A hype man in rap and hip hop supports the primary rappers with exclamations and interjections, and attempts to increase the audience’s excitement.
Emmanuel C. M. says, “the hype man is essential to a live performance. He is an integral piece to the whole show. It’s his job to be the support for the performer, give the performer energy and keep the crowd engaged at all times”. Music writer Mickey Hess expands the term as follows: “a hype man is a figure who plays a central but supporting role within a group, making his own interventions, generally aimed at hyping up the crowd while also drawing attention to the words of the MC“.
Your Maintenance and Reliability Department needs a hype man (or woman) as well.
To be successful, you should celebrate, share, and make your successes known. Find an outspoken, passionate member of your team, and make them your hype man. Metrics and KPIs don’t mean anything if the right people don’t see them. Your hype man should be taking those and delivering them to the senior leadership and key decision-makers within the organization regularly. Not only metrics, but also successes, day-to-day activities that make people understand the value of a high functioning maintenance and reliability organization that produces reliability every day. The hype man should look for specific opportunities to take before and after pictures and data metrics, to show any improvement or value added activities. Don’t be apprehensive to share a lesson learned too.
Maybe not a master of the spoken word, but someone who’s not afraid to get in front of a group, and speak clearly and in detail about maintenance and reliability. The hype man should give some solid examples of opportunities, and showcase these finds, and should keep them on file so they can be produced quickly when asked.
If the Maintenance and Reliability team is doing everything right, and things are running well, no one may notice all the great work being done. The idea here is to keep maintenance and reliability on the same level as other departments in an organization for the right reasons. Money saved by proper maintenance and reliability is money not spent, and that adds to the company’s profitability. More so, it can make for an easier sell when asking for capital for new personnel, tooling or equipment in the future.
Does your team have a hype man? Are you generating information that could be used to tell a good story? Does the leadership of your organization know the great work done by your maintenance and reliability department? If no, to any of these think about how your organization is viewed by leaders? Could it be changed with a little hype about what you have done right?
