The Proactive Mindset - In life and maintenance

Why don’t people do things that are beneficial? Those areas that drive successful outcomes. It comes down to mindset. Ed Mylett’s book “The Power of One More” posits the following:

“The Navy Seals are taught to ask the question, ‘What in this situation can I control immediately?’ By contrast, most people ask themselves, ‘What could go wrong? What can’t I control in this situation? What should I fear and worry about?’ because most of us are hard wired to think that way.”

Let that sink in for a moment. Many individuals, and certainly a great number of organizations set themselves up for damage control. Personally, I ask “what could go wrong?” all the time, albeit usually with a big dose of sarcasm knowing full well what could go wrong.

What’s different about those who ask, “what can I control?” They are proactive, they scan for threats that can be neutralized or for those that need to be avoided. They have the data, they understand, they plan. They know how the organization works. They've done the assessment.

This approach is simple, but it is not easy. In the case of Navy Seals, we know they endure some of the most punishing physical, mental, and emotional obstacles, voluntarily, to become part of an elite team. They drill, they train, they work together, they do extensive after-action debriefing to assess what they can do better and more efficiently.

Applying this to proactive maintenance, the answer is simple. Proactive maintenance identifies threats early, presents you with prescriptive recommendations to restore condition of the equipment at the proper time, with the proper steps, tools, and parts, and then asks you to report out on the findings, helping train the system to know the accuracy of the recommendation. During a recent conversation, someone said that we know that most colleagues show up and want to do a good job. Only a small percentage don’t. We know who they are, and we don’t task them with the hard things. But the vast majority who show up want to make a difference.

Building that culture, creating that DNA is hard. Having the right data and knowledge to deploy proactive maintenance fortunately is simple. Removing that variable helps simplify the task. It also makes things actionable by breaking more complex tasks into procedures. While it may be the wrong time of year to make the comparison, much of the shift to proactive maintenance is like making a New Year’s resolution. The vast majority fail, and fail quickly, because people have a concept, but they don’t have definitive actions they can take to make that concept an executable plan. A well-intended resolution that often fails is someone saying they are going to lose weight. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the vision, but how do you intend to make that a reality?

An executable plan has steps. Note, I’m not a doctor, a trainer, or any kind of health coach, so this is not medical advice, but it does give you a sense of types of activities to plan and track. I will create a weight loss log to track:

-??????? How many times I expect to exercise per week and am I meeting that goal?

-??????? How much water I’m drinking daily compared to what I should be drinking.

-??????? Am I getting 7-8 hours of sleep to help my body recover?

-??????? Am I eating the proper foods at the proper times of day?

Having a plan, with concrete actions, you can better track your progress to the plan. Nobody is perfect. You’ll miss a day at the gym. You’ll get caught in a streaming binge and go to bed way later than planned. We’re human, it’s going to happen. But, to become more proactive, those must be the anomalies, not the norm.

Bringing it back to the proactive maintenance world, saying we’re going to improve uptime or better manage our maintenance budget is a nice concept. How do we turn that plan into reality? Unfortunately, many solutions offered aren’t geared toward leading you on a path to a proactive culture. They are often technology focused, lack domain knowledge, and end up creating more work or less certainty about the recommendations.

Fortunately, there’s a better way. Yes, it takes work, and a plan that you can execute. The good news is, that plan exists. It is simple, but it is not easy. It does require executing the plan, reviewing the recommendations, and executing them. You can start small, gain trust through good communication and show how the improvements tie to return on investment. The results help build the business case to expand and drive further improvement.

We will be unveiling more on the proactive workflow model in our next series of posts. Additionally, we’re making available our guide on building the business case for reliability. Message Adam Napolitano here or email him ([email protected]) to request your free copy.