Asset management - making the “unreasonable” reasonable?

Abstract

Asset management (AM) discussions frequently come around to how to prepare compelling investment cases to Top Management in a language that they understand. The objective of this paper is to propose a way in which the AM concept itself may be made more compelling to Top Management and Leadership. The paper argues that a macro representation of asset management in a general organizational context may be beneficial approach. The paper refers to high-profile historic examples to illustrate how an AM approach might have influenced outcomes. The paper is the author's personal view and is intended as a discussion of the potential power of asset management. One way to look at AM and ISO55000 is that it describes what we should do in today's constrained and crowded world in order to make progress in a `reasonable' way. The `commissioning organization' may need to achieve revolutionary outcomes, but, through AM, we can take the holistic view of the situation and identify, then treat, the full range of related issues. Informed leadership is critical in this regard. Whilst asset managers can individually and collectively strive to develop the multi-skilled, multi-agency, multi-layered networking culture and approaches that will enable us to prepare compelling investment cases to Top Management (and that will also enable Top Management to respond to them), we must continue to lobby for representation at the most senior levels of organizations. This is because one of the hardest skills is Influencing - there is only so much `pushing' that can be done from below. Asset managers, just like anyone else in business, commerce, government or NGOs, need `pull' from above. A useful way to `sell' the concept and value of asset management to the Leaders of Today (and, perhaps more importantly, the Leaders of Tomorrow) could be to create compelling stories that interpret iconic achievements and events in AM terms. Several examples will illustrate the key learning points, that the `commissioning organization' was strongly motivated and very powerful, and that progress was made but important areas of `reasonableness' appear to have been overlooked. These are areas that an AM Framework could have picked up. In summary, there is huge potential to further develop a series of illustrative studies to highlight the power of the AM approach in a way which should appeal to a general business readership and thus engage existing and developing Leaders across a wide range of enterprises.