Action Based Leadership-Intensive Development of Senior Technical Leaders & Enterprise Teams
Authors: Sheegog James F. , Graham Kenneth 
Published: September 2015

Objectives/Scope: Presenters will share novel methods used in two-year case study with senior technical, administrative, and commercial leaders responsible for achieving enterprise level targets. We will share organization assessment & leadership development methods. This project in the Middle East region required the authors to apply methods that would demonstrate how improvements in individual's decision-making, team leadership, and change leadership skills would help progress corporate metrics such as capital budgets, EBITA, and HSE targets.

Methods, Procedures, Process: Methods- The authors used McKinsey's 7S, Michael Porter's 5 Forces, Peter Senge's Learning Organization, and Michael Day's Innovation strategies. The team started with 3 months of strategic assessments with the CEO & executive management team to define strategic gaps in organization. Six initiatives were selected over 24 months that would test the capacity of existing senior engineering & technical managers in country under intensive time pressures. Pre, Post, and Transfer Measurement procedures were applied over by a team of senior industry advisors and leadership development experts to correlate impacts of strategic initiative teams on company key performance targets such as capital cost optimization, increased production capacity, HSE targets, and culture change. The process involved frequent observations, advisory, coaching, and intensive survey data collection based on leadership skills demonstrated in the leader's current role. Over time, each individual leader in case study received intensive feedback on how their actions (behaviors) contributed to larger team and cross-functional successes.

Results, Observations, Conclusions: The project resulted in accelerated senior leadership skill development in areas of highest priority to achieving company wide targets. Experienced leaders are best developed beyond the classroom. Educators will provide more value to the energy sector by applying experiential learning methods to real time job challenges. Current training & executive development investments focus too much on theory, versus real-time observation and assessment. We conclude that education and training interventions are only sustainable when closely tied to concrete corporate milestones and key performance measures that justify such investments. For educators to provide value, they will benefit from a robust knowledge of the petroleum industry, experience managing production facilitates, and providing intensive human factors feedback to both the executive team and senior operational leaders. Culture change is purpose-driven and must be correlated to adjustments in highly visible team leader actions. Realizing that senior operational managers must manage industry volatility and their executive teams, this approach of Action-Based Leadership connects top-level strategy targets to contributions of front-line decision makers.

Novel/Additive Information: Rapid improvement in leadership capabilities cannot be realized through traditional performance management systems alone. Strategic plans are not well served by costly investments in customized classroom learning. Senior Leaders demonstrate positive changes in behaviors when learning frameworks are closely tied to disruptive events in the petroleum industry and challenges in which they are accountable for delivering results. Senior technical leaders can often improve the quality of their contributions to executive management teams. We discovered that the quality of senior leader contributions is correlated to cross-functional social learning networks. To positively influence technical leader capabilities, educators and advisors need to apply more advanced individual, team, and organization assessment measures to assure technical leaders are proactively applying the right skills when disruptive events occur in our industry.