For the last 4 years or so, I have had a two and a half hour slot at the on-boarding workshops for new GS staff in Europe. For the last two years, we have been recruiting so fast that this commitment has been a monthly one, and the workshops have usually had their full complement of 24 participants.
I've loved doing this. It appeals to the frustrated actor and preacher in me - I suppose the same affectations that make me a blogger - even though it takes a lot of my time, I'm always exhausted after the sessions, and I get no tangible recognition (indeed I don't think my boss even knows that I do it).
Like all good things, this monthly performance will come to an end soon, as GS launches a new onboarding structure in the new year. Quite right too, a new approach is timely, and what has been designed seems efficient, modern and smart. But I'll miss it.
Apart from an efficient way of campaigning, getting messages across, marketing my team etc, I have valued the onboarding sessions for what they have taught me. The groups are excellent representative focus groups of the talent coming into GS. I take care to do a lot of listening and learning at the sessions. And I also reflect on how GS is changing, as well as where we stand on our various change journeys.
It is great news to report that everything I observe about GS from how these sessions have changed is for the better. Truly we are attracting diverse and motivated talent - and that is just in Europe, the "old continent". Here are some examples.
About diversity, I just need to look and listen. The ethnic and cultural diversity nowadays is stunning and so exciting, and there is a freshness and vitality in the audiences nowadays which can take my breath away. I'm sorry, but in the old days some classes felt like relics from a bygone age, full of people whose attitudes suited unfashionable, under-funded universities or government departments, with no commerciality little curiosity, and a palpable lack of networking skills. How that has changed! Perhaps the European education system is not as bad as some politicians and reactionaries would have us believe?
About motivation, I'll just relate one story. At the start of the workshop, I just stand by a flip chart and ask for words or phrases that people have heard or come to believe describe GS. Then we talk about some of them. I was stunned one time this year when one person shouted out something like "motivated" or "high morale". I retorted by pointing out that the sessions weren't recorded by the management secret police and people should say what they really felt. And everyone in the class started talking, saying it was true, they were really happy, they felt they were in a place that was buzzing etc etc. The more I pushed back (I can be cynical at times you know, much as I hide it well!) the more animated they became.
Wow! Can it really be true that a generation of demanding, talented youth have joined a division of an oil and gas company and think it ROCKS? In subsequent classes, I've not had this back so strongly, but there is always nowadays a positive mood, and they always subscribe easily to my claim that they are a lucky generation, joining an ambitious business at an exciting time. We old cynics should reflect on this too. Maybe we represent boiled frogs in reverse - things are better, but because it has happened gradually we haven't noticed? Don't whisper it too loudly though, or someone in HR will cut our pay!
The same exercise with the flip chart also reveals other things about how we have changed. I always look out for two words, note how long the exercise runs before they come up, and start a discussion to test them more deeply. These words are Expensive and Innovative.
Expensive always used to come up first or second. Everyone tittered, as though this was some sort of guilty secret or inevitable factor like an embarrassing uncle at Christmas. No-one really challenged it. Worse, few really knew how to challenge it, by looking at the adjective from the customer's viewpoint. Nowadays, the word still comes up, but it so much easier to take the class through a journey to Value for Money as a more meaningful concept, the criticality of Value for Money in any sustainable business, and the role of third party business, benchmarking, customer satisfaction etc in measuring it and continuous improvement. Trust me, that simple logic flow could take a long time before and leave many bemused faces. Not now. Nowadays, the classes are still realistic enough to see that GS is far from good practice, but readily buys in to the business and customer logic of the concepts. That is the first step to success.
Innovation is less positive, though still better than it was. Often I have to drag the word out of the class. Then I ask "are we innovative?" and someone from GSIR (no offence guys, it could be others) talks about some esoteric experiments their department started years ago yet have no idea of bringing to deployment, someone else equates innovation to R&D budgets, and someone else lauds LNG or GTL. What would a class in the mobile phone or computer business make of that? At least nowadays, the class more readily buys in to the criticality of innovation, as well as the concepts that it is more than science and only really has value when applied. It is better, but I reckon we still have a way to go on this one. It is striking how few people in the class seem to link innovation with their daily lives or how they are led.
There are other signs. On the negative side, the chargeability obsession comes through more strongly than ever - people recognise that it is a good vital sign for our business, but it is clear that many staff are led to treat it as their only goal. But there is more on the positive side. The role play we do shows that more staff have a commercial awareness and diagnostic behaviours than before, and that there is more respect for people with other roles. There is more awareness of competition. People see the merits (and pitfalls) of the GS business model. And people seem more attuned than before with the world they live in.
I'm far more often impressed than depressed by these classes, and overall I think they show a fantastic leading indicator to a successful future for GS. In my view, the biggest advantage of the GS business model comes in the talent space, and these classes offer great evidence that this is true and that our model is working. Thanks to the 400 or so people who have been subjected to my ranting, for what you have taught me and the energy you have given me.
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