I think the equivalent analogy here is to prevent a big issue from occurring, management creates small issues that it can control. Or do I have it wrong?
If you handle small issues, it’s similar to handling small fires and not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest.
The analogy might not fully hold. The risk is that the controlled burn gets out of control. IIRC there was a case last year in Nevada where a controlled burn turned into an extremely large fire. A better analogy might be safety drills at Nuclear power plants. Done well, it helps ensure safety protocols are in place that can mitigate a big disaster, done badly, and you have Chernobyl.
> not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest
Funny enough, small fires are very healthy for many forests and even _necessary_ for some. For example, Some trees do not drop seeds until there are fires. EG: "Giant sequoias are the largest trees on Earth. They can grow for more than 3,000 years. But without fire, they cannot reproduce." [1]
Further, the clearing of underbrush can be good for animals as they can move around more easily, hunt, gather, etc.. [2] Though, what is really not good for them are the mega-fires that burn so hot that it burns trees & everything 100% up to the top of the tree (killing it) and also several feet underground.
So, perhaps another analogy is that every year is like adding gunpowder into the forests. Setting this alight every now and then is good, but let it build up too long and it becomes a bomb. Areas that have burned in the PNW tend to look really healthy 1 to 3 years later. On the other hand, areas that have "over" burned in California with mega fires are drastically impacted, as if a nuclear bomb had went off and killed everything.
At the end of the day, prescribed burns is an amazing tool to create a defensive patch work of lower-combustion areas that help prevent fires from becoming mega-fires that are super-impactful to everyone and everything.
In many of the burns which I've read about that get out of control, it's because the agency doing it (USFS, usually) had a plan to do it on that date and they didn't consider the actual conditions on the ground before they lit up.
Example: An Oregon sheriff arrested a USFS employee supervising a burn that got out of hand and torched private property. The FS was crying foul and saying it was an act of god, but there were warnings for burning that day because they conditions were so unfavorable (the county may have had an outright burn ban). The only reason the FS employee decided to burn is because that's what he was supposed to do that day. And he was legally okay, since it was federal property, but then it got onto private property next door...
For some reason the FS in particular has this problem. Most of them are alright people but the institution and culture needs serious reform.
We had a controlled burn near the SF Bay Area get out of control in 2021 which forced some evacuations. Of course controlled burns are still needed to reduce overall fire risk, but incidents like that naturally make local residents a bit leery.
Right. The small issues are minor outages causing customer inconvenience and/or lost revenue. The big issues are major pwnage and loss of everything because you were afraid of causing small issues while fixing things.
That makes a lot of sense. By allowing the teams to fix things quickly and break things, management creates an environment where people can continuously learn how to handle fires and this makes them ready to handle bigger fires and also prevent bigger fires.
But the problem is that there are incentives to keep pushing the middle ground closer towards eventual system collapse.
It's never the right time to see if the backup generators can take the building load. But during real emergencies, it's amazing how common it is for the backup generators to not work for one reason or another.
"It's never the right time to see if the backup generators can take the building load. "
How about a test outside normal working hours?
It is possible, to meassure the power output before and then plug in enough stuff, that draws roughly the same.
But yes, it is more convenient to not do it and continue buisness as usual and hope for the best.
My point is, that in most cases, you can test and fix critical stuff and also fix problems created by your fixes, if you make it an important issue and plan accordingly. However, I did not say it is necessarily easy.
If you handle small issues, it’s similar to handling small fires and not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest.