I’ve been blogging on Shell’s intranet for two and a half years now, and this is the first original post on this new platform. I’ve imported most of my Shell material onto this site, with apologies for the occasional Shell-specific context or acronym. From now I’ll try to post here at least once per week, using a similar style but no doubt a wider range of content.
So writing this new blog feels a bit like setting sail into uncertain waters. But this is far from the biggest transition in my life around now. The reason for escaping the confines of Shell’s intranet is that I’m also escaping Shell, just a couple of weeks before my fiftieth birthday. Escaping to what exactly is rather unclear, defined more by what it will exclude (work mainly for pay or fee) than what it will include.
Add to this that this week I sat down with my estranged wife and two lawyers and hammered out a settlement for divorce, after twenty two years in a generally stable and calming marriage. And that I closed the lease on the house I’d lived in for nine years, went to the town hall to deregister from the Netherlands, and now divide my time between various countries, partly in a furnished flat with few of my own possessions, and no car.
Perhaps this defines a mid life crisis. Certainly it defines a series of transitions. It describes the wilful casting away of many of the anchors that we traditionally use to give our lives ballast and security against turbulence. On a good day, this feels like total liberation. On a less good day, it just feels scary.
Of course, these changes have been brewing for some time. I made the decision to do different things with my fifties about two years ago and have been manoeuvring an exit from Shell since then. That, combined with my daughter leaving home, led me in the wholly unexpected direction of questioning my marriage, and moving out a year ago. Even so, it is strange how the milestones always seem to pop up in groups.
And I am not totally without anchors; indeed I have many privileges to be thankful for. I have great friendships and activities, have discovered support from Higher Powers, and am not short of assets either. Furthermore I’ve started a new love relationship, which provides peace and joy. However, compared with the convention and rock like stability of what came before, this journey does feel quite unnerving.
One theme in this blog will be to document that journey, both where it leads and how it feels on the way. Seasick at times, no doubt. Maybe you yearn for some liberation from your own anchors? If so I might spur you to action or be someone to remind you that the grass is not necessarily so green on the other side and that anchors serve a purpose.
Right now it feels good. Bring on the new life! Possibly that is driven a bit by a desire to move away from the transition itself, with all its doubt, pain and guilt. I have also started to learn to cherish adventure and uncertainty, to be able to find the surprises life has to offer rather than plan a safe route to avoid the rocks, to rely more than before on fate and humanity. Now I plan my life three months at a time, and have simplicity and maintaining shallow roots as goals, at least for a while. People in Shell all ask what I plan to do after leaving, and are very bemused by the answer that I don’t really know and will work it out when I get there.
I guess the boating metaphor signals the biggest risk with my approach. It is great having a flexible, fast machine and no anchors when the waters and the weather are somewhat predictable. You don’t want a calm sea and no wind, but then again, you don’t want an unexpected storm either. The test of my new approach to life will come when the storms gather, for example my own ill health or that of a loved one or a financial catastrophe. Who knows what lies ahead. But we only live once, and a boat that spends its life in the harbour may come to regret its caution.
I’ll keep you posted.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
The Last Post (here)
My last post in the internal Shell blog space
So, the time has come to leave Shell, after 28 wonderful years. Over the last two and a half years, blogging has been another great gift that Shell has taught me, and I’m thrilled that my blog seems to have given some pleasure and useful advice. Encouraged by this, I’m going to make a serious and sustained attempt to find a blogging niche outside Shell. You can find my new blog on www.grahambobby.blogspot.com. Please look this up from time to time, as readership is the oxygen of any blog and you are my core partners. Even better, set up an RSS or twitter feed, tell your friends, and also start commenting, and perhaps this snowball can roll as fast as any of our 2006 snowballs. In my external blog I’ll keep a similar style, and try to post at least once a week. I’ll be able to comment on things outside Shell’s sphere as well as the tried and trusted areas. Shell has been good to me and I have no intention of becoming an angry outsider.
It is a privilege to be able to retire just before my fiftieth birthday. Not many of the billion or so humans born in the 1960’s will be ahead of me, at least not through their own choice. I feel good about the decision I made two years ago to pursue a different path in my fifties, though I don’t discount that doubts might set in during the months ahead without their familiar routine. That decision also opened up many other changes in my life, changes for the better but involving some pain. While this is not for everyone, I do sense that more could benefit from such a change of scene, so I’ll try to explain how it came about. Like all good crimes, it needed motive, means and opportunity.
Motive is the rarest of the three. I have loved my time at Shell, so why give it up? Basically because I’m blessed enough to have many other things I love as well and the courage to defy convention. At work, mental capacity has rarely been a blocker for me, but physical capacity has been – I do get tired and there have been times when work has consumed all my energy, and more. Between writing, coaching, studying and music, there should be enough to keep me more than busy, especially if I add in some charity work or even a bit of paid work. Yet to do all this while still working for Shell in a senior position would be bound to strain my health. Actually I’ve been very lucky in my 40’s, for most jobs I see at my level require far more physical stamina than I possess, yet I’ve found a niche where I can still add some value while having time and energy to do some other things. Now it is time to shift that balance further, while, God willing, still having healthy years ahead.
I suspect many of my age could tell a similar story, and find a strong motive to change their life, and have means and opportunity too, yet still not consider it. I believe many are driven by a larger opposite force to stay in paid work, a sort of reverse motive. What are the elements of that? That will be different for everyone, a cocktail of genuine pleasure from work, need for recognition and ego, ambition, naked greed, fear of change, fear of changing the equilibrium at home, pandering to convention, and avoidance of serious consideration. Some of these motives are excellent, but some much less so. My challenge to you, if you are lucky enough to have the positive motivation, means and opportunity, is to give this the consideration it deserves, and challenge what your true motives and goals in life are. No one will do this for you.
Means is a simpler story, and for most of us come down to financial means. If you are younger, consider some factors which have given me the means. Starting paid work at twenty two. Not having school age kids any more. And, most important, sticking with one company, so that the severance and pension are strong. It is now that the conservative choice to avoid jumping ship all those times where I was tempted reaps its reward. I have also benefited from Shell’s expatriation policy and conditions, and also from the major increase in senior salaries and bonuses that came through from the late 1990’s. Both of these I find unfair and unjustified in the context of society overall, but I am far from alone in benefiting.
The other point on means is to suggest that you have the courage to do the sums. Many people plough on with paid work under the assumption that they need the money. Well, check it out, you may have more money than you think. And I also believe it is possible, even desirable and pleasurable, to live a lot more simply than our habit.
Opportunity takes some finessing, especially as the means equation becomes altogether tougher without a severance package. I was lucky enough to find myself in an over-populated demographic at a time of retrenchment. I also found myself in an area where no one could argue my skills were indispensible, and with some leaders who were ready to talk honestly and show some courage. With all the complexities of local rules, obscure policies and practices, and fear of precedents, this is rarely simple. Nonetheless I would argue that this combination of circumstances is not as rare as all that. The courage of leaders may be the rarest aspect, but then do you have the courage yourself to put that to the test?
I do believe that more people could make such a decision, perhaps not at fifty but maybe fifty five. That way, fewer people would have to go through the agony of an unpleasant career closure, being pushed out before they are ready and with dignity compromised. Might that be you?
Of course, I might live to regret taking this route. To find that out, you had better start following my external blog! I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for the support so far. And thank you Shell for being a great employer.
So, the time has come to leave Shell, after 28 wonderful years. Over the last two and a half years, blogging has been another great gift that Shell has taught me, and I’m thrilled that my blog seems to have given some pleasure and useful advice. Encouraged by this, I’m going to make a serious and sustained attempt to find a blogging niche outside Shell. You can find my new blog on www.grahambobby.blogspot.com. Please look this up from time to time, as readership is the oxygen of any blog and you are my core partners. Even better, set up an RSS or twitter feed, tell your friends, and also start commenting, and perhaps this snowball can roll as fast as any of our 2006 snowballs. In my external blog I’ll keep a similar style, and try to post at least once a week. I’ll be able to comment on things outside Shell’s sphere as well as the tried and trusted areas. Shell has been good to me and I have no intention of becoming an angry outsider.
It is a privilege to be able to retire just before my fiftieth birthday. Not many of the billion or so humans born in the 1960’s will be ahead of me, at least not through their own choice. I feel good about the decision I made two years ago to pursue a different path in my fifties, though I don’t discount that doubts might set in during the months ahead without their familiar routine. That decision also opened up many other changes in my life, changes for the better but involving some pain. While this is not for everyone, I do sense that more could benefit from such a change of scene, so I’ll try to explain how it came about. Like all good crimes, it needed motive, means and opportunity.
Motive is the rarest of the three. I have loved my time at Shell, so why give it up? Basically because I’m blessed enough to have many other things I love as well and the courage to defy convention. At work, mental capacity has rarely been a blocker for me, but physical capacity has been – I do get tired and there have been times when work has consumed all my energy, and more. Between writing, coaching, studying and music, there should be enough to keep me more than busy, especially if I add in some charity work or even a bit of paid work. Yet to do all this while still working for Shell in a senior position would be bound to strain my health. Actually I’ve been very lucky in my 40’s, for most jobs I see at my level require far more physical stamina than I possess, yet I’ve found a niche where I can still add some value while having time and energy to do some other things. Now it is time to shift that balance further, while, God willing, still having healthy years ahead.
I suspect many of my age could tell a similar story, and find a strong motive to change their life, and have means and opportunity too, yet still not consider it. I believe many are driven by a larger opposite force to stay in paid work, a sort of reverse motive. What are the elements of that? That will be different for everyone, a cocktail of genuine pleasure from work, need for recognition and ego, ambition, naked greed, fear of change, fear of changing the equilibrium at home, pandering to convention, and avoidance of serious consideration. Some of these motives are excellent, but some much less so. My challenge to you, if you are lucky enough to have the positive motivation, means and opportunity, is to give this the consideration it deserves, and challenge what your true motives and goals in life are. No one will do this for you.
Means is a simpler story, and for most of us come down to financial means. If you are younger, consider some factors which have given me the means. Starting paid work at twenty two. Not having school age kids any more. And, most important, sticking with one company, so that the severance and pension are strong. It is now that the conservative choice to avoid jumping ship all those times where I was tempted reaps its reward. I have also benefited from Shell’s expatriation policy and conditions, and also from the major increase in senior salaries and bonuses that came through from the late 1990’s. Both of these I find unfair and unjustified in the context of society overall, but I am far from alone in benefiting.
The other point on means is to suggest that you have the courage to do the sums. Many people plough on with paid work under the assumption that they need the money. Well, check it out, you may have more money than you think. And I also believe it is possible, even desirable and pleasurable, to live a lot more simply than our habit.
Opportunity takes some finessing, especially as the means equation becomes altogether tougher without a severance package. I was lucky enough to find myself in an over-populated demographic at a time of retrenchment. I also found myself in an area where no one could argue my skills were indispensible, and with some leaders who were ready to talk honestly and show some courage. With all the complexities of local rules, obscure policies and practices, and fear of precedents, this is rarely simple. Nonetheless I would argue that this combination of circumstances is not as rare as all that. The courage of leaders may be the rarest aspect, but then do you have the courage yourself to put that to the test?
I do believe that more people could make such a decision, perhaps not at fifty but maybe fifty five. That way, fewer people would have to go through the agony of an unpleasant career closure, being pushed out before they are ready and with dignity compromised. Might that be you?
Of course, I might live to regret taking this route. To find that out, you had better start following my external blog! I look forward to seeing you there. Thanks for the support so far. And thank you Shell for being a great employer.
Special Gifts and Music
What is the most generous gift you’ve received in the last five years? What about the most generous gift you’ve given to someone else in that time?
I think the surprise party thrown for me last Saturday qualifies. In March, Dagmar Mekking sent me an IM message asking what I was planning for my farewell from Shell. I hadn’t given it any thought, and if anything was inclined to just fade away, fearful of sensitivities, budgets and so on. I told Dagmar I had no plans, so she wrote back with an offer. I should send her a list of people dear to me, and I would hear no more but something would happen.
Wow, what a gift! That someone so busy should feel motivated to make this effort was enough. But to take away all the responsibility was even more special. I duly sent the names, and a six line terms of reference (surprises are good, spending money and gifts bad, dinners and traditional speeches dull). Last Saturday afternoon I experienced the result, and was overwhelmed really. Thanks so much Dagmar, and Susan, Milly, Hariom, Gina, Sophie, Rob and and and.
It was mentioned at the party that my blog is brave, but that I haven’t written of love. And I’m not about to start. Yet the gift question reminded me of a book I’ve just read, a bestseller called “The Five love languages” by Gary Chapman. The basic premise is that we all have a preferred way to receive love, one of Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service or Physical Touch. It is worth investing in learning and feeding the preference of those most dear to us, as that way we will find it easier to keep their love tank full. The book was a bit corny and padded, much like management literature actually, but I found this core idea compelling. If someone close to you has Receiving Gifts as their primary love language, maybe you should ponder my question even more closely.
Enough on love – I don’t want to lose all my male readers so close to the finish line! The subject of the party was Music, since one of the things (other than writing) I’m dreaming of doing after leaving Shell is to devote more time to making, appreciating and leading music. I’ve done a conducting course and taken singing lessons for some years, and have been blessed with many opportunities recently to practice both.
Music is a wonderful hobby. But, parents beware, be careful about music as a career. As soon as money and need gets involved, the joy of the art has a habit of diminishing. Many of the professional musicians I have come across are poor, bitter, insecure, snobbish, and forced to be nice to people and situations they don’t respect. It is the same with other artistic careers I think, though of course there are glorious exceptions in every field. But as a hobby there is great liberation, growth, fulfillment and friendship to be had.
Learning to sing and to conduct have a certain frustration in common, which is that the more you know the further away becomes the finish line. It is only by making progress that you see what you still have to learn and how unattainable most goals are. I found a trick to help with this, which was occasionally to go back and re-learn a piece that I had sung twelve months before. What seemed so tough then always seemed easy a year later, and that way I could celebrate progress. Perhaps we can use that trick in other aspects of our lives as well.
I think choir directing is the most fulfilling activity I have ever discovered, because it challenges and rewards in so many directions. You are entertainer, teacher, cheerleader, listener, physical guide, organizer all at the same time, and it is amazing how developing on any one of these axes can improve the outcome. Yet there are few rules, many routes to success and massive scope to experiment. You also receive instant feedback, in the form of sound but also the animated faces in front of you.
There are many links between conducting/choir directing and leadership. Both are enabling roles – as soon as you see yourself at the centre you are lost. Benjamin Zander and Itay Talgam have carved niches as world class conductors who give advice to leaders, including at Shell conferences. Here is a link to a lovely piece of Talgam. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_conductors.html . Many of the skills I have acquired in Shell are fully relevant in choir directing. What a shame I can’t stop myself conducting like Mr Bean!
Maybe there is an activity out there for you, where you can combine a modicum of talent with a mountain of passion? You will only discover it by looking, so don’t leave it too late. And on the way, don’t forget to take pleasure from giving and receiving gifts.
I think the surprise party thrown for me last Saturday qualifies. In March, Dagmar Mekking sent me an IM message asking what I was planning for my farewell from Shell. I hadn’t given it any thought, and if anything was inclined to just fade away, fearful of sensitivities, budgets and so on. I told Dagmar I had no plans, so she wrote back with an offer. I should send her a list of people dear to me, and I would hear no more but something would happen.
Wow, what a gift! That someone so busy should feel motivated to make this effort was enough. But to take away all the responsibility was even more special. I duly sent the names, and a six line terms of reference (surprises are good, spending money and gifts bad, dinners and traditional speeches dull). Last Saturday afternoon I experienced the result, and was overwhelmed really. Thanks so much Dagmar, and Susan, Milly, Hariom, Gina, Sophie, Rob and and and.
It was mentioned at the party that my blog is brave, but that I haven’t written of love. And I’m not about to start. Yet the gift question reminded me of a book I’ve just read, a bestseller called “The Five love languages” by Gary Chapman. The basic premise is that we all have a preferred way to receive love, one of Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service or Physical Touch. It is worth investing in learning and feeding the preference of those most dear to us, as that way we will find it easier to keep their love tank full. The book was a bit corny and padded, much like management literature actually, but I found this core idea compelling. If someone close to you has Receiving Gifts as their primary love language, maybe you should ponder my question even more closely.
Enough on love – I don’t want to lose all my male readers so close to the finish line! The subject of the party was Music, since one of the things (other than writing) I’m dreaming of doing after leaving Shell is to devote more time to making, appreciating and leading music. I’ve done a conducting course and taken singing lessons for some years, and have been blessed with many opportunities recently to practice both.
Music is a wonderful hobby. But, parents beware, be careful about music as a career. As soon as money and need gets involved, the joy of the art has a habit of diminishing. Many of the professional musicians I have come across are poor, bitter, insecure, snobbish, and forced to be nice to people and situations they don’t respect. It is the same with other artistic careers I think, though of course there are glorious exceptions in every field. But as a hobby there is great liberation, growth, fulfillment and friendship to be had.
Learning to sing and to conduct have a certain frustration in common, which is that the more you know the further away becomes the finish line. It is only by making progress that you see what you still have to learn and how unattainable most goals are. I found a trick to help with this, which was occasionally to go back and re-learn a piece that I had sung twelve months before. What seemed so tough then always seemed easy a year later, and that way I could celebrate progress. Perhaps we can use that trick in other aspects of our lives as well.
I think choir directing is the most fulfilling activity I have ever discovered, because it challenges and rewards in so many directions. You are entertainer, teacher, cheerleader, listener, physical guide, organizer all at the same time, and it is amazing how developing on any one of these axes can improve the outcome. Yet there are few rules, many routes to success and massive scope to experiment. You also receive instant feedback, in the form of sound but also the animated faces in front of you.
There are many links between conducting/choir directing and leadership. Both are enabling roles – as soon as you see yourself at the centre you are lost. Benjamin Zander and Itay Talgam have carved niches as world class conductors who give advice to leaders, including at Shell conferences. Here is a link to a lovely piece of Talgam. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/itay_talgam_lead_like_the_great_conductors.html . Many of the skills I have acquired in Shell are fully relevant in choir directing. What a shame I can’t stop myself conducting like Mr Bean!
Maybe there is an activity out there for you, where you can combine a modicum of talent with a mountain of passion? You will only discover it by looking, so don’t leave it too late. And on the way, don’t forget to take pleasure from giving and receiving gifts.
My Room 101
In the UK, there is a popular TV programme called Room 101, where people are asked what they would like to consign to a dark room forever. I’ve had a go at it from a Shell perspective. See what you make of my list. If you like it you can use it as a bullshit bingo card, or count how many times you catch yourself using an item. What would you consign to your own Room 101?
My number one item is Intellectual Property. It makes sense to protect valuable assets, even Apple does that, but I’ve found discussions around IP in Shell on balance to be destructive. People focused on protecting the past find it harder to innovate. The tendency can become to value the store cupboard of patents over the customer need served or money earned. Via a metaphor, I blogged on this in “Once upon a time” in January 2008, and I’m still as suspicious.
Number two is the word Alignment. This first became standard business vocabulary in the late 1990’s, the same time as granularity (where did that come from?), and it has mushroomed since. I find it is usually a weasel word. When I hear “we are aligned” what is too often really being said is “we will do what we want anyway and have agreed not to fight about it” or “we disagree but are too bored to try to agree so will just pretend” or simply “please leave us alone” or “I’ve done my bit, boss, will this do?”
Number three is a denial of cost competitiveness epitomized by phrases like “we will always be expensive”. Who says? In the long run, uncompetitive equals dead. In retail pie charts segmented customer into price quality buyers, with price buyers beneath our consideration. But we didn’t provide any real quality, so the price buyer segment grew year on year and our business shrank. Then others use their cost advantage to offer more quality and the cycle reinforces. The mindset is endemic in Shell and is poisonous, not just in marketing. It really says “I am overpaid and lazy”.
Number four is the concept of Must Win. So what, exactly, happens if we don’t? Not much, really. It is conceivable that Holland’s third match in the world cup could be “must win”. In business terms, it is hardly ever so clear cut. And managers using the concept become so scared of losing that they define the so called must win so generally that they can later claim success whatever the outcome.
Number five is the overuse of the Industry, and Joint Industry Projects. This is another Shell disease, and a clear difference with Exxon. Partly this is as an avoidance of anti-competitive temptation, but there is more to it. Winners think of serving customers, market share and beating competitors, losers tend to think of margin structures and industry conditions. Choose a sound market and be the most competitive player and in the long run you will prevail. Furthermore, people who think industry often fail to spot threats from outside the cozy establishment.
Number six is accountability. A lack of any sense of accountability or supporting structure is bad. But in my experience to be accountable tends to be one of those irregular verbs. I am accountable means I expect obedience and all the resources I demand. You are accountable means I will blame you when it goes wrong, and he is accountable means to he should be fired. Not all that helpful, really.
Number seven is the word portfolio. Listen to the people who use it. Often it is used to excuse a poor operating performance. Or by people who consider our business a game of battleships played with other majors, and again underplay operational excellence or non-traditional competition. Oh yes, and people who want to make their job sound grander than it really is.
Number eight is the teleconference. How could we live without it, with our virtual teams and fast paced agendas? It would be tough, but I claim that overall I’ve hated and wasted more time on telecons than the value I’ve gained from them. At least set a strict time limit of 45 minutes and the banning of regular telecons like weekly team meetings. Both become lazy too easily and waste time, as well as being a poor substitute for authentic communication.
Number nine is the concept of non-technical risk. Inevitably this term is used by technical people who believe all interesting things in the world are technical and who resent that other things matter as well. Hence they usually fail to give due attention to such matters, display arrogance when the customer insists on considering them, and explain our ultimate failure to win a deal as bad luck, uncontrollable circumstances or someone else’s fault. Treat technical as one category among many please.
Number ten is complexity. I’m not a great believer in simplicity as a goal, since it drives the business towards commoditization. Genuine complexity in business provides potential to add value and differentiate. However, complexity as a mindset becomes self fulfilling. Most things can be simpler than we believe if we try to make it so. Starting from the customer, most businesses are pretty simple really. Complexity is a weak and overused excuse for uncompetitiveness.
So there are my ten. In my opinion, Shell would be a stronger company if each of these were consigned to room 101. But then I’m on my way rapidly to room 101 myself, so you can just ignore these and come up with your own list.
My number one item is Intellectual Property. It makes sense to protect valuable assets, even Apple does that, but I’ve found discussions around IP in Shell on balance to be destructive. People focused on protecting the past find it harder to innovate. The tendency can become to value the store cupboard of patents over the customer need served or money earned. Via a metaphor, I blogged on this in “Once upon a time” in January 2008, and I’m still as suspicious.
Number two is the word Alignment. This first became standard business vocabulary in the late 1990’s, the same time as granularity (where did that come from?), and it has mushroomed since. I find it is usually a weasel word. When I hear “we are aligned” what is too often really being said is “we will do what we want anyway and have agreed not to fight about it” or “we disagree but are too bored to try to agree so will just pretend” or simply “please leave us alone” or “I’ve done my bit, boss, will this do?”
Number three is a denial of cost competitiveness epitomized by phrases like “we will always be expensive”. Who says? In the long run, uncompetitive equals dead. In retail pie charts segmented customer into price quality buyers, with price buyers beneath our consideration. But we didn’t provide any real quality, so the price buyer segment grew year on year and our business shrank. Then others use their cost advantage to offer more quality and the cycle reinforces. The mindset is endemic in Shell and is poisonous, not just in marketing. It really says “I am overpaid and lazy”.
Number four is the concept of Must Win. So what, exactly, happens if we don’t? Not much, really. It is conceivable that Holland’s third match in the world cup could be “must win”. In business terms, it is hardly ever so clear cut. And managers using the concept become so scared of losing that they define the so called must win so generally that they can later claim success whatever the outcome.
Number five is the overuse of the Industry, and Joint Industry Projects. This is another Shell disease, and a clear difference with Exxon. Partly this is as an avoidance of anti-competitive temptation, but there is more to it. Winners think of serving customers, market share and beating competitors, losers tend to think of margin structures and industry conditions. Choose a sound market and be the most competitive player and in the long run you will prevail. Furthermore, people who think industry often fail to spot threats from outside the cozy establishment.
Number six is accountability. A lack of any sense of accountability or supporting structure is bad. But in my experience to be accountable tends to be one of those irregular verbs. I am accountable means I expect obedience and all the resources I demand. You are accountable means I will blame you when it goes wrong, and he is accountable means to he should be fired. Not all that helpful, really.
Number seven is the word portfolio. Listen to the people who use it. Often it is used to excuse a poor operating performance. Or by people who consider our business a game of battleships played with other majors, and again underplay operational excellence or non-traditional competition. Oh yes, and people who want to make their job sound grander than it really is.
Number eight is the teleconference. How could we live without it, with our virtual teams and fast paced agendas? It would be tough, but I claim that overall I’ve hated and wasted more time on telecons than the value I’ve gained from them. At least set a strict time limit of 45 minutes and the banning of regular telecons like weekly team meetings. Both become lazy too easily and waste time, as well as being a poor substitute for authentic communication.
Number nine is the concept of non-technical risk. Inevitably this term is used by technical people who believe all interesting things in the world are technical and who resent that other things matter as well. Hence they usually fail to give due attention to such matters, display arrogance when the customer insists on considering them, and explain our ultimate failure to win a deal as bad luck, uncontrollable circumstances or someone else’s fault. Treat technical as one category among many please.
Number ten is complexity. I’m not a great believer in simplicity as a goal, since it drives the business towards commoditization. Genuine complexity in business provides potential to add value and differentiate. However, complexity as a mindset becomes self fulfilling. Most things can be simpler than we believe if we try to make it so. Starting from the customer, most businesses are pretty simple really. Complexity is a weak and overused excuse for uncompetitiveness.
So there are my ten. In my opinion, Shell would be a stronger company if each of these were consigned to room 101. But then I’m on my way rapidly to room 101 myself, so you can just ignore these and come up with your own list.
Behavious Rock - Let's stay the Course
The SEF is the Senior Executive Forum
The CEO took that platform to launch a new set of behaviours for Shell
I have to say I was impressed by the SEF output last week and the webcast on Tuesday. I don’t by now have much to lose by being critical and I’m not that easily impressed, so you can conclude it is genuine. It makes me feel good for Shell and our staff.
While we can quibble about the speaking style and the obvious planting of questions, not to mention the cringe making automated phone calls beforehand, it was great to see all the faces from around the world, and the overall impression I took away was of a CEO with growing confidence after a year in the job. And confidence matters so much.
This was the launch of the new direction, after a year of transition and cost cutting, and that was presented honestly and is just at the right time, even if we all know that the pain and ramifications of transition are not truly over yet. And the vision for me started in exactly the right places, with the brand, the customer and behaviours.
In my view this shows that Peter has chosen his advisors well, and has built on his experience working with marketing businesses in SEOP and elsewhere. Brand and customer are not natural starting points for EP types or manufacturers, nor people like McKinsey for that matter, and it is a good departure for Shell to think this way. All the best companies who truly compete in open marketplaces do this. “Powering progress together” hardly trips off the tongue, but is clear and sound. So is the vision to become the most competitive and innovative energy company – don’t believe for a minute that cost consciousness will diminish from here on as a theme, it won’t and it can’t.
I am less convinced about the strategy part, strategy snob that I am. It was good to hear an admission that “more upstream, profitable downstream” was more capital allocation tool than strategy, but I’m not sure that what is in its place is much better. “Get our house in order, bring the projects onstream, tackle new opportunities” reads more like a business plan or shopping list than a strategy to me. There is certainly nothing distinctive about it. Maybe there is more that will not be shared.
Another clear challenge is in the articulation of customer. This was brave and clear, but begs strategic questions. Striding the four customer groups quoted (consumers, businesses, resource holders and governments) is tough or even impossible over time, as a truly focused approach to one group will necessarily compromise another. That for me is the dominant reason to advocate the radical step in the end of breaking up the company, in a way where each part can focus on a more homogenous customer set.
I find a clue to strategy in the list of behaviours. The classic book “The Discipline of Market Leaders” posited that a company had the choice of three strategies: operational excellence, customer intimacy or innovation leadership. Like all such theories, it is simplistic but telling. Exxon has followed operational excellence for a long time, while Shell tends to fudge the issue. Whenever I hear “we will always be expensive” I cringe and realize many of us still live on planets other than earth. Now the new list of behaviours actually gets close to defining a classic operational excellence strategy. So perhaps, together with the shopping list, they are enough.
I love the behaviours. I have always believed that behaviours are a good way to influence culture and strategy, and these are excellent (although the little descriptors on the web behind each one don’t help at all, in my view, too much consensus at work there guys?). But the challenge will be in making it happen. Actually, I liked LAT too, and I found it sad that Jeroen van der Veer seemed to lose heart with driving them so soon after their launch. I can only assume that he couldn’t bring his full EC and EC-1 along with him with enough enthusiasm.
And this will be the challenge again. I have to say that the culture and behaviours I witness again and again in our upstream (ex EP and to a lesser extent ex GP) are almost the diametric opposite of the five. Our only focus seems at times to be fighting each other rather than any competitor. Customers are barely recognized, even the word is discouraged. Delivery is undermined by defensiveness, dashboard management and lack of transparency, and speed by lack of courage. Finally, if people choose to convince themselves day after day of how complex their business is, that will become self-fulfilling and fatally undermine simplicity, no matter how many ESSA days are planned.
I’m aware this is a generalization based on a very limited view, and even with that I have worked with some truly wonderful role models. Yet the impression is a strong one, and it does fit the evidence. I can even add a singular lack of cost consciousness to the indictment. I hope this is not me being bitter once again about the swallowing of Global Solutions (and GP), yet I can’t help but think that the five behaviours were all alive in GS and it is such a waste to have to rebuild them now.
So the real test will be staying the course and demonstrating real change. Peter, you are right, have belief. And what can the rest of us do? We can form an army of winning behaviours through the organization, so that if there is any reluctance at senior levels we can try to squeeze it from below as well as above. With care, we can confront poor leadership behaviours, and it helps to know that up there someone is on our side.
The other thing about behaviours is the challenge of how to know whether we are winning, since they don’t lend themselves to KPI’s. So here are three challenges for the next SEF in twelve months time.
First that we see different faces. Humans cannot change that much, and it is simply not credible to believe that the same people who behaved one way can suddenly en masse behave the opposite way. There has to be some injection of new blood, dare I suggest starting very near the top.
Second that by then we have not just a good vision and good behaviours, but also a credible, distinctive strategy. One that the analysts can articulate and support would be a bonus.
And third, a random sample of Shell people interviewed next May could not just list the behaviours, but tell stories about their own journey and the good changes they see around them.
The CEO took that platform to launch a new set of behaviours for Shell
I have to say I was impressed by the SEF output last week and the webcast on Tuesday. I don’t by now have much to lose by being critical and I’m not that easily impressed, so you can conclude it is genuine. It makes me feel good for Shell and our staff.
While we can quibble about the speaking style and the obvious planting of questions, not to mention the cringe making automated phone calls beforehand, it was great to see all the faces from around the world, and the overall impression I took away was of a CEO with growing confidence after a year in the job. And confidence matters so much.
This was the launch of the new direction, after a year of transition and cost cutting, and that was presented honestly and is just at the right time, even if we all know that the pain and ramifications of transition are not truly over yet. And the vision for me started in exactly the right places, with the brand, the customer and behaviours.
In my view this shows that Peter has chosen his advisors well, and has built on his experience working with marketing businesses in SEOP and elsewhere. Brand and customer are not natural starting points for EP types or manufacturers, nor people like McKinsey for that matter, and it is a good departure for Shell to think this way. All the best companies who truly compete in open marketplaces do this. “Powering progress together” hardly trips off the tongue, but is clear and sound. So is the vision to become the most competitive and innovative energy company – don’t believe for a minute that cost consciousness will diminish from here on as a theme, it won’t and it can’t.
I am less convinced about the strategy part, strategy snob that I am. It was good to hear an admission that “more upstream, profitable downstream” was more capital allocation tool than strategy, but I’m not sure that what is in its place is much better. “Get our house in order, bring the projects onstream, tackle new opportunities” reads more like a business plan or shopping list than a strategy to me. There is certainly nothing distinctive about it. Maybe there is more that will not be shared.
Another clear challenge is in the articulation of customer. This was brave and clear, but begs strategic questions. Striding the four customer groups quoted (consumers, businesses, resource holders and governments) is tough or even impossible over time, as a truly focused approach to one group will necessarily compromise another. That for me is the dominant reason to advocate the radical step in the end of breaking up the company, in a way where each part can focus on a more homogenous customer set.
I find a clue to strategy in the list of behaviours. The classic book “The Discipline of Market Leaders” posited that a company had the choice of three strategies: operational excellence, customer intimacy or innovation leadership. Like all such theories, it is simplistic but telling. Exxon has followed operational excellence for a long time, while Shell tends to fudge the issue. Whenever I hear “we will always be expensive” I cringe and realize many of us still live on planets other than earth. Now the new list of behaviours actually gets close to defining a classic operational excellence strategy. So perhaps, together with the shopping list, they are enough.
I love the behaviours. I have always believed that behaviours are a good way to influence culture and strategy, and these are excellent (although the little descriptors on the web behind each one don’t help at all, in my view, too much consensus at work there guys?). But the challenge will be in making it happen. Actually, I liked LAT too, and I found it sad that Jeroen van der Veer seemed to lose heart with driving them so soon after their launch. I can only assume that he couldn’t bring his full EC and EC-1 along with him with enough enthusiasm.
And this will be the challenge again. I have to say that the culture and behaviours I witness again and again in our upstream (ex EP and to a lesser extent ex GP) are almost the diametric opposite of the five. Our only focus seems at times to be fighting each other rather than any competitor. Customers are barely recognized, even the word is discouraged. Delivery is undermined by defensiveness, dashboard management and lack of transparency, and speed by lack of courage. Finally, if people choose to convince themselves day after day of how complex their business is, that will become self-fulfilling and fatally undermine simplicity, no matter how many ESSA days are planned.
I’m aware this is a generalization based on a very limited view, and even with that I have worked with some truly wonderful role models. Yet the impression is a strong one, and it does fit the evidence. I can even add a singular lack of cost consciousness to the indictment. I hope this is not me being bitter once again about the swallowing of Global Solutions (and GP), yet I can’t help but think that the five behaviours were all alive in GS and it is such a waste to have to rebuild them now.
So the real test will be staying the course and demonstrating real change. Peter, you are right, have belief. And what can the rest of us do? We can form an army of winning behaviours through the organization, so that if there is any reluctance at senior levels we can try to squeeze it from below as well as above. With care, we can confront poor leadership behaviours, and it helps to know that up there someone is on our side.
The other thing about behaviours is the challenge of how to know whether we are winning, since they don’t lend themselves to KPI’s. So here are three challenges for the next SEF in twelve months time.
First that we see different faces. Humans cannot change that much, and it is simply not credible to believe that the same people who behaved one way can suddenly en masse behave the opposite way. There has to be some injection of new blood, dare I suggest starting very near the top.
Second that by then we have not just a good vision and good behaviours, but also a credible, distinctive strategy. One that the analysts can articulate and support would be a bonus.
And third, a random sample of Shell people interviewed next May could not just list the behaviours, but tell stories about their own journey and the good changes they see around them.
Business Support Disquiet
I’ve been very touched by all the good wishes and encouragement to continue blogging after leaving Shell. Thank you. I’ll write more blogs yet on this site, but I do intend to blog externally afterwards, so if you are interested watch this space for a link to appear sometime in June. Any ideas for niches for me to write about that might be interesting for a broader audience would be gratefully received.
Today’s subject in Business Support. P&T has recently given more details of its intent, subject to staff council consultations, to implement a standard new model, with quite heavy implications for staff numbers.
The nature of Business Support needs has changed over the years. It used to be secretaries and typing pools, and now there is much more self-service and remote service. My belief is that I am on the cusp of a generation gap – between those brought up pre-computer (baby boomers if you like) and those (generation X and later) for whom most of their lives self service is just how things happen.
My guess is that many of the angry complainants are baby boomers. And there are fewer and fewer of these left in Shell. That is the main reason why I actually broadly support the move to rationalize P&T business support. It is supported by global trends and demographic trends within Shell.
The other interesting point about all the comments is that they are overwhelmingly from former Global Solutions staff in support of the BSO model. That tells me that something is very good about the BSO concept. And, as far as I understand it, the plan in the new structure is to retain its core elements, albeit with fewer support staff per technical staff. This doesn’t come across well in the communication, but if I am right then the plan has a good chance of success (even of improving things for ex EPT staff) and that the angry people might be mollified once things become clearer.
However, one thing must improve radically for this to succeed, and that is the self service interfaces. I’m sorry, but these are woefully poor currently, an opinion shared widely in the commentary. Who on earth designed the SAP time-writing and expenses interfaces? I fear they were nerdy IT people targeting frequent users, maybe in finance or (ironically) dedicated support roles. With respect, I’m not sure those designers would be able to secure a job with Apple or other leading edge practitioners. When I first wrote time this year, I needed help many times, even after having completed the extensive (ill-designed) training. At one point I believe you have to click a part of the screen that is not even defined let alone highlighted. For occasional users, this is simply not good enough, and it undermines the business case for self service.
I was involved in the P&T business support project myself for a couple of months at the end of last year. At the time we were really just trying to achieve a workable temporary solution and get some smart communication in place, but I enjoyed the experience. I built respect not just for the BSO model but also for many of the people in business support, including many of the BSO supervisors. I hope that this group has been actively consulted in the subsequent redesign. Last year, even though there were U-turns and missed deadlines, I felt the process being followed was not bad in tough circumstances, although I did find it hard to defend a decision not to open windows for most staff.
One driving principle behind the change is global standardization, and here I think there are pros but also cons. Bundling staff in BSO’s, creating global specialists and off-shoring some support all makes sense. On the other hand there are downsides, as opportunities to find strong bespoke solutions for businesses and people are removed. The most stubborn glass ceiling in Shell may be for people trying to escape admin skill pools, and these hybrid solutions were one former way to develop careers of some very talented people. Like many aspects of the drive to standardization I find the business case somewhat dogmatic, though I accept that overall the benefits may outweigh the downsides more often than not.
Finally, it is always tragic when people of modest means lose their jobs. But Shell has to live in the real world, and, even though it is true that there are far more expensive areas where cuts would make far more sense and impact, business support cannot be immune. Life is not always fair. In my experience, there is a massive range in the dedication and quality of business support staff in P&T and I only hope that the process to be followed is strong enough to protect or even reward the many deserving people in the population.
Today’s subject in Business Support. P&T has recently given more details of its intent, subject to staff council consultations, to implement a standard new model, with quite heavy implications for staff numbers.
The nature of Business Support needs has changed over the years. It used to be secretaries and typing pools, and now there is much more self-service and remote service. My belief is that I am on the cusp of a generation gap – between those brought up pre-computer (baby boomers if you like) and those (generation X and later) for whom most of their lives self service is just how things happen.
My guess is that many of the angry complainants are baby boomers. And there are fewer and fewer of these left in Shell. That is the main reason why I actually broadly support the move to rationalize P&T business support. It is supported by global trends and demographic trends within Shell.
The other interesting point about all the comments is that they are overwhelmingly from former Global Solutions staff in support of the BSO model. That tells me that something is very good about the BSO concept. And, as far as I understand it, the plan in the new structure is to retain its core elements, albeit with fewer support staff per technical staff. This doesn’t come across well in the communication, but if I am right then the plan has a good chance of success (even of improving things for ex EPT staff) and that the angry people might be mollified once things become clearer.
However, one thing must improve radically for this to succeed, and that is the self service interfaces. I’m sorry, but these are woefully poor currently, an opinion shared widely in the commentary. Who on earth designed the SAP time-writing and expenses interfaces? I fear they were nerdy IT people targeting frequent users, maybe in finance or (ironically) dedicated support roles. With respect, I’m not sure those designers would be able to secure a job with Apple or other leading edge practitioners. When I first wrote time this year, I needed help many times, even after having completed the extensive (ill-designed) training. At one point I believe you have to click a part of the screen that is not even defined let alone highlighted. For occasional users, this is simply not good enough, and it undermines the business case for self service.
I was involved in the P&T business support project myself for a couple of months at the end of last year. At the time we were really just trying to achieve a workable temporary solution and get some smart communication in place, but I enjoyed the experience. I built respect not just for the BSO model but also for many of the people in business support, including many of the BSO supervisors. I hope that this group has been actively consulted in the subsequent redesign. Last year, even though there were U-turns and missed deadlines, I felt the process being followed was not bad in tough circumstances, although I did find it hard to defend a decision not to open windows for most staff.
One driving principle behind the change is global standardization, and here I think there are pros but also cons. Bundling staff in BSO’s, creating global specialists and off-shoring some support all makes sense. On the other hand there are downsides, as opportunities to find strong bespoke solutions for businesses and people are removed. The most stubborn glass ceiling in Shell may be for people trying to escape admin skill pools, and these hybrid solutions were one former way to develop careers of some very talented people. Like many aspects of the drive to standardization I find the business case somewhat dogmatic, though I accept that overall the benefits may outweigh the downsides more often than not.
Finally, it is always tragic when people of modest means lose their jobs. But Shell has to live in the real world, and, even though it is true that there are far more expensive areas where cuts would make far more sense and impact, business support cannot be immune. Life is not always fair. In my experience, there is a massive range in the dedication and quality of business support staff in P&T and I only hope that the process to be followed is strong enough to protect or even reward the many deserving people in the population.
Office Matters
With 26 working days to go before leaving Shell, I moved office this week, into Alaska in Rijswijk with several hundred others from P&T. New offices are always sources of stress for people, as we get used to changing commutes and timings, and try to reconnect with familiar people and routines. It brings out the suspicion in many of us (why does he have more space than me?). Overall the Alaska move seems to have been well handled – it is an airy, welcoming place good for collaboration. The lack of fixed desks and offices for all but the most mighty is a culture shock to many, but is in tune with the modern world. In my belief a plea for privacy is usually signaling someone pretending something – about how hard they work or how important they are.
My worldly goods I now carry in two small files with my computer. It feels strange how work life has reduced to this, but in truth, I believe most of you could downsize your paper to nearly nothing nowadays, it is all in the computer. In successive moves I’ve gone from 6 boxes to 3 then 2 and now none. It is like having been on a successful diet. Surrounding ourselves with stuff is one of the ways we try to convince ourselves and our colleagues of our significance. A former boss recently retired. As a lawyer brought up in more traditional times, he had retained every file note, every report through his whole career, and his room (and neighbouring rooms too) were full of his files. The day he realized that 99% of it was destined for the shredder was one of the saddest of his life. Individually, we are not that important really, and we should remind ourselves frequently to avoid the sort of pain he experienced.
Offices have changed, due to technology and gradual erosion of status symbols. My first Shell office was looking over the Stand in London, a great location. There was nothing on the desk but a phone – the only accessory NOT on the Alaska workspaces. I could tell who was the boss (and his boss) by the carpet, curtains and colour of wood in the furniture. We had a terminal room where you had to queue to use the computer (in one of my previous summer jobs it was worse – you booked processing time a day in advance and used punched cards as input; one mistake with a card cost you a whole day). There was one restaurant for the normal people (excellent even then, Shell has always fed me well) and one for JG2 and above, with a well-used bar. The building had its own pub, where we had a pint or two for lunch at the slightest excuse. Ah, the good old days. It was critical to be friends with the boss’ secretary, as she was the only way to get anything typed yet she didn’t have any obligation to help. The official alternative was something called a typing pool, out of which I never recall emerging any typing.
I’ve seen some weird offices. For about a third of my career, I’ve been home based. On balance that has been good. The best years of all were the first three years of my daughter’s life, as being at home really adds to the time you can bond. The other side of it is that you miss some bonding with work colleagues, and sometimes you feel a bit excluded. In the early days of technology there were issues too. I remember sitting in Birmingham with my home computer only usable via a security device rather like the ones banks sometimes use now, but much less reliable. I was cut off every few minutes. There is no doubt that meeting people physically on a regular basis aids cooperation. One study showed that even being around a corner or on a different floor reduced the effectiveness of work relationships, so imagine how hard it is when your team are dotted around Europe or the World. That is a good thing about Alaska, as it will bring together teams who can benefit from collaboration.
Offices say a lot about companies. Investing in space and light and things like cafes makes sense, as these things affect mood and performance. Think about recent good and bad meetings you have been in, and correlate it with the quality of the meeting room, especially its light. Interesting, yes? But offices can also send signals about hierarchy, modernity, customer attitude. In the early 1990’s I visited the head offices of Sainsbury and Tesco in consecutive weeks. The former in central London was plush, cosseted, complacent, the latter in a suburb next to a warehouse was basic but alive. That told me all I needed to know about the two companies, and their divergence in performance since came as no surprise to me.
What do Shell’s offices communicate today? For me there remains decency to employees, but still too much hierarchy and not enough customer proximity or feel. We had a golden age in the early days of SEOP in the late 1990’s, where in retail we went completely customer crazy. We sold off all the central relics in business districts, and moved into functional spaces, often next door to petrol stations. Then we spent a lot of time travelling between sites on buses, It was a bit manic, but I for one found it inspirational and good. Of course in the end the bureaucrats fought back and we retreated most of the way back to our comfort zone.
Offices and other symbols really speak volumes about a culture. SEOP and our customer revolution was an extreme case. But there are many if you look. The lack of first names on the doors in Germany told you all you needed to know about Deutsche Shell. The Norwegian office where the executive floor could only be reached by a non-public lift sent a clear message, reputedly about the CE’s wife more than anyone else. Westhollow’s “chapel of rest” atmosphere pervaded the whole place. The first office of Shell Bulgaria was a converted apartment in a residential district of Sofia, and was wonderful – such a contrast to the formal stuffiness of the first offices in Poland or the Czech Republic. In Denmark, if you wanted to leave after 16.30 you had to crawl through the basement – sending a clear signal about the work culture there.
So, today’s blog has been a bit of a nostalgic ramble. I must be winding down. Perhaps we can derive a few lessons though. Be ready for change. Be aware of the signals you sent out – what are you pretending, and who to? Always choose well lit meeting rooms. Observe what offices tell you about people and companies, including your own. Customers matter. Celebrate good food and good coffee. Collaboration is easier if you are close together. It is right that we don’t drink at lunchtime now, but how have you replaced that bonding? Chuck out your junk, travel light. Get a home based job when your children are young.
Oh, and don’t ramble when you get old.
My worldly goods I now carry in two small files with my computer. It feels strange how work life has reduced to this, but in truth, I believe most of you could downsize your paper to nearly nothing nowadays, it is all in the computer. In successive moves I’ve gone from 6 boxes to 3 then 2 and now none. It is like having been on a successful diet. Surrounding ourselves with stuff is one of the ways we try to convince ourselves and our colleagues of our significance. A former boss recently retired. As a lawyer brought up in more traditional times, he had retained every file note, every report through his whole career, and his room (and neighbouring rooms too) were full of his files. The day he realized that 99% of it was destined for the shredder was one of the saddest of his life. Individually, we are not that important really, and we should remind ourselves frequently to avoid the sort of pain he experienced.
Offices have changed, due to technology and gradual erosion of status symbols. My first Shell office was looking over the Stand in London, a great location. There was nothing on the desk but a phone – the only accessory NOT on the Alaska workspaces. I could tell who was the boss (and his boss) by the carpet, curtains and colour of wood in the furniture. We had a terminal room where you had to queue to use the computer (in one of my previous summer jobs it was worse – you booked processing time a day in advance and used punched cards as input; one mistake with a card cost you a whole day). There was one restaurant for the normal people (excellent even then, Shell has always fed me well) and one for JG2 and above, with a well-used bar. The building had its own pub, where we had a pint or two for lunch at the slightest excuse. Ah, the good old days. It was critical to be friends with the boss’ secretary, as she was the only way to get anything typed yet she didn’t have any obligation to help. The official alternative was something called a typing pool, out of which I never recall emerging any typing.
I’ve seen some weird offices. For about a third of my career, I’ve been home based. On balance that has been good. The best years of all were the first three years of my daughter’s life, as being at home really adds to the time you can bond. The other side of it is that you miss some bonding with work colleagues, and sometimes you feel a bit excluded. In the early days of technology there were issues too. I remember sitting in Birmingham with my home computer only usable via a security device rather like the ones banks sometimes use now, but much less reliable. I was cut off every few minutes. There is no doubt that meeting people physically on a regular basis aids cooperation. One study showed that even being around a corner or on a different floor reduced the effectiveness of work relationships, so imagine how hard it is when your team are dotted around Europe or the World. That is a good thing about Alaska, as it will bring together teams who can benefit from collaboration.
Offices say a lot about companies. Investing in space and light and things like cafes makes sense, as these things affect mood and performance. Think about recent good and bad meetings you have been in, and correlate it with the quality of the meeting room, especially its light. Interesting, yes? But offices can also send signals about hierarchy, modernity, customer attitude. In the early 1990’s I visited the head offices of Sainsbury and Tesco in consecutive weeks. The former in central London was plush, cosseted, complacent, the latter in a suburb next to a warehouse was basic but alive. That told me all I needed to know about the two companies, and their divergence in performance since came as no surprise to me.
What do Shell’s offices communicate today? For me there remains decency to employees, but still too much hierarchy and not enough customer proximity or feel. We had a golden age in the early days of SEOP in the late 1990’s, where in retail we went completely customer crazy. We sold off all the central relics in business districts, and moved into functional spaces, often next door to petrol stations. Then we spent a lot of time travelling between sites on buses, It was a bit manic, but I for one found it inspirational and good. Of course in the end the bureaucrats fought back and we retreated most of the way back to our comfort zone.
Offices and other symbols really speak volumes about a culture. SEOP and our customer revolution was an extreme case. But there are many if you look. The lack of first names on the doors in Germany told you all you needed to know about Deutsche Shell. The Norwegian office where the executive floor could only be reached by a non-public lift sent a clear message, reputedly about the CE’s wife more than anyone else. Westhollow’s “chapel of rest” atmosphere pervaded the whole place. The first office of Shell Bulgaria was a converted apartment in a residential district of Sofia, and was wonderful – such a contrast to the formal stuffiness of the first offices in Poland or the Czech Republic. In Denmark, if you wanted to leave after 16.30 you had to crawl through the basement – sending a clear signal about the work culture there.
So, today’s blog has been a bit of a nostalgic ramble. I must be winding down. Perhaps we can derive a few lessons though. Be ready for change. Be aware of the signals you sent out – what are you pretending, and who to? Always choose well lit meeting rooms. Observe what offices tell you about people and companies, including your own. Customers matter. Celebrate good food and good coffee. Collaboration is easier if you are close together. It is right that we don’t drink at lunchtime now, but how have you replaced that bonding? Chuck out your junk, travel light. Get a home based job when your children are young.
Oh, and don’t ramble when you get old.
Three big Ideas for Shell
The UK Election is in two days time. There is been a lot of noise. But precious little debate or policy about anything that really matters. What to do about the repeated surveys that show the UK as one of the developed world’s worst countries to be a child? How can a medium sized country effectively influence global power? What can we do about climate change? Why do we need more than 200 MP’s when Europe makes most of our law? The whole thing seems outdated, somewhat dishonest and lacking in ideas.
Does that sound a bit like the IOC’s? Perhaps it is a stretch, but at times I sense a collective sleepwalking along over-trodden paths. A couple of months ago I bemoaned the lack of serious strategy competence and option generation in Shell.
It is all very well to moan, but it does create some obligation to try to do better. So I’ll have a go. Here are three ideas for potential five-year strategies for Shell. Are they fully thought through? No, especially in how they might link together and in how to manage transitions. Would they add value? Possibly not, but I’d like to try to prove they can, and I do believe that the current dearth of true strategy will consign Shell and IOC’s to irrelevance within 20-30 years. Will they happen? Don’t hold your breath.
The first idea is to try to form a true environmental coalition across industries and allow this to lead policy (rather than create sound bites or boxes to tick on investment proposals). I believe there is a niche available, and the third hard truth will bite back sooner than we think to make it potentially a winner. I suggest GE, the Economist, The World Bank, Toyota and Microsoft as potential partners. After gaining credibility with publics and governments, early tasks for the coalition would be to create globally excepted metrics and tax/subsidy policy proposals. Transforming our own companies would happen simultaneously. It is possible – remember assets are easily bought and sold in our industry.
The second idea is to break the company up. Where is the value of integration? I’ve seen far more diseconomies of scale than economies during my career, and markets tend to agree. The interfaces can easily be managed via open market trading. The resulting upstream and downstream companies would immediately be more nimble, focused and coherent, and could develop cultures appropriate for their goals. The upstream culture is currently a major drag on the downstream, while the brand requirements from downstream are a drag on the upstream. And integration adds cost and hampers speed. An option exists to create a third company for services.
The third idea is to Go East with intent, focusing on services. Why on earth are most of our engineers in Rijswijk or Houston? It is just about justifiable now, but in ten years time this will cripple competitiveness and under current direction the balance will hardly have changed in that timescale. India I believe as the best location, given the availability of talent and acceptable IP laws. And therefore I think approaching Reliance industries for a major partnership makes sense, since they have the talent, the local connections, the money, and a need for IP. Over time more and more of the services for both Shell and Reliance could be sourced from this India-based partnership. Other agreements between the players on assets could happen in parallel but are not essential to the basic idea.
