Reclaiming the time, the fatigue, but also the joy of a long read – and of its attempt to hatch out an argument – should be top of mind for as many colleagues and industry practitioners as possible.
So I am using this short piece opportunistically: as both an invitation to ignore it entirely and go read the longer report we co-authored with CAIA Association, and as a gentle nudge to reclaim the attention we largely feel is going missing today.
The report, An expanding mandate – a systems-level framework for asset management, goes precisely in this direction: it gives centre stage to a particular kind of attention. An attention that is a precursor to care.
“We argue that it is time for investment organisations to make the system their habitual object of attention”
The system has got too heavy
Something subtle but decisive has shifted. The future, the long term, and the broader system within which investment decisions unfold are no longer “ahead of us”. They have collapsed into the present.
The consequences of today’s decisions now arrive faster, propagate further, and interact more heavily with one another than the traditional investment frameworks were designed to accommodate. What used to be a sequence has become simultaneity (encapsulated by the polycrisis); what used to be mechanical has become relational (expressed through complexity).
In this setting, the idea that one can stand outside the system and optimise within it and its parts (asset classes, portfolios, even hyperspecialised careers, and siloed sleeves), becomes increasingly fragile. So we argue that the system is not external, but is the medium itself. And like any medium, it transmits, refracts, and feeds back the consequences of action.
Hence the report’s central message: long-term investment outcomes are inseparable from the health and resilience of the broader system that enables them. System-level investing follows from this recognition, to become a practical necessity.
A possible mental and practical framework to cope
The inside-out, outside-in (IOOI) framework presented in the report is a systems thinking attempt to translate this diagnosis into something usable. It seeks to mimic the expansion captured by the main report title: to provide a way of moving from awareness to action by linking how organisations understand the system to how they operate within it.
The movement begins inside-out. At the macro level, this means cultivating awareness of future systemic points of pressure, interacting forces unfolding under deep uncertainty. This task invites us to ditch prediction in favour of preparation: expanding the range of plausible futures through horizon scanning and scenario analysis. It is therefore less about narrowing probabilities and more about widening perception – what we refer to in the report as moving from forecasting to sense-making.
This awareness is the key driver for proceeding to the meso level, where organisations must project their own identity into the system. Here, purpose translates systems awareness into organisational intent: what risks are internalised, what externalities are acknowledged, and what (systemic) role the organisation claims to play. We bring to the front here concepts like systemic impact and purpose. Investment activity is, or should be, no longer evaluated solely by how external conditions affect portfolios, but also by how portfolios affect the system. The three-dimensional lens of risk, return, and real-world impact emerges as a natural extension.
From there, the framework turns outside-in, bringing the system back into the organisation. This is the micro level: how firms adapt their internal design to operate effectively within this expanded field of awareness and impact.
Harnessing organisational alpha becomes the bridge. We frame governance, talent, processes, and technology as essential adaptive capabilities. Their role is to convert systemic complexity into coherent, repeatable, high-quality decision-making. This includes moving towards multiple-goals frameworks, integrating public and private exposures within a total portfolio mindset, and creating the cultural conditions for conviction-based, challenge-driven investing.
Alongside effectiveness sits preparedness: the capacity to remain fit for purpose as conditions change. Here, we emphasise the shift from optimisation and efficiency to resilience, optionality, robustness, and learning. The “next-gen” framing in the report captures this transition across business models, investment practices, professional capabilities, and organisational vision.
We ultimately call for expanding the mandate
The report’s call to action is both brave and ambitious as we recognise it cannot simply point to incremental improvements but transformational change. We are calling for a widening of the mandate – of what investment organisations choose to pay attention to and therefore act upon.
- First, redefine success. Benchmark-relative performance remains necessary, but insufficient when the conditions for returns are themselves at risk. Accountability must reflect resilience alongside return
- Second, rebuild around systems thinking. This implies a shift from narrow specialisation towards synthesis – linking signals across domains and operating with contextual fluency under uncertainty
- Third, stop treating the system as external. Macro forces now sit inside valuation, underwriting, and portfolio construction. Integrating them is a condition for better decision-making.
The invitation, then, is to reclaim this attention as part of the professional curriculum. To make the system, in all its complexity, uncertainty, and immediacy, the object of it. And to act accordingly.
Andrea Caloisi | June 2026
