out companies, um, conform, have you? Um, so I’m interested in bringing in the theme then of you know where, where we see change happening within engineering, in the world of of safety. So has there ever been any innovations in the world of safety, either physical or mental health, that you’ve that you’ve helped support?
Iain McKechnie 16:08
Well, one company that springs to mind, they they made or manufactured the the safety chairs that you see in high rise office blocks or in hotels, you see the yellow safety chairs at the ends of corners and hotels.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:34
Oh yeah, like evac chairs, evacuation chairs. So yeah,
Iain McKechnie 16:38
evacuate International. Jez was the managing director and a company near Birmingham. That’s their business. They so the innovation started in the US, and then migrated the license that into the UK, and that’s they then featured as one of the SMEs in my case study book.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:56
Ah, okay, okay, yeah, for the listeners that want to find out more then about it, tell us a bit about your book and your what you’ve authored.
Iain McKechnie 17:05
Well, the book was only really a part of an evidence process. Mark. So we had, we had secured, when I first joined, Timmy, had secured about 800,000 to help us work with some small companies in the region to test his models and frameworks that then led to a 1.2 million type program, rather than getting an evaluator, and I decided to write the book of case studies to show real evidence, and we published 200 copies of it. We took that back to the funders. It was evaluated by government agencies, and then that then led to a 2.4 million pound program, which was so we were scaling all the time, but the 30 case studies, they covered companies employing between seven and 80 people a short 18 month period, we helped them generate just over 10 million in new revenues. So the small companies are very agile. They can take decisions very quickly. So a back chair International was one of these, one of these companies, so small world, when you see them out about but that was a big safety innovation for, I think anything over three stories, I believe, in the UK, you have to have one of these chairs.
Mark McBride-Wright 18:17
Okay, okay, so yeah. I mean, it sounds like you’ve you’ve supported transformation across 1000s, hundreds or 1000s of firms, or either directly or indirectly, even through the case studies that you’ve profiled and talks that you’ve given. So how do you find when it comes to then? So you’ve got to experience lots of different cultures within different organizations. How do you find inclusion showing up in those spaces, and how it affects innovation and service excellence? How does an inclusive culture best contribute? Have you ever seen any examples, even in your case studies where a diverse and inclusive team has led to a demonstrably better Servitization achievement. Yes,
Iain McKechnie 19:13
I have Mark and probably what I’m not going to name the company, but we’re a packaging company in south of Birmingham, and I was doing some work with the managing director, and his view of the company was that it was a fantastic company that a great product, the great customers, but he was interested in being innovative and just making sure that he wasn’t missing any opportunities. So I arranged a small workshop. I asked them to get eight people from across the organization, and I picked the roles, not the people, but the roles. We brought these people together. I run what we call a pains and gain session. So it was basically post it notes. Everyone has posted notes. Give them all to the. People, and we give them 10 minutes to write down all the pains that they thought they had with either the product or the customer. And we got 56 in 10 minutes. And he was blown away, because as far as he was concerned, he had a perfect organization. But what was happening was this group had never met before, so we were I was building a coalition of people I thought had to be involved, ie the inclusive nature of innovation, bringing people together. It was about the roles, not the people, and bringing them together to think about the organization and the challenges that they had. Now, fair credit to the company, I went back two weeks later, and about a third had already been addressed. But pains were within the organization, because one department was passing something here, and they were doing something with it to pass it to this department, they were having to do two things to pass it back to this department. So there was a lot of wasted time and effort within the organization, but that group had never met before to discuss it. So it was about being very open about you need to build this internal coalition. You need to bring people together. And there are two people that I can think of immediately that foster, perhaps that approach within me, way back into the Midway back. But it was all about looking at the people, not the roles. It’s about that, bringing them into the family, feeling inclusive, being central to understanding people, and what drives
Mark McBride-Wright 21:30
people. Well, let’s go there. It sounds like you’ve had an influence in the history then, or in your in your training and and so what? What was it that popped into your brain there that you said you can think of two in the past,
Iain McKechnie 21:44
two people, one, unfortunately, is no longer with us, but William Miller, or William Miller, worked with me, nel and I was doing a lot of engineering work at that point in time. He was a scientist, and we we socialized. We had a great relationship. We played football together, and he brought me into his team. So it was all about information systems. So it was a totally different world from where I’d been involved, tangential, you might say, but he he saw something in me that he wanted to foster, and he built that, and he built that, and he built it. And we ended up then socializing on a Friday evening, and then it ended up with his family on a Saturday evening, or it was a Sunday afternoon with his family going a walk. Willie looked after the people within the group were about 1820, strong at that point in time, and it didn’t matter who you were, your banker will have looked after you like a member of family and and that always stuck with me, and it passed away probably 20 years ago now, 1520 years but it still sticks with him, because that was that that really gave me a step up and a kind of confidence boost in terms of what I could then do and help people. And the other one is Martin Watkinson, who was head of strategy at the Open University when I worked there, and there’s still a lot of confusion about it. He told me it was South African saying about never say anything that’s unnecessary, untrue or unkind, and that was Martin, through and through. Now, when you look back, there are some people attribute to a poem, some people attribute to an earlier poem in the late 1870s of that ilk. But nevertheless, whoever came up with that unnecessary, untrue, unkind, it sticks, and that’s how I like to treat people and and that’s what I think that I bring. But that’s because of perhaps the support I got from Willie and the mentoring I got from Martin.