Brave, I agree. What about the criticism that this is typical Shell dreaming, and it detracts from operational excellence? Fair enough, operational excellence has to form the backbone of any strategy implementation. But is operational excellence going to be enough? And I believe the second and third ideas would themselves be engines for operational excellence, given the external focus and clarity of purpose they would lead to.
Why will none of this happen (assuming they would be workable)? The short-term nature of the market could be a blocker. A bigger blocker is inertia among our leaders – there would be an element of turkeys and Christmas to each of these. Inertia driven by personal incentives, being a slave to markets, strategic poverty and cultural complacency. All good excuses, the sort quoted by companies and industries with potentially a shorter life expectancy than they think.
Does that sound a bit like the IOC’s? Perhaps it is a stretch, but at times I sense a collective sleepwalking along over-trodden paths. A couple of months ago I bemoaned the lack of serious strategy competence and option generation in Shell.
It is all very well to moan, but it does create some obligation to try to do better. So I’ll have a go. Here are three ideas for potential five-year strategies for Shell. Are they fully thought through? No, especially in how they might link together and in how to manage transitions. Would they add value? Possibly not, but I’d like to try to prove they can, and I do believe that the current dearth of true strategy will consign Shell and IOC’s to irrelevance within 20-30 years. Will they happen? Don’t hold your breath.
The first idea is to try to form a true environmental coalition across industries and allow this to lead policy (rather than create sound bites or boxes to tick on investment proposals). I believe there is a niche available, and the third hard truth will bite back sooner than we think to make it potentially a winner. I suggest GE, the Economist, The World Bank, Toyota and Microsoft as potential partners. After gaining credibility with publics and governments, early tasks for the coalition would be to create globally excepted metrics and tax/subsidy policy proposals. Transforming our own companies would happen simultaneously. It is possible – remember assets are easily bought and sold in our industry.
The second idea is to break the company up. Where is the value of integration? I’ve seen far more diseconomies of scale than economies during my career, and markets tend to agree. The interfaces can easily be managed via open market trading. The resulting upstream and downstream companies would immediately be more nimble, focused and coherent, and could develop cultures appropriate for their goals. The upstream culture is currently a major drag on the downstream, while the brand requirements from downstream are a drag on the upstream. And integration adds cost and hampers speed. An option exists to create a third company for services.
The third idea is to Go East with intent, focusing on services. Why on earth are most of our engineers in Rijswijk or Houston? It is just about justifiable now, but in ten years time this will cripple competitiveness and under current direction the balance will hardly have changed in that timescale. India I believe as the best location, given the availability of talent and acceptable IP laws. And therefore I think approaching Reliance industries for a major partnership makes sense, since they have the talent, the local connections, the money, and a need for IP. Over time more and more of the services for both Shell and Reliance could be sourced from this India-based partnership. Other agreements between the players on assets could happen in parallel but are not essential to the basic idea.
Brave, I agree. What about the criticism that this is typical Shell dreaming, and it detracts from operational excellence? Fair enough, operational excellence has to form the backbone of any strategy implementation. But is operational excellence going to be enough? And I believe the second and third ideas would themselves be engines for operational excellence, given the external focus and clarity of purpose they would lead to.
Why will none of this happen (assuming they would be workable)? The short-term nature of the market could be a blocker. A bigger blocker is inertia among our leaders – there would be an element of turkeys and Christmas to each of these. Inertia driven by personal incentives, being a slave to markets, strategic poverty and cultural complacency. All good excuses, the sort quoted by companies and industries with potentially a shorter life expectancy than they think.
So your Boss sucks - what now?
Last year I wrote a blog “choose your boss, not your job” arguing that the line manager plays a fundamental role in our working life and it is well worth trying to get a good one. But often we can’t choose. Especially now, with the turbulence of Transition 09, many of us will have ended up with bosses we didn’t expect. And some of those bosses will be a disaster. What can you do about it?
There are as many types of bad boss as there are bad bosses. The weakling. The narcissist. The bigot. The obsessive. The absent. The creep. The bully. The gossip. The indecisive. The micromanager. The bitter. The loser. I’ve seen them all, in strange combinations. I’ve suffered under most of them. Heck, I’ve been many of them myself.
A few words of mitigation for bad bosses. They probably didn’t choose you either. They might never have wanted to be a line manager. They almost certainly never received any training or help. Their own boss may be a nightmare. They might be having a bad time at home. And, face it, you might just be a bad subordinate.
On the subject of judging less and seeking to understand more, here is a story from Greg Lewin. Wow, Greg becomes more of a hero in my eyes with every passing month. I was unimpressed with a manager in the US I had to deal with occasionally. I saw him as a bit lazy, stuck in his ways, obstructive. Without being direct about it, I took an opening one day to express some mild frustration to Greg. He looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, X hasn’t been the same since he lost his son last year”. Wow, did I feel small! What a great lesson.
Despite the mitigation and the call to judge less, overall I do find the quality of bosses in Shell (and I believe we are better than most) as a disgrace and a lost opportunity. Our influence as a line manager becomes much more significant than our influence as a professional as our careers develop, yet almost no attention is paid to assessing our suitability or developing us. Five years ago in Global Solutions I am proud to say that I was instrumental (with Greg) in starting Applied Leadership, a low cost programme to help bosses learn from their peers. In a modest way, it worked, though it suffered the weakness of all development that the ones who were most open to it were the ones with least need.
One more piece of mitigation. Being a boss is hard work. Most of my darkest most wearying moments in work in the last 15 years have come as a direct result of being a line manager. No matter how much you try, you will always fail, with such a variety of challenges and people to deal with. And it is hugely time consuming to do well. I noticed 18 months ago when I changed jobs that suddenly I was about 50% less busy. I’m convinced that had nothing to do with the respective job content save that I ceased to be a line manager.
Anyway, that is a long preamble. I’m supposed to be giving you some tips for handling your situation with a bad boss.
First, you have my sympathy. This makes such a difference. It is not fair. And there is so little you can do about it – indeed many of the things you are tempted to try will only make the situation worse. A bad boss is a nightmare, it makes your performance and self esteem suffer and holds you back. Sorry. But my first advice is to remember that little lasts forever. One of you will move before long or some other change will arrive to help. Try to chill. See this as swings and roundabouts – we all get this from time to time and at other times you will be blessed with good bosses. And lots of others are suffering too.
This advice is to try to stop you doing counter-productive things in your frustration. Don’t tell them they are a bad boss or fight them. Unless it is really bad, don’t go to their boss or to HR. Don’t try to do their job for them. Don’t ignore them or keep them in the dark or work around them. Don’t humiliate them or gossip about them. Be very careful how you coach them. Sorry, but all these things are likely to make things worse. The root cause of most bad bosses is their own insecurity, either generally or with you. All this type of action does is simply feed that insecurity. Don’t. Stop digging, my friend.
The next advice is to try to authentically help them, by looking at the world through their eyes. You may find this distasteful and wonder why you should – after all, they are paid more than you! But it is in your own interest. Work out what makes them insecure, and try to lessen it. Maybe they need reassurance, and if you really try hard to can find honest statements that can offer it. If they can’t make decisions then make it pitifully easy in the way you present options. If they are frightened of their own boss then make them look good in front of him or her. Most causes have partial remedies if you look for them. And taking this approach has the additional benefit that you will understand their own context better – like the man who lost his son.
Respectfully and cautiously, you can involve the boss in this process. Without threatening, ask them what they like, what would help them, what they would like from you. You might be surprised, not least in that they may view you in a way totally different to what you assumed, most often more positively. You might create space where they are ready to accept some coaching from you. In this you can also involve people around you, peers and others, just as long as you don’t descend to gossip and ganging up or collective whingeing. Others may have a secret they can share. They can also help in practical and emotional ways.
Next, cover your bases. When you have a bad boss, you do need to be somewhat more formal. Put things in writing. Take care over your GPA. Offer frequent reviews, suggest milestones, make sure you deliver. Use your customer to verify that you are performing well. Carefully, make sure that the peers and boss of the boss see some of your work. Check frequently what is expected and meant. Demand specific feedback and reviews. Sorry, you’ll probably get a worse IPF than you deserve anyway, but at least you can minimise the damage.
Next, create options. Few situations are unchangeable. There will often be a chance to be assigned on a project where the boss has less influence. You can try to bring forward your transfer, or change the content of your role so the boss should change. You are always free to leave. You can even try to engineer a new job for the boss! Make these things a campaign, don’t act hastily but perhaps give yourself a year to see what can be achieved.
Finally, look at yourself. Often the most useful feedback you will have a chance to receive will come from a boss who has problems with you. After all, they have to try to articulate why you are failing, and, amidst all the rubbish, there will be some gems, some uncomfortable truths. Be open to that, it is a gift, one hard to accept because of where it comes from. Also, think about how you are as a subordinate. If you are someone who seems to have suffered a succession of bad bosses, then consider whether the problem might just be you and not them.
There are as many types of bad boss as there are bad bosses. The weakling. The narcissist. The bigot. The obsessive. The absent. The creep. The bully. The gossip. The indecisive. The micromanager. The bitter. The loser. I’ve seen them all, in strange combinations. I’ve suffered under most of them. Heck, I’ve been many of them myself.
A few words of mitigation for bad bosses. They probably didn’t choose you either. They might never have wanted to be a line manager. They almost certainly never received any training or help. Their own boss may be a nightmare. They might be having a bad time at home. And, face it, you might just be a bad subordinate.
On the subject of judging less and seeking to understand more, here is a story from Greg Lewin. Wow, Greg becomes more of a hero in my eyes with every passing month. I was unimpressed with a manager in the US I had to deal with occasionally. I saw him as a bit lazy, stuck in his ways, obstructive. Without being direct about it, I took an opening one day to express some mild frustration to Greg. He looked me in the eye and said, “Yes, X hasn’t been the same since he lost his son last year”. Wow, did I feel small! What a great lesson.
Despite the mitigation and the call to judge less, overall I do find the quality of bosses in Shell (and I believe we are better than most) as a disgrace and a lost opportunity. Our influence as a line manager becomes much more significant than our influence as a professional as our careers develop, yet almost no attention is paid to assessing our suitability or developing us. Five years ago in Global Solutions I am proud to say that I was instrumental (with Greg) in starting Applied Leadership, a low cost programme to help bosses learn from their peers. In a modest way, it worked, though it suffered the weakness of all development that the ones who were most open to it were the ones with least need.
One more piece of mitigation. Being a boss is hard work. Most of my darkest most wearying moments in work in the last 15 years have come as a direct result of being a line manager. No matter how much you try, you will always fail, with such a variety of challenges and people to deal with. And it is hugely time consuming to do well. I noticed 18 months ago when I changed jobs that suddenly I was about 50% less busy. I’m convinced that had nothing to do with the respective job content save that I ceased to be a line manager.
Anyway, that is a long preamble. I’m supposed to be giving you some tips for handling your situation with a bad boss.
First, you have my sympathy. This makes such a difference. It is not fair. And there is so little you can do about it – indeed many of the things you are tempted to try will only make the situation worse. A bad boss is a nightmare, it makes your performance and self esteem suffer and holds you back. Sorry. But my first advice is to remember that little lasts forever. One of you will move before long or some other change will arrive to help. Try to chill. See this as swings and roundabouts – we all get this from time to time and at other times you will be blessed with good bosses. And lots of others are suffering too.
This advice is to try to stop you doing counter-productive things in your frustration. Don’t tell them they are a bad boss or fight them. Unless it is really bad, don’t go to their boss or to HR. Don’t try to do their job for them. Don’t ignore them or keep them in the dark or work around them. Don’t humiliate them or gossip about them. Be very careful how you coach them. Sorry, but all these things are likely to make things worse. The root cause of most bad bosses is their own insecurity, either generally or with you. All this type of action does is simply feed that insecurity. Don’t. Stop digging, my friend.
The next advice is to try to authentically help them, by looking at the world through their eyes. You may find this distasteful and wonder why you should – after all, they are paid more than you! But it is in your own interest. Work out what makes them insecure, and try to lessen it. Maybe they need reassurance, and if you really try hard to can find honest statements that can offer it. If they can’t make decisions then make it pitifully easy in the way you present options. If they are frightened of their own boss then make them look good in front of him or her. Most causes have partial remedies if you look for them. And taking this approach has the additional benefit that you will understand their own context better – like the man who lost his son.
Respectfully and cautiously, you can involve the boss in this process. Without threatening, ask them what they like, what would help them, what they would like from you. You might be surprised, not least in that they may view you in a way totally different to what you assumed, most often more positively. You might create space where they are ready to accept some coaching from you. In this you can also involve people around you, peers and others, just as long as you don’t descend to gossip and ganging up or collective whingeing. Others may have a secret they can share. They can also help in practical and emotional ways.
Next, cover your bases. When you have a bad boss, you do need to be somewhat more formal. Put things in writing. Take care over your GPA. Offer frequent reviews, suggest milestones, make sure you deliver. Use your customer to verify that you are performing well. Carefully, make sure that the peers and boss of the boss see some of your work. Check frequently what is expected and meant. Demand specific feedback and reviews. Sorry, you’ll probably get a worse IPF than you deserve anyway, but at least you can minimise the damage.
Next, create options. Few situations are unchangeable. There will often be a chance to be assigned on a project where the boss has less influence. You can try to bring forward your transfer, or change the content of your role so the boss should change. You are always free to leave. You can even try to engineer a new job for the boss! Make these things a campaign, don’t act hastily but perhaps give yourself a year to see what can be achieved.
Finally, look at yourself. Often the most useful feedback you will have a chance to receive will come from a boss who has problems with you. After all, they have to try to articulate why you are failing, and, amidst all the rubbish, there will be some gems, some uncomfortable truths. Be open to that, it is a gift, one hard to accept because of where it comes from. Also, think about how you are as a subordinate. If you are someone who seems to have suffered a succession of bad bosses, then consider whether the problem might just be you and not them.
More Advice for Unhappy Winners
You may recall my Transition '09 4-box model from December. In the three intervening months, more of us have had some uncertainty removed and been able to determine which box we are in. Spare a thought for those still going round the merry-go-round of MOR or facing new threats, for example the admin staff in P&T. I guessed in December that the box with the greatest number of people was the one for Unhappy Winners. These are people placed in jobs but somehow dissatisfied. Does this include you?
There are many good reasons to feel an unhappy winner. You might conclude the process leading to your placement was hurried, poorly executed or just plain unfair. You may recall promises made to you long ago when times were good and that now have been conveniently forgotten. You may look with envy at people who seem to have survived or even thrived or passed you by despite their evident flaws. You might not have been too seriously affected yourself, yet you find what is going on in Shell rather distasteful, challenging your loyalty. You may have landed in a job with unclear goals, an inadequate boss, or unrealistic expectations. You might think your bonus or grade or pay increase to be less than adequate compensation for your efforts. You might see your aspired further development path blocked. You might be disconcerted by disfunctionality around you, whether that is Shell People or time writing or whatever else. You might simply be saddened by a general worsening of the atmosphere around you, or by a seeming lack of energy. You might be fearful for the next round of cuts, wondering if our CEO’s new staff reduction commitments might include you.
Wow, what a lot of good reasons. It is no wonder you are unhappy, really. So what should you do about it?
There are some excellent clues in the presentations from our recent Strategy day. I have been a critic of Shell’s strategy for some years (see my last blog), and overall I remain dissatisfied, as I see little in the presentations to excite me about differentiated capabilities and priorities, or definition of a credible, sustainable future role for Shell. Yet the markets reacted quite well. Why? I suspect it wasn’t only in response to the announced further cost cutting, though no doubt that helped (yet hardly makes us feel good as staff). I believe the presentations signaled a return to reality.
The presentations contained more accurate detail about Shell’s portfolio of opportunities than any since the reserves crisis, leaving less room for ambiguity or exaggerated interpretation. While acknowledging the competitive performance as inadequate, our leaders did not show awe or parroting of competitors, but boldly focused on what we would do ourselves. And that focus was short-term and quantified rather than vague and peppered with tangential dreams. In simple terms, it cleared the decks, seized control and gave commitment. Not a strategy to win long-term perhaps, but one to prepare the ground, to stop losing. Sweetened by some cost cuts and the inherited bonus that is the upcoming production spike.
So, what is this to do with individual unhappy winners? Convert the messages to yourself and you might see. Clear the decks, focus on self rather than others and be clear on immediate goals.
That means being realistic about your new situation. True, others may have done better than you and may not have deserved it, but so what, it happened and is in the past. True, you might as well tear up your IDP from 2007, but it won’t help you now waving it about. True, that career path you saw before maybe closed off for a while, but that doesn’t mean there are no alternatives. True, you may be surrounded by something approaching chaos but does that make you powerless? We have had long enough to mourn, now it is time to clear the decks, roll up our sleeves, to lead and to deliver. In the end, that is the only way to become happy again, and also the only way we can help our company deliver its promises (including the wishful one about Transition 09 being over).
Where to start? I suggest Step one is in your own head. Happiness is a state of mind. Banish those blues, and enjoy the spring sunshine. Make some resolutions about your attitude. Get some help if you need to.
Step two is about starting on the road. Define your goals for the next three months and set about achieving them. Surprise your boss and your colleagues. Take the lead. Find energy for your work even if others seem to block rather than enable. Get things done.
Step three is to rebase your future expectations. Even though the 2007 IDP may be waste paper now, you can still create a realistic 2010 one from the ashes and demand your boss engages with you about your development. You can action some ideas about leaving Shell rather than just musing about it. You can network to discover what opportunities in Shell may be out there for you in 2011 and 2012 (not 2017, keep the focus nearby). You can restart your learning.
