You Can Do This Too!
Five Tips for Building a Business, a Reliability Program or a Sailing Team
There is a saying in sailboat racing that getting to the starting line is harder than getting to the finish line. I know it to be true. Like building a business or a subset of it is fun if you enjoy it, doing the actual competitive sailing — even when its long-distance, endurance racing — is the enjoyable part. The hard part, and the part where even the greatest come up short, is building the program that it takes to run the race. This is where my experience with building a sailing team is very similar to building a business and a reliability program.
I have found that there are a handful of key elements to building anything.
Passionate Belief (including self-developed, self-motivated skills)
Passion must drive motivation. The motivation has to be self-motivation.
I think the first mistake I made with building a reliability program within a company was a belief that everyone else in the business would join me in my enthusiasm. The truth was that most of the people above me had little knowledge of why reliability was important, and many of my peers did not want to be troubled by another process being added to their normal work. It took me probably a year to fully realize that the only help that was coming was from within me.
This permeated into a wide range of reliability program needs. The question was asked, “Why do you need your version of Fault Tree commercial software when you can write your own or “Why do you need a multi-user license of the industrial version of the DecisionTools Suite when you can borrow a copy of @Risk.” With some passion, I got the corporate investment into each. And also bought my version of the DecisonTools Suite as well.
Speaking of tools and personal investment, I made the personal investment nearly a decade ago into a Flir-E4 thermography camera and a handheld TPI-9070 vibration meter. My wife asked me why the company was not doing it and why we were spending several thousand dollars of our personal money. The short answer was that it was for me, not the company.
The longer answer took me on a recount of having a crappy, low-end team GPS on our first Atlantic 1000 campaigns. That was all our team could afford. However, it mattered little when the device malfunctioned and we ended up wedged behind the jetty at the Jacksonville (FL) inlet. After tacking several times to get back on the right course and ruining our finish in that leg of the race, I resolved to never again be limited by my personal investment in something I believed in. Great sailors, great mechanics, great carpenters, and great reliability engineers make the personal investment in their tools and their training.
There is only one type of motivation — passionate self-motivation — and it overcomes all obstacles.
A Trusted Partner (to help acquire money, team, and equipment)
This element may not be as obvious as the others, but it is second only to the passionate belief in what you are doing. Borrowing from sailing again, the need for a trusted partner became most apparent for that first racing campaign because the downside was so steep. The financial costs associated with a new high-tech sailboat, the entry fee to the race, a groundcrew that prepared for a year (and traveled with us for two weeks), and the time away from our businesses were all significant. They came at a time when me and Frank Moore, my racing partner, had young families and emerging businesses. There wasn’t even any prize money, just satisfaction and maybe some bragging rights.
In the reliability programs, the essential need for a trusted partner was also obvious out of the gate. The comparison to few people in business understanding what our infant reliability program was doing, and maybe why we were doing it, was as foreign to our corporate managers as the investment we were making in sailboat racing was to mine and Frank’s families.
When speaking at conferences or when teaming to deliver reliability analysis, I am often asked how to get the support to build a successful program. My response is usually, “Are you doing this alone, or do you have a trusted internal partner.” I am amazed at how many reliability professionals are trying to build a reliability program on their own and frustrated by the lack of resources that they obtain. The truth is that there is simply too much ground to cover, too many dimensions to consider, too many cross-functional relationships to develop, and too much complexity and uncertainty to do it all on your own. Having a trusted partner is essential.
Money
Asking for money is one of the toughest things for most business professionals to do. That is also true for most of the general population, too. Building and maintaining a business, or a success subset of the business such as a reliability program, necessarily takes money. It takes a lot of money. And it takes a lot of money over several years, not just a single year.
Ultimately, you must find you Sugar Daddy (or Sugar Mama). That is the internal person in senior management that believes in you and trusts in you when all others do not. That person is probably not going to even understand what you do or even why you are exactly doing it. But they will believe in you, through your passion, or in your trusted partner.
There should not be a false belief that “good” should naturally attract funding. The world is full of good causes. The business world in full of good initiatives. It comes down to building personal trust and personal trust with your financier, who will make sure you continue to have most of the resources you need.
Nothing is more analogous to securing the money for any business program than securing the need for investment in a sailing team. The single biggest thing that keeps most great sailors from being great racers is money. I have seen so many great sailors stuck on the shore because they could not secure the investment. I see the same with many great reliability engineers — great on their own but never quite able to build the program they deserve because they simply cannot secure the money. Getting to the starting line is indeed often harder than getting to the finish line.
Practical Vision
Reliability programs in a viable business are about the long haul. Many corporate initiatives are not. This sets up a natural conflict in developing and maintaining a reliability program. Managing this conflict requires a practical vision. The truth is that a reliability program — or any subset of your business — is not going to be as strong as it should be out of the gate. Nor will it be able to solve all of the problems that your company desires for the initial investment that was made.
Reliability programs are much like initiatives of all kinds. Not every battle will be won, but winning makes up for a lot of shortfalls. The leader must have a practical vision — rooted in the realities of today and simultaneously striving to a dominating success in the future.
Effective Communication — All Times and All Tides
Effective communication is the fifth key aspect of building a successful business program. It connects all of the other key aspects. And once again, there are parallels to successful racing.
First, “less is more” when it comes to communications. Nothing like a messy reliability problem or a windy day on a sailboat to remind us that the more we say, the more we are likely to be misunderstood. In simplicity, there is understanding and usefulness.
Second, know when to talk and when to not talk. Like managing wind, wave, current, and your competitors in a sailboat race, there is enough uncertainty and complexity in any form of a business program without adding additional noise. Remove needless and mindless chatter.
Third, respect the decisions of the captain. We all play our roles on the team, but in the end, there must be one decision maker. Trust that the decisions of your leader are fair and just. Most likely your leader understands more from the big-picture, systems perspective than you do.
Moving Forward
Building a business, a reliability program, or a competitive racing team is both challenging and fun. Ultimately it is rewarding because you are doing what you love. Hopefully, these five tips from my own experience will relieve some of the heartbreaks and setbacks that are part of the journey. And always remember, you can do this too!
