Explore Chief Services Officer Jay McFadyen’s path through the services industry and how you can gain success in your own field service career journey
On this episode of Field Focus, a podcast by MSI Data, host Mike Pandl, Senior Vice President of Marketing of MSI Data, talked with Jay McFadyen, Chief Services Officer at Fairbanks Morse Defense and President at Fairbanks Morse.
The duo spoke about field service leadership from a career perspective, the skills required to be successful, career paths to lead someone to field service leadership, and several other topics on this subject.
Fairbanks Morse manufactures and delivers high-quality engines and power systems for military and commercial-class vessels designed to perform under the most rigorous operating conditions. They build diesel, dual fuel, and gas engines to meet a wide range of applications. They recently underwent a rebranding to highlight their focus on supporting the Navy and the Coast Guard.
When it comes to making a career in field services leadership, McFadyen found himself in a leadership position after stints as an engineer at General Electric. There, he would have to explain the results of product acceptance testing to customers.
He also worked as a design engineer for another company, and it was here that he knew he had a passion for working with customers and solving challenging problems.
“My path led me through different roles in program management, operations and general management, but the assignment that kind of created that senior leadership opportunity was a program management role, where I spent a significant amount of time working alongside our field service engineers to overcome late delivery of equipment,” McFadyen said.
“It was during that time that I realized how much of our company’s reputation relied on the customer’s perception of the field service team.”
Listen to the episode here to learn more. And subscribe to the Field Focus podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify for the latest insights and best practices to help improve the productivity of your field workforce.
