Operations & Maintenance

The Milano Cortina Winter Olympics are fast approaching and you may have heard of one of the sports – biathlon. This is a mix of cross-country skiing and target shooting, which has produced some of the most disciplined and consistently high performing athletes in the world.

Most people in asset management don’t follow biathlon closely, but fans of the Winter Olympics know that Norway has dominated the sport for decades. Their men’s team has repeatedly ranked at or near the top of the World Cup standings and has produced many of the sport’s most consistent performers. Coaches Egil Kristiansen and Siegfried Mazet have spoken openly about why the program is so successful: it isn’t one big breakthrough, but countless small improvements made year after year.

“We’re always making small changes.” — Siegfried Mazet, Norwegian shooting coach

Norway’s approach involves constantly refining both the physical and shooting components of the sport, knowing that performance in one affects the other. Their coaches describe a culture of continual improvement rather than oneoff overhauls. Each season begins with a clean slate, a reassessment of training and detailed adjustments informed by testing, athlete feedback and data.

Some examples of their incremental improvement process include:

• • • Regular technique refinement in crosscountry skiing
    • Biomechanical evaluation of shooting stability under fatigue
    • Small equipment adjustments (ski setup, rifle fit, wax selections) for varying snow conditions
    • Tactical changes to breathing cadence before shooting
    • Strength and conditioning programs adjusted annually based on performance data
    • Strong peer learning culture: younger athletes improve simply by training alongside world leaders

None of these steps alone explains Norway’s success. But combined, they form an engine of continuous, incremental improvement.

Does This Sound Familiar?

This philosophy closely mirrors modern asset management. Achieving better asset performance rarely requires massive transformation projects. It’s typically about improving performance at the lowest sustainable cost, while managing risk and through a series of manageable, targeted improvements.

Asset managers often do exactly what the Norwegian biathlon team does:

• • • Break down the elements that influence performance
    • Evaluate the current state of each component
    • Identify multiple small improvements and implement them consistently
    • Measure the impact, refine, repeat

At the end of this process, organizations produce a list of redesigns, timebased tasks, conditionbased tasks and other optimizations — none dramatic on their own — but powerful in combination.

Then What?

Norway’s biathlon story is well known not because of their strategy, but because of their execution.

Their coaches emphasize a culture where the team is constantly refining and challenging itself. As Mazet puts it, the athletes benefit from working sidebyside, pushing each other, and continually iterating on technique and shooting.

Rather than treating performance as a onetime project, it’s seen as a continuous loop: adjust, test, monitor, refine.

Asset management often falters at this very point. Enormous effort goes into designing the strategy and far less into operationalizing it, monitoring it and improving it over time.

The Question for Asset Managers

You already break down everything that influences the function and reliability of your critical assets. But the real question is:

Have you gone beyond developing the asset strategy and actually activated all the small improvements that deliver business value when combined?

Biathlon teaches us that endurance, precision and continuous improvement win races — and they also drive operational excellence.

Learn how you can operationalize the efforts you’ve invested in your asset strategies by connecting with us here.