In the last post I took up Eli Goldratt’s contention that most of us are focussed on efficiency (doing what we are currently doing but doing it better) because that is what we feel we have most control over. I asked what was missing. But another way of looking at this problem is not at what is missing – but at what should be! Policies or practices that we have hung onto that are no longer serving us well in the new environment we are trying to instigate. Let’s again turn to Goldratt who argues that
“Technology can be beneficial if, and only if, it diminishes a limitation.”
This may be a limitation that we are so used to we take it as the way that life is. For example 200 years ago, travel was so slow that it was not feasible to work a full day AND also travel ten miles. This meant that if you got a job in another town you moved to that town. Today many travel much further. Workers 200 years ago would likely not have seen travel time as a constraint, it was ‘just the way that life is’. The iPhone and the Ipad were great innovations but many of us were not consciously aware of the limitations they diminished – until we got them!
The importance of limitations is that humans are intelligent. When we have a limitation we develop work arounds, rules that help us manage. But if we do not change the rules (e.g. our work practices, our policies, our regulations) we cannot get the full benefits of the innovation.
Which leads him to ask 4 questions that might be useful for you.
- What is the power of the new technology or innovation?
- What limitation does it help alleviate?
- What is the cost of the work around rule for that limitation?
- What is the new rule? and its cost?
These questions are not easily answered, especially the last one, but the more I look at them, the more critical they seem to be.
Thoughts?
The reason why we focus on efficiency is because we can. Doing what we are currently doing – only doing it better, cheaper, faster – is not only within our capabilities it is also within our responsibility levels. Effectiveness requires going beyond, looking at how what we are doing interrelates with what others are doing. Doing our thing better will fail to achieve real benefits unless we do. So while efficiency is desirable, it is not enough. Here is a case in point.
The asset management team proposed that the government build an asset register that would provide information to enable the transfer of property from departments that no longer had need for the resources to those that did. This, they argued, would enable great savings in both capital and maintenance funds. So the asset register was built. It took a number of years and cost many millions of dollars and when completed it did exactly what it was intended to do – it showed where property was underutilised and where capacity was under strain.
The expected benefits, however – the transfer of surplus property saving both capital and maintenance funds – did not arise. Why not? Because information by itself is not enough. We also need people and processes that want to and can make use of the information.
In this case no department with surplus property was willing to admit it and hand it back to the Treasury. It knew that if their demands should increase in future, getting expansionary funds would be very difficult, so there was an incentive to disguise and minimise the true extent of under-utilisation.
There was no organisational mechanism. Departments needing to expand would make the case to their Minister, usually done by proposing a specially designed facility. On approval, these departments had no incentive to settle for hand-me-down space and there was no organisational means to make it happen.
QUESTION: What project benefits have failed to materialise not because of what you did, but because of what others didn’t?
What’s new this week?
Announcement : Categories have been added to all of the posts we have uploaded so far. Existing categories are
- Understanding Infrastructure
- New Perspectives
- The Four Transitions, namely
- From Efficiency to Effectiveness
- From Sustainability to Adaptability
- From Risk to Resilience under Uncertainty
- From Growth to Prosperity for all
- The Weekly RoundUp
Explanations of these categories can be found by clicking on “Categories” in the main menu or by clicking on any of the individual categories.
Commentary; This week we have four extremely thoughtful and extensive comments by Doug Bartlett, one each to the last four posts as a start to further conversation, so join in, comment on the post or on any comment. And just a reminder to all, to see the comments associated with each post, remember to click ‘comments’ in the post menu
“We can’t let politicians make decisions, they are so irresponsible!” This was the reaction by a group of academics to the suggestion that politicians should be free to allocate their own weights to various criteria (cf last post on multiple criteria decision making)
I was first introduced to multiple criteria analysis when a UK researcher presented his work on the third Heathrow runway to a university staff seminar. The presentation was enlightening – and so was the reaction of those present. The senior public servants, who needed to get elected members focussed on the issues, were enthusiastic about the potential to present clear information not artificially constrained by dollar equivalents. But the academics were truly horrified when the presenter argued that elected members should allocate their own weights. As the people’s representatives – it was their objectives that were key.
In the last post, I asked who should be deciding on the weights. This is not a trick question but it is a difficult one. It bedevils serious public servants everywhere, staffers who desire to produce good quality ‘finished staff work’, to be able to anticipate all the problems, all the issues, all the questions, that decision makers could ask, and ensure that they have been addressed.
But this can then slip into believing that, having done all the analysis, the staffer now knows best what option should be selected and so we get the three card trick – presenting the decision makers with only three options, two of which are obviously out of consideration for cost or other reasons, so that effectively the decision makers are forced to choose what the staffer has determined.
Multiple criteria analysis, presented honestly without weights, allows decision makers to seriously and knowledgeably to consider the issue. The final decision may not be so predictable but it is likely to have their greater long term support.
On 9 September I wrote a post “Are Politician the real decision makers?” which attracted more comment than most other posts and the commentary was good. Have a look.