Mark McBride-Wright 23:54
It shows you how important mentoring showing up for people when they are in their formative years, or in a in a change in a change in a situation where they’ve maybe changed as well, changed location, moved. I’m always careful to try and not make it sound like just when we’re younger and we’re going off to do a degree or an apprenticeship, that that’s the only time in life where we can be open to new structures, and, you know, to design us and how we then lead. Because it can happen at any point in life. What I do find when, when we deliver our training with our trusted 10 exercise, is that if we don’t have any changes in our life put upon us, or that we actively choose to make happen, then we just get into the everyday running of how our rhythm of our life, and we start to narrow and narrow and narrow, just because life’s busy, right? And we’ve got our friends that are around us and we Social. Specialize with our kids, friends, parents and what have you. And all of a sudden you find yourself in your, you know, late 30s, early 40s, whatever with. You know, friends that you’ve you’ve not connected with for years. Or, you know, life, life narrows unless lightning bolt moments, as I say, happen, which mixes things up. So, you know, a year ago, when I, when I got the opportunity to move to New York, when my husband got a promotion and we relocated, that was one of those moments for me, because, you know, I was just in my rhythm, running my business, doing my thing, and it’s required me to, you know, build up a whole new set of people, whole new set of connections. So what advice would you give to people, or if you, if you do find yourself in a situation where you’re in fairly steady state with your with your life, personally and professionally, how do you bring in that, like shaking it up a bit, you know, that diversity of perspective.
Iain McKechnie 26:07
Well, your mention of training there. Mark was a really good one in 97 after, you know, I was 20 years at any L, I had a job there for life if I wanted it. I had a pension, all the stuff that goes with it. Yeah. And one day, driving through town, I heard the Clydesdale Bank offering stop start pensions. And I thought, Uh huh. So banks always do something because there’s a lot of research that’s going into it, and there’s potential money for them. And it made me realize that people were becoming more transient. So I was there in a 20 year career at a pension pot, and I’m thinking, I’ve got a job for life. Within three months, I was a senior lecturer in limited University, move country, wow, went for a two year contract, and then I moved to the Open University on a two year contract. Then I moved to Cranfield University on a two year contract. I then, because my rationale for it was that if I moved on a short term contract, a it made me perform. And secondly, if I made a good job of it, then they would want me to stay. They would find a way to make mistake. When I moved to join Tim in 2012 I moved on a two year contract. That was 13 years ago. Yeah, you know. So I think taking that step that just go beyond that comfort zone a little bit and eliminate one of the guys there, Kevin, feeling Kevin and I still keep in contact, localized, but it was a culture on Ireland that caught me out. I couldn’t understand the fact that things took days or weeks to happen, right? Such a more relaxed kind of Lacey, fair approach. In Ireland, I was on the West Coast loving Limerick, music, culture, you know, everything was it, and it helped me slow down. Okay, run a two day training program once for me on achieving process improvements through designing experiments. It was probably the best course I’d ever been on. And I still think of Kevin’s training when I’m trying to think of the work that I’m doing with other companies now in Dresden. He’s a consultant over in Dresden at the moment, we still keep in touch, even though that was I left there and kind of mid 1999 so just over 25 years ago, but Kevin and I still keep in touch. I learned so much from Kevin and his team with an island. It’s just a vision. Go for change.
Mark McBride-Wright 28:37
Go for change. So bring, bring that change into your life, if you, if you can, I think there’s an element as well of, if you’re, if you’ve got more, if you’ve got less, degrees of freedom personally, and you have to be quite anchored and fixed, then there’s ways to still get it with that’s quite an extreme way to do it, to move, move country, and change which, which both of us have, did have done, but you can how, how would you go about bringing that into if you feel like your business is getting a bit stagnant or a bit stale, or, you know you need to innovate a bit more, but you’re and you find you’ve got a team of people that the you know you want to cultivate ideas. You want ideas to be coming forward, but they’re not necessarily that forthcoming. How? How do you how do you innovate?
