Tuesday afternoon (30 july), in addition to the topics listed in our earlier post, we will also have the following, lead by Sally Nugent, former CEO of the Asset Management Council, now Director, Sallyent Pty Ltd, and currently working on a new book on asset management, culture and leadership,
1. How and What to ask: do you know what decision model you are using for your project or plans, and what questions to ask? For example
- Why is it important to make decisions promptly? (The Consequences Model)
- How do we identify the ‘next big thing’? (The Hype Model)
- Why does the printer always break down just before a deadline? (The Results Optimisation Model)
Reference The Decision book Fifty models for strategic thinking
2. Have you considered the context of your project or required solution with ‘open systems’ in mind. How does context influence the questions you ask?
Margaret Wheatley (2006, Leadership and the new science: discovering order in a chaotic world) points out that much of the current thinking in management science is based on Newtonian mechanics – an approach primarily based on reductionism – the best way to understand the whole is to break it up into smaller parts and understand those individual parts. The premise being that if you understand how the heart works and the liver works, you will understand the entire body. The problem is that two critical elements are missing
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- understanding the individual parts doesn’t provide any understanding of how the parts interact.
- very few organisations operate in an environment where they are closed off from external factors.
Also
I am also hoping to add a discussion on real options analysis.
So if you find sitting and listening to others in conferences a bit passé, join us on Tuesday afternoon, where you get to take part in the entertainment!
Sign up in the comments, or better, write me at penny@TalkingInfrastructure.com
And I will send meeting details.
Just before my father died, he drove to visit me, then cheerfully walked down the road to have a haircut. He had been mostly bedridden for over a year and it was hard to recognise in this strong and happy man, the person I knew to be so ill. Within days he was in hospital and a week later he was dead. I found out later that this last burst of energy from a dying person is not at all unusual.
As with people, also with ideas?
As I watch the attempts of politicians to promote the use of coal fired generation, I think the same may apply to ideas. The fight for the dying idea of fossil fuel generation is so strong with some that it seems to outweigh all the death indicators, like the facts that solar is now far cheaper as well as environmentally more sustainable, that banks are not interested in supporting new construction and insurers are withdrawing their support.
And Rail?
What other examples can we see around us? I am a train buff. I enjoy travelling on trains, especially the London and Sydney tube lines, and my library contains many books of rail journeys and videos documenting the development, operations and maintenance of underground rail, so it hurts to think that this latest burst of rail construction might be another death rattle. However with the arrival of trackless trams, automated driving, and potentially reduced demand with greater use of video conferencing, and increases in the number of people working from home rather than central city offices (despite increased populations), one has to ask the question. On any rational assessment the need to cope with a rapidly changing future would seem to argue in favour of transport infrastructure that is lighter and more adaptable.
And yet the rapturous reaction to the proposal of a Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop, with hardly a voice raised in opposition, challenges this rationality. How much of this support is fuelled by the heady expectation that, with the rail loop, Melbourne will become another ‘London’ with all the status that implies? How much is it because we are familiar with this means of transport and therefore can easily visualise such a future whereas other options are perhaps still in science fantasy land? At this stage, these are just questions.
Professor Graham Currie
So I am greatly looking forward to my interview this Friday with Professor Graham Currie on the Melbourne Suburban Rail Loop. Professor Currie is Director of Monash Infrastructure, Chair of Public Transport, and Professor in Transport Engineering. He is a renowned international Public Transport research leader and policy advisor with over 30 years experience. He has published more research papers in leading international peer research journals in this field than any other researcher in the world.
(I don’t know whether this impresses you, but it impresses the heck out of me!)
Professor Currie is also founder and Director of the Public Transport Research Group at Monash University which was identified as the 3rd top academic research group in the world in an European independent review of the field in 2015.
I could go on about his numerous best paper awards and countless other achievements, but you get the picture. This is a person who knows what he is talking about when it comes to public transport.
