Anyone read the book by Steve Coll back in 2012? I think he needs to write a follow up!
6 replies (most recent on top)
@egt+16UM9DfB, preach! Couldn't have said it better myself
I read the book. Having joined EM a few years earlier I found it very insightful. It described the company that I saw around me. Proud, maybe stubborn but structured - emphasis on processes and risk avoidance. A company that understood the world as if it was a global sovereign state and operated as such. Never agreed with the EM political views but I could respect them back then (of course I did not know the extend of funding to unscientific charlatan climate change deniers that a company claiming science as its basis was providing - different story).
The book though failed to anticipate the changes that EM was undergoing. EM was slowly changing with work processes turning into “fit for purpose”, meaning really whatever the higher manager in the room wants to please his boss (usually males). Did not anticipate a global company gradually turning into a Texan one (ran by UK managers to be honest - why?). Reorg exercises in futility, almost wasting more money in person hours and travel and consultants than the made up on-paper savings. Besides the next manager would typically ignore all these and start over. A pharaonic campus that induced corporate dissonance as really “grease engineers” start pretending working fo Apple or Google.
Maybe it was always like that and the book author - despite his liberal leanings - bought the hype as many of us did. Or maybe EM indeed gradually changed, due to a provincial mentality of its top leadership. Or maybe many of us, as we move up, see better behind the facade. Tough to know.
I bought it, but I never read it. It's around here somewhere. I do remember hearing of the "God pod" reference.
@toi+16UM9DfB
ha you got it. Interview me when the time comes.
ExxonMobil is now a Pyramid Scheme :)
I'm almost done with my book. I'm still employed but if I get cut in the next rounds, I'm headed straight to a publisher and if they don't bite, I'll self publish and sell to O&G peeps. It has been cathartic writing my decades experience w/ExxonMobil. I'm not sure people will believe some of the stories but I don't care...it will be all true. Steve Coll has got nothing on me. No way will he have the same insight.
Nah.. I will buy a book on the post mortem of “We are ExxonMobil” when it is available.