I am not trying to defend the indefensible here. Many have real pain, some actions in the name of Shell have been poor and some remaining blockers are genuine. You may well have reason to complain. All I am doing is asking you to reflect on whether this will help you going forward, and what alternative strategies may be more effective. Clear those decks, and seize the moment.
There are many good reasons to feel an unhappy winner. You might conclude the process leading to your placement was hurried, poorly executed or just plain unfair. You may recall promises made to you long ago when times were good and that now have been conveniently forgotten. You may look with envy at people who seem to have survived or even thrived or passed you by despite their evident flaws. You might not have been too seriously affected yourself, yet you find what is going on in Shell rather distasteful, challenging your loyalty. You may have landed in a job with unclear goals, an inadequate boss, or unrealistic expectations. You might think your bonus or grade or pay increase to be less than adequate compensation for your efforts. You might see your aspired further development path blocked. You might be disconcerted by disfunctionality around you, whether that is Shell People or time writing or whatever else. You might simply be saddened by a general worsening of the atmosphere around you, or by a seeming lack of energy. You might be fearful for the next round of cuts, wondering if our CEO’s new staff reduction commitments might include you.
Wow, what a lot of good reasons. It is no wonder you are unhappy, really. So what should you do about it?
There are some excellent clues in the presentations from our recent Strategy day. I have been a critic of Shell’s strategy for some years (see my last blog), and overall I remain dissatisfied, as I see little in the presentations to excite me about differentiated capabilities and priorities, or definition of a credible, sustainable future role for Shell. Yet the markets reacted quite well. Why? I suspect it wasn’t only in response to the announced further cost cutting, though no doubt that helped (yet hardly makes us feel good as staff). I believe the presentations signaled a return to reality.
The presentations contained more accurate detail about Shell’s portfolio of opportunities than any since the reserves crisis, leaving less room for ambiguity or exaggerated interpretation. While acknowledging the competitive performance as inadequate, our leaders did not show awe or parroting of competitors, but boldly focused on what we would do ourselves. And that focus was short-term and quantified rather than vague and peppered with tangential dreams. In simple terms, it cleared the decks, seized control and gave commitment. Not a strategy to win long-term perhaps, but one to prepare the ground, to stop losing. Sweetened by some cost cuts and the inherited bonus that is the upcoming production spike.
So, what is this to do with individual unhappy winners? Convert the messages to yourself and you might see. Clear the decks, focus on self rather than others and be clear on immediate goals.
That means being realistic about your new situation. True, others may have done better than you and may not have deserved it, but so what, it happened and is in the past. True, you might as well tear up your IDP from 2007, but it won’t help you now waving it about. True, that career path you saw before maybe closed off for a while, but that doesn’t mean there are no alternatives. True, you may be surrounded by something approaching chaos but does that make you powerless? We have had long enough to mourn, now it is time to clear the decks, roll up our sleeves, to lead and to deliver. In the end, that is the only way to become happy again, and also the only way we can help our company deliver its promises (including the wishful one about Transition 09 being over).
Where to start? I suggest Step one is in your own head. Happiness is a state of mind. Banish those blues, and enjoy the spring sunshine. Make some resolutions about your attitude. Get some help if you need to.
Step two is about starting on the road. Define your goals for the next three months and set about achieving them. Surprise your boss and your colleagues. Take the lead. Find energy for your work even if others seem to block rather than enable. Get things done.
Step three is to rebase your future expectations. Even though the 2007 IDP may be waste paper now, you can still create a realistic 2010 one from the ashes and demand your boss engages with you about your development. You can action some ideas about leaving Shell rather than just musing about it. You can network to discover what opportunities in Shell may be out there for you in 2011 and 2012 (not 2017, keep the focus nearby). You can restart your learning.
I am not trying to defend the indefensible here. Many have real pain, some actions in the name of Shell have been poor and some remaining blockers are genuine. You may well have reason to complain. All I am doing is asking you to reflect on whether this will help you going forward, and what alternative strategies may be more effective. Clear those decks, and seize the moment.
Too much Strategy or not enough?
A reader asked me to ponder the question as to why Shell seemed so poor at implementing, seeing things through, following things up.
Good question.
Is the statement true? We have had some great successes, some of our businesses are very well run (eg STASCO) and some individual projects and initiatives have led the world. GBLP I think is a great initiative well followed through over many years – the flaw there is how we use it (see an earlier blog). Generally, however, I do think there is truth in the statement.
So the question is, why? And what can we do about it?
Jeroen van der Veer’s theory was that frequent job rotation was a root cause. That is why our job descriptions now generally talk about four year terms. I do think this is a good idea and we should see some benefits from it eventually. But I’m not sure it is a root cause. Most companies have similar rotation to us. Many even have massive turnover of staff, which would make the problem much worse. Yet we are the ones with the problem. This is not enough.
The latest theory is that we have too many thinkers and not enough doers. In Transition 09 strategy departments have been cut and often put under finance, while the rest have been urged to follow ESSA and implement rather than reinvent.
This has appeal and will have some further positive effects. ESSA is undoubtedly a good goal, businesses which make things as simple as possible tend to do well. I like Eliminate especially, as that deals with a weed at its root rather than just on the surface. So far I see more S and S than E in practice.
But as far as strategy is concerned, I have a theory which is precisely the opposite of current thinking. To me a key root cause of poor implementation and follow through is poor or incomplete strategy. And strong strategy starts at the top.
The best implementers have simple, clear, strategies, robust over many years and epitomized by their top leadership. Look at Exxon. Goldman Sachs. Wal Mart. Tesco. GE. IBM. Toyota (whoops). Ikea. Easyjet. Anardarco. Most of us could write a paragraph describing the core strategies of these companies, and there would be high continuity from year to year. We can see how that strategy translates into action, culture, recruitment. It doesn’t change when a recession comes along, only has fine tuning. They don’t seek to please the analysts as a goal (maybe GE as an exception there). They buy at the bottom of markets and sell at the top.
Could you write the same paragraph about Shell? I could back in the 1980’s but I struggle since, to be honest. I don’t blame the current EC particularly, this is something that takes years to lose and years to regain. We were the best in the world 40 years ago, a position which itself had taken 40 years to build.
Much of what I have seen in Shell over the last fifteen years has been a travesty of the word strategy. I have seen great strategies for parts of Shell, but these have been fatally undermined by being unhinged from anything above, and therefore blown away when storms arrive. I have seen many checklists or process maps masquerading as strategies. I have seen planning masquerading as strategy, and expect that to proliferate now that finance is in charge. I have seen trite universal goals pretending to be strategies. I have seen beautiful intellectual scenarios which then have no bearing on any activities. I have seen McKinsey roaming every corridor while own teams are dismantled – talk about a recipe for no follow up! I still see presentation after presentation suggesting that our sole competitors are Exxon and the rest, when it is plain that thinking became obsolete twenty years ago. I have seen a lot, and it makes me want to weep.
As usual, I look at myself, as we all can. I was nominally managing the Global Solutions strategy for many years. Being arrogant, I could class GS in the category of good but unhinged, but then why was it unhinged? Partly because there was nothing to hinge to, but also because we wanted it to be! I spent years dodging people from corporate. So you could equally argue we got what we deserved.
So, my argument is that the root cause of poor implementation in Shell is not too much thinking, but rather too little. Or at least an absence of focused, quality, sustained, strategic thinking led from the top. And manifest by the lack of a strategy skill pool in the company. We have outsourced our most precious activity to McKinsey!
And what are the root causes of that? Leadership. Leadership quality, leadership complacency, leadership opportunity. Again I stress this is not an attack per se on the current leadership.
The three above are related. Read the Charlemagne column in the Economist. Here is a great example from February.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15452612
Wherever you read the words EU, substitute Shell. Same problems, same diagnosis. Complacency coming from a glorious history and a culture that can’t move on. Lack of opportunity coming from complex outdated structures that prevent and dilute decisions and actions. And, over time, people quality suffers too, and a vicious cycle results.
Is there a solution? For the EU, probably not, short of war or economic catastrophe. For Shell? If there is a solution, I submit it starts with the leadership root causes rather than with ESSA and relegation of strategy to the sidelines.
Good question.
Is the statement true? We have had some great successes, some of our businesses are very well run (eg STASCO) and some individual projects and initiatives have led the world. GBLP I think is a great initiative well followed through over many years – the flaw there is how we use it (see an earlier blog). Generally, however, I do think there is truth in the statement.
So the question is, why? And what can we do about it?
Jeroen van der Veer’s theory was that frequent job rotation was a root cause. That is why our job descriptions now generally talk about four year terms. I do think this is a good idea and we should see some benefits from it eventually. But I’m not sure it is a root cause. Most companies have similar rotation to us. Many even have massive turnover of staff, which would make the problem much worse. Yet we are the ones with the problem. This is not enough.
The latest theory is that we have too many thinkers and not enough doers. In Transition 09 strategy departments have been cut and often put under finance, while the rest have been urged to follow ESSA and implement rather than reinvent.
This has appeal and will have some further positive effects. ESSA is undoubtedly a good goal, businesses which make things as simple as possible tend to do well. I like Eliminate especially, as that deals with a weed at its root rather than just on the surface. So far I see more S and S than E in practice.
But as far as strategy is concerned, I have a theory which is precisely the opposite of current thinking. To me a key root cause of poor implementation and follow through is poor or incomplete strategy. And strong strategy starts at the top.
The best implementers have simple, clear, strategies, robust over many years and epitomized by their top leadership. Look at Exxon. Goldman Sachs. Wal Mart. Tesco. GE. IBM. Toyota (whoops). Ikea. Easyjet. Anardarco. Most of us could write a paragraph describing the core strategies of these companies, and there would be high continuity from year to year. We can see how that strategy translates into action, culture, recruitment. It doesn’t change when a recession comes along, only has fine tuning. They don’t seek to please the analysts as a goal (maybe GE as an exception there). They buy at the bottom of markets and sell at the top.
Could you write the same paragraph about Shell? I could back in the 1980’s but I struggle since, to be honest. I don’t blame the current EC particularly, this is something that takes years to lose and years to regain. We were the best in the world 40 years ago, a position which itself had taken 40 years to build.
Much of what I have seen in Shell over the last fifteen years has been a travesty of the word strategy. I have seen great strategies for parts of Shell, but these have been fatally undermined by being unhinged from anything above, and therefore blown away when storms arrive. I have seen many checklists or process maps masquerading as strategies. I have seen planning masquerading as strategy, and expect that to proliferate now that finance is in charge. I have seen trite universal goals pretending to be strategies. I have seen beautiful intellectual scenarios which then have no bearing on any activities. I have seen McKinsey roaming every corridor while own teams are dismantled – talk about a recipe for no follow up! I still see presentation after presentation suggesting that our sole competitors are Exxon and the rest, when it is plain that thinking became obsolete twenty years ago. I have seen a lot, and it makes me want to weep.
As usual, I look at myself, as we all can. I was nominally managing the Global Solutions strategy for many years. Being arrogant, I could class GS in the category of good but unhinged, but then why was it unhinged? Partly because there was nothing to hinge to, but also because we wanted it to be! I spent years dodging people from corporate. So you could equally argue we got what we deserved.
So, my argument is that the root cause of poor implementation in Shell is not too much thinking, but rather too little. Or at least an absence of focused, quality, sustained, strategic thinking led from the top. And manifest by the lack of a strategy skill pool in the company. We have outsourced our most precious activity to McKinsey!
And what are the root causes of that? Leadership. Leadership quality, leadership complacency, leadership opportunity. Again I stress this is not an attack per se on the current leadership.
The three above are related. Read the Charlemagne column in the Economist. Here is a great example from February.
http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15452612
Wherever you read the words EU, substitute Shell. Same problems, same diagnosis. Complacency coming from a glorious history and a culture that can’t move on. Lack of opportunity coming from complex outdated structures that prevent and dilute decisions and actions. And, over time, people quality suffers too, and a vicious cycle results.
Is there a solution? For the EU, probably not, short of war or economic catastrophe. For Shell? If there is a solution, I submit it starts with the leadership root causes rather than with ESSA and relegation of strategy to the sidelines.
On Confidence
In my last months, I'll take the liberty of recycling a few blogs from before my readership grew. It is easier than finding new topics, and some of them might be appreciated by a wider audience. This is the first. I first wrote about confidence a couple of years back.
What drives top performance? Capability. Leadership. Clear roles and accountability. Teamwork. External environment. All are important, of course. But I would argue that if you only had one lever, a good one to pull would have the label Confidence. Yet in business this is scarcely talked about.
Those who watch or play sport know all about the effect of confidence. I love watching and supporting sports. It is one of life's little examples of games that are not zero sum. When my team wins a game, I am so happy, it carries my mood for days. Yet when they lose, it is generally easy to remember that "it is only a game". So, even when cursed by supporting perennial losers like West Ham United, there is a net gain.
When you observe sports people and their coaches, the effect of confidence is crystal clear. It is huge. A mediocre but confident team will beat a talented team lacking confidence every time, and the best coaches know it and work on it relentlessly. There are countless examples. At soccer, England under Capello compared with under MacLaren. In Rugby Union, the English again under Woodward and then Robinson/Johnson, or the Irish now with their collective belief. Some coaches just drain confidence with their demeanour - poor old Tony Adams may have been great technically, but he destroyed confidence. Look at your own favourite sport, team or individual, and correlate performance with confidence.
Listen to the best coahes giving interviews, and it is clear that they understand about confidence and use it. Wenger of Arsenal is a good example, always praising the team, the players individually and what he calls spirit. They always support and build up the players, it is the players which win and the coaches (or the referee or whatever) that leads to defeat.
So confidence helps. What leads to confidence? Well, the biggest factor is success. Success really does breed success. The Americans often call this momentum. That is not much help when you are trying to turn things around. So we'd be better focusing on factors that can be influenced. There are many. We can categorise them. Belief in the leadership. Belief in each other. Belief in self.
Belief in the leadership comes from clarity of stated goal. From track record. From consistency of goal and message, and ownership for outcome. From perception of courage.
Belief in each other comes from understandingand respecting the roles of each team member. From having been dug out of holes when required. From a positive mindset and can do attitude. From shared purpose. From celebrating successes and learning from setbacks.
Belief in self comes from being given a stretch but with the saftey net of caoching and support. From being deployed in areas of one's strengths. From seeing a clear and consistent development path. From balanced feedback. From being given freedom to express oneself. From feeling valued. From recognition.
Confidence is killed instantly in some ways. By betrayal and mutiny. By dishonesty. By unsignalled changes of goal and direction. By loss of togetherness and shared purpose. By blame and threats (at least if these become pevasive). By bullying.
Overconfidence can be an enemy, but is not so common a problem. It manifests as complacency. Some sports teams lose to lesser opponents if they do not respect them or take the task seriously. It is good to always talk up the opposition, to make sure people understand that competition improves and winners improve faster.
OK, so this is all very nice, but perhaps you are thinking this is only about sports. Let me share some other examples then. What about the USA under JFK? Japan in the 70's and 80's or China now? The British labour government under Blair and then Brown, or the tories under Thatcher and then Major? The US army in Iraq before and after Petraus? The entire financial community in 2008-09? Singapore before and after President Li? Toyota (well, Toyota until very recently). GE under Welsh. You can even look at how people combat serious illness. The ones who can stay positive and buoyant tend to do better.
So I firmly believe this is a very valuable indicator, and I feel it could be used much more in business. True, there is a lagging element to it, but I also believe that working on confidence can be a driver to performance improvement. I would go so far as to put it on dashboards and in GPA's. You can measure confidence through things like the Shell People Survey very easily or in more ad hoc ways.
As line managers, team members and senior leaders, we might learn to act very differently if building confidence was an explicit goal and part of our mindset. Look at at all the ways to build and destry confidence above, and judge yourself against your current behaviours and actions. If someone new joins your team, imagine if you saw your sole goal for the first three months as building their confidence? I suspect you could manage stretch with safety net. You could really seek to discover strengths and exploit them. You could be much clearer and simpler with goals and metrics. You could utilise buddies and other support from elsewhere within the team. And my contention is that this would be one of the simplest and most effective ways available to you to make a step change to your team performance.
It could also be a lever to steer and judge HR and the senior leadership. Confidence is lacking in Shell just now, that is so clear. What does a sports chairman do in those circumstances? Fire some of the coaches seems to be the knee jerk reaction, though not normally the most effective one, at least not always and certainly not when it becomes a habit.
Like so many other things, this can apply easily to all of us, whatever our position. Great sports teams have individuals within them, not always the captains or most talented, who serve to build confidence. In your teams, that could be you. Is it today? What will you do about it?
What drives top performance? Capability. Leadership. Clear roles and accountability. Teamwork. External environment. All are important, of course. But I would argue that if you only had one lever, a good one to pull would have the label Confidence. Yet in business this is scarcely talked about.
Those who watch or play sport know all about the effect of confidence. I love watching and supporting sports. It is one of life's little examples of games that are not zero sum. When my team wins a game, I am so happy, it carries my mood for days. Yet when they lose, it is generally easy to remember that "it is only a game". So, even when cursed by supporting perennial losers like West Ham United, there is a net gain.
When you observe sports people and their coaches, the effect of confidence is crystal clear. It is huge. A mediocre but confident team will beat a talented team lacking confidence every time, and the best coaches know it and work on it relentlessly. There are countless examples. At soccer, England under Capello compared with under MacLaren. In Rugby Union, the English again under Woodward and then Robinson/Johnson, or the Irish now with their collective belief. Some coaches just drain confidence with their demeanour - poor old Tony Adams may have been great technically, but he destroyed confidence. Look at your own favourite sport, team or individual, and correlate performance with confidence.
Listen to the best coahes giving interviews, and it is clear that they understand about confidence and use it. Wenger of Arsenal is a good example, always praising the team, the players individually and what he calls spirit. They always support and build up the players, it is the players which win and the coaches (or the referee or whatever) that leads to defeat.
