Asset Management and the Paradigm Problem 

This is a follow-up to Julie’s and my first post. This comes from discussions with Ruth, as we are both fans of Kuhn and approaching Asset Managment from a Systems Thinking bend.

Asset Management isn’t failing, but it is struggling.  It’s struggling because it asks for something most organizations aren’t ready to give: a change in worldview.  

In his seminal work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn argued that progress in science doesn’t move forward in smooth, logical steps. Instead, it lurches forward through upheaval.

An existing model, what Kuhn calls a paradigm, organizes how people understand and act in the world. When that model starts to break down under the weight of anomalies it can’t explain, a crisis forms. Eventually, a new model takes hold. Not by refining the old one, but by replacing it entirely. 

Asset Management isn’t a toolkit upgrade. Asset Management is a paradigm shift. 

The prevailing paradigm in many organizations see assets as cost centers. Value is measured in terms of budget variance, performance is gauged by how fast we respond to failure, and success means keeping operations running despite broken systems and shrinking resources. This is the logic of firefighting, not foresight. 

Asset Management offers a radically different frame. It suggests we treat assets as value-producing systems. These decisions should be based not only on today’s conditions but on long-term impacts. That success means reducing failure, not merely reacting to it quickly. And that the ultimate responsibility of an organization is to deliver reliable, sustainable service—not just to manage budgets. 

But here’s the problem, and Kuhn would recognize it: paradigms don’t go quietly. The existing mindset fights back. Asset Management is often taken in and translated through the old lens. We say we’ve adopted Asset Management, but we’re still rewarding short-term fixes. We talk about lifecycle value, but we still plan one year at a time. We build dashboards and risk models, but we still defer investment until failure forces our hand. 

This is normal. According to Kuhn, when a new paradigm first appears, it doesn’t make sense within the old logic. People struggle to see its relevance. They may accept some of its tools, but not its worldview. The old questions remain, and the new answers seem off-topic. 

Real change happens only when the organization starts asking new questions. Not just, “How do we save money this year?” but “What will this decision cost us over the next 30?” Not, “How fast did we respond to the outage?” but “Why did the outage happen at all?” 

That’s when a shift begins. 

A true Asset Management transformation doesn’t begin with data, or systems, or even leadership mandates. It begins with discomfort, when the old paradigm can no longer explain the failures piling up around us. When firefighting becomes too exhausting, too expensive, too visibly ineffective. Then, and only then, do people become open to a new way of thinking. 

So, the task isn’t just to implement Asset Management. It’s to create the conditions where the old worldview can be questioned. That means: 

• Telling stories that expose the cost of reactive practices
• Measuring success in ways that reward foresight 
• Giving voice to people who see the long game
• Protecting Asset Management from being reinterpreted as just another compliance exercise

Paradigm shifts are hard. They are political, cultural, and emotional. But they are also the only way real progress happens. Asset Management doesn’t need to fight harder. It needs to be ready to lead when the cracks in the old system finally become too big to ignore. It needs to be there to offer a better forward. 

Link to Ruth’s article: AM, Capital-ism and Shifting Paradigms | Talking Infrastructure