Why I Still Spend Time in the Field
The further I progress in my career, the more often I get asked the same question:
"Why do you still spend so much time in the field?"
After all, I could spend my days in meetings.
Behind dashboards.
Reviewing KPIs.
Looking at PowerPoint presentations.
And yet, I still go.
Regularly.
Because one day, I realized something.
Numbers tell a story.
The field tells the truth.
I've seen KPIs in the green while teams were running on empty.
I've seen projects labeled as success stories while nobody truly believed in them.
I've seen perfectly rational decisions fail the moment they met reality.
Since then, I've learned to be cautious with certainty.
When I go into the field, I'm not there to control.
I'm there to understand.
To understand why a technician finds a solution that no process ever anticipated.
To understand why a team works around a tool that was supposed to make their lives easier.
To understand what really happens when managers are no longer in the room.
Because that's where everything happens.
The field has something that reports will never have.
Honesty.
Sometimes brutal.
Often uncomfortable.
But absolutely essential.
I genuinely believe that leaders who stay away from the field for too long eventually start making decisions about a business they no longer truly understand.
And in a world that changes faster every day, that may be one of the biggest risks of all.
So yes.
I still spend time in the field.
Not because I don't trust the data.
But because I know what the data doesn't tell me.