Since there’s a lot of information presented here about why we are bad, I thought I’d list what’s needed. I know, I can dream, though.
(1) Zerobase the company then cut all non-value adding activities. This is easy to do. First, survey all employees regarding the top 10 ways they spend their time (interpreting seismic, staff meetings, education, etc). Then consolidate, bucket all answers, and then have all employees “timesheet” their annual time to these activities. Everything is now transparent in terms of how much time and resources is spent doing what “work”. And yes, I know there will be lying for all the internet surfing but the supervisors are supposed to have somewhat of a clue about this (what work takes so long) so there’s some hope. Imperfect but a huge heads up on our current cluelessness. No expensive consultant needed. Then cut everything that is not value adding.
(2) Eliminate the Hi-P-t program. This is a significant root of all company problems. How arrogant is it that we think we can identify future leaders this early and in this way? Instead it’s a program for accelerated costly training of brown nosers who only care about their next assignment and quickly rise to their level of asset damaging incompetence. It creates a career agenda rather than a “value creation for ConocoPhillips” agenda.
(3) Tie executive management compensation to a simple one-question employee survey ranking their leadership competence, “on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate executive management?” I know it’s not a popularity contest but employees will rate highly and respect leaders who communicate well about hard decisions. This is what real leaders do. Poor leaders micromanage, communicate poorly or untruthfully, support their favorites rather than the best, and say one thing but do another. RL the highest paid executive in Houston? I think we’re living in a simulation. Where’s the value proposition here? Well-led employees are motivated to work harder for the company.
Speaking of which
(4) Eliminate the employee satisfaction survey. It’s got so many useless confusing “layered” questions that no one makes sense of it and the only folks who find value in this is the company that supplies it. Instead ask three simple open ended questions: What are we doing well, what do we need to improve on, any other comments? Then look for trends and take action. Again, no useless expensive consultant needed
(5) Create a post-audit division. Post-audit all major decisions and investments, what was promised vs what actually happened. Fire the liars and incompetents and lavishly reward those who truly lead and create value. Use this to identify root causes of catastrophic investment failure, stop these, and dramatically improve our RoI. This might be the hardest thing here because managers despise transparency about what they promised vs what was delivered.
(6) Let’s face it, we have too many employees and too much fat. Offer everyone a 3-year voluntary severance to move on and use this as a tactic when #1 shows we waste 60% of our time. 90+% of employees “work the system” to look busy when they are not. Accept every severance request, but… if someone is deemed “too valuable to let go” dramatically increase their compensation. And while you’re at it remove all deadwood.
(7) Fire anyone who lacks simple common sense. Y’all could list multiple actions here, but I’ll list two: 80% of Houston is without electricity, heat, and water during the Texas freeze, and the Spirit Towers are lit up like Roman Candles with a spirit-proud ConocoPhillips blazoned at the top. Whoever “left the lights on” should be gone yesterday. The “vaccine lanyards” are a complete invasion of medical privacy and divisive. Who thought these were a good idea? What next, red lanyards to show when women are menstruating?
(8) Eliminate all planning: let’s face it, we can’t forecast our way out of a sand trap. Put together a budget in December and only for large things: production, CapEx, Expenses.
(9) Back again to #1: DOES MANAGEMENT HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH OF OUR TIME IN THE FIELD IS WASTED WITH USELESS HSE REPORTING AND MEETINGS? Just allow us to do our work.
(10) Stop supporting and actually paying for activities which are actively working to destroy us. This is not rocket science, we are a “pure play E&P” company, so why do we support the Paris Climate Accord and actively advocate for CO2 emissions reductions? Pure play E&P means pure play E&P: our products produce CO2, so why are we paying for the rope to hang ourselves? I’m personally proud to say my car runs on energy, the steel in it was refined using energy, the plastics in it were derived from hydrocarbons, and I had a small part to play in that production. And yes, I’m talking about all “woke” stuff but I don’t want this thread banned. How hard is it to support oil and gas production, and if investors want to support climate change, they can invest in wind mills (which are manufactured using oil and gas production and transported to their location using oil and gas production)… isn’t this what “pure play” means? See #1: stop all non-value adding activities, these actually hurt ourselves! Get rid of BoD members who think otherwise.
(11) Have all leaders take a course in listening. Yes, we told you about those many many many problems way in advance when it was still early enough to be prevented but you had your own career agenda and did not listen… and look what happened. List all asset write downs here: there are a lot.
(12) Bring back the lost art of productive meetings, meeting facilitation. How much of our time is wasted in useless meetings? (See #1)
(13) Have real “Chief Subject Experts” who are well paid enough to speak truth. These are desperately needed for functional excellence but instead politicized by incompetents with their own agenda. I know, hard to find them, all of the good ones have been fired or quit for speaking the truth.