Control Bias and the Maintenance Manager: How I Learned What to Hold and What to Let Go
Control bias is something I’ve had to work through myself, especially working inside operations where everything feels urgent and important. Early on, I believed that if I stayed close to every decision and every issue, I could keep things under control. What I learned, often the hard way, is that this mindset doesn’t create control at all. It creates dependency, slows everything down, and keeps the team stuck in a reactive cycle. This realization became a core part of my Paint It Red Philosophy , which is really about making better decisions and focusing on what actually matters. One of the pillars of that philosophy is control bias. Focus on what you can control and stop wasting energy on what you cannot. In a maintenance environment, that distinction changes everything. I’ve walked into plenty of facilities where maintenance teams were constantly firefighting, jumping from breakdown to breakdown, feeling busy but never making real progress. When I looked closer, it ...
