Do you really think it's about management commitment?

The oil leak in the Mexican Gulf is truly nearing calamitous proportions. With ramifications that are still widely unknown, but surely spread far beyond that small part of the world.

It is increasingly being referred to not as a crisis scene but a crime scene, and Tony Hayward, successor of the scandal ridden Lord Brown, as a criminal.

Keith Olbermann summed it up succinctly saying "Why is this man in charge instead of in jail?"

Of all the unknowns in this truly disastrous event, the one thing we know with certainty is that asset failure, of some kind, had at least something to do with this.

It is practically unavoidable in a failure of this scale in this industry.

Do we still think that management don't support physical asset management? Still? After the Hatfield Rail disaster (leaders charged with corporate manslaughter), The BP Refinery Explosion, the Buncefield explosion, and... the list goes on.

Then there are all the lessons to come out of the GFC.

• Resource companies bloating in high cash times and having to thin down in low cycles,
• the damage wrought when production becomes the only economic factor (because prices are incredibly high)
• The extremely sharp and continual eye needed on bottom line costs. Particularly int he wake of The Ruddy Gang's proposed Super Profits Tax in the Mining industry.

In the past I think it was true. But today, I just don't buy the line that executive management do not support asset management initiatives.

Every senior executive I have spoken to in the last decade "get's it", and often get's it deeply.

What they often lack however, is a good guide to help them work out exactly what they should be doing about it.

"Lack of management support"when quoted today as an excuse for failure, normally means you are not engaging with them in the right way.

Not always, there are exceptions - but very, very often.

If you haven't been able to get support for what you want to do then the fault lies with either the initiative itself, the underlying story being told, or the right people haven't been spoken to yet.

That's it. They aren't uninterested, they just aren't hearing you clearly.