So confidence helps. What leads to confidence? Well, the biggest factor is success. Success really does breed success. The Americans often call this momentum. That is not much help when you are trying to turn things around. So we'd be better focusing on factors that can be influenced. There are many. We can categorise them. Belief in the leadership. Belief in each other. Belief in self.
Belief in the leadership comes from clarity of stated goal. From track record. From consistency of goal and message, and ownership for outcome. From perception of courage.
Belief in each other comes from understandingand respecting the roles of each team member. From having been dug out of holes when required. From a positive mindset and can do attitude. From shared purpose. From celebrating successes and learning from setbacks.
Belief in self comes from being given a stretch but with the saftey net of caoching and support. From being deployed in areas of one's strengths. From seeing a clear and consistent development path. From balanced feedback. From being given freedom to express oneself. From feeling valued. From recognition.
Confidence is killed instantly in some ways. By betrayal and mutiny. By dishonesty. By unsignalled changes of goal and direction. By loss of togetherness and shared purpose. By blame and threats (at least if these become pevasive). By bullying.
Overconfidence can be an enemy, but is not so common a problem. It manifests as complacency. Some sports teams lose to lesser opponents if they do not respect them or take the task seriously. It is good to always talk up the opposition, to make sure people understand that competition improves and winners improve faster.
OK, so this is all very nice, but perhaps you are thinking this is only about sports. Let me share some other examples then. What about the USA under JFK? Japan in the 70's and 80's or China now? The British labour government under Blair and then Brown, or the tories under Thatcher and then Major? The US army in Iraq before and after Petraus? The entire financial community in 2008-09? Singapore before and after President Li? Toyota (well, Toyota until very recently). GE under Welsh. You can even look at how people combat serious illness. The ones who can stay positive and buoyant tend to do better.
So I firmly believe this is a very valuable indicator, and I feel it could be used much more in business. True, there is a lagging element to it, but I also believe that working on confidence can be a driver to performance improvement. I would go so far as to put it on dashboards and in GPA's. You can measure confidence through things like the Shell People Survey very easily or in more ad hoc ways.
As line managers, team members and senior leaders, we might learn to act very differently if building confidence was an explicit goal and part of our mindset. Look at at all the ways to build and destry confidence above, and judge yourself against your current behaviours and actions. If someone new joins your team, imagine if you saw your sole goal for the first three months as building their confidence? I suspect you could manage stretch with safety net. You could really seek to discover strengths and exploit them. You could be much clearer and simpler with goals and metrics. You could utilise buddies and other support from elsewhere within the team. And my contention is that this would be one of the simplest and most effective ways available to you to make a step change to your team performance.
It could also be a lever to steer and judge HR and the senior leadership. Confidence is lacking in Shell just now, that is so clear. What does a sports chairman do in those circumstances? Fire some of the coaches seems to be the knee jerk reaction, though not normally the most effective one, at least not always and certainly not when it becomes a habit.
Like so many other things, this can apply easily to all of us, whatever our position. Great sports teams have individuals within them, not always the captains or most talented, who serve to build confidence. In your teams, that could be you. Is it today? What will you do about it?
Where have our Bonuses gone?
My most widely read internal blog
Shell’s results were released yesterday, somewhat below market expectations, though mainly explainable by our relative exposure to refining and gas, two areas where market conditions were weak. Nonetheless, there does seem to have been a depressingly long streak of fourth quarters and full years where Shell has lost ground to peers. And, you may not have noticed, don’t just look at Exxon and the rest. Petrochina overtook Exxon last year in market capitalization. It is arguable that the IOC’s as a group have lost their relevance, and are busy fighting yesterday’s battles with each other.
One piece of good news is that a recent Goldman Sachs report called Shell as a “winner” for the second year in a row. This is based on the bubble of volumes we have coming on stream in the next 2-3 years (where all that capex was spent). They see market prices firming and some pay off for us as we enjoy a production spike. I hope they are right.
However, the corridor talk is less about Shell’s performance than about our own bonuses and job prospects, after Peter Voser put in a downward adjustment to the scorecard and announced further retrenchment in 2010. With morale already battered, that is a tough pill for many to swallow.
The retrenchment should come as no surprise. Well run firms are always pruning to grow, world demand remains subdued and our capex programme is shrinking. Furthermore, the markets do reward cost cutting. What is a shame is that the process last year became so drawn out and stifling, so now it feels we are being kicked while we are still on the floor, or at best still picking ourselves up. I still miss energy and purpose and buzz around Shell, we should be motoring again by now. Perhaps that is the only way in such a large enterprise, though others seem to manage to be quicker and I do recall that speed and simplicity were supposed to be hallmarks of the new Shell. Perhaps next time.
As for the bonuses, personally I admire and support the move, even if it can be argued that it is designed as a cynical sop to potentially rebellious shareholders. I really did not approve of the upward revisions for share award purposes of the previous two years, though I have to confess I didn’t give the money back! We have to live in the real world. Performance is poor. There should be consequences for all of us. A credible case could be made to be even tougher and cancel all bonuses. And we can’t argue that it has nothing to do with us, or we risk double standards – accepting bonuses in good times while absconding ourselves from blame in bad. And if we don’t like Shell we can always choose to leave.
Nonetheless, I do have serious gripes about this. Firstly, when the upward revisions were made it was to share awards – skewed enormously to the upper echelons – while the downward revision lands on everyone. That doesn’t feel right. Already the spread of remuneration in Shell feels almost obscene to some of us, though of course that is only reflecting the same trend right across capitalism. It is some mitigation that the greater sin was in the previous years, though of course many of the same executives remain on seat. Perhaps the bonus downgrade could have been made relatively harder hitting at senior levels?
My next gripe concerns the target setting itself. The whole point of scorecards is that they should be designed to reflect what matters. Essentially, these moves admit that our historical scorecards have not done that. So whoever designed and agreed those scorecards has screwed up. Now THAT is a good reason for a scorecard adjustment! And this is not just making a semantic point, this really matters. In a performance culture, KPI’s and targets drive behaviour, and it is a very slippery slope indeed to introduce management adjustments. If that is acceptable at the top, it soon becomes acceptable all the way down, and the performance culture is fatally compromised.
Finally, we have to accept that our bad performance trend is not just happenstance, and I wish I could see more going on to accept that and respond radically. To sell 15% of the refining portfolio now is all very well, but we are right at the bottom of the market so hardly likely to secure good value. How did we miss the golden opportunity of 2005-07 with bumper margins and Russians and Libyans and others knocking at the door (I’m sorry, I’m not convinced the French refineries were enough)? And then there is cultural change. It is required. But how can this happen with barely any infusion of external talent at senior leadership levels? Sometimes I get very frustrated with my lifetime employer. I obviously haven’t done enough myself. Nor have you. We can’t just point upwards, Shell is us.
Shell’s results were released yesterday, somewhat below market expectations, though mainly explainable by our relative exposure to refining and gas, two areas where market conditions were weak. Nonetheless, there does seem to have been a depressingly long streak of fourth quarters and full years where Shell has lost ground to peers. And, you may not have noticed, don’t just look at Exxon and the rest. Petrochina overtook Exxon last year in market capitalization. It is arguable that the IOC’s as a group have lost their relevance, and are busy fighting yesterday’s battles with each other.
One piece of good news is that a recent Goldman Sachs report called Shell as a “winner” for the second year in a row. This is based on the bubble of volumes we have coming on stream in the next 2-3 years (where all that capex was spent). They see market prices firming and some pay off for us as we enjoy a production spike. I hope they are right.
However, the corridor talk is less about Shell’s performance than about our own bonuses and job prospects, after Peter Voser put in a downward adjustment to the scorecard and announced further retrenchment in 2010. With morale already battered, that is a tough pill for many to swallow.
The retrenchment should come as no surprise. Well run firms are always pruning to grow, world demand remains subdued and our capex programme is shrinking. Furthermore, the markets do reward cost cutting. What is a shame is that the process last year became so drawn out and stifling, so now it feels we are being kicked while we are still on the floor, or at best still picking ourselves up. I still miss energy and purpose and buzz around Shell, we should be motoring again by now. Perhaps that is the only way in such a large enterprise, though others seem to manage to be quicker and I do recall that speed and simplicity were supposed to be hallmarks of the new Shell. Perhaps next time.
As for the bonuses, personally I admire and support the move, even if it can be argued that it is designed as a cynical sop to potentially rebellious shareholders. I really did not approve of the upward revisions for share award purposes of the previous two years, though I have to confess I didn’t give the money back! We have to live in the real world. Performance is poor. There should be consequences for all of us. A credible case could be made to be even tougher and cancel all bonuses. And we can’t argue that it has nothing to do with us, or we risk double standards – accepting bonuses in good times while absconding ourselves from blame in bad. And if we don’t like Shell we can always choose to leave.
Nonetheless, I do have serious gripes about this. Firstly, when the upward revisions were made it was to share awards – skewed enormously to the upper echelons – while the downward revision lands on everyone. That doesn’t feel right. Already the spread of remuneration in Shell feels almost obscene to some of us, though of course that is only reflecting the same trend right across capitalism. It is some mitigation that the greater sin was in the previous years, though of course many of the same executives remain on seat. Perhaps the bonus downgrade could have been made relatively harder hitting at senior levels?
My next gripe concerns the target setting itself. The whole point of scorecards is that they should be designed to reflect what matters. Essentially, these moves admit that our historical scorecards have not done that. So whoever designed and agreed those scorecards has screwed up. Now THAT is a good reason for a scorecard adjustment! And this is not just making a semantic point, this really matters. In a performance culture, KPI’s and targets drive behaviour, and it is a very slippery slope indeed to introduce management adjustments. If that is acceptable at the top, it soon becomes acceptable all the way down, and the performance culture is fatally compromised.
Finally, we have to accept that our bad performance trend is not just happenstance, and I wish I could see more going on to accept that and respond radically. To sell 15% of the refining portfolio now is all very well, but we are right at the bottom of the market so hardly likely to secure good value. How did we miss the golden opportunity of 2005-07 with bumper margins and Russians and Libyans and others knocking at the door (I’m sorry, I’m not convinced the French refineries were enough)? And then there is cultural change. It is required. But how can this happen with barely any infusion of external talent at senior leadership levels? Sometimes I get very frustrated with my lifetime employer. I obviously haven’t done enough myself. Nor have you. We can’t just point upwards, Shell is us.
Bullying - Making an unwelcome Comeback?
I first heard the word bullying in Shell during the reserves crisis of 2004. Jeroen van der Veer made a big play on the word, as he believed a bullying culture had been an important driver of the crisis. Leaders talking without listening, demanding without helping, not leaving any room for questions or bad news, this is what he meant I think. And in many early public pronouncements he used the word with great passion, I felt with a passion of someone who had witnessed or suffered bullying himself. By making this public, he hoped to release the bullied to fight and make the bully reconsider their behaviour. A good campaign, well managed. Typical of the most positive side of the van der Veer legacy.
Over time the word drifted away again. Until now. Maybe it is a coincidence, but I have heard it from four different places in the last two weeks. So I thought I would try a blog on it. I should insist that I don't have compelling evidence of a systematic issue, indeed all the four stories could easily be interpreted in different ways.
What is workplace bullying? I think I can define it very simply - abuse of power. Someone (or a group) with power (hieracrchical or otherwise) over others exerts excessive pressure, overt or covert, with the effect of either creating unnecessary human suffering or of suboptimising the value of the enterprise.
Is bullying ever acceptable? No. It is a universal bad that people sometimes try to make excuses for, like corruption.
What sort of situations are more like to lead to workplace bullying? Well, there are several.
A lack of strong checks and balances is one. If someone knows they have a place to go where they will be listened to then they are less likely to tolerate bullying, and the bully will desist. This can be a formal structure akin to whistleblowing, or just the existence of close colleagues, or parties like HR, who can mediate or observe. Linked to this, a clarity of rules and well established procedures help too.
Absolute power is another. If there are bigger job group gaps, and few peers around potential bullies, the power is greater, less observed, and less moderated by group behaviour. In politics, dictators tend to become bullies over time.
A macho culture is a third. Masculine behaviours and excessive competitveness runs the risk of bullying emerging. Also, bullies are often people who have not been answerable to others for a long time.
Then there is pressure. Pressure can be external - if we don't perform we'll be punished. Or pressure can grow through lack of clarity, or through poorly defined expectations. Most common it comes from insecurity, which itself will stem from incompetence or lack of confidence (both in the bully and the bullied, incidentally).
Finally, there is the power balance between employer and employee. A collective or unionised environment has its downsides, but it tends to stamp out bullying.
Now compare this list with Shell today. Compared with almost any organisation in the world, we have checks and balances, openness, and no sort of macho culture. As with many of our potential issues as a company, we start from a legacy of the high ground and can compare ourselves favourably with most.
However, just now the may be higher risk than usual. A new organisation is not had time to bed down rules, expectations, norms. There have been some power grabs. Pressure is greater than usual, and many are insecure. There has been a marked shift of power from employee to employer in the last 12 months in a recession and in the transition, with the sanction of job loss hanging over many.
I also see some people who somehow seem to be unanswerable. One good consequence of the global solutions mindset where we were taught that customer was king was to take some of the sharp edges off arrogant behaviour. That approach has its downsides too, but I wonder if some EP colleagues have missed the benefits of that sort of challenge for a while.
So analysis suggests the risks are higher than usual. Anecdote itentifies some incidents. That does not add up to a problem, but maybe suggests it is wise to keep an eye on the issue. As always, the best place to start is with ourselves. Might I be a bully? Might you? Here is a short list of questions we might ask ourselves, and ask people we trust to help us with. I'm sure there a better questions out there somewhere.
Do I ask people I have power over how they are feeling? Do I listen to the answers, and act on them?
Do I rant about things that trouble me to people? Might they somehow conclude that they are being blamed?
Do I thoughtlessly impose my own working style on others? My preferred working hours? My communication style?
Do I expect others to be as adept as I am at my strengths, even though they are different and maybe less well paid? My language? My analysis? My written word? My e-mail capacity?
Do I ask for feedback? Again and again, so I reach the truth? Do I consult my peers?
Do I inadvertently pass on my pressure to others as unreasonable expectations? When I ask something, do I check back that it is understood, or feasible? Do I offer help, really?
Do I belittle people? Am I full of my own importance.
Do I sometimes say "Do you know who I am?"
That is not a bad prayer. Lord, let me never feel tempted to ask "do you know who I am". And if you have any more space for my prayers, let me never hear that from anyone else.
Over time the word drifted away again. Until now. Maybe it is a coincidence, but I have heard it from four different places in the last two weeks. So I thought I would try a blog on it. I should insist that I don't have compelling evidence of a systematic issue, indeed all the four stories could easily be interpreted in different ways.
What is workplace bullying? I think I can define it very simply - abuse of power. Someone (or a group) with power (hieracrchical or otherwise) over others exerts excessive pressure, overt or covert, with the effect of either creating unnecessary human suffering or of suboptimising the value of the enterprise.
Is bullying ever acceptable? No. It is a universal bad that people sometimes try to make excuses for, like corruption.
What sort of situations are more like to lead to workplace bullying? Well, there are several.
A lack of strong checks and balances is one. If someone knows they have a place to go where they will be listened to then they are less likely to tolerate bullying, and the bully will desist. This can be a formal structure akin to whistleblowing, or just the existence of close colleagues, or parties like HR, who can mediate or observe. Linked to this, a clarity of rules and well established procedures help too.
Absolute power is another. If there are bigger job group gaps, and few peers around potential bullies, the power is greater, less observed, and less moderated by group behaviour. In politics, dictators tend to become bullies over time.
A macho culture is a third. Masculine behaviours and excessive competitveness runs the risk of bullying emerging. Also, bullies are often people who have not been answerable to others for a long time.
Then there is pressure. Pressure can be external - if we don't perform we'll be punished. Or pressure can grow through lack of clarity, or through poorly defined expectations. Most common it comes from insecurity, which itself will stem from incompetence or lack of confidence (both in the bully and the bullied, incidentally).
Finally, there is the power balance between employer and employee. A collective or unionised environment has its downsides, but it tends to stamp out bullying.
Now compare this list with Shell today. Compared with almost any organisation in the world, we have checks and balances, openness, and no sort of macho culture. As with many of our potential issues as a company, we start from a legacy of the high ground and can compare ourselves favourably with most.
However, just now the may be higher risk than usual. A new organisation is not had time to bed down rules, expectations, norms. There have been some power grabs. Pressure is greater than usual, and many are insecure. There has been a marked shift of power from employee to employer in the last 12 months in a recession and in the transition, with the sanction of job loss hanging over many.
I also see some people who somehow seem to be unanswerable. One good consequence of the global solutions mindset where we were taught that customer was king was to take some of the sharp edges off arrogant behaviour. That approach has its downsides too, but I wonder if some EP colleagues have missed the benefits of that sort of challenge for a while.
So analysis suggests the risks are higher than usual. Anecdote itentifies some incidents. That does not add up to a problem, but maybe suggests it is wise to keep an eye on the issue. As always, the best place to start is with ourselves. Might I be a bully? Might you? Here is a short list of questions we might ask ourselves, and ask people we trust to help us with. I'm sure there a better questions out there somewhere.
Do I ask people I have power over how they are feeling? Do I listen to the answers, and act on them?
Do I rant about things that trouble me to people? Might they somehow conclude that they are being blamed?
Do I thoughtlessly impose my own working style on others? My preferred working hours? My communication style?
Do I expect others to be as adept as I am at my strengths, even though they are different and maybe less well paid? My language? My analysis? My written word? My e-mail capacity?
Do I ask for feedback? Again and again, so I reach the truth? Do I consult my peers?
Do I inadvertently pass on my pressure to others as unreasonable expectations? When I ask something, do I check back that it is understood, or feasible? Do I offer help, really?
Do I belittle people? Am I full of my own importance.
Do I sometimes say "Do you know who I am?"
That is not a bad prayer. Lord, let me never feel tempted to ask "do you know who I am". And if you have any more space for my prayers, let me never hear that from anyone else.
