Asset Management: Looking Backwards/Going Forward

As follow up to our last blog “Buildings…The Gifts that Keep on Taking” knowing where we came from is helpful to figuring out we are going as a professional discipline. To help in this pursuit, the following observations are drawn from our experience in Higher Education Facilities Management:

1. The evolution of Asset Management is responsive to macro trends. History has shown that asset management evolution has been guided by reactions to things, mostly bad things, that happen beyond the scope of managing assets. This includes choices to underfund maintenance and operations and asset life cycle requirements due to competing priorities, budget challenges and enrollment issues related to Covid and demographics.
2. Asset Management evolution is biased towards response to and avoidance of Colleges and Universities tend to be slow to change and risk adverse, and therefore proactive asset management advancements are rare. In most cases, an organization must understand that serious loss or failure to achieve critical objectives is linked to asset management decision making before it is willing to embrace a disciplined asset management approach.
3. Asset Management innovation is led through the actions of individuals. Nothing within an organization happens without someone doing something. So even though progress implementing asset management improvements can be challenging, every advancement is linked to the actions of individuals. The point of this observation is to not give up hope. Asset Managers are leaders and need to be persistent in doing the right thing in terms of implementing disciplined asset management, because if they don’t no one will.
4. All successful Asset Management transformations are top-down driven. Even though every asset management advancement is led through the actions of individuals, no organization will embrace disciplined asset management if it is not championed and led through a top-down action or activity. Only executive level decision makers have the span of control required to direct this level of coordination and this establishes the necessity that all asset management transformations be top-down driven.
5. Asset Management success is derived from benefit realization. Asset Management is and must be outcome oriented for it to be successful. These outcomes can be evaluated in terms of asset performance, but true asset management success is only measured through the realization of benefits for the organization. Apply the WIIFMSOWC’s test – What’s in it for me, so what. Who cares? But from an organizational perspective.
6. Sustainable Asset Management is driven by culture, not strategy. Peter Drucker coined the famous phrase – “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Disciplined asset management improvement strategies that do not positively contribute to an asset management culture will be short lived.
7. Managing Assets is responsive, Asset Management requires proactive leadership. All organizations own and manage assets, and most organizations view managing assets as a responsive activity (e.g., as an overhead expense) – that is ensuring the asset serves its intended purpose. Only some organizations go on to implement disciplined asset management. Every disciplined asset management implementation is a leadership decision, and only some organizations do so proactively. Those that learn to do so are best prepared to successfully achieve their objectives and adapt to changes in their environment. These organizations understand that (management) systems are greater than (management) goals

All change involves actions that generate reactions. As an industry, we have come a long way in how we understand asset management. Going forward asset management will continue to evolve and absorb and apply other best practices just like it did with application of life cycle and maintenance management of physical assets.

Facilities Management will find a way. While it may not always be direct or efficient, if history is a gauge, we know that the best ideas will rise to the top. We can also expect that as organizations learn about asset management’s benefits accelerated pathways will emerge. In this way asset management will be recognized as the proactive force it is.

R Ledbetter & Associates (RL&A) is a strategic consultancy firm specializing in Higher Education Facilities Management (FM). We focus on this market and area of expertise because it's what we know best. Our team has worked in the industry for years, and that experience has prepared us to help you elevate and improve your FM organization’s program into a high achieving / role model organization.

Contact me at: Randy@rledbetter.com