Did you know April 16th was National Stress Awareness Day? Neither did I. I don’t normally pay attention to holidays like these, but that’s just me. However, this one was brought to my attention by a colleague, and I starting thinking about stress in our day-to-day lives. Let me set the record straight, I am not a psychologist, therapist, or any other type of “-ist”, so if you need proper attention, please contact a professional.

With that said, we all know that stress can be caused by many different things and affect us in different ways. I have experienced a lot of stressful situations in my life, both personally and professionally. For those who experience stress on a personal level, I hope you can find the answers you need and can work through whatever issues you are dealing with. It’s not always easy but look for the positives and carry on.

On the professional side, for me, stress in our work efforts has mainly been related to a few key factors.

  • Information
  • Data
  • Processes

There are certainly many more than the above, but at the root, I have a feeling these drive stress for most.

Have you ever had to make a decision without all the information you need? Where does the information come from? Can you trust the information? Are you basing your decision on a gut feeling, or is there too much information that may not be useful? If you had all the information and it was accurate, you could make the decision more effectively. How many times have you heard someone say, “I wish I knew that before I made my choice?”

Let’s consider data. Data is what forms the information we have. I have talked with many Maximo users as well as maintenance and operations folks over the years. When I start asking questions about data, I always get the same reply: “Our data is perfect.” Just kidding. The immediate response is a deep sigh followed by an “Oh, man” or something similar. To me, data is the root cause for a lot of stress and bad decisions. I like to ask a lot of questions (the 5 whys type), and you can usually track bad data back to incomplete onboarding processes for assets, incomplete data collection processes for work management, and a lack of standards for data in general.

Finally, processes or standards can play a role in reducing stress in the workplace. Well-defined and documented processes and standards are a plus, but it does not end there. They need to be aligned with organizational goals, understood by all within the organization, and finally, how they impact everyone and how everyone is part of the bigger picture. Our organization has been experiencing time pressure over the last few months as we complete the final stages of our ISO 9001 Quality Management Certification. Interestingly, though, most of the stress is relieved by having well-defined processes and standards in place and good data management as foundational elements of what we do.

If properly set up and used, can you see how Maximo can be a stress reliever? We need to factor that into the ROI equation. Check out what we do at Maven and let us know how we can help you reduce stress and improve ROI with your Maximo implementation.