44169003 © Shea R Oliver | Dreamstime.com

Regulation can be an admission of failure – failure of a sector to do what it should do.

And the realisation that many organisations only take Asset Management seriously because some branch of government tells them they must can seem like our failure, failure to convince them AM is for their own benefit.

And some stop doing it when they are no longer pushed…

What incentivises someone in a position of some power in a public agency to do the right thing? More particularly, what encourages them to think longer term?

CEOs and other senior managers have several kinds of short-term incentives: personal annual targets and maybe bonuses. Local politicians with their own short-term ambitions for re-election. Immediate approval or disapproval from their communities.

Public-sector managers can pick up assumptions about their careers from the private sector. Moving onward and upward by moving organisations – or moving on before anything catches up with you.

On the other hand, whatever their views on their own careers, people in government regulations are normally set the objective of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of what they are regulating over time.

Of course there are poor regulations, and poor regulators. One urgent concern is governments depriving regulators of teeth and funding to enforce the regulations – the UK Environmental Agency’s ability to enforce the law on sewage releases into rivers, for example.

But overall, their incentives are far more aligned to longer-term Asset Management than the average manager. They realise they can’t change things overnight, that it’s about processes and competences and a longer-term perspective. The regulators I have known are generally firm, but patient. They know they have to be.

Infrastructure is too important to be left to ambitious executives alone.

Are we working closely enough with the regulators?