Analyzing your Assets and Liabilities

The Asset/Liability Nexus
Examining your assets and liabilities is often a process of recognizing that each item contains elements of both. Your assets - the aspects of your company that hold the power of your company to produce jobs, cash flow, production is derived from the very same items as its liabilities. For it is what you perceive as your assets that also create the  opportunity for some negative outcome, related to public opinion, environmental or public harm, or internal danger to your company's future.

As you conduct your inventory of Operational, Management and Contingency challenges, you will recognize quickly that your assets and liabilities are tightly bound together.

Thus the good news is that your assets create opportunity for your company, its employees and the larger community.

The bad news is that - at the same time - any loss of the benefits of the company to any of the stakeholders creates negative outcomes for the company as well.

It only makes sense.

The opposite of love is not hate - it is indifference. If you - or the public - is indifferent to some aspect of your company, then they will not be concerned if it fails to function properly. It is only where there is a perceived interest that liabilities arise.

Define your Assets Broadly
Once again, your company's reputation is an exceedingly important asset. If you fail to recognize this, by defining your assets too narrowly, you will miss the most critical nexus between your company and its relationship to the broader community of stakeholders.

High tech, High Touch, Low Tech, High Touch
Some companys have had good success with a process that brainstorms the assets and liabilities of the company by creating a three column chart that we'll call - for the sake of simplicity "High Tech, High Touch" Your company does not have to be high tech to take advantage of this, it is simply a means for differentiating between those aspects of the company's assets that relate to its capital assets and those that relate to its human assets.  You may wish to assign a value to each based upon the value of the assets to its stakeholders.

The Management Connection
The second revelation that may hit you is the Management/Liability connection. That is to say that where Management values are high, Liabilities are low and where Management Values are low, Liability issues are heightened.

Again, this only makes sense.

Where companies are well managed from both their technical and human perspectives, capital (equipment, money, processes) are operating at optimum efficiency and liabilities are reduced. This is not to say that all chances of an accident are reduced to zero - after all that's why they call them accidents - but that  the likelihood of an accident is dramatically reduced and further that the relationship between the company and its stakeholders will cushion the blow where management has developed a strong bond with stakeholders.

Defining your assets and liabilities and assigning some level of priority to them provides you with a "Heirarchy of Need" where management and resources naturally are focused more strongly where needs are highest.

All of these steps are applicable to a broad strategic plan for your company but since we are focused on developing a Strategic Oil Management and Contingency Plan, we will focus on the issues around Oil (or the liquid hydrocarbon your company specializes around).

Creating an Inventory of Operational Management issues.