Take Ownership for Reliability

?I have found that to be successful at anything we do, we first need to look at the leadership involved and the key aspect to that is taking Ownership. As one of my friends reminds me, “Ownership is The One Grand Key that Changes Everything Else.”

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Why should you read this article? Well, the fact is that if you can achieve a proactive approach to your equipment, you can save up to 90% of what it is costing you to react to it. The universal fact about equipment is that you schedule the right maintenance, or it will schedule the wrong maintenance for you. Let’s not look at the 90% possible savings but at a 10% reduction in maintenance costs.

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If you can correctly reduce maintenance costs by 10%, it is equivalent to a 40% increase in production. The difference is that reducing maintenance costs correctly is achievable without building another plant and employing another workforce. Increasing production would require both. So, this and the following articles will focus on the correct way to reduce maintenance costs to capture the 40% increase in productivity.

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The informative years for all of us are from birth to five years old. Think about how you are taught during these years. You have a coach or mentor by your side guiding you. If you do something well, you are praised and even possibly instructed as to why you did well.

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If you attempt to do something harmful, you are stopped and instructed in corrective measures to prevent harm. Sometimes you can fail, and then your coach helps you understand why you failed and how to adjust to correct the approach. This coaching continues throughout your first five years.

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What changes when you turn five? You are sent off to school, where the teaching changes. In your academic environment, you are rewarded for good behavior and disciplined for bad behavior. You are strapped in a chair and force-fed mountains of information.

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You are never told how it relates to what you are doing or given validation that what they are teaching is correct. Your leaders and others in leadership positions repeat this, serving as examples for us. No wonder most of us lead transactionally; it is all we know.

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The most common question I get when I talk about taking ownership is, " When do I have time? " I understand this question because I have been in your shoes. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I had a mentor who gave me the answer to this question.

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He told me that the answer to doing the right things is to stop doing the wrong things. Then he proceeded to tell me what the wrong thing was. So, I will start our ownership quest by telling you what five things we as leaders need to stop doing to free up our time to do the right things.

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Start Taking Ownership

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The ability to lead is all about taking ownership. Throughout your day, you must make many decisions. To accomplish this, you must make a choice. This applies to almost every moment. You stand at either a conscious or unconscious nexus of choice. At this moment, you must respond as either a victim or an owner. The criticality of this decision cannot be overemphasized.

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Even when they seem unimportant, these choices represent pivotal moments in your life. In these moments, the victim or owner's decision has consequences, which drive results.? With each owner’s choice, you take charge of the issue, costs and outcomes by deciding to act rather than be influenced. A good friend, Dr. Dennis Deaton, is the author of the book?Ownership Spirit: The One Grand Key that Changes Everything Else. When I first read his book, it changed my life.

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Dennis says, “The consummate truth of life is that we alter our destiny by altering our thoughts.” We have power over our thoughts, and while you may not be able to control what happens to you, you can control how you respond to it. I am reminded of this day in and day out.

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Reliability leadership is all about making decisions. The only way to accomplish this is to have the experience to draw upon. The only way to get this experience is to have a hands-on reliability work history. No college degree teaches you what you need to make the necessary decisions every day as a reliability leader.

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As I have noted throughout this article, there are no shortcuts to leadership in reliability. There are no substitutes for hard work and the time it takes to become a skilled tradesperson. Organizations are setting the people they are hiring to fill these key positions up for failure if they are not qualified. To have the confidence to take ownership of the situations they will be presented with, they need knowledge that only comes from hands-on experience.

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A title does not make you a leader, having followers does, and the only way to get a reliability team to follow you is to earn their respect. To do this, you will have had to have walked in their footsteps and had the internal fortitude to take ownership that experience is the only path to reliability leadership.

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Owner or Victim are not Characteristics.

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The owner or victim are not characteristics but represent contrasting mental approaches. Different ways of looking at the world deliver dramatically different results. When you are a victim, you relinquish your power and are ineffective.

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As an owner, you retain your power and release more power. Think of all the times you have been confronted by the issue of having insufficient time and money to accomplish a task. How did you respond? Was your response?“How do they?expect us to do this?”? or was it?“Here is what we can do given these constraints?”? The difference between victim and owner thinking is that simple.

