Everyone complains about poor management and with a good reason. However, the truth is somehow always in the middle. Even if totally new people, top experts, appear in managerial positions tomorrow, I'm not sure they could drastically improve the situation at Shell. Some things can certainly be fixed but nothing significant. I think everything else are just fairy tales.
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I agree with the BG deal. RDS is still stuck with ~ 70 bn of debt with the majority of that debt coming from the BG deal. BG's assets are not generating the revenue to pay off the debt so it appears that this was a poor deal. If you add that to the 9 bn Alaska fiasco from Marvin Odum and at least 2 bn of regret from Carmon creek along with all kinds of issues in Nigeria I am just not sure there is a lot of confidence left in Shell leadership's decisions. Shell is leaning heavily on continuing to think that they can monopolize energy trading control and generate easy profits (without any real skin in the game)....that is until some wh-z kid working out of his mom's basement creates a new blockchain trading technology that will be cheap, effective and trustworthy and replace all the expensive trading parasites. RDS is the most indebted of the oil majors and their future plans do not appear to be able to generate enough profits to pay off their debts. The best they can hop for is merging with another oil major to share their debt load.
Stop promoting young inexperienced new grads. The bigger their sc--w up theyre jumping job groups.
1) Some management need to resign. Some have no experience in what they are managing.
2) Remove team leads that only have 1-3 reports.
3) Don't wait for reorgs to let people go. As there are groups that have been bloated for years.
4) Cut all of the make work cr-p out. Don't need yammer etc.
5) Proper implementation process. CIF, Avanti and AMS has failed.
6) Need to keep more people with Experience.
7) Stop moving people around without a proper transition.
8) Actually hold people accountable.
9) Don't beat around the bush during townhalls.
10) Benchmark against smaller competitors as they appear to be making money in Shales.
Upper management has dug a deep ho-e that will be tough to get out of. Not impossible but very challenging.
In my opinion the BG deal was a disaster that we still haven't recovered from. Our debt almost tripled after we acquired BG and we still haven't made a big dent in it. Right now we have exactly the same amount of debt as we did post purchase. A lot of the assets we got from BG were subpar at best with the biggest benefit coming from LNG which has shown good results but may have a questionable future.
We are very inefficient. In a high margin oil industry, our margins are pathetically low compared to other companies. Its hard for me to believe that Shell can survive in a very low margin hypercompetitive utility business.
A lot of the financial metrics can be blamed at bad commercial deals along with poor management of the assets that exist. No one takes accountability. I understand that the organization is very large and people need to be rotated around to get experience but higher ups need to be accountable for the decisions they make! The organizations need to be flatter as well as there are too many mid-level managers.
There are tons of ineffective project and central organizations with capable people that just spin wheels all day long trying to sell projects around Shell. Gotta cut it out.
There has been a lot offshoring of different disciplines that may cuts costs short term but may end up having long term issues with integration. So far its so-so.
Summary:
- Hold managers accountable
- Flatten organizations
- Remove non-value add groups
- Slow down offshoring
- create clarity of purpose. decide that shell is an oil and gas company. emphasize technical and operational excellence. de emphasize narrative related to decreased production and carbon neutrality.
- change the strategy to exit or stop investments related to electricity generation/transportation/sales,
- stop trying to be all things to all people and do so without apology
To the person that posted this, thank you. You nailed it. That is exactly what is wrong at Shell.
Try to decentralize the governance, managing opco s from distance is not working
Expand trading and continue divestments
start with 3 things:
- create clarity of purpose. decide that shell is an oil and gas company. emphasize technical and operational excellence. de emphasize narrative related to decreased production and carbon neutrality.
- change the strategy to exit or stop investments related to electricity generation/transportation/sales,
- stop trying to be all things to all people and do so without apology
Fire every single JG1 and above managers right up to the EVP's. All of them are incompetent a-s kissers that can't figure it out