This past week I managed to attend a water specific conference aimed at asset management. What was I doing there given we don’t get involved in designing or delivering physical assets?

The answer, I don’t believe that the idea of great asset management is just about how great the technology is. After all, there are people involved. So, i was looking for the connection between how water leaders think about assets and their organisation.

Amazing opportunities

It’s true. Whilst I was there I spoke to a number of people on various stands, demonstrating their products. Fascinating leaps in what tech can do. I heard people stand on stage and talk about AI, and how its helping with all sorts of challenges from spotting sewer defects to future weather patterns. It’s all really positive and if leveraged should help the sector in meeting it’s upcoming challenges.

At the risk of bringing this down though, I do have a couple of concerns, one of which i’ll outline here, which was kind of alluded to by the people on stage, but never really brought to the fore. 

That is the health of the organisations in terms of ‘how they are’, their culture.

 

A different conference

You could tell me that I was at the wrong conference. There’s a CPD one that covers organisational development. You should have gone to that. This, I believe is part of the problem. Why are we separating these things? Is it possible to have great asset mgt without a great culture? What’s the risk of diffrent people heading up these different themes?

I don’t think they can exist in isolation. Here’s why…

People make Assets perform

If you think of all the people doing their various activities in water companies, whether that is detecting, maintaining, repairing, installing etc. Do you think someone that is happy, engaged, fulfilled, appreciated, connected, is going to have a more positive impact on ‘assets’ than someone who is not? What about how this manifests when asking people to collaborate to work on assets, would someone like this be more ‘team’ orientated?

I can only see one answer here and that’s a yes. 

If this is true then how leaders and managers create environments for people to feel more like this in support of asset management will be vital to leveraging the amazing innovations that are coming through.

So, rather than separating out different strategies, maybe we need to think more about how they come together. Systems thinking was mentioned a few times at the conference and ‘people’ are a huge part of organisational systems as much as the tangible nuts, bolts and AI.

 

How separated are your asset mgt, change and people strategies and how can you bring them into closer alignment?