Nick Richards spent more than 13 years as a field service engineer at Cubic Transportation Systems before stepping into management. That experience sits close to the surface in everything he talks about in this episode.He joins Sarah Nicastro to discuss what leaders get wrong about the frontline, why recognition so often misses the mark, and what a genuine commitment to knowing your team actually looks like in practice. He also talks about how Cubic is approaching diversity in hiring — including neurodiversity and women in engineering — and why he believes field service managers, not HR departments, should own the recruitment process.This is a conversation for anyone leading a frontline team, or anyone trying to understand what today's field service workforce actually needs to stay and grow.Topics covered:- What top-level leadership consistently misses about the frontline role- Why a simple "thanks" isn't always enough — and what actually lands- Why Nick refuses to be called "boss"- How Cubic is building more diverse field service teams- Neurodiversity in field service hiring — seeing strengths, not risks- Getting more women into field engineering roles- What a better recruitment process looks like in practice- Why managers should own hiring, not just HR- What younger and more experienced engineers want from their leaders- The changing nature of pride in the field service roleGuest: Nick Richards, Interim Head of Field Services, Cubic Transportation SystemsHost: Sarah Nicastro, Creator & Editor in Chief, Future of Field Service
Yasir Sheikh, Global Service Transformation Leader at Honeywell Technologies and 2026 Stand Out 50 leader, joins Sarah Nicastro to explore how AI is changing service delivery - from predictive to prescriptive maintenance, why change management is the part of transformation most organizations get wrong, and the analogy for getting transformation right that Sarah says she won't forget.
When a CEO tells Ashley Gross they need an AI win, her first question is always: why does the win need to come from AI? In this episode of Assets UNSCRIPTED, host Berend Booms sits down with Ashley, founder and CEO of The Alliance and author of The AI Workweek, to explore what actually makes AI pay off in the day-to-day work of an organisation. Ashley rebuilt her 80-hour work week down to 15 hours before ChatGPT existed, has since helped Fortune 500 companies figure out what AI is genuinely worth doing, and now describes herself as a business therapist between IT and business teams. The conversation covers AI fatigue among frontline workers, why AI is putting more pressure on senior leaders than entry-level staff, and whether Dario Amodei's call to slow AI development is a valid concern or smart timing.
Berend Booms, Associate Editor of Future of Assets, takes over the mic to share his key takeaways from Future of Field Service Live London. Session by session, he covers what stood out, what surprised him, and what he will carry with him. And in a nod to Rob Stevenson's keynote on music and energy, he picks a song to go with every part of the day.
Sarah Nicastro is just back from the Service Council Symposium in Chicago. In this solo episode she shares her five personal takeaways — from why the employee experience conversation is finally going deeper than the talking point, to "digital rocks not digital popcorn," to the empathy insight from EchoStar's Melissa Perkle Bailey that she says she'll come back to time and time again.