Asset Management has become increasingly sophisticated. We have standards, frameworks, maturity models, information systems, risk methodologies, lifecycle strategies, governance structures and an ever-growing vocabulary to describe what good Asset Management should look like. All of these have their place, but sometimes I think we make the subject far more complicated than it needs to be.
When I look back over my own career from maintenance and reliability through operations, supply chain, major systems implementations, organisational change and Asset Management, many of the lessons that have stayed with me are remarkably simple. Look after what you have. Plan before you act. Don’t ignore warning signs. Understand the consequences of your decisions. Listen to people who know the work. Don’t save a dollar today if it costs ten tomorrow. And, perhaps most importantly, don’t confuse complexity with good management. Long before we called these things lifecycle management, assurance, alignment, risk-based decision-making or organisational change, our grandparents had sayings that captured much of the same common sense. So, with tongue firmly in cheek, here are some of my favourite “Grandma-isms” for Asset Management and Change Management.
- A Penny saved is a penny earned (Balance of Cost Risk and Performance)
- A poor workman always blames his tools (Culture and Assurance)
- An apple a day keeps the doctor away (Preventative Maintenance)
- An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (Planning and Preventative Maintenance)
- As you make your bed, so you must lie upon it (Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail)
- Ask a silly question and you’ll get a silly answer (Know what data you need to underpin your decisions)
- Ask no questions and hear no lies (You get what you measure, you see what you report)
- Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness (Leadership and Alignment)
- Cheaters never win and winners never cheat (Don’t cut corners, Assurance)
- Don’t shoot the messenger (Leadership, Maintenance vs Operations vs Owner)
- Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater (Evolution or Revolution)
- Failing to plan is planning to fail (say no more)
- Familiarity breeds contempt (Culture, Leadership, Complacency, safety and working the same environment can turn us blind..)
- Feed a cold and starve a fever (don’t ignore symptoms…of people or assets)
- Forewarned is forearmed (Listening is more than hearing)
- Fortune favours the brave (The management of risk is the game)
- Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration (not the other way around)
- Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; show him how to catch fish, and you feed him for a lifetime (Leadership and Knowledge Transfer)
- Haste makes waste (Process vs Practice and Urgent vs Important)
- He who can does; he who cannot teaches (Be aware of who you are listing to and Competency Management)
- Hindsight is always twenty-twenty (Reliability Engineers vs the Organisation)
- If “ifs and ands” were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers (poor excuse plus poor result still equals poor result)
- It’s the early bird that catches the worm (Planning and Leadership)
- It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease (Look beyond the symptom)
- Look before you leap (Change Management, Configuration Management)
- Mighty oaks from little acorns grow (investment on all fronts…People and Assets)
- Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today (Opportunity is a window today but a door tomorrow)
- No pain, no gain (Effort is doing stuff, not talking about stuff)
- Nothing is certain but death and taxes (certain things in life are constant)
- Out of sight, out of mind (Don’t relay on a standard TMP, understand your Assets, take a walk on the factory floor)
- Penny wise and pound foolish (Finance vs Maintenance and Corrective vs Preventative)
- Prevention is better than cure (say no more)
- Rob Peter to pay Paul (Grandfathers Axe anaology and cannibalisation)
- Rome wasn’t built in a day (Change is a journey, not a destination…Look at where you have come from as well as the road ahead)
- Success has many fathers, while failure is an orphan (Leadership)
- Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves (Planning and Investment)
- The bottom line is the bottom line (It’s not about the money…Its about the money!)
- The customer is always right (internal and external…and you may learn something if you listen)
- The devil finds work for idle hands to do (Measurement and Culture)
- The leopard does not change his spots (Leadership and Culture)
- The longest journey starts with a single step (Change and Leadership)
- The road to hell is paved with good intentions (“I’ll just change this one little thing…”)
- The squeaky wheel gets the grease (Corrective Maintenance vs Preventative Maintenance)
- The whole is greater than the sum of the parts (System and Outcome vs Equipment and Production)
- There’s no such thing as a free lunch (Elbow grease isn’t free)
- Time and tide wait for no man (another constant to accept)
- Too many cooks spoil the broth (first define the problem, then have a plan)
- When the cat’s away, the mice will play (Culture and Alignment)
- Work expands so as to fill the time available (Measurement, Culture, and Assurance)
- You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear (Preventive vs Corrective vs Refurbishment vs Replacement)
- You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar (Change Leadership…Stick vs Carrot)
Asset Management is obviously more than a collection of sayings passed down through generations. But behind the humour is something I think we sometimes lose as our frameworks, systems and organisations become more sophisticated: good Asset Management should still make common sense. If a decision saves money today but costs more tomorrow, question it. If an asset keeps failing, don’t just keep fixing it. If the data doesn’t look right, challenge it. If the people closest to the asset are telling you something, listen. And if a process has become so complicated that nobody understands why they are doing it, perhaps it is time to ask what problem we were trying to solve in the first place.
For me, the challenge isn’t to make Asset Management more complicated; it is to use the standards, systems, information and disciplines available to us to make better, more informed and more joined-up decisions. Asset Management ultimately comes back to understanding what we are trying to achieve, looking after the things that enable us to achieve it, considering the consequences of our decisions and bringing people along with us. Our grandparents might not have called that Asset Management or Organisational Change Management. They probably would have just called it common sense.