You will be able to hear this interview on the September episode of our podcast.
YOUR CHANCE TO ASK YOUR QUESTIONS
If there are questions that you would like me to put to Professor Currie – be quick, put them in the comments section and I will do my best.
PS For those in Melbourne
If you would like to join us for AM exploration on the theme of how AMgrs can support their organisations in a changing future, be advised that Monday and Tuesday morning are now full but we have three spaces left Tuesday afternoon, 30th July. Email me at penny@TalkingInfrastructure.com – but do it quick!
Today’s Asset Management Strategists
Today’s Asset Management Strategists need to ask new and different questions. We can no longer rely on answers that served us well in the past, nor the questions that generated those answers. We need to develop new question asking skills and explore new directions.
Over the last 30 years we have concentrated on efficient production, or ‘getting the job done right’ and done really well with that. Now we need to tackle the next task ‘getting the right job done’.
With so many technological options now opening up, and economic, social and environmental demands, as well as public and governance attitudes changing so rapidly- it may be a very, very, different job!
But it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
We just need to know where to start.
In my last post I reflected on the public service in the late 1980s where I rejoiced in finding many others willing to co-operate in problem solving – before ‘competition’ rather than ‘collaboration’ became the ethos of the day.
However, there are now signs that the tide is again turning, so can we provide a vehicle for collaborative discussion? Let’s try!
Melbourne Workshops
I will be in Melbourne at the end of this month to conduct interviews for our podcast series and while I am there, the Talking Infrastructure Melbourne Team is organising a series of free workshops (coffee provided!) to explore new questioning techniques.
Here is what is on offer – Two hour workshops will be held at the Istana next to the Queen Vic Markets between Saturday 27 and Wednesday 31 – In the comments section, tell us what interests you and we will send you session times and more detail.
1. Inverse Hypotheticals
In an ordinary hypothetical a hypothetical story is created and panelists are asked questions. In an inverse hypothetical, a story is again created BUT it is the panelists who get to ask the questions. The set up is this: A review group has to consider a certain infrastructure proposal or situation. The panel are advisors to this review group and feed them the questions they feel relevant. The facilitator may throw some unexpected new items into the mix as the discussion develops.
2. Development Session: Exploring the role of the Future Asset Management Strategist
If you know the technique of ‘Beyond Bullet Points’, this is a great opportunity to practice. If not, it is a great opportunity to learn. And to produce something valuable in the process.
3. Exploration Session: “The 2020 Infrastructure Challenge”
Those of you who have been involved in asset management for a while will remember The International Asset Management Competitions which took place between 1996 and 2000. They were designed to put asset management, if not on the map, at least high on the priority list of CEOs. And it was very effective in giving asset management greater traction at that time. The 2020 Infrastructure Challenge is looking at how we might do the same for the new infrastructure decision making we will need as we transit for 20th to 21st century infrastructure.
4. Open Discussion Session
Key concerns of asset managers today, Come with your question and/or come to get involved in the ideas of others.
Not in Melbourne?
Workshops are being planned for other cities. At the moment we are looking at Sydney in mid August (while I am over Sydney way to give the opening keynote to the Asset Management for Critical infrastructure Conference, August 20th)
There is something about wet and windy overcast conditions that brings on reflection, which, if we are not careful, can lead us into melancholy. Avoiding this risk requires us to take action – and so I am. Read on to see the reason – and the action.
The way things were
In 1982 I moved from the University where academics were closely focused on their own projects, to the state water authority where – at that time – the focus was improved community outcomes. If I had an idea for improvement, it was not difficult to find half a dozen bright, well intentioned others, to willingly and co-operatively work through it with me. And, equally, there were many others willing to involve me in their ideas for improvement. The Public Service was a great place to be in the early 1980s. It changed, of course, with the introduction of modern commercial management ideas. And, ultimately, not for the better.
