Is Your Asset Management Team Focused on Winning?

Winning requires a full team effort, all seats filled with skilled players, everyone pulling in the same direction, and focused on the same outcome: winning. Winning teams are fun to be a part of and can be deeply meaningful to our business and career success. Today’s challenge is what constitutes a win is changing rapidly and not everyone knows what these changes mean to their ability to succeed as a team or individually. This is particularly true for asset management.

The Game Has Changed and that Means What Matters has Changed

In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace what constitutes a win has changed and not everyone is on board yet. This blog post is about how the game has changed in asset management and what matters most for winning.

Team Constitution Matters

How you constitute your asset management team makes all the difference in how it performs and exactly how much it helps the company win. First and foremost the team has to know what constitutes a win, for their team and the company. They then need to know what is required to produce a win and how it will be produced. Like any successful team, skilled players are required at each position and they need tools that enable and amplify individual and team performance. They also require leadership open to new ideas, from inside or outside the game.  They can’t be certain about what is required if they aren’t yet producing the outcomes that matter for winning.  This attitude was displayed by the leadership of a sports team who, open to new possibilities, did what no other team though possible.  We write about it in, “Is Your Team Ready for it’s Moneyball Moment?”

Knowing What Constitutes a Win Matters

Competitive requirements are changing rapidly as the age of incremental process improvement as a primary advantage gives way to the need for step-change improvements to speed, capability, and cost. Companies are transforming to compete more effectively in Industry 4.0, so must asset management teams. This is what winning has meant for us.

• 2X to 3X improvements to speed

• 3X to 4X improvements to asset utilization

• 50% improvements to the availability

• 25% to 50% reduction in operating capital requirements

Knowing When a Win is not a Win Matters

When teams are hitting goals that aren’t aggressive enough to enable their company to win. When the goals aren’t ultimate outcomes, but task outcomes disconnected from larger and more strategic objectives. It’s not that these outcomes aren’t helpful, just nowhere near helpful enough.

• Database Accuracy and Property Compliance

• Calibration and Maintenance Compliance

• Reduce Equipment Downtime

Every asset management team is focused on results like this so these results won’t help your company win.

Team Membership & Organization Matter

The leader of a high-performance team knows what roles are important to deliver the outcomes they’ve promised, how to recruit the specific players they need, and then how to get the team’s actions aligned behind their mission. In the case of asset management, the team can’t be an isolated group of asset specialist, but a cross-functional team with actions aligned and outcomes measured.

On our company Linked In Page we posted an article, Is Your Team Ready, Willing, and Able to Win, and solicited comments on essential roles outside the typical asset management roles. We’ve listed them here, but you can always go to the post to read more.

• Asset Users and their Managers

• Suppliers and OEMs

• Internal Support Groups

• Purchasing Departments

• Quality Professionals

• Project, Program and Product Management

• Finance Professionals

• Engineering, Operations and Finance Executive Governance

The last bullet was offered by a Sr. Executive who has worked closely with us in the past. He included the importance of metrics and a governance process ensuring everyone on the team is contributing as well as benefiting from their contributions and that the asset management capability stays aimed at important enterprise outcomes.

High-Performance Tools Matter

For an asset management tool to be able to facilitate the team above it must contribute to their success. All too often asset management tools have been designed to support asset management teams buried in their functional silos and largely disconnected from meaningful cooperation and collaboration with other departments. Sente’s solution is Accelerated Enterprise Asset Management or aEAM. It is not the primary focus of this article so that is all we’ll say about tools here. If you are interested in more information click the link aEAM link or request a demo on this page.