The Curse of Resignations
We enter 2010.
By now GS has become a part of a larger division called P&T - Projects and Technology. Greg Lewin departed Shell some months before.
P&T lost an EVP with the coming of 2010 with the decison of Jaap Huijskes to leave Shell to join OMV. Ken Fisher also resigned recently. Good luck to both of them. I don't know of any other examples of leaders appointed to senior positions and then resigning since the start of the transition.
In Shell, this is always a particular shock as it is so rare. I suspect in most companies it is commonplace, but our retention rates are almost uniquely high. When I sit as GBLP faculty, and participants are offered a scenario based around a senior leader resigning, they are often confused since they have no relevant experience. True enough, I've seen the same this week, as teams near me try to come to terms emotionally and practically with the abrupt departure of Jaap.
When this happens, there is almost a feeling that something must be very wrong, that they knew something bad that we didn't. It also inevitably undermines to some extent the team building and belief, especially just now with the official launch of P&T next week. Then we are worried to talk about it, we pretend it hasn't happened except with our best mates at lunch. And finally we convince ourselves that the one who resigned was no good anyway.
I have heard some strange claims this week. Somehow that it was disloyal or unethical to accept a job and then resign so soon afterwards. Oh yeah? Not on planet earth it isn't. There may be circumstances where ethics can be quentioned, but we certainly can't assume that from afar.
There is a far more fatalistic approach to this which I suggest we would be better taking. It happens. We are all free agents (thank goodness). If we are smart we are weighing up internal and external options all the time. Some people will take external options and leave. It is reasonable, it is right. No one is bigger than Shell, and there are many good candidates to take over. It might even be good for us individually as the route to the top has one less obstacle now. Life goes on.
I wonder why this is so hard to do? It is not just in business that this is hard. Take football. where loyalty is almost tribal. The booing of players who "betrayed" their club is routine and vitriolic. Somehow players are supposed to be loyal no matter what (though we are allowed to boo them when they misplace a pass), and the whole edifice of morale and belief can collapse far too easily. I suppose one reason is that our belief is generally so fragile, and that we prefer to follow people rather than concepts or strategies.
As with many other things in life, we also don't help ourselves by being unable to share openly. We are hurting, but we are not allowed to say so. So we hurt for longer, and inside our brains the theories become ever more farfetched and damaging.
The other consequence of not sharing honestly is that the organisation finds it hard to learn. I believe Jaap was career Shell, but I know Ken wasn't. Why is it that our track record of retaining people is so much worse with mid career recruits? Does it matter? What does it mean? What can we do about it? For a company that wishes to make its culture more externally focused and diverse, to me these are critical questions.
Back to ourselves, how loyal should we be to our company, and how ready to move on? I've said already that we always should know our value externally. Many of us were found out during the transition process for not having that data point. But the modern notion that the smart career move is to flit between companies also feels wrong to me. There are many reasons. Firstly, the grass is not usually as green as it looks over the fence. Secondly, those with short tenures tend to struggle in hard times, simply because of a lack of network or reputation or sponsor. Third, ask someone who is about to receive a VS package after 25 years service and recognise the long term monetary value of loyalty. Finally, consider yourself as being born with an asset, call it a loyalty quotient. Every time you move companies you give away some of that asset, and it never returns. It is a bit like having lots of lovers. It is a good idea to learn what you can and to know your value and be ready to move on - but it is not cost free either especially if it becomes a habit.
So, here is an alternative storyline to consider when someone senior resigns:
- good luck to them
- great to confirm that Shell people can get good jobs outside, as then you might be able to as well
- reminder to know ones external value and options at all times
- it is probably an opportunity for the business, it is certainly not a crippling blow. Avoid thoughts that the whole business is collapsing, it isn't
- don't pin your hopes or your reputation onto just one or two senior people, they might leave and then where are you?
- talk about what has happened, and see what we can learn. Properly, honestly, not just at the surface level
- avoid the tempation to join the disparagement of the person who resigned. That way no one learns, and it is hardly decent human behaviour either
- be ready to jump companies, but not too easily or not too often
Perhaps with all these unhappy winners around, we might face a period with more of these, so we'd better be ready for it.
By now GS has become a part of a larger division called P&T - Projects and Technology. Greg Lewin departed Shell some months before.
P&T lost an EVP with the coming of 2010 with the decison of Jaap Huijskes to leave Shell to join OMV. Ken Fisher also resigned recently. Good luck to both of them. I don't know of any other examples of leaders appointed to senior positions and then resigning since the start of the transition.
In Shell, this is always a particular shock as it is so rare. I suspect in most companies it is commonplace, but our retention rates are almost uniquely high. When I sit as GBLP faculty, and participants are offered a scenario based around a senior leader resigning, they are often confused since they have no relevant experience. True enough, I've seen the same this week, as teams near me try to come to terms emotionally and practically with the abrupt departure of Jaap.
When this happens, there is almost a feeling that something must be very wrong, that they knew something bad that we didn't. It also inevitably undermines to some extent the team building and belief, especially just now with the official launch of P&T next week. Then we are worried to talk about it, we pretend it hasn't happened except with our best mates at lunch. And finally we convince ourselves that the one who resigned was no good anyway.
I have heard some strange claims this week. Somehow that it was disloyal or unethical to accept a job and then resign so soon afterwards. Oh yeah? Not on planet earth it isn't. There may be circumstances where ethics can be quentioned, but we certainly can't assume that from afar.
There is a far more fatalistic approach to this which I suggest we would be better taking. It happens. We are all free agents (thank goodness). If we are smart we are weighing up internal and external options all the time. Some people will take external options and leave. It is reasonable, it is right. No one is bigger than Shell, and there are many good candidates to take over. It might even be good for us individually as the route to the top has one less obstacle now. Life goes on.
I wonder why this is so hard to do? It is not just in business that this is hard. Take football. where loyalty is almost tribal. The booing of players who "betrayed" their club is routine and vitriolic. Somehow players are supposed to be loyal no matter what (though we are allowed to boo them when they misplace a pass), and the whole edifice of morale and belief can collapse far too easily. I suppose one reason is that our belief is generally so fragile, and that we prefer to follow people rather than concepts or strategies.
As with many other things in life, we also don't help ourselves by being unable to share openly. We are hurting, but we are not allowed to say so. So we hurt for longer, and inside our brains the theories become ever more farfetched and damaging.
The other consequence of not sharing honestly is that the organisation finds it hard to learn. I believe Jaap was career Shell, but I know Ken wasn't. Why is it that our track record of retaining people is so much worse with mid career recruits? Does it matter? What does it mean? What can we do about it? For a company that wishes to make its culture more externally focused and diverse, to me these are critical questions.
Back to ourselves, how loyal should we be to our company, and how ready to move on? I've said already that we always should know our value externally. Many of us were found out during the transition process for not having that data point. But the modern notion that the smart career move is to flit between companies also feels wrong to me. There are many reasons. Firstly, the grass is not usually as green as it looks over the fence. Secondly, those with short tenures tend to struggle in hard times, simply because of a lack of network or reputation or sponsor. Third, ask someone who is about to receive a VS package after 25 years service and recognise the long term monetary value of loyalty. Finally, consider yourself as being born with an asset, call it a loyalty quotient. Every time you move companies you give away some of that asset, and it never returns. It is a bit like having lots of lovers. It is a good idea to learn what you can and to know your value and be ready to move on - but it is not cost free either especially if it becomes a habit.
So, here is an alternative storyline to consider when someone senior resigns:
- good luck to them
- great to confirm that Shell people can get good jobs outside, as then you might be able to as well
- reminder to know ones external value and options at all times
- it is probably an opportunity for the business, it is certainly not a crippling blow. Avoid thoughts that the whole business is collapsing, it isn't
- don't pin your hopes or your reputation onto just one or two senior people, they might leave and then where are you?
- talk about what has happened, and see what we can learn. Properly, honestly, not just at the surface level
- avoid the tempation to join the disparagement of the person who resigned. That way no one learns, and it is hardly decent human behaviour either
- be ready to jump companies, but not too easily or not too often
Perhaps with all these unhappy winners around, we might face a period with more of these, so we'd better be ready for it.
The Christmas Lunch Fiasco and other Catch 22's
The Head Office Christmas Lunch was not a success...
If you in the Hague on Wednesday you probably attended the Christmas lunch. Oh dear. It was not a success. Of course many people have been anxious to learn their fate this week so there was always going to be tension. But we arrived to find soft drinks only, no choir, little sign of effort...and no food. Now, I am not the best party host in the world, but I can learn a bit from Napolean's words about soldiers and realise that filling stomachs early and well is a good plan. Here, we could put up with the polystyrene trays, the plastic forks, even the poor food, but the wait? No. The starters, such as they were, had long gone when I arrived, and then started a prolonged game of tracking down servers of food. As soon as someone bearing a tray emerged from a crevice, they were mobbed by hungry staff, who grabbed all they had within seconds and metres of their starting point. Unedifying. Now, the conversation was always going to a bit dark this Christmas. But the result of the misorganisation was that in an hour of talking to group after group, person after person, all I witnessed was bleak and anti-Shell. What an own goal. References to knives not being on offer in case senior leaders might be stabbed. Comparisons to soup kitchens and refugee camps. Stories of how this or that communication had been so badly handled.
Not a good party. But of course so easy to see how it happened. Some hastily convened committee took time off from endless matching panels to agree a budget. Spend lavishly and everyone will complain of waste while people are being made redundant. Cancel and you get simmering bitterness and a message that Shell may be in trouble or bowing to pressure from outside. So do it half cock. Catch 22. Fair enough. But still, some food would have been nice. Why not just make the regular canteen free for a day and lay on music and decorations? Half the cost, none of the anger. If you were the senior leader who arranged this, maybe an apology would be an idea? Not one just issued anonymously via Lieke Mekking either.
But then? What right have we to expect a Christmas lunch anyway? The refugee camp and soup kitchen analogies struck home to me, as we all milled around our warm building before going home to our affluent homes. There are real soup kitchens in The Hague, and real refugee camps in countries Shell operates. Let's keep some perspective. I heard an expression this week - an expectation is a premeditated resentment. Nice, eh? I've blogged on entitlement already in 2009. We'll get through our lives easier if we can avoid too many resentments, and a good way is to go easy on the expectations.
And on the lack of booze I'm 100% with Shell. For years I've seen double standards on this and rarely received a straight answer from a boss, for example getting advice about whether a lunchtime bottle of wine between six at a leaving do was OK. It was catch 22. Don't ask or you'll get a bad answer or no answer, so take the risk personally. At last that one is solved. Life saving rule. No booze if you are going back to work. Have your leaving do at 4pm. Clear. Good. There are many catch 22 situations. A good one at home at this time of year is about whether to buy a card or present for a former partner. No good answer I'm afraid - pain will result whatever choice is made.
An obvious catch 22 at work now is the old chestnut about whether to make people redundnat before Christmas or afterwards. Before and you ruin the holiday, and after and people have spent all their money. Catch 22. On that I think it is clear by the way, we have a duty to pass on information as soon as available, even if that is the day before Christmas.
At work, many catch 22's are like the alcohol one, about choosing whether to ask a question or just take a personal risk. I try to remember to ask myself what answers I might receive and what they will imply before asking a question. My favourite one was about the mandates for Global Solutions in the third party arenas. Staff demanded clarity all the time, and fair enough really. But we fudged it, right to the end, and I know why - it was because it was a catch 22. By asking the question clearly, we would open a can of worms with a worse outcome (for clear decisions, for GS and for Shell) than struggling on in ambiguity would offer. So we didn't ask the question, or at least we were very careful what questions we asked in what way to whom. Not being devious either, just smart. Greg and many others took personal risk as a result -I guess you can call that leadership. Remember that next time you are tempted to ask for clarity. Catch 22.
I'm off for a break now. I've enjoyed blogging in 2009, and get lot of inspiration, learning and fulfillment from all the resulting feedback, however it comes. Have a good rest, especially if you have just received unwelcome news at work. Things will seem easier after a break, and you'll move forward better if you allow yourself some time. But do lean on others for support, especially family and true friends. That one is the opposite of catch 22. The more you are open, sharing and asking, the more you will receive, and you'll help others in the process.
If you in the Hague on Wednesday you probably attended the Christmas lunch. Oh dear. It was not a success. Of course many people have been anxious to learn their fate this week so there was always going to be tension. But we arrived to find soft drinks only, no choir, little sign of effort...and no food. Now, I am not the best party host in the world, but I can learn a bit from Napolean's words about soldiers and realise that filling stomachs early and well is a good plan. Here, we could put up with the polystyrene trays, the plastic forks, even the poor food, but the wait? No. The starters, such as they were, had long gone when I arrived, and then started a prolonged game of tracking down servers of food. As soon as someone bearing a tray emerged from a crevice, they were mobbed by hungry staff, who grabbed all they had within seconds and metres of their starting point. Unedifying. Now, the conversation was always going to a bit dark this Christmas. But the result of the misorganisation was that in an hour of talking to group after group, person after person, all I witnessed was bleak and anti-Shell. What an own goal. References to knives not being on offer in case senior leaders might be stabbed. Comparisons to soup kitchens and refugee camps. Stories of how this or that communication had been so badly handled.
Not a good party. But of course so easy to see how it happened. Some hastily convened committee took time off from endless matching panels to agree a budget. Spend lavishly and everyone will complain of waste while people are being made redundant. Cancel and you get simmering bitterness and a message that Shell may be in trouble or bowing to pressure from outside. So do it half cock. Catch 22. Fair enough. But still, some food would have been nice. Why not just make the regular canteen free for a day and lay on music and decorations? Half the cost, none of the anger. If you were the senior leader who arranged this, maybe an apology would be an idea? Not one just issued anonymously via Lieke Mekking either.
But then? What right have we to expect a Christmas lunch anyway? The refugee camp and soup kitchen analogies struck home to me, as we all milled around our warm building before going home to our affluent homes. There are real soup kitchens in The Hague, and real refugee camps in countries Shell operates. Let's keep some perspective. I heard an expression this week - an expectation is a premeditated resentment. Nice, eh? I've blogged on entitlement already in 2009. We'll get through our lives easier if we can avoid too many resentments, and a good way is to go easy on the expectations.
And on the lack of booze I'm 100% with Shell. For years I've seen double standards on this and rarely received a straight answer from a boss, for example getting advice about whether a lunchtime bottle of wine between six at a leaving do was OK. It was catch 22. Don't ask or you'll get a bad answer or no answer, so take the risk personally. At last that one is solved. Life saving rule. No booze if you are going back to work. Have your leaving do at 4pm. Clear. Good. There are many catch 22 situations. A good one at home at this time of year is about whether to buy a card or present for a former partner. No good answer I'm afraid - pain will result whatever choice is made.
An obvious catch 22 at work now is the old chestnut about whether to make people redundnat before Christmas or afterwards. Before and you ruin the holiday, and after and people have spent all their money. Catch 22. On that I think it is clear by the way, we have a duty to pass on information as soon as available, even if that is the day before Christmas.
At work, many catch 22's are like the alcohol one, about choosing whether to ask a question or just take a personal risk. I try to remember to ask myself what answers I might receive and what they will imply before asking a question. My favourite one was about the mandates for Global Solutions in the third party arenas. Staff demanded clarity all the time, and fair enough really. But we fudged it, right to the end, and I know why - it was because it was a catch 22. By asking the question clearly, we would open a can of worms with a worse outcome (for clear decisions, for GS and for Shell) than struggling on in ambiguity would offer. So we didn't ask the question, or at least we were very careful what questions we asked in what way to whom. Not being devious either, just smart. Greg and many others took personal risk as a result -I guess you can call that leadership. Remember that next time you are tempted to ask for clarity. Catch 22.
I'm off for a break now. I've enjoyed blogging in 2009, and get lot of inspiration, learning and fulfillment from all the resulting feedback, however it comes. Have a good rest, especially if you have just received unwelcome news at work. Things will seem easier after a break, and you'll move forward better if you allow yourself some time. But do lean on others for support, especially family and true friends. That one is the opposite of catch 22. The more you are open, sharing and asking, the more you will receive, and you'll help others in the process.