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The biggest part of this battle for me has been realizing when I am victim thinking. It is not possible to be an owner all the time. No matter how hard I have tried, I have not been able to keep the victim inside me from slipping out from time to time. The key to managing the times you are the victim is to realize when it is happening and shift to be an owner.

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Now, does that mean you need to wait for things to happen to you? Absolutely not. Here is where experience can help you prevent situations where you make a victim or owner decision. This is another example of being an owner. It is not all about how you react but how you approach every moment of your life. Having the experience to get ahead of situations is another aspect of taking ownership.

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Again, organizations are hiring people into leadership positions who lack the prerequisite experience and setting them up for failure. While owner and victim are not identities, they complement your identity for better or worse.

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A victim looks for a scapegoat. There are many excuses, from something nearby to God. Victims are pessimists who look at the world with a “glass half empty” mentality. They squander their lives, viewing them as one big plot or a string of hindrances.

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When leaders act as victims, they feel that all situations are overwhelming and that they cannot influence anything. Victims reject accountability for the consequences and do not take responsibility for anything. You hear victims say things like,?“They made me do it,”?“I had to do it,” or “It is your fault.” When victim thinking, you fail to work on problems, goals, or challenges. Victims are indignant, astonished, and intimidated. When victim thinking, you do not make a difference or see opportunity.

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In reliability leadership, there is little room for victim thinking. When someone is hired for a position they do not possess the knowledge or experience to fulfill, they will quickly find themselves in the victim-think mentality. They quickly look for scapegoats because they lack the breadth of experience to draw upon when confronted with the day-to-day operations of reliability efforts.

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Many such persons have said, “I need to ask my manager,”?or?“How?am I supposed to know that?”?Qualified reliability professionals do not need to ask their managers because they are the subject-matter experts themselves. The answer to “how am I?supposed to know that?”?is that experience teaches you. With qualifications comes more owner speaking and thinking, so organizations looking for leaders to take ownership need to hire qualified people for these positions.

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How to Think Like an Owner

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Owners look for what to do. They know that the right thing is usually not easy, and they don’t look for it to be. When faced with an obstacle, they figure it out and overcome it. Owners concentrate on values that trigger success and learn from previous lessons to build their knowledge. The enjoyment of overcoming resistance is precisely equal to it.? US Navy SEALS are the epitome of ownership spirit.

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Being an owner comes with experience and the knowledge that you are qualified for the tasks. Today, organizations are less worried about having the most qualified personnel in their positions and more worried about the bottom line.

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I have seen this in most organizations I have worked for and with. Few of the organization’s leaders have earned their way to the positions they hold. Most are examples of the “Peter Principle;” that is, they have been promoted to their highest level of incompetence.

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All these organizations need leaders with the knowledge or experience to execute their jobs effectively. Because of this inadequate leadership, these organizations lean towards victim thinking. Owner thinking eludes them because they need more qualifications for their positions.

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You share the process of victim or owner thinking. Nobody is one or the other but a combination of both. You move through victim thinking so quickly you don’t even know you are doing it. It is essential to understand that no one has a set personality or fixed characteristics.

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Once you understand what you are doing works and is progressing, you will be prepared to smash through all obstacles. There is no limit to the chances to release the power of victim/owner choice. Developing ownership muscle allows you to act calmly in conflict or the noise around you. It will enable you to think clearly. You can respond as an owner or react as a victim. Real reliability professionals respond as owners.

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A Navy SEAL friend used to say that “they don’t bring SEALS in to negotiate, they don’t bring them in to be fair, they don’t bring them in for any other reason but to win. It’s not a self-help group-- they are there to take over and tilt the odds back in favor of America.”

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Now, I am not equating a reliability professional with a Navy SEAL, but there are similarities in the philosophy. Reliability professionals do not negotiate; they are not fair; they take over and win. In the case of reliability, this unfolds as a dogged effort to transform an organization from production-centric to productivity-centric. Production can only happen with reliability.

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It takes a hard-charging reliability professional to move this needle. These professionals operate and dwell in the space between reality and fantasy. The truth is that most organizations do not value maintenance but want reliability. When a true reliability professional leads an organization down the path to reliability, some might think it is a fantasy. However, it is only a fantasy if the reliability leaders are engineers or consultants not qualified by experience to lead the efforts.

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