It started in the Australian sunshine outside my daughter’s audition venue. All I had was my laptop and a few spare hours, so as part of a business workshop task, I began creating a mind map of all the mistakes I had made in my career. As I wrote them down, a pattern surfaced. I kept making the same five mistakes:
- Not identifying problems before they find you.
- Not taking the time to understand problems.
- Ignoring the alternative solutions to problems.
- Ignoring data that is essential for understanding and solving problems.
- Failing to implement a solution in the workplace.
After my daughter’s audition, I kept thinking about this discovery and eventually came up with the five habits that helped me avoid these mistakes.
- Not identifying problems —> Identify problems
- Not understanding problems —> Understand problems
- Ignoring alternatives —> Assess the alternatives
- Not using data —> Use data
- Failing to implement —> Implement by facilitation
I realised that these lessons could be invaluable to reliability engineers across the globe, which is why I decided to write a book about it. I wanted ‘5 Habits of Reliability Engineers’ to be 15 years worth of wisdom enclosed in a small, quick-to-read book. If they didn’t spend 15 years making the same mistakes as myself, imagine what they could achieve instead? They could make new mistakes and gain new wisdom that they could pass down to the next generation of reliability engineers.
In one of my favourite books and main inspirations, ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Covey, he said that a person desires to live, love, learn, and leave a legacy. I have a life to live, people to love, lessons to learn, and this book is my legacy to leave.
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