Iain McKechnie 29:33
Okay, so the I was having a conversation, I hosted a business, the elites, on Wednesday evening this week, and one of the economic specialists was there, and I was having a conversation with them about careers, and it reminded me that I went through, although I was 20 years at any element, through five different disciplines, but it was four years at a time. First year was learn it. Second year was make it better. Third year was, enjoy it. The fourth year was look up and look out,
Mark McBride-Wright 30:02
right? Okay,
Iain McKechnie 30:03
fresh, even though it was still with the same organization. Now it’s different with where I’m at, Aston, with the advanced services group, because they’re at the leading edge of research. Everything is evolving. So I never that we’re we’re always in this space where they’re leading the way. Yeah, the innovation is following, and therefore trying to understand how to capture the research and turn that into useful material that can be then absorbed by industry that can create impact, because the research is only valid if you’ve got a line of sight to impact. So that’s why, perhaps different where I am now it
Mark McBride-Wright 30:41
is, it is one question. It’s one thought I had when you were describing the focus and the team that you had around. Where do you ever get pushback from industry thinking, well, this is all lovely and theoretical, but yeah, this, this is hard to show up in my day to day practice, you know, and how, how can you do research on businesses from an academic perspective without inherently having them involved at the core as well? Or, I guess you do, and that’s actually your role, is to convene that and build these groups that you were saying, yeah, so you’ve
Iain McKechnie 31:19
got two parts to your question there, Mark. So I think let me answer perhaps the second part first. So when Tim, so Tim and I met at Cranfield University, we were both working there at the same time. And he wrote a book called made to serve. And he worked with five large, industrial, well known UK companies, so Xerox rolls, Royce, Alstom trains, Goodyear man, truck and bus, and he worked, and the reason he focused on them was that they were identified as having more than 50% of their revenues coming from services. Okay, that was what he wanted to investigate. And this is what led to the topic of, you know, Servitization as a term was coined in 1988 by our academic researchers. But Tim’s interest was, how can I work with industry, understand what their requirements are to transfer to grow these revenues? Because you might get 3% selling a truck, you might get 30% margin if you’re providing it as a capability and a service, yes, how do you move? So it’s all about productivity, to your earlier point about how do you go about it? That kickback, we probably had eight years of kickback from industry because it was very conceptual. I was using research money to fully subsidize the companies to come to me. I was paying to the marketing companies to get people to come to breakfast events. It was hard. What turned it circular economy, sustainability, environmental performance, okay? People in these areas realized that we had a business model blueprint that allowed them to articulate to their investors, to their board, to the people, why they were going to change and how they were going to change. Okay, that was the tipping point.
Mark McBride-Wright 33:15
So, is there a way then, how, how? Yeah, so that that inherently then brings in sort of like cultural changes and behaviors within an organization as well, like convincing, influencing, upwards and sideways and all directions. How? How did you find the How did you find the shift from like, a very anchored traditional culture that is, well, this, we make things. That’s what we do. We’re manufacturing. We make things. Where did you find it quite resistant to change? Or actually, did you find Well, yeah, let’s embrace this. Let’s try something new. Because your point around your own self discovery, around being in a career. For a long time, things have moved away from that, and now it’s more you have multiple careers. You know, I’ve been reading a book recently where the author makes that point. You know, jobs of the industrial age that were the company will look after you when you retire and you get a company pension with guaranteed income, etc, etc. That all sort of evaporated in the 1980s as we moved into the information age, which is what we’re in now. And we have to take ownership of our own destinies and our own our own employment and income essentially, as we get older, but there’s but a lot of people aren’t in that place discovering entrepreneurial ism to try and achieve that for themselves, and that’s why we’ve got an overburden on like the NHS and Social Security and things like that, because we haven’t been doing good financial planning. Learning at school and what have you. So I’ve lost track of my question there.
Iain McKechnie 35:09
Well, I could, I could give you a response to the earliest part of it, I think part of it about communication and using examples that people would resonate with in their everyday life. So do you use Spotify?
