Are You Talking to the Right Stakeholders About Your Assets?

Most organisations can tell you what their assets are. Many can tell you why those assets exist. But have they identified who they exist for?

That’s a problem. Because if you’re not clear about who your assets are supposed to deliver value to, you’re making decisions in a vacuum. And vacuums are expensive places to operate.

It Starts With Purpose

In the last newsletter, we explored how service levels are the hidden driver of asset investment decisions. But before you can define what your assets should deliver, you need to be clear about something more fundamental: what is your organisation’s purpose, and who are you delivering value to?

Every organisation exists to create value for someone. Not just shareholders. Not just customers. Your assets serve a wide network of stakeholders—both internal and external—and each of them has different needs, different expectations, and different levels of influence over your success.

What ISO 55001 Actually Requires

This isn’t just good practice—it’s a standard requirement. ISO 55001 is explicit: an organisation shall determine the stakeholders that are relevant to its asset management system, understand their requirements, decide which of those requirements will be addressed through the system, and consider the impacts of asset management activities on those stakeholders.

Read that again. It’s not “identify your customers.” It’s far broader. It’s about understanding the full landscape of people and entities that have a stake in how your assets perform—and making deliberate decisions about how you respond to their needs.

The Stakeholder Landscape Is Wider Than You Think

Think about it. Your assets don’t just serve customers. Internally, you have employees who operate and maintain the assets, managers who make decisions about them, and owners who expect a return from them. These internal stakeholders are often overlooked in formal stakeholder analysis—yet their buy-in and understanding is critical to everything working properly.

Externally, the landscape is even broader: government and regulators, the local community, creditors, shareholders, and society at large. And don’t underestimate your suppliers. A key supplier relationship can have significant power to impact your asset management outcomes—positively or negatively. They’re not just vendors; they’re stakeholders with real influence over how your assets perform.

Each of these groups has legitimate requirements. Legal obligations and codes of practice. Licence agreements. Shareholder expectations. Consumer service level agreements. Community expectations around noise, safety, or environmental impact. Indigenous engagement requirements.

If you’re only thinking about the end user of your asset, you’re missing most of the picture.

Not All Stakeholders Are Equal

Once you’ve identified your stakeholders, the next realisation is that they don’t all carry the same weight. Some have significant power to influence your operations. Others have a strong interest in what you do but limited ability to affect it. The point isn’t to rank them in a spreadsheet—it’s to be thoughtful and deliberate about how you engage with each group.

And here’s something that catches many organisations off guard: different stakeholders will sometimes want different—even conflicting—things from your assets. A regulator may demand higher safety margins. A shareholder may push for lower costs. The community may want less noise while operations need more throughput. If you haven’t identified these tensions, you’re probably discovering them the hard way—in the middle of a crisis or a budget fight.

It’s Not Enough to Know — Everyone Needs to Know

Here’s a point that often gets missed. It’s not enough for the leadership team to understand the stakeholder landscape. Everyone in the organisation needs to know who they’re serving and why it matters. The technician on the workshop floor, the planner scheduling next week’s work, the procurement officer selecting a supplier—they all make decisions that affect stakeholders, whether they realise it or not.

When people understand the “who” and the “why,” their decisions improve. When they don’t, you get well-intentioned people optimising for the wrong things.

The Real Question

So here’s my challenge: can you name the stakeholders who have a legitimate interest in how your assets perform? Do you know what they need from you? Does your whole organisation know? And have you made conscious decisions about which of those needs your asset management system will address—and which it won’t?

If the answer to any of those questions is “not really,” then you’re making asset decisions without understanding the full picture of who those decisions affect.