Brainstorming exercise – only for honest EM colleagues. Leaders are out!

The real potential of EM is no better or worse than that of other companies. But our condition is devastating.
I heard many of the statements from this Site 1: 1 from personal conversations with great and professional colleagues from many different countries. So for me there are no individual opinions of a few frustrated complainers. Most of the colleagues I speak to will probably be allowed to stay for the time being.
Many of us, certainly not all, but many, have worked hard for EM over the years. Based on our experience, many of us see the weaknesses and contradictions that are getting bigger and bigger - like an ice floe in the sun. And many also addressed them clearly in this forum: wrong decisions, often weak management responsibility, complete destruction of a company culture, questionable service from the service centers and often a weak role of HR. And much more.

But we are not heard! Why? Because each of us is alone! Everyone struggles alone like a beetle lying on their back for their own survival. Each of us alone drinks the cocoa through which we are drawn through a manipulated and corrupted performance system as just a simple example.

And now comes the brainstorming task:

Is there an ingenious way that we “normal” people who would like to change something could express our concerns, our displeasure and our suggestions for improvement with ONE VOICE? A powerful VOICE of thousands of colleagues who together have more knowledge and experience than all GBCs combined?
What can we do to be heard? For example, can we organize a global anonymous employee survey?
Or: Many of us will own EM shares, each maybe not many, but together? Can't we speak as a shareholder with one VOICE to have first time ever a vote against the famous poor dividend grandma?

I'm honest, I haven't thought of anything! But I keep looking.

Or do we want to lie on our backs like beetles and lament our fate? And hope every year that the next wave won't hit us either? She will hit each of us if we don't do anything! One sooner, the other later!

Esso - let's put the tiger in the tank!

Comment! It's anonymous!

5 replies (most recent on top)

Exxon has a great system of internal controllers. Their management is independent and reports directly to Dallas. Why XOM cannot use this system of internal Controllers as a template for technical project management? Currently, the XOM is founded on a fusion of people management and project management that allows supervisors and managers to be de facto exclusive owners of ideas and nothing can be done unless they support it. The trouble is, many of the XOM people in management are very much single-minded and quite shallow technically.

@1ymm+185emzQR
Of course he is. Xom has always promoted bullies. This is where the entire company has failed. Bullying is far from the equivalent of intelligence. This is what leaves people scratching their heads when incompetent or unqualified people are promoted to leadership positions.

Quit working for any company and people who are dishonest. You have your answer. Now go find a real job with honest people. There are many that exist when you get out of that poisoned well

A team I was on tried to get 360 feedback for the entire team as one of the mid level supervisors was just awful. Even the project manager was supportive. Someone very high up stopped it to protect his protege. It was unbelievable. Everyone hated the guy and he is now a PM on one of the Guyana Projects, keeps being promoted even though no one wants to work for him. Manage upwards I guess.

I think many feel as you do. There’s not much collaboration in XOM because of the competitive ranking. XTO did not do this and people shared ideas and then profits in form of bonus and stock as everyone wanted to work hard and share learnings to make it a better company.
But, take away the leadership and replace with XOM and this fizzled away quickly.
We don’t even know what goals we have in XOM. Key performance indicators are not known and distributed such that people across a team even know how the field, asset or division are doing.
I think folks would have much more fun at work and they’d work hard if they saw how their piece of the puzzle fits the whole.
How to start this? Unfortunately, it needs to be recognized at the top. We have individual managers doing a very good job of this at field offices but moving to cross functional team on campus and across business units is not possible without buy-in at a higher level.

Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Brainstorming exercise – only for honest EM colleagues. Leaders are out!

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