The way things are
This started the exodus of those who believed in community service and of the intelligent who could easily secure positions outside the government. Today, with short term public service contracts, there is no devotion to improved community outcomes – how can there be when one’s own short term outcome is so precarious, so insecure? There is also no corporate knowledge and information to draw upon. The community has lost out. The public service has lost out. Who has benefitted from this much vaunted ‘improved management’ shift?
The way things can be
Clearly I am not advocating for greater inefficiency, but I think we could do with improved effectiveness. I miss those days when community focus was the norm amongst the brightest and best. A time when, if I had an idea for allowing unprofitable irrigation farmers to sell those most valuable asset – access to water – to others who could make better use of it; or if I wanted to see whether the hype about the value of the Grand Prix could be proved, I could draw on the expertise of others simply by asking for it. That was how we started a review of irrigation water licences and put together academics and public servants to produce ‘The Adelaide Grand Prix’ – an analysis of the first Grand Prix in Australia in 1985. This was the first serious analysis of the impact of a Special Event, it has been cited in every publication on Special Events since then, and our approach was adopted by the Commonwealth Government in their grant assessments for many years – despite the hyped up arguments of some of the top management consulting companies. It prevented our State Government from following its earlier wish to contend for the Commonwealth Games – and thus avoided the ‘white elephant’ structures associated with these events.
Action now
Is it possible to replicate today those productive, well intentioned, discussions that served the greater good? I think it is. The growing strength on the non-private, non-government ‘Civil Society’ supports this. I also think it is essential that we develop a core of intelligent strategists to help manage the infrastructure shifts that will be necessary as we transit into a digital, increasingly complex, future.
Talking Infrastructure is looking to provide opportunities for those of you, from whatever disciplinary background, who aspire to be these future strategists, to physically get together with like-minded others for the purpose of sharing your ideas for improvement and assisting them in theirs – and in general developing your strategic ability to assist your organisations face the future. Does this interest you?
More information to come.
“Private firms efficiently finance their operations or they fail”
Clifford Winston, Brookings Institution.
There are a lot of implied assumptions here! Where do we start?
A major implication is that private firms must therefore be more efficient than public firms, but this makes a massive assumption – namely that the losses to the community from those private firms that fail is of lower consequence to the community than inefficiencies of public sector organisations that are not allowed to fail.
Where has this ever been rigorously and neutrally examined? And if it had – why would we have persisted so long, throwing good money after bad, at the UK private sector firm, Carillion? Carillion, which employed 43,000 people to provide services in defense, education, health and transport, collapsed in January, becoming the largest construction bankruptcy in British history. It left creditors and the firm’s pensioners facing steep losses and put thousands of jobs at risk
We tend to regard as heroes those entrepreneurs that go bankrupt – perhaps many times – and then come back and make a fortune. That latter fortune, however, is financed (involuntarily) by many small entrepreneurs and their families, some of whom may well have gone out of business because the work they did for our bankrupt hero was never paid for.
There have recently been a number of very large and very public failures in the banking system that have created enormous public havoc. These banks cannot ‘go bankrupt’ but can – and are – bailed out by the public, which is the equivalent. Without this ‘safety net’ and the incentive to make a profit ‘no matter what’, would a public banking system, such as we once had, have fallen prey to the sub-prime mortgage debacle?
Have the so-called ‘efficiencies’ created by a private banking system been systematically weighed against the costs? I suspect that this is an area where we are acting in ‘blind faith’. It has to be blind because there is so much to the contrary that we can see if we but look.
Another aspect of this faith is the presumption that anything that we may say in favour of private sector or ‘market‘efficiency’, still holds true when the private sector is propped up by government contracts (e.g.public toll road contracts).
I am not arguing that there are not problems in the public sector. There are. But would it not be an idea to address these problems directly rather than advocate private provision where there are also problems – but they are less amenable to correction?
When are we going to get that definitive examination of Carillion and hold them responsible?
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