Episode

Inside Fluke's Transformation from Hardware to Data — Betting on the Future of Work

Podcast
Lean Focus Podcast
Published
Jun 2, 2026
Duration seconds
3400
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not_requested
Canonical source
https://leanfocus.com
Audio
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/ffa2fbcc-3bad-401a-ad49-3c091aadca36/LFC_Lean_Focus_Podcast_060226-Wes_Pringle_v2.mp3?dest-id=5097720
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Markdown
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Summary

Fluke didn't have a performance problem. It had a future problem. In Episode 10 of the Lean Focus Podcast, Damon Baker sits down with Wes Pringle, CEO of Evident Scientific, to unpack how one of the most respected industrial brands in the world made a high-stakes decision: reinvent the business while it was still winning. At the time, Fluke was the clear leader in handheld industrial test tools. Trusted brand. Dominant market share. World-class hardware. But the world was changing. Industrial environments were becoming more automated. Fewer technicians. More connected systems. The value was shifting — from the tool… to the data behind the tool. Fluke had a choice: Protect the core that made them successful. —or— Build the future before the market forced them to. In this conversation, Wes breaks down what that transformation really looked like: The moment he realized success was becoming a constraint, Why moving into software challenged the identity of the organization, How internal resistance shows up when people fear what change means for them, The strategic bet that made the transformation irreversible, Why speed, iteration, and customer pilots mattered more than perfect planning, How Fluke built a new growth engine in predictive and preventative maintenance, What it takes to protect a new venture inside a large, successful company. Wes also shares a reality most leaders underestimate: You are asking your best people — the ones who built the current success — to question the very model that made them successful. And that's where most transformations fail. This episode is a real-world look at what it takes to navigate disruption from a position of strength — not theory, not hindsight, but leadership in the moment. Because the biggest risk isn't disruption. It's believ…