Generator Maintenance

We've been experiencing an alarm lately on our diesel generator during its' weekly test. The alarm is really quite loud and annoying but I'm glad we got it. It gave us a chance to become more familiar with a system we don't often think about. And, because many of our staff are new since the generator was installed several years ago, we needed the opportunity to learn.

The display on the generator control panel was un-readable, making our troubleshooting efforts difficult right from the start. We could barely make-out something something about a low coolant level. We all knew that a company in town came by once in a while to keep fuel in the unit and we knew the generator fired-up every Sunday for a test. You can't help but hear the big diesel motor running when it fires-off. Beyond that, it was decided, we didn't know much else about it. The two staff that were responsible for the installation of that particular system were no longer employed with us.

We checked the manufacturers web site and found a certified repair vendor in town. We asked them to find the cause of the alarm (we had just been resetting it whenever it went off) and also perform some maintenance on the engine (oil, coolant, filter changes, etc.) The technician was really knowledgeable and inspired confidence. He spent some time with our staff, demonstrating some basic operations and pointing out the documentation that was locked-up in one of the control cabinets. We're still a long way from being experts but at least we feel a lot more comfortable with this critical but seldom used system. Now we plan to perform some "real-live" testing with the system at some point in the near future.

For me, the lesson learned here is to be on constant look-out for opportunities to increase knowledge, experience, and comfort with all our systems. I think sometimes we tend to shy away from areas we don't know much about but only through embracing those opportunities to learn, often times through just plain old curiosity, do we make ourselves better.

Category Description (Compliance)

This is where I'll post topics related to Compliance issues.

Category Description (Operational Efficiencies)

This is where I'll post topics related to IT Operational Efficiencies.

Category Description (BCP/DR)

This is where I'll post topics related to Business Continuity Planning and Disaster Recovery.

Category Description (IT Performance Metrics)

This is where I'll post topics on IT Operational Performance Metrics.

Category Description (Technology Strategies)

This is where I'll post topics about different technology strategies.

Category Description (Security & Controls)

This is where I'll post topics about IT Security and Controls.

Category Description (Policies & Procedures)

This is were I'll post topics related to IT Policies and Procedures.

Category Description (IT Governance)

This is where I'll post topics related to IT Governance.

Chapter Night

I went to the Willamette Chapter meeting tonight. It was good to see so many of my co-workers in attendance. I always get at least a little something out of these events. They help me in my goal of better understanding the business of the business.

Tonight's topic was around compliance issues. The speaker was one of the NCUA Examiner's out of Salem. He talked a lot about compliance issues around BSA, OFAC, CTR, SAR, and a host of other acronym's. And I thought IT had a lot of acronym's! I was particular interested in the topic of risk assessments since we were required to do a risk assessment as a part of our MFA project. I would have liked to heard more from the speaker about the examinations they've been doing around the MFA issue but he didn't address that topic at all. Anyway, it was interesting to hear him explain our responsibilities around recognizing risk and documenting risk but not necessarily eliminating risk. Obviously, just about everything we do has some risk associated with it. We just need to understand that and make sure the risk as at an acceptable level for our particular situation.

Leadership Culture

Several of us met last week and talked about the "Leadership Culture" here at work. To me, it seemed like a lot of the discussion centered around trying to take what is already a part of the "culture" and make it more formal. Just sort of organize a lot of the different peices of our unique experience here.

Historically, I've never been real big on this leadership stuff. But, if I look at the different peices we put into practice, there's a lot to recommend it. I'm still not really good at it all but i'm trying. I especially like the "complete communication" stuff. Not so much that I find each step in the completion process helpful but, I really believe that if you are thinking it, you should find a way to say it. In other words, don't leave anything left un-said, especially if there is something bothering you. Some other parts of completing communication i'm just not confortable with. For instance, rarely would I ever wish to be acknowledged for something I did at work and I would never asked to be acknowledged. I find asking for acknowledments to be uncomfortable. I don't mind giving them but I'm just not very good at it. Just ask my wife.

I know there is a lot more to our Leadership Culture than just completing our communications. For me, I think that's one of the strongest parts of it. I just don't spend a lot of time thinking about things like my intentions, how I want to be heard, how I want to listen, etc. Although, maybe I should.

Anyway, I think it was decided that we are going to start some Leadership sessions for our underserved populations. For instance, there are a lot of people that have been around for a long time now and they haven't experienced the training in a while. I really think it would be a good idea for some of those folks to get together and talk about what the Leadership Culture here means for them, how they practice it, what's valuable, what's not, and so forth. I wouldn't want those folks mixing-in with new employees during Breakthrough Leadership. In my mind, that's just not a good mix.

Another thing we decided to do was to get more staff involved in leading the different Leadership sessions. I know it's not something I would be very good at but we have some folks in the organization that really internalize this stuff and would make good teachers.

Anyway, I could go-on but I'll save some of my thoughts on this topic for another day.

My First Post

Thinking about starting a blog...