Mark McBride-Wright 35:25
I use Apple Music. Okay, and do you pay a
Iain McKechnie 35:28
subscription for that? Yes, right? So you’re consuming something, you’re not owning a physical asset. You’re consuming something, you’re consuming a service, yes. So Spotify did the same. If you have a look at Spotify revenues over the years. It does that because what they understood was that it was about taking away the pay from the customer. They didn’t want to have a CD collection or an album collection or iPods everywhere that were running out of memory. What they realized was that streaming was a way to reach people when it suited them, so they were designing it as a service to people. And when you start looking around, you know, Uber is mobility as a service. Spotify is entertainment or music as a service. Netflix, you stream, you you buy entertainment as a service. So all of these as a service models are all around us, yes, but we don’t apply them to a day to do role when we make things. So we need to try and get away from making things and moving into using things. So that really helps with the circularity and sustainability
Mark McBride-Wright 36:39
just thinking that, yeah, it plays right to their message, because it’s about how you the Goodyear example that you gave, the tires are then automatically booked in to be coming back and recycled or whatever, rather than just going off to landfill, because it’s a service, and I’m paying for X number of kilometers, And then there’ll be a trigger point when the original product needs to come back to the manufacturer.
Iain McKechnie 37:06
Well, it’s an interesting nuance mark, because actually the value was not about that. The value was in them, understanding what was important to the customer, and the importance to the customer was up time of that truck on the road, moving from A to B, because if that customer got the goods from A to B on time and it was reliable, they were able to make money. What good year did was they bought a company that had drive over tire readers. So imagine a truck and a yard and there’s a red light and a green light on the balls. The truck drives over the tire reader. It checks for temperature, pressure, any cuts or gouges on the tires. So you might have 16 tires on the rig. It drives over. Nothing wrong. The green light comes on. That truck is very unlikely to fail at the roadside, because it’s been before it left the yard. If they do spot anything low pressure, overheating and maybe a brake binding, a cut or a gouge on the tire, the headlight goes on circles in the yard. It’s repaired and replaced. Best place for them to do easily with all the tools and equipment is there within minutes. That’s all about customer uptime. That’s what they care about. They also care about fuel consumption, because every half a mile per gallon probably makes about 20% difference to the margin. So they’ve got the tires at the right pressure, at the right temperature, without cuts. We’ve got this environmental benefit. So it’s not just about having the tire to recycle it. It’s about making sure that you’re providing the customer with the uptime, which is the reliability. That’s what they’re after.
Mark McBride-Wright 38:49
Fascinating. So where, where? I mean, obviously this is the million dollar question for you all the time. Where do you see in the in the years to come, with AI and everything coming in. Where do you see Servitization or areas that haven’t had it thus far? Is there any emerging areas that we need to keep an eye out on, or we have been challenged as consumers?
Iain McKechnie 39:14
Okay, so we tend to operate at a level of manufacturing where we are not perhaps sector specific. At the moment, however, we are seeing significant opportunities in the HVAC, so heating, ventilation, air conditioning. Why? Because people are providing cooling as a service or heating as a service, or ultimately, in the home comfort as a service, whether it’s hot or cold. So there’s a lot of research going on in that area. At the moment, we’re seeing a lot of interest in the health sector. So you imagine a surgeon in the operating theater been handed in a piece of equipment that’s been told that single use only, yeah, but that surgeon knows that he or she could use that 10 times all it needs to do. Be cleaned properly, and it can come back into use. Obviously, procurement teams in the NHS Trust, because they buy a new price. And also, the other thing that’s stopping it is the manufacturers in the US or in Asia trying to sell as many of these single use items as possible. We don’t want to be buying more things. We want to be getting more use of the things that we’ve got.
Mark McBride-Wright 40:22
Yes, yes, yes. So there in like, with that mindset, then any entrepreneurs listening to this should be on the lookout for opportunities of, how can we create a service out of this product, manufactured product that is used. That’s what your brain must think in that way. Now all the time
Iain McKechnie 40:48
it does. That’s a good thing and a bad thing, but the good, big positive from it is that stop thinking about the product and start thinking more about the customer. What? So can we get an example, Microsoft? What we all use Microsoft? What I probably use 3% of it. Why am I paying for 100% of Microsoft? What I don’t need? All the functions I’ve got provide me with the capability I need, and I will pay you forever. You know, think about the customer. Don’t think about the product. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 41:22
okay, that’s good, good, good, good advice. I’ll be applying that to my to my training review then, or our product service review. Okay, quick fire questions already. Yeah, right. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received,
Iain McKechnie 41:44
just do it. Just, you know, Nike came out with the with the slogan, but I think apply anything that’s innovation related, just do it.
Mark McBride-Wright 41:54
What’s one project or collaboration you’re especially proud of?
