The organisation develops a false sense of maturity because its frameworks, policies and processes appear complete while actual behaviours remain unchanged. Leadership may believe Asset Management capability is embedded when critical decisions are still being made inconsistently, creating a dangerous gap between documented assurance and operational reality.
- Compliance maturity and behavioural maturity are different, because having the required processes does not mean people consistently use them.
- Mature Asset Management should be visible operationally through everyday decisions, priorities, responsibilities and ways of working.
- Decision-making under pressure reveals maturity because established behaviours are tested when cost, time, risk and performance begin to compete.
- Escalation and accountability behaviours demonstrate culture by showing whether people understand when to act, challenge or seek support.
- Leadership responses expose organisational priorities when difficult trade-offs need to be made between cost, risk and performance.
- ISO 55001 maturity ultimately requires behavioural maturity if Asset Management practices are to become embedded rather than simply documented.
Real World
One of the strongest examples for me came from a 16-week maintenance contract recovery assignment in a processing plant more than 70 years old. The organisation had been through different owners, operating models, industrial disputes and commercial arrangements. Operators didn’t always treat equipment well, maintenance wasn’t always completed to the required standard, and different functions had learned to survive independently. When something went wrong, the organisational response became one of blame, denial, and justification. Walking into that environment and talking about an “asset management maturity assessment” would have achieved very little.
Instead, I concentrated initially on two simple asset management fundamentals: Alignment and Assurance. Are we working together, and are we doing what we say we should be doing? They sound almost ridiculously simple, but they exposed far more than a maturity score could. You could see maturity in conversations, handovers, planning meetings, accountability and whether people were prepared to acknowledge a problem rather than explain why it belonged to somebody else. That experience changed the way I think about maturity. I still value maturity assessments, but ultimately I want to see the evidence in organisational behaviour. If the assessment says you are mature, but the functions still blame each other when an asset fails, I know which evidence I believe.
Change Management Perspective
When assessing maturity, I want to see more than policies, processes, frameworks and completed templates. I want to understand what people actually do.
- How are decisions made when priorities compete?
- What happens when someone challenges a decision?
- Who takes accountability when something goes wrong?
- Do leaders behave consistently with the organisation’s stated Asset Management objectives?
From an organisational change perspective, these behaviours tell me considerably more about maturity than the existence of another approved document. Frameworks remain important, but I use them to create and reinforce desired behaviours. Ultimately, maturity becomes sustainable when the expected way of working becomes the normal way of working.
Key Takeaway
Asset Management maturity isn’t what the organisation has documented. It’s what people do when nobody is checking.