Also see Kim Geedrick’s comment on the last post
QUESTION TODAY IS GENERAL – YOUR THOUGHTS?
In our post on May 29 we introduced the problem of finding the best solution to the problem of a high number of road accidents on a certain stretch of road in the Adelaide Hills. The Government had decided to address the problem but what was most important to them – reducing the number of accidents, maintaining speed of traffic without congestion, aesthetics (or the ‘general look’ of the solution), minimising social disruption, or containing the cost?
Multiple Criteria Analysis
In this case a multiple criteria solution was adopted. Each option was analysed by specialists in the particular criteria who estimated the expected outcomes for their criteria, e.g. likely number of accidents reduced, or likely impact on aesthetics, so that each option ended up with five scores, one for each of the criteria examined. No option clearly dominated all others on the five criteria.
To weight or not to weight
At this stage there was a staff debate. Some thought that each criteria should be allocated a weight which would enable them to reduce each solution option to just one score and thus they would be able to rank the options, as is often recommended in the textbooks on the subject.
Others thought that they, the staff, were not the right group to assign weights but rather that this was the right and responsibility of the decision makers themselves (i.e. the government decision group). They pointed out that in previous circumstances where staff had assigned their own weights and ranked the options accordingly, the decision makers frequently ignored their ranking recommendations. Moreover they argued, since the decision makers were unable to see the analysis that had been done on each criteria, it was not taken into consideration and so was wasted. This group argued that the decision makers should be presented with the results and allowed to decide what weights to assign.
Question for today.
Which group has the right of it, and why?
Some of the more Interesting ideas arising from commentary and communication this week.
Kathy Dever Todd commented on The Third AM Revolution and in subsequent conversation spoke of her work in New Zealand on Resilience. This has caused me to rethink the third transition which I had previously positioned as ‘from risk to uncertainty’. Resilience, however is a better word for the goal of dealing with uncertainty for it has positive connotations (as well as a developing literature), so, thanks to Kathy, I am repositioning the third transition as ‘From Risk to Resilience’.
The Third AM Revolution also drew thoughtful comment from John Falade who acknowledged that plant asset managers aimed at 95% efficiency for critical assets but argued that “Whilst we can celebrate the emphasis on critical assets as a paradigm shift from the pre strategic asset management era mindset of ‘all assets must be maintained’, it still stops short of asking the questions: What do I or my organisation want to achieve with our assets? What assets re really critical towards the achievement of our objectives? Do we need 95% reliability or availabilit of these assets to achieve our objectives. In other words, do I need so much efficiency to be effective? (my emphasis) See his full comment.
Milos Posavijak commented on A Strange Business, providing a link to manufacturing process and product life cycles and contrasting manufacturing plant and community infrastructure in terms of variety and standardisation. See comment and link. In his comment on Is There Still a Role for Common Sense? he put forward the intriguing proposition that ‘the model is not the predictor of future reality, but a JIT factory for future scenarios from the most granular asset information to the overall network’ Definitely worth further consideration, see comment.
In email discussion over Do Efficiency and Effectiveness conflict? Sandy Dunn referred to the Transport Department that, with the appointment of a new Head, realised that their function was not to build and maintain roads, but to minimise traffic congestion. This brought on quite a bit of work in analysing and resequencing traffic signals – and they have achieved some good results. This led me to think how many of us have ‘process determined’ objectives such as ‘build and maintain roads’ when we would be better served with ‘outcome determined’ objectives such as minimise traffic congestion. Your thoughts?
In conversation with Ron Riegel-Huth over Understanding the Objective, he queried whether ‘reduce road accidents’ or ‘improve road safety’ was really the main determining objective of the government. Surely, he suggested, the real determinant was ‘how do we get this road accident public pressure off our backs? And, he added, unless we start with the real objective, our research and analysis will be ineffective. Again, your thoughts?
Enjoy the weekend. Penny
The last post observed that every objective has multiple dimensions or elements. Before moving (as promised) to consider how we could deal with this, it is worth considering that while the main element or ‘what’ is likely to remain constant (although not always, see example below) the other elements, the ‘what else’ can change as a result of external events and other projects being carried out or planned. In addition to the problem of ‘staying on track’, we also face the challenge that some aspects of importance to decisionmakers may be deliberately hidden from us.
Consider the following
Staying on track
A section of road in the council was subject to major flooding with heavy rainfall and repairing the damage threw the road budget into the red. It was suggested that creating a wetlands would enable the water to be drained away removing the repair problems and would also provide an attractive tourist feature and provide a number of other benefits. The council got more and more enthusiatic. However, in the process of considering all the ‘extra’ benefits, they completely lost sight of the original purpose of reducing the costly damage that the regular flooding of the road presented. They decided they would go ahead with the wetlands – but not in the originally suggested location where it would ameliorate the flooding damage, but somewhere else!
Discovering what is really important.
The Police department insisted that they needed to own their own regional housing. There was a ready supply of rental housing in all areas so it was hard to understand why this was important to them. They argued that with their own housing. it could serve as a de-facto second police station. Why was this important? They didn’t want to say. It turned out that police officers are difficult to manage and the ability to send an unruly officer out to a remote regional location at a minute’s notice was a valuable and key deterrent to bad behaviour – but not something that the department was keen to admit to.
