The Leadership Factor

Welcome to The Reliable Edge

We guide leaders in transforming maintenance into a competitive edge—one proven idea at a time.

This week, we’re focusing on a topic that shapes every reliability outcome yet is often underestimated: Leadership. You can have the best systems, processes, and tools in place—but without strong leadership, reliability will not endure. In fact, it’s leadership that makes the difference between organizations that sustain reliability and those that continually struggle.

In this issue of Reliable Edge, we explore how leadership can make—or break—the pursuit of lasting reliability and resilience.

Field Insight: Leaders Set the Tone

The challenge isn’t just about setting targets or launching initiatives. It’s about how leaders model behaviors, set priorities, and foster a culture where reliability is owned at every level. Because the truth is simple: leaders set the tone.

Their choices—what they emphasize, how they communicate, and what they reward—either reinforce reliability as a core value or unintentionally undermine it.

At a plant struggling with constant downtime, the first reaction was more technicians, more tools, more inspections. But nothing seemed to fix the problem.

The real breakthrough came when a new plant manager changed the approach. He made reliability part of everyday conversations, celebrated proactive problem-solving, and asked supervisors to lead by example.

Within a year, breakdowns dropped—not because of more tools, but because leaders got everyone pulling in the same direction and made reliability everyone’s responsibility.

Signs Leadership May Be Undermining Reliability

Even with strong technical systems in place, leadership missteps can quietly erode reliability efforts. Warning signs include:

• Reliability treated as a “maintenance issue.” When leaders frame reliability as the sole responsibility of the maintenance department, it sends the message that others can ignore their role. This siloed mindset prevents collaboration across operations, engineering, and support functions.

• Pushing speed over quality. Supervisors who prioritize production output at all costs often create an environment where shortcuts become the norm. While targets may be met in the short term, repeat failures and higher long-term costs are the inevitable result.

• Celebrating “firefighting heroes.” Leaders who reward dramatic, last-minute saves unintentionally devalue prevention. Teams that keep systems running smoothly are overlooked, discouraging the very behaviors that sustain reliability.

• No consistent message from the top. If executives talk about reliability once during a campaign but don’t reinforce it in daily decisions, employees conclude it isn’t a true priority. Reliability becomes “flavor of the month” instead of part of the culture.