Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site
Working From Home (WFH)…just one of the things that the “New Normal” will bring according to a few voices from the populations of various workforces who have contributed to economies during lockdowns. People seem to have enjoyed the utopia of ‘flexible’ working hours with a freedom to work when they want, attending virtual meetings and collaborating in on-line virtual offices. [Read more…]
As a risk manager, you will often be asked to explain the RoI (return on investment) of you, your team, even the whole risk management program.
Effective risk management can help an organization grasp an opportunity and realizing an upside risk should generate a positive RoI.
However, when you are focussed on shoring up a weak system, plugging gaps and minimizing risks, showing an RoI can be hard. Even so, an inability to show a positive RoI in a cost-conscious environment can threaten investment in your team. It can even make people question the value of the program as a whole. [Read more…]
Have faith to seize on opportunities that come your way (but the risk is within us!)
Everyone has opportunities. But it is up to us to seize the opportunities that come our way!
There will be opportunities to build lives, to better ourselves, or to serve the community.
Faith and opportunities
Faith is the complete trust or confidence in someone or something. It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. Faith is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead. [Read more…]
The Coronavirus pandemic (COVID19) continues to spread throughout the world despite the best efforts of governments and the medical community. With no vaccine becoming available in the near term and perhaps even in the long term we are faced with growing uncertainty. It seems that ever since the emergence of COVID19 that conflicting advice, information and guidance has exacerbated the situation and created a lack of trust on the part of the public on what measures to take. Wear a mask.
Don’t wear a mask. Social distance. Don’t social distance. The only advice that seems trustworthy is “Wash your hands”; and, that is something that we should do regardless of the pandemic – it’s good common sense. [Read more…]
A while back, I felt that pretty much everything was out of sync and I was highly disorganized. There was a growing list of undone things whether that was around the house, at work, with my family, or at the places where I volunteer.
It was definitely time for a reorganization. [Read more…]
Fifty years ago, having your own car was a sign of adulthood and your ticket around town. But that is all going to change within the next five to ten years due to rising CO2 levels and a new trend called Transportation as a Service. TaaS sits at the intersection of four technical macro trends. These are:
These trends are here today and are predicted to grow significantly and quickly over the next five to ten years. It is a positive trend with a lot of positive affects on the country and world.
The risk to this trend is the need for electric power will outstrip the supply. This article presents the case for this risk. [Read more…]
George Bernhard Shaw once said, and it’s now been written down and put on posters and the like: “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place”.
In this ‘Information Age’ we have access to, receive, generate, and send more information than ever before. People can suffer from infoxication as a consequence of ‘information overload’ and decision making has, we are told, become more difficult as a consequence. [Read more…]
On 31 December 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) learned of several cases of severe pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan. This strain of coronavirus has since spread through China and into other countries. WHO later named COVID-19.
The emergence of the coronavirus was exactly the type of fast-emerging risk with uncertain consequences that could have triggered quick actions by governments and organisations. Instead, it was played down or dismissed by many. They adopted a wait and see approach to risk management. [Read more…]
This is where the achievement of objectives must be translated into tangible successes that are linked to positive outcomes.
Growth for growth’s sake is meaningless. Achieving objectives for the sake of it is meaningless unless you want to game the system and get your financial bonuses by meeting some meaningless performance targets. It becomes a meaningless compliance exercise. [Read more…]
COVID 19 throws a curve ball in the path of life and job security. If you compare life as a walk through a forest, then COVID-19 is a high stone wall (curve ball) along the path of life. Do you stop and retreat or go over or around it and continue your journey? I think you get through the pandemic and continue along the path back to job security and low unemployment. [Read more…]
I was shocked to find out about our drug and medical supplies reliance on China, a dangerous risk to the U.S. I believe most Americans were also shocked. I believe this revelation is a game changer and the American people will insist on change. [Read more…]
In the past, organizations have pr
acticed agility more than anything else because it is easy to simply pivot and put out small fires as they arise.
But with the world facing a global pandemic, statewide lock downs here in the United States, and a once booming economy now seemingly frozen in time, organizations both large and small are caught in the blaze as those small fires are now an uncontrollable inferno of a great unknown. [Read more…]
In his book “Willful Ignorance: The Mismeasurement of Uncertainty”, Herbert I. Weisberg notes: “Medical research is often held up as the paragon of statistical research methodology. Evidence-based medicine, based on randomized clinical trials, can provide proof of the effectiveness and safety of various drugs and other therapies.” (1) He goes on to note that clinical practitioners, who’s judgement is informed by evidence-based data, are finding little in the research that is useful. [Read more…]
The risk of a pandemic is not an unknown unknown. In the 2019 World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report it ranked at a less than average likelihood with a more than average impact. Not a bad assessment but the causes and consequences are difficult to evaluate. There is a barrage of statistical data by country; a lack of knowledge and changing opinions which generates misinformation that is then clouded by journalistic sensationalism in the hunt for yet more breaking news and a spot on the TV. [Read more…]
It is undoubtedly and incontrovertibly true that global extreme poverty has declined as capitalism has driven globalization – the trade between and among nations – to increase over time. Certainly, there are arguments to be made that the growth in wealth has also been increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer people, but the world as a whole has benefited. The charts below from Our World in Data, showing the number of people living in extreme poverty from 1820 to present, clearly demonstrate that the economic benefit of globalization has been as positive as it has been apparent [Read more…]
