Age Friendly FuturesBy George Gouzounis Case study

Capital asymmetry in practice

Where should we invest to do our job better?

An aged care and community transport team put a strategy framework to work — and converged on the same answer twice.

After my interview with Professor Rick Watson on capital asymmetry, Access Sydney Community Transport asked him to run a planning session with their team. He has shared what came out of it, and Access Sydney has kindly let us write it up. With thanks to Michelle Newman, CEO of Access Sydney, for allowing us to use this as a case study, and to Professor Rick Watson for facilitating the session and sharing his analysis.

A quick recap of the idea. Capital asymmetry says an organisation builds a lasting advantage by investing in a mix of capital — economic, human, organisational, social, symbolic, and natural — that competitors can't easily copy. Watson's analysis grid is a way for a leadership team to look honestly at where they stand across those capitals. Access Sydney's session is that grid in use.

01About Access Sydney

Access Sydney Community Transport is a not-for-profit that has provided door-to-door transport and social connection for more than 30 years. It serves older Sydneysiders, people with a disability, and people who are otherwise transport-disadvantaged, across nine of Sydney's local government areas. Alongside health and personal transport, it runs group outings, shopping trips, and a social support program, with multilingual staff.

Its funding comes mainly from the Department of Health and Aged Care, Transport for NSW, and NSW Health, plus an annual grant from the City of Sydney and one small commercial operation. That funding picture matters for what the session found.

02The session

The aim was simple: help the aged care team work out where to invest to better achieve its mission. Eight people met at Access Sydney's facility. The session ran in two parts — first surfacing the challenges the organisation faces, then rating the state of its capital.

03Part one — naming the challenges

The team worked through three steps.

Generate

Each person was asked to identify key challenges, one per sheet of paper. Duplicates were removed and a few were reworded for clarity, then all were stuck on a wall.

Evaluate

Everyone got eight sticky dots to place on the challenges they thought mattered most, with multiple dots allowed on one. Anything with fewer than two votes was set aside.

Relate

Together, the group built a model of how the surviving challenges connect to one another. The number in each blue circle is its vote count.

A relationship map of Access Sydney's key challenges. Workforce retention, skills, recruitment and future needs drew 14 votes and manual systems and processes drew 12, both feeding into growth and sustainability at the centre, with manual systems and integration of systems linked to a performance plateau.
Figure 1The team's map of key challenges, with vote counts.

Two challenges stood out by a clear margin:

14Workforce — retention, skills, recruitment, future needs 12Manual systems & processes

The map puts growth and sustainability at the centre of everything, with manual systems and processes — and the integration of systems — pulling the organisation towards a performance plateau. In other words, the team felt its people and its systems were the things most likely to make or break its future.

04Part two — rating the capital

Next, the team rated the state of its capital. They looked at five of the six types — economic, human, organisational, social, and symbolic. Natural capital wasn't in scope for a transport service. Each was rated one at a time on a five-point scale, where three means "about right for our mission and funding".

1
2
3
4
5
Well shortMore than enough

3 = about right for our mission and funding

Each capital's votes were turned into a weighted mean. Ordered from strongest to weakest, the picture is clear.

3 · about right
Social
3.81
Human
3.38
Symbolic
2.88
Organisational
1.75
Economic
1.00
1 2 3 4 5
At or above "about right" Below "about right" Weighted mean of 8 voters
Table 1 / Figure 3Weighted mean rating for each capital.

05Reading the result

Access Sydney rates strongest on social capital (3.81) and human capital (3.38) — its connections and its people. That fits an organisation built around community transport and social inclusion. It rates weakest on economic capital (1.00) and organisational capital (1.75) — money and systems. The economic rating is worth noting: every person in the room marked it lowest, with no spread at all.

The two parts of the session line up. The challenges the team voted up — workforce, and manual systems and processes heading for a performance plateau — are the human and organisational sides of the business. The capital ratings say the same thing from a different angle: people and connections are a strength to protect; money and systems are where the organisation is stretched.

For a grant-funded not-for-profit, a low economic rating isn't a surprise. But seeing the whole team arrive at it together — and agree that systems are the soft spot — is the point of the exercise. It gives them a shared, evidence-based starting point for deciding where to put limited time and money.

What this is, and isn't. This is one session, with one team, on one afternoon. It's a snapshot the group can act on and revisit — not a final verdict. Watson suggests running the analysis each year and watching how the picture moves.

Want to try the same exercise?

Professor Watson is facilitating capital asymmetry sessions for Australian aged care and community providers as part of his research. There's more detail, and how to get in touch, at the end of the interview.

Thanks again to Michelle Newman and the team at Access Sydney Community Transport, and to Professor Rick Watson.