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Practicing the Art of Failing Forward
Fear of failure isn’t the real obstacle. Instead, our lack of practice is. By treating failure as rehearsal, not catastrophe, we build resilience, insight, and momentum. Whether in leadership, manufacturing, or personal growth, creating space to fail forward transforms hesitation into progress.
Oct 12 min read
The origins of a reliability engineer
The origins of a reliability engineer may go back to Royal Engineers disposing of unexploded bombs. These Royal Engineers mastered their craft at mitigating risk, recognition of patterns, and iterating their skill-set. Similar to Reliability Engineers in manufacturing, there needs to be a skill set fully dedicated to similar situations.
Apr 142 min read
Applying my first lesson from Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge failure
The FBI has recently opened a criminal investigation on the container ship that brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in...
Apr 16, 20243 min read
Zugzwang moments within performance goals
Performance goals Performance goal season is wrapping up. With a few days remaining, you summarize your annual performance to each goal...
Dec 29, 20232 min read
Idioms for when both options are bad.
A decade ago, I vividly remember facing a dilemma where neither option was good. A department I was responsible for had a basement with...
Dec 5, 20233 min read
Understanding the prerequisite to a failure
A quote I remember a mentor of mine said years ago was, if you find yourself bored, just wait 5 more minutes, something will blow up. Of...
Nov 27, 20225 min read
Looking back, I guess it was a sightless turn
I was talking to a friend lately about the melancholy moments in a professional career that became influential turns when looking back....
Oct 30, 20224 min read
Cheers... to the last outage.
WIthin all forms of manufacturing, outages exist. They are either planned or unplanned and they could exist at some periodic interval....
May 17, 20225 min read
When Does Your Analysis Reach a Point of Diminishing Return?
We all fall on both sides of the fence when solving problems. We are either on the receiving end of problems to solve or we are the...
Feb 6, 20224 min read
Rethink our view towards single-points-of-failure.
The new James Webb Space Telescope claims to have 344 single-points-of-failure (SPOF) or single components that could disrupt the...
Feb 1, 20224 min read
Using algorithms for spares management. Easy, right?
Academic references exist for inventory optimization to reflect current reliability and current market conditions. Within manufacturing,...
Jan 3, 20222 min read
Standing Out by Embracing Your Business Failings? Absolutely.
It is always something to admire when people own their mistakes or missed attempts or utter flops. In the manufacturing industry, I find...
Dec 7, 20212 min read
Reflections on the Use of the Word "Failure": I blame Manufacturing.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time in manufacturing because “failure” is one of my default words. I have tried to incorporate fiasco,...
Dec 7, 20211 min read
How I figured out that reflecting on failures made for good business.
Seth Godin calls it “shipping.” Having the courage to reflect, write, and ship. It is taking time to build the habit to do good things...
Dec 7, 20212 min read
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