Question:
What other elements of understanding objectives have you had experience with?
First, let us get back to basics. We know that
You are being effective, if your activities achieve the objective or desired outcome. You are efficient when you achieve that objective or desired outcome at minimal cost or effort.
So both effectiveness and efficiency require us to be clear on our objective or‘desired outcome’. And that is where our first problem arises, for an objective never has just one desired outcome.
Consider the following example:
A particularly tricky stretch of road in the Adelaide hills was causing serious safety concerns. The government decided to tackle it. But what was the objective? Reducing the number of accidents was obviously a front-runner because it had been what initiated the action, but it wasn’t the only concern. Traffic speed was also important because a growing number of city workers had been moving to attractive locations in the hills so that anything that slowed down traffic could result in major morning and evening traffic congestion. It tended to be the richer and more influential who could afford a hills location and decision makers were quick to realise that inconveniencing them could provoke an undesirable reaction.
The hills were a major catchment area, which presented environmental considerations. They were also a key tourist destination as well as a main entry point for interstate visitors from the east, which meant that aesthetics, or the general look of the solution, was of concern. Of social consideration was the number of businesses along the route that could become nonviable if the solution required extensive deviations or lengthy road closures. Finally, there was cost.
This is true of any objective. It is a composite of features – things we wish to have (in this case safety, traffic speed) and things we wish to avoid (detrimental effects on the environment, on aesthetics, and on the livelihood of businesses along the route) And all must be accomplished within an available budget.
All members of the government’s decision making group agreed that it was important to reduce accidents, but they had different priorities when it came to the other features.
If you have ever proposed what you considered to be the ‘optimal’ solution only to have it turned down by the board or council, this may well have been the cause – your bundle of features and the importance you gave to each was different from theirs.
How do we deal with this problem?
We are on the brink of an exciting new phase in Asset Management – in fact the Third Asset Management Revolution!
To understand what this is. why it’s important, and where we are going, it pays to understand the first two revolutions, AMR1 (‘where we were’) and AMR2 (‘where we are’). The 3rd AM revolution, AMR3, will take us to where we need to be to meet the demands of the new world we are now moving into – the world of the internet of things.
Asset management was first introduced in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Up until this time, the word was ‘maintenance’ and it focussed on individual asset functionality. ‘Asset Management’ introduced the notion of combining engineering, financial and planning decisions with respect to assets – for the purpose of better services or corporate outcomes. It was centred on the asset portfolio.
Curiously, it all started with concern that we were not spending enough on maintenance!
As early as the 1970s, there was awareness of the problems of under-maintaining infrastructure in the USA. For example, there were the well-documented infrastructure maintenance problems of New York in the mid 1970s where, you may remember, stories started to emerge of pieces of the Manhattan Bridge rusting and falling into the water and potholes in New York’s cement roads being covered over with metal plates, causing havoc for the city’s bus service. In 1988 “The Decaying American Campus”, described in detail the infrastructure decay problems being experienced by tertiary education institutions.
Eventually this culminated in a major federal study of infrastructure requirements in the USA, “Fragile Foundations”. The sheer monetary size of the problem caused a stir in government and professional circles, but it did not lead to action, because it wasn’t ‘action oriented’. The only recommendation to come out of the report was to ‘spend more money’. But Governments then – as now – did not want to spend the many billions, now trillions, of dollars, the report suggested.
… so how did we get from that situation to where we are now? First we had to think ‘management’ rather than ‘funding’. To read more go here
Welcome to our new Australasian, North American and European visitors and a little background to our site.
In September 2014, and after twenty years and 400 issues, we ceased publication of Strategic Asset Management, a fortnightly guide for asset management practitioners and policy makers. Many others were now in a better position to continue development of the asset management issues but there was something important that was not being addressed. So we created “Talking Infrastructure”, a not-for-profit organisation, and started this blog.
What is that important thing ? The launch of ISO 55,000 in January 2014 was a milestone in asset management development but, when it comes to goals, we are making assumptions for which there is really little evidence. Asset managers are urged to align their activities to reach their organisational goals. This is very reasonable and indeed there can be no objection. Except that…
As any asset manager can tell you, they often have no idea what the real objectives of their organisations are, for these objectives are frequently so poorly developed, badly expressed and inarticulately communicated, that when it comes to aligning activities, they really have very little guidance.
Estimates of ‘stranded assets’ – assets that are non-functional, or obsolete – vary, but they already run into the billions, and some estimates are in the trillions, of dollars – and all estimates are set to increase in the future if we continue to build infrastructure according to old concepts and principles. To avoid this, we need to rethink the entire role of infrastructure and its place in a future digital world, a world moreover facing significant environmental and demographic challenges.
These challenges are what we describe in The Third Asset Management Revolution.
The action steps resulting are addressed in our post Talking Infrastructure Rationale
Welcome to the future of infrastructure decision making! Ideas appreciated.
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