Iain McKechnie 41:59
Perhaps the one was when I wrote the case study book. But it wasn’t the book itself. It was a project 1.2 million. Delivered everything against objectives. I brought in two point 16 over budget, and really started changing minds within industry. That was what was so successful and kind of proud thing for me.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:21
What’s one skill every transformation leader should perfect
Iain McKechnie 42:27
communication,
Mark McBride-Wright 42:30
coffee or tea. Coffee
Iain McKechnie 42:32
only. I haven’t had tea for 50 years.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:35
Oh, wow. What’s your go to? Way to unwind after a long day?
Iain McKechnie 42:40
Well, I’m very fortunate where I live by I’m on the outskirts here of the Yorkshire Wolds and the Yorkshire Moors. So jump in the car. Roof, off, go for a ride.
Mark McBride-Wright 42:53
Lovely. If you could sit down with any historical industrialist or academic. Who would it be?
Iain McKechnie 43:00
Well, that’s an easy one. James Watt, the innovator and engineer,
Mark McBride-Wright 43:06
what’s a recent innovation in manufacturing that’s caught your attention?
Iain McKechnie 43:13
The positive side of AI, so we do a lot of work with the voice of the customer, so going out and actually doing customer interviews. Technology nowadays allows me to just record it on my phone. I come by, I download it into a transcript. I then use Genie or any other AI, GP chat, GPT, any other platform, dissect it, but asking the right questions in our research context, which then gives us the value in the insight that’s that’s a good side of AI, rather than all the stuff that you hear in the use.
Mark McBride-Wright 43:49
What’s one book or resource you recommend to clients or colleagues?
Iain McKechnie 43:53
Okay, can I use? Can I suggest to mark? Yes, you can. I’ve got to plug this one, because that Servitization strategy, if you can see that Tim and Ali and Carol, they wrote, is spanning 10 years of Servitization activity and industry and the matching research paradigms and models of work. Another one I’ve got, Blue Ocean Strategy, fantastic book. I read it the first time, and it was valuable to me. When I looked at it through the lens of business model innovation, it became a totally different book altogether. I’ve written all over it. I’ve got examples in the case done. It’s fantastic looking at it through a different lens. Okay, really enjoyed it for that reason.
Mark McBride-Wright 44:42
What’s the most surprising thing about working with small medium enterprises?
Iain McKechnie 44:54
They’re all different, and they all I think it’s the heritage that really excites me. Marthas, i. You know, we all, we all want to be innovative and look forward. But, you know, I’ve got into some of these small companies in Birmingham. And there was a lady painting the enamel on a medal that was being used for Buckingham Palace to give out. And I just looked at it, and I thought it was just a little logo that was been drawn on it. And then they asked me to look through the magnifying glass, and it was a horse with a soldier on the horse, and and they were drawing the the blade with a single hair on a airbrush. Wow, that. And they were training people, you know that is a skill that perhaps only one or two people will ever have. In the light, you know, the number of people that can do that is so small you see behind the scenes at all of these companies. So everyone will give you a different dimension.
Mark McBride-Wright 45:56
And finally, what’s one piece of advice you would give your younger self just starting out in engineering, oh,
Iain McKechnie 46:07
probably travel more and learn more cultures first, I think I probably stayed the 20 years was the right thing for me at the time, looking back, I would do Different. So my daughter, at the moment, she’s a teacher, but she then she taught Scotland, she then taught Madrid. She’s currently teaching in Bangkok. You know, she’s she’s doing it the other way around. She’s doing all the traveling first. And I think she will then have a long established career wherever she ends up. But I think I would have probably done it
Mark McBride-Wright 46:38
that way. That’s great advice. Great advice. Well, really enjoyed our chat today. Ian, thanks so much. If people want to find out more about your work, get in touch with you. How did they do that?
Iain McKechnie 46:52
Very simple, just advanced services. Group.co.uk, you’ll find all the team there. All our assets and materials are there. We have a huge repository of evidence and case studies that we use. There’s a current study coming out that’s going to, I think, be very disruptive for UK productivity, and that’ll be launched in October this year. So what’s this space
Mark McBride-Wright 47:15
fantastic. And with the new industrial strategy just coming out, then what a better time to never been a better time to to be getting into that. So great. I’ll certainly be be be downloading that. Wonderful. Thanks so much. Ian
Iain McKechnie 47:31
mark, it’s been a pleasure, and thanks for setting this up. It’s been a real entertaining afternoon for me. So thank you and enjoy your evening in New
Mark McBride-Wright 47:41
York. Thank you. Speak soon. Bye. Mark you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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