Title: The Mission Critical Mindset
Course: 2016FA-MCO-110-401 > Section: Module 13: Determining Mission Criticality and the Mission Critical Mindset

The Mission Critical Mindset

There exists a special breed of folks that have what it takes to succeed in mission critical trades. Some call us crazy; some call OCD-driven standards impossible to achieve; some just can't handle the stress. To be true, a facility engineer or systems operator role at somewhere like a data center or nuclear power plant is a far cry from a general commercial or industrial location, and it's simply not for everyone. Just because you are a master electrician that has built skyscrapers doesn't mean that you will automatically enjoy success in a mission critical operations position.

Beyond the appropriate technical knowledge, though, the secret to success is easily summed up: adopt and maintain a Mission Critical Mindset. This means an operator should develop a broad understanding of systems integration, and cultivate a constant awareness of how even the smallest action has far-reaching consequences like the ripples and waves upon a body of water. Even if you don't know every last technical specification about the system you are performing work on, this mindset greatly increases the probability of operational success because you will be looking for areas of risk and can engage resources or enact plans to manage the risk to an acceptable level. Most importantly, when something (hopefully beyond your control) goes awry, you will have a much better understanding of the current environment and be able to react more promptly to remedy the situation.

You are probably at least partially familiar with, if not experienced in, pre-task planning (PTP) of job-hazard analysis (JHA). Think of the Mission Critical Mindset as a constant version of those thought processes, which we might consider "Live Task Analysis." Until it becomes second nature, questions such as the following should be running on a non-stop loop in your mind:

- How critical is the work?
- Do I know the systems?
- What else do I affect?
- What are the risks?

Objectives met:
- C13
- 13.5