We had two power outages this week. Maybe it’s because they’re building data centers and mega-warehouses around us, but that’s a different topic for a different day.
Neither outage was particularly convenient, but both turned out to be useful.
When the power goes out in a facility, there are a number of things that need to happen. Equipment needs to be checked. Certain systems need to be reset. People need to know what to do, in what order, and who is responsible when something like this occurs.
We have documentation and SOPs for situations like this. But there’s a difference between having a procedure and knowing that procedure works.
An unexpected event has a way of exposing that difference.
The outages showed us a few gaps. Some things needed to be documented better. Some responsibilities needed to be clearer. There were things we knew how to handle because the right people happened to be there, but not necessarily because we had built a system that anyone could follow.
That’s useful information.
We certainly wouldn’t create a power outage just to test our processes. But when something goes wrong anyway, we might as well learn from it.
I think there’s a broader lesson in that.
Normal operations can hide a lot of weaknesses. Good people fill gaps. Experience makes up for missing documentation. Someone remembers what happened last time.
Then something abnormal happens, and the system gets tested.
Sometimes bad things are just bad.
But sometimes they give you a pretty good list of what to fix next.