How does MW compare to his predecessors? I've only been with the company during JW and MW's tenures.
What about compared to before them? In your 25-30year careers, is he the largest t–d?
14 replies (most recent on top)
Mike is on par with all the others. His main flaw is that he has not made the hard decisions required about changing out "old school" leaders around him. Therefore, the culture change he desires is a big failure.
@hcu "It’s a different time and place than in decades past"
No it's not. Plot the real oil price from 1986 through 2001. Now overlay the price from 2015 through now. They are an overlay. The late 80s and 1990s were no different than now. The issue is that companies have too many people, time expended, overhead, and expenses related to many many activities that do not actually improve margins.
@2ron - Watson said the same thing on CNBC not sure how long ago now. He the price will NEVER go below $70 because that is the cost to produce the last barrel of demand. I watched that and thought, wherever did that come from!
Ken Derr, followed by Dave O’Reilly were good CEOs who kept the Chevron ship steady and growing. Enter J Watson, followed by M Wirth and everything that Chevron once was began falling apart. These two last d!ckheads have damaged this company greatly.
The biggest problem with big organizations is lack of accountability. Decisions are made all the time, but by the time outcome is available those who had made wrong choices are either retired or promoted so high up that are untouchable.
Next is lack of clear focus on making money on what we can make the most. I stead we try to do anything all at once and embrace not critical processes that takes so much time to learn, costs more, impacts very little the outcome and sadly derails the focus on proper execution.
Finally, anyone who talks a lot in the leadership will not do much, as they focus too much on perfecting their speech and messaging, a great leader talks only seldom but very clear and to the point, brief, and executes the decision quickly and promptly. In Chevron it is all talk and long periods of I'll executed decisions that end up doing over and over in every 3 to 5 years if not sooner.
Remember when MW said $100 oil was new new norm going forward. Of course you can’t find it on the internet anymore as are IT and PR people scrub all that info.
Also why are we developing a massively expensive 20k psi project in the GOM with a break even price about $75 / bbl.
Now is this his fault. Probable not but he has some people below him that are leading him astray.
I think MW is the right person for the times. He has shown he can make disciplined capital decisions. His message of “winning in any environment” is a simple one that makes sense. We are in the commodity business which is cyclical, low margin, low roce, and increasingly less pricing power. You need someone with a steady hand and experience running a low growth business such as the downstream business he oversaw. He has been quite transparent so far, sharing his thoughts with rank-and-file more often than his predecessors.
Mike Wirth is not a Ken Derr or a Dave O’Reilly. Those two predecessors were so much better than Mike is. Stop referring to then and now. Business style and focus is a constant. Our CEOs of our company’s recent decades were so much better than Watson or Wirth. These last two are softies that are ruining this company.
If you want a more risk taking company than you may want to check out Oxy.
If you think MW is ‘right for the company’, you better be ready for constant downsizing reorganizations, regular layoffs and budget cutting, until that day in the future when nothing is left but the Permian, Tengiz, and Gorgon. Not to mention mandatory fascination with the trendy. Yes, the industry is in decline, but if you have more than six years’ experience, you know Chevron was more ‘fun’, more risk-taking, more career-developing in the past than now. As long as you like a nose-to-the-grindstone environment, MW is fine.
It’s a different time and place than in decades past for all the Chevron CEOs due to the changes in our Society. CVXs own work force is at home still. How will this affect MWs tenure compared to prior CEO’s is anyone’s guess.
Mike is leading the slow decline of this company. We have been over hiring for years. He and Pierre are trying to get the stock price up but this effort is futile. The new generation money managers are not interested in oil stocks even if it will be a necessary evil for a very long time. That being said he is the right man for the job right now. He has led many efforts to streamline downstream including selling the refineries we had in the most attractive locations. He isn’t better or worse than previous CEOs.
MW loves seeing himself performing on-line giving us all the cvx bs!! Just another pos that gets to the top!!!
Not a boomer, but my impression is that MW is far more cost conscious than other CEOs. He turned out to be the right CEO we needed at this time. However, I am very concerned about all the PC, SJW focus. We are in a low margin, commodity industry with little tolerance for this type of silliness.