When does anyone think about maintenance and its contribution to the success of the company? When do people talk about maintenance? If you were a fly on the wall in the lunch room, when would maintenance come up in people's conversations? How often is maintenance blamed for breakdowns, or for lack of responsiveness around breakdowns?

People think about maintenance when something breaks. People think about maintenance when there's a problem. People also tend to blame the messenger. Maintenance frequently has bad news for operations and others.

Can you imagine the operations people telling each other that they are so blessed with this maintenance department? That they feel that the maintenance department and the maintenance people are wonderful. You don't hear that much, though it could happen.

Until now I would bet you that when you did something to save the company money or effort, or when you eliminated waste, you didn't blow your own horn. I'd bet that, probably outside of three or four people close to you, no one knew that you even did anything.

I know this statement is true because I give personality tests to maintenance people. And almost half of the maintenance people, about twice as many as you would normally find, are what we call introverted in their personality profile. Maintenance people as a group don't brag a lot, and they're not particularly good promoters. Maintenance does not attract the kind of people that yell to the world, "Yes, we did this! Let's tell everybody!"