From Bill Wallsgrove

AI continues to not quite to get what a platypus is – just as many people still don’t understand what Asset Managers do.

I could tell two miserable current stories of Human Resources not getting it. A major power utility with ISO 55000 certification where HR led a structure reorganisation, and failed to include any Asset Management (and the saddest part was how much effort the AM team had put into trying to bring HR along with them).  A transit agency where HR insist they know better how to recruit good Asset Managers – again, after years of effort from the AM team on what to look for.

But lamenting HR failures is like shooting fish in barrel: too easy.

And we are all still working it out.

For example, looking at AM teams where they have really done interesting things, I see how much difference ‘professional’ information skills have made. The most impressive Asset Managers I know include a librarian, an ex-military intelligence veteran, and a teacher of data science. I wonder if good Asset Management is even possible without information nous.

And the perennial questions of whether you can learn to ‘embrace uncertainty’, or think strategically. Are good Asset Managers born, not made? I don’t want to believe so.

I certainly don’t have it all and have depended through my career on other people with complementary skills to mine.

As the Institute of Asset Management (IAM) starts its review of its Competency Framework, to update and expand the original work led by Chris Lloyd, I get the feeling more than ever that it isn’t just a matter of hiring people with certain skills, but of encouraging those who think about the world in particular ways.

I’m on the Competences Steering Group for the IAM.  This is a plea for input: what is your experience on the most important skills, experience, aptitudes, attitudes for good Infrastructure Asset Management?

What have we learnt about good people in the nearly 40 years of Asset Management?