Happy Losers and Unhappy Winners
So at last this transition process starts to play out, after months of denial and then uncertainty. As people find their fate, traditional wisdom would divide us into two groups, winners and losers. I believe, however, there are four groups, just like Harry Potter and his sorting hat created (and, you could argue, with about as much opacity). We can use my old friend the four box model. That way we can have happy winners, unhappy winners, happy losers and unhappy losers. Winners are those with jobs, losers those without. Happy or unhappy is obvious. Like all good 4 box models, it neatly divides the population, and the strategy for each box should be distinctive. Let us start with happy winners, those with jobs they feel satisfied with and motivated to perform well in and retain loyalty to Shell. A big group? I'm not sure. An important group for Shell of course, as they have to provide our forward momentum. The key with this group is to enable them to act, quickly. They need autonomy, tools, information, as soon as possible. At last we see some launches, some new teams coming together and dragging themselves into action. This group also need to epitomise the new culture, behaviours and (dare I say it) cascade the strategy. A big part of the skill they need will be to re-motivate the next group.Unhappy winners might be the biggest group. They have a job, but are not fully motivated. Maybe their development needs have been compromised. Maybe former promises have been disregarded, or terms and conditions worsened. Maybe an ego is bruised by seeing former rivals pass them by, or are suspicious of a new boss. Wow, what a lot of reasons to be unhappy! One friend described her feelings towards Shell wonderfully at the weekend, comparing it to going back with misgivings into a relationship with a boyfriend who had betrayed her. Can things ever be the same again? Rarely. But time heals. This group has to be motivated to discard resentment and find new energy. Indeed the happy winners have a challenge - maybe more than they had imagined. A happy winner friend of mine happily started his new job yesterday by calling together a team of people with useful information to try to create some progress. What did he encounter? A less than helpful reception. Maybe he was being paranoid, maybe a bit insensitive, but he was certainly taken aback. How many times must this scene be being played out around Shell. Are you involved in such scenes? Happy losers are a smallish group but they are around if yuou look carefully, often being very quiet and talking only to other happy losers about pension planning and tax loopholes. Retrenchment always offers a chance to get out for those who can reconcile themselves to change, be ready to move on, and seek the exit. A lot of manoeuvring may be required, and Shell rightly doesn't make it easy. Having conceded a dignified exit to a happy loser, the best strategy is to let them go quickly, remembering to retain their knowledge and maybe to use their energy for transition projects. Unhappy losers are easier to spot, those without jobs who would have rather stayed. Now this is applying to the more normal job groups, this often involves hardship, and Shell and its staff councils rightly attempt to soften the blow. Moving along the SARAH curve from denial to acceptance is not easy, but this group has to achieve this somehow, and the ego gets in the way on every leg of the journey. It remains in Shell's interest to keep this group away from the others and leave their care to specialists, as otherwise they will disturb the rebuilding work of the others. This 4 box model feels potentially useful. In particular, how Shell can re-engage the unhappy winners feels a pressing challnge, but a winnable one given focus, strong communication and listening, and aware and trained behaviours from the happy winners. What can you do?If you are a happy winner, be brave and get active but be sensitive to your colleagues, especially to the unhappy winners. Be true leaders.If you an unhappy winner, first get real - you could always have resigned. Then work out the best path forward, which probably won't include sulking but may include giving some honest feedback to colleagues about your reasonable needs. If the boyfriend called Shell really has betrayed you beyond redemption, then don't hang around being bitter, find another boyfriend.If you are a happy loser, don't rub it in, stay out of the way but be ready to help if asked on transition tasks. As people who have got over the curse of the ego, you can also be generous and try to help the unhappy - winners and losers.As an unhappy loser, you have to regroup, set goals, take advantage of support while it is there, and try hard to be driven by logic and not ego. Be ready to ask for support and to share your tale - it only can help.If you are not in any box yet, keep lobbying, keep delivering, and do your best to be ready for what is coming.
Shell isn't the Company I joined - Oh Yeah?
It is an emotional time for many of us. And I've been listening to the expression above and similar ones quite a lot lately. Might it be true? What does it really mean when someone says something like this?
First of all, would you expect or want Shell to be the company you joined? When I joined in the early 80's everyone was saying we were so behind the times that we were still trying to compete in the 60's. If we'd stayed like that we wouldn't have a company at all today. Times change, markets change, winning companies change. Shell changes. Just as well really.
And back then, remember the old codger who said "Shell isn't the company I joined"? Did you respect him or her? Probably not, or at least not wholly. Isn't it a scary thought that you might have become the old codger?
Next, maybe it isn't Shell that has changed so much, but it is you. True, you are less naive now, but are you as optimistic? As energetic? As open? Try the words "I am not the person I was when I joined Shell". How do they sound?
And maybe Shell hasn't changed all that much, and you haven't changed all that much either, but you are just seeing a different part of Shell in a different way. The front door and entrance hall of a house often feel different to the other rooms. Maybe you are just seeing a different part of the same entity, a part that feels less welcoming just now.
It is a bit like saying "X is not the man/woman I married" or "Y is not the son/daughter I brought up". Not generally a smart thought, for all the reasons above.
So, if you catch yourself saying or thinking this, what might you be really experiencing? A reaction against change. Some loss of control. Some challenge to the self esteem. Some perceived loss of status against colleagues. Fear. A sense of loss of dignity. A desire to say something important and a sense that no-one is listening.
These are all valid feelings. Almost inevitable really in the situation many are facing. But address them for what they are, don't look for solace in euphemism. You can ask for help for many of the feelings, and find support among colleagues in the same boat and other supportive friends.
You might also have a constructive point to make, which will get lost inside a general whine. How exactly has Shell got worse? What could people around you do about it to fix it? What could YOU do to fix it? Articulate that, and you might even achieve some change.
Similarly, if you hear someone else talking about Shell changing, don't just dismiss them as another old codger (or worse still, believe them!). Probe for the ideas to make things better. But even more, think what you can do to help. Dignity is not that difficult to provide. It can be as easy as asking them questions, not ignoring them at meetings, not making them invisible, avoiding small slights, taking pains to allow them to leave their legacy behind on livelink or via lunch and learns or whatever. Be generous. You might need the same someday.
First of all, would you expect or want Shell to be the company you joined? When I joined in the early 80's everyone was saying we were so behind the times that we were still trying to compete in the 60's. If we'd stayed like that we wouldn't have a company at all today. Times change, markets change, winning companies change. Shell changes. Just as well really.
And back then, remember the old codger who said "Shell isn't the company I joined"? Did you respect him or her? Probably not, or at least not wholly. Isn't it a scary thought that you might have become the old codger?
Next, maybe it isn't Shell that has changed so much, but it is you. True, you are less naive now, but are you as optimistic? As energetic? As open? Try the words "I am not the person I was when I joined Shell". How do they sound?
And maybe Shell hasn't changed all that much, and you haven't changed all that much either, but you are just seeing a different part of Shell in a different way. The front door and entrance hall of a house often feel different to the other rooms. Maybe you are just seeing a different part of the same entity, a part that feels less welcoming just now.
It is a bit like saying "X is not the man/woman I married" or "Y is not the son/daughter I brought up". Not generally a smart thought, for all the reasons above.
So, if you catch yourself saying or thinking this, what might you be really experiencing? A reaction against change. Some loss of control. Some challenge to the self esteem. Some perceived loss of status against colleagues. Fear. A sense of loss of dignity. A desire to say something important and a sense that no-one is listening.
These are all valid feelings. Almost inevitable really in the situation many are facing. But address them for what they are, don't look for solace in euphemism. You can ask for help for many of the feelings, and find support among colleagues in the same boat and other supportive friends.
You might also have a constructive point to make, which will get lost inside a general whine. How exactly has Shell got worse? What could people around you do about it to fix it? What could YOU do to fix it? Articulate that, and you might even achieve some change.
Similarly, if you hear someone else talking about Shell changing, don't just dismiss them as another old codger (or worse still, believe them!). Probe for the ideas to make things better. But even more, think what you can do to help. Dignity is not that difficult to provide. It can be as easy as asking them questions, not ignoring them at meetings, not making them invisible, avoiding small slights, taking pains to allow them to leave their legacy behind on livelink or via lunch and learns or whatever. Be generous. You might need the same someday.
Never ignore the Fundamentals
When we are looking to explain things, we often dream up all sorts of theories. Economists are especially prone to this, since they have a new, imperfect science, and you can see just how flawed by their inability to spot or remedy a credit crisis.
But often when we look for fancy explanations we forget the very basics. Here are some examples of what I call basics.
First, so much starts with geography. Read Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. People from unreliable or dark climates tend to get up earlier and get things done. Why? Otherwise the harvest would have been ruined in times past. People from locally dominant states tend to have formal, flowery, language. Why? When they were in charge, they developed airs and graces and rules to keep their subjects in check. Why are the Dutch brusque? I have a linguist friend who claims it is because the Dutch language has so many ways of giving orders, so that when Dutch people translate they get stuck. I don't believe it - the geography came first, the language followed. My theory is about monopoly trading positions associated with the river deltas. People passing through could be asked to pay a toll. No point being polite as they had no choice. No point being flowery or a queue might form. Look at almost any trait of a people, and try to explain it geographically - you'll find you can usually succeed.
Next, look at fertility. Read a typically brilliant report in The Economist last week on this. National wealth depends first of all on how many citizens there are of different age brackets. As nations develop, economies diversify and families have fewer kids, and eventually life expectancy grows. The result is a golden generation, where there are lots of productive adults, but not so many unproductive old and young. No wonder these countries have the most rapid growth! More than anything else, this explains the Asian miracle. The Chinese miracle more than others maybe, since policy led to a steeper fall in fertility than elsewhere.
For us as individuals, look at our parents. Wow, parents have a big influence on how we develop. They are a massive part of our learning system just when the learning system is most acute. The old Larkin poen "They f*** you up, your Mum and Dad" is so true - although in a few cases they might actually have done a decent job. If you want to understand someone better, find out about their parents. If you are a parent, be in awe of your responsibility. Maybe leaving home before the kids are up and getting back after they've gone to bed isn't that smart a life move?
Finally, companies. For all the guff about CEO's and strategies, look at Porters five forces. Who have effective monopolies? Which sectors are inherently less competitive? Which sectors have such growth that the customers haven't worked out their power yet? That probably explains 90% of performance. Plot such trends forwards wisely, and you might make some money on the stock exchange, or be able to choose to work in a rewarding sector. (Oil and Gas is not bad, the competition is less fierce than most areas, for all we like to claim).
Maybe there are other equally important fundamentals. But the Economist reminded me, not for the first time, how easy it is to overlook them.
But often when we look for fancy explanations we forget the very basics. Here are some examples of what I call basics.
First, so much starts with geography. Read Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. People from unreliable or dark climates tend to get up earlier and get things done. Why? Otherwise the harvest would have been ruined in times past. People from locally dominant states tend to have formal, flowery, language. Why? When they were in charge, they developed airs and graces and rules to keep their subjects in check. Why are the Dutch brusque? I have a linguist friend who claims it is because the Dutch language has so many ways of giving orders, so that when Dutch people translate they get stuck. I don't believe it - the geography came first, the language followed. My theory is about monopoly trading positions associated with the river deltas. People passing through could be asked to pay a toll. No point being polite as they had no choice. No point being flowery or a queue might form. Look at almost any trait of a people, and try to explain it geographically - you'll find you can usually succeed.
Next, look at fertility. Read a typically brilliant report in The Economist last week on this. National wealth depends first of all on how many citizens there are of different age brackets. As nations develop, economies diversify and families have fewer kids, and eventually life expectancy grows. The result is a golden generation, where there are lots of productive adults, but not so many unproductive old and young. No wonder these countries have the most rapid growth! More than anything else, this explains the Asian miracle. The Chinese miracle more than others maybe, since policy led to a steeper fall in fertility than elsewhere.
For us as individuals, look at our parents. Wow, parents have a big influence on how we develop. They are a massive part of our learning system just when the learning system is most acute. The old Larkin poen "They f*** you up, your Mum and Dad" is so true - although in a few cases they might actually have done a decent job. If you want to understand someone better, find out about their parents. If you are a parent, be in awe of your responsibility. Maybe leaving home before the kids are up and getting back after they've gone to bed isn't that smart a life move?
Finally, companies. For all the guff about CEO's and strategies, look at Porters five forces. Who have effective monopolies? Which sectors are inherently less competitive? Which sectors have such growth that the customers haven't worked out their power yet? That probably explains 90% of performance. Plot such trends forwards wisely, and you might make some money on the stock exchange, or be able to choose to work in a rewarding sector. (Oil and Gas is not bad, the competition is less fierce than most areas, for all we like to claim).
Maybe there are other equally important fundamentals. But the Economist reminded me, not for the first time, how easy it is to overlook them.
Time to Look Forward
From November 2009
2009 has not been an easy year to look forward. Under pressure, we all tend to cover our rear before thinking about advancing, and this year there has been a collective pessimism hanging over Shell and much of the world.
So I’m going to force myself to focus forwards, and have a go at a blog with predictions for 2010 and 2011. By the way, real winners have been doing this and acting on it, all through 2009. This year has seen a few economies, a few companies and a few individuals striding ahead while fear gripped the majority. It is in tough times that new alignments are forged. If you don’t believe me, look at the stock market, and curse yourself for not piling in during the spring.
As for global trends in the post-recession era, let us start with China. China has had a great recession and has been building power in all directions, whether it is over US economic policy or rights to long-term assets like key commodities. No company or government will be able to ignore China from here on. Check the market capitalization of the Chinese NOC’s if you have any doubts that our own industry has shifted structurally – and while you are at it there are some other winners too, such as Petrobras (from another of the so-called BRIC’s).
I also see are strong re-emergence of trends that have been put on pause by recession. IT and communications will take more leaps forward. So will finance and financial services, where some companies (eg Tesco) are already vying to claim ground vacated by banks and other chastened hybrids like GE. In employment, globalisation and outsourcing and service centres will resume their march – India to the fore, Europe and the US losing out.
What about people and employment? 2009 has seen the chastening of generation Y and the revenge of the behemoth, but the cycle will quickly turn and the revenge will work the other way. Agile companies in growing sectors will be recruiting again soon, and the talent will flock to them, reinforcing winners and further challenging the rest.
So what about Shell?
First, have you noticed how Shell has been outperforming the peer group lately? The analysts have noticed the assets to come onstream in the next couple of years and like the cost cutting. I predict this good run will continue, especially if the oil price does trend upwards, which is very possible. Imagine if Russia really does turn off the taps this winter or Iran ups the ante further.
But don’t assume that an upswing in share price will lead to a U-turn in the employment trend in Shell any time soon. Capex will stay constrained and our leaders will seek to demonstrate prudence over an extended period, not least to stave off predators. And note that Gorgon will eat a large share of Shell capex in coming years, but won’t create many Shell jobs since we are not operating there.
Before long Shell will need to define a longer-term strategy in more detail, responding to the general squeeze on IOC’s and globalisation 2.0. My suspicion is that for 2010-11 the actual choices resulting will be conservative ones, for example with accelerated disposals in downstream, reduction of dependence on Nigeria and caution with biofuel or renewable investment, while struggling to beat off the Chinese where more traditional growth opportunities arise.
So what does that mean for you and I? My guess is that transition 09 may be extended into transition 10 and transition 11, at least in some parts of the business. There will be winners, and a new generation of future leaders will emerge. P&T and Downstream will rightly be expected to drive down unit costs, so look out for some divestments (capabilities as well as assets) and possibly a more decisive shift in employment balance eastwards than so far seen (if you are in STI don’t panic, your time may yet come). Many structures, and appointments, put in place in transition 09 may prove temporary, from the top downwards, and to be fair that would be entirely consistent with the communications we are receiving. Expect some leaders to emerge from outside Shell, as efforts to move the culture intensify.
Can I translate this into personal advice? I’ll try. Don’t assume these MOR rounds will be definitive and that the organisation will be “locked” for four years. Be ready (or not) to accept a Shell where the Employee Value Proposition is more basic, for example with a step change reduction in expatriation opportunities. Make sure your skills and chosen business area are robust to mega-trends, or be ready for intensified pressure. Look out for chances to be a next generation leader, or at least to follow one.
And, as usual, remember your customer. And be happy.
2009 has not been an easy year to look forward. Under pressure, we all tend to cover our rear before thinking about advancing, and this year there has been a collective pessimism hanging over Shell and much of the world.
So I’m going to force myself to focus forwards, and have a go at a blog with predictions for 2010 and 2011. By the way, real winners have been doing this and acting on it, all through 2009. This year has seen a few economies, a few companies and a few individuals striding ahead while fear gripped the majority. It is in tough times that new alignments are forged. If you don’t believe me, look at the stock market, and curse yourself for not piling in during the spring.
As for global trends in the post-recession era, let us start with China. China has had a great recession and has been building power in all directions, whether it is over US economic policy or rights to long-term assets like key commodities. No company or government will be able to ignore China from here on. Check the market capitalization of the Chinese NOC’s if you have any doubts that our own industry has shifted structurally – and while you are at it there are some other winners too, such as Petrobras (from another of the so-called BRIC’s).
I also see are strong re-emergence of trends that have been put on pause by recession. IT and communications will take more leaps forward. So will finance and financial services, where some companies (eg Tesco) are already vying to claim ground vacated by banks and other chastened hybrids like GE. In employment, globalisation and outsourcing and service centres will resume their march – India to the fore, Europe and the US losing out.
What about people and employment? 2009 has seen the chastening of generation Y and the revenge of the behemoth, but the cycle will quickly turn and the revenge will work the other way. Agile companies in growing sectors will be recruiting again soon, and the talent will flock to them, reinforcing winners and further challenging the rest.
So what about Shell?
First, have you noticed how Shell has been outperforming the peer group lately? The analysts have noticed the assets to come onstream in the next couple of years and like the cost cutting. I predict this good run will continue, especially if the oil price does trend upwards, which is very possible. Imagine if Russia really does turn off the taps this winter or Iran ups the ante further.
But don’t assume that an upswing in share price will lead to a U-turn in the employment trend in Shell any time soon. Capex will stay constrained and our leaders will seek to demonstrate prudence over an extended period, not least to stave off predators. And note that Gorgon will eat a large share of Shell capex in coming years, but won’t create many Shell jobs since we are not operating there.
Before long Shell will need to define a longer-term strategy in more detail, responding to the general squeeze on IOC’s and globalisation 2.0. My suspicion is that for 2010-11 the actual choices resulting will be conservative ones, for example with accelerated disposals in downstream, reduction of dependence on Nigeria and caution with biofuel or renewable investment, while struggling to beat off the Chinese where more traditional growth opportunities arise.
So what does that mean for you and I? My guess is that transition 09 may be extended into transition 10 and transition 11, at least in some parts of the business. There will be winners, and a new generation of future leaders will emerge. P&T and Downstream will rightly be expected to drive down unit costs, so look out for some divestments (capabilities as well as assets) and possibly a more decisive shift in employment balance eastwards than so far seen (if you are in STI don’t panic, your time may yet come). Many structures, and appointments, put in place in transition 09 may prove temporary, from the top downwards, and to be fair that would be entirely consistent with the communications we are receiving. Expect some leaders to emerge from outside Shell, as efforts to move the culture intensify.
Can I translate this into personal advice? I’ll try. Don’t assume these MOR rounds will be definitive and that the organisation will be “locked” for four years. Be ready (or not) to accept a Shell where the Employee Value Proposition is more basic, for example with a step change reduction in expatriation opportunities. Make sure your skills and chosen business area are robust to mega-trends, or be ready for intensified pressure. Look out for chances to be a next generation leader, or at least to follow one.
And, as usual, remember your customer. And be happy.
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