In his book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey presents a "Time Management Matrix".  There are 4 quadrants and he points to the importance of taking care of activities in quadrant II.  Here is a version of that matrix showing typical maintenance and reliability focused activities:

	Urgent	Not Urgent
Important	I •Emergency Repairs •Safety consequences •Environmental consequences •Late Customer Delivery •Significant loss of revenue	II •Preventive and predictive work •Failure finding testing •Project work •Planned repair work • RCM, PM Optimization Post-failure analysis (RCA, RCFA)
Not Important	III •Some report deadlines •Some meetings •Some routine activities •Many near-term matters •Many phone calls •Most e-mail	IV •Dealing with bureaucracy •Most meetings •Most reports •Time wasters •Some phone calls •Some e-mail

If you are working in Quadrant I you will experience stress, burnout, a great deal of crisis management and fire-fighting.  You never seem to get ahead of the game.
In Quadrant II you are able to attain vision, perspective, balance, discipline, control and you experience few crises.  You are ahead of the game and respected.
In Quadrant III you have a short-term focus, deal with crises, worry about appearing to do the right thing, treat goals and plans as value-less, feel out of control and possibly victimized and your relationships with co-workers and peers are somewhat shallow.
In Quadrant IV you could be judged as being largely irresponsible, at risk of being fired and highly dependent on others to get things done.

Very few of us are fully in any one Quadrant, but sadly many of us work in Quadrants I, III IV or some combination of those.  Only a few focus on Quadrant II.  There are those who will blame "the organization", "the boss", "the bureaucracy here", "unresponsiveness of other departments", "demands of production", "lack of spares", "no one who listens", "management that just doesn't care", etc.  If any of that sounds familiar, then you are playing the role of victim.  As a victim you have three basic choices: do nothing and remain a victim, bury your head in the sand (denial) or take responsibility and then take charge through proactive choices.  Even a small start in the right direction will help.

There are people who are quite happy to remain where they are, regardless of which Quadrant (or combination of Quadrants) that they are in.  If you are mostly in I, III or IV and happy to be there, then you are in some way failing your business.  Sooner or late someone who has a Quadrant II focus will find you out and then you may find yourself in some difficulty.  Some of you may already be there.  Doing just a little bit in Quadrant II is helpful, but without a concerted focus your efforts will not get you far.  We all want to be able to solve our own problems on our own, but sometimes admitting that we need help is the best approach.  If you feel held back by your working environment (like some of the victim statements clearly imply), then that environment needs to change.  You probably can't do it all on your own, but you can still start the process rolling.  Giving up and going somewhere else is not usually a great option - remember the old adage, "the other man's grass is always greener" and its underlying message.

The entire management culture may need to shift with you, but it won't happen until you shift your perspective and focus.  It begins with you.  It manifests through many.