What exactly are the behaviors and characteristics of this culture? Why are we spending millions of dollars and people’s time to change something that is highly valued by XOM leaders and has greatly benefitted them? Is “We are ExxonMobil” totally fake and just a waste of everybody’s time? I would love some personal examples. As an experienced hire I have not experienced or heard of any other company talking so much about “Culture” and how somehow it’s a mystery that needs to be understood. Thank you! :)
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@1hzo+16 is what’s wrong with Exxon.
Isn’t it remarkable that white males from either the southern US or Britain have dominated the upper echelons of the company, ushering the disaster we are in, yet old Bubba here finds a way to blame it on “diversity”, women, and minorities?
“We’ve lost our way”, he says. I’m sure he does truly think the few minorities we have are product of affirmative action, not merit. I’m sure he believes he’s been disadvantaged, because in his mind, only he works hard; the rest of people juggling dual careers are just socially promoted.
If it used to be great, Boomer, it was our folks who run it into the ground. The lack of self awareness, the c—iness, the hubris, and now white male fragility is what defines Exxon Culture.
I supported one of EM's joint venture sites for a couple of years. One of my "colleagues" was also there frequently. He was disruptive, definitely not a team player, he spoke badly about everyone behind their backs, hijacked people when they had good ideas and reinvented them as his, and was particularly skilled at undermining people. He took each and absolutely every opportunity to s— up to management and show how "hard" he was working. He did keep on top of his LPS! Of course he was promoted multiple times. This just about sums up EM ....always reward bad behavior.
And for the employees to fully comprehend the culture there is a whole layer of “Culture Managers” who spew the magic. Wonder how many of those middle layers of culture managers are in the PIP program? Losing another 30% of the work force will not affect the amount of work getting done!
In the Oil Business once culture is lost it is hard to regain. I worked for the small independent down the Blvd from XOM, who just built a brand new 1 billion dollar Corp office on Hidden Ridge (Day care, free lunch, valet parking). Was to house 5,000 employees and empowered goal of 1 MM BBLs/day from the Permian Shale. All hands signed and agreed to goal, then 950 mil dollar loss in 4th quarter 2018, someone took their eye off the ball big time. Now packages and lay-off have arrived, the culture of the company is in ruin. Company is rupturing culture and people, it will never come back
As a long time employee, it seems to me that the company lost their way, their competitive edge, when inclusion and creating a diverse workforce took priority over attracting and retaining the best and the brightest. While they don’t have to be mutually exclusive, going overboard in an effort to ensure every meeting look like a gathering of the UN in a compressed period of time was a disservice to the company, and the employees, both the existing ones and the new hires. Hire the best and don’t worry whether they are male, female, green, purple or otherwise. Just hire the best and make sure you mentor them and motivate them. The diversity will happen, the diversity of the young people entering universities and the workforce is broadening, so is the prospective employee pool. And then treat. Them. All. The. Same.
Culture of poor employees, rewarding poor behavior to groom good employees to become useless. The ship is sinking but the visionless fake visionaries cannot see it. Good luck id–ts!
For a clear picture - need to take several steps back - not Darren or Rex or that PBS face-dude - but a long way back.
There's a flick - I think Daniel Day-Lewis got an Oscar - called 'There Will Be Bl..d' pretty recently.
Very good - and very accurate.
"I driiiiink from your glass. I s— it right out."
@vng+16qS4Vd0 - do/did you work in EMRE ? You have described the Clinton work environment perfectly !
It was a culture of technical & project excellence and Fiscal & Financial Discipline. With the opex and capex reductions, XOM is headed back to fiscal and financial discipline. Goal should be get net cash gen and ROCE restored to above 10%, reducing debt while investing in sound long term projects. Fewer people are needed.
It's a culture of fear. It's also a culture of kissing up, kicking down. Plenty of articles about both that sum them up nicely. At least for some senior management, they are finally getting over the initial surprise at the amount of dysfunction in the company, and will try to do something about it. Whether or not they succeed will take years to find out, so either button down for a rough ride or jump ship, whichever works best in your own situation.
S—ing up on the lay-off board is not going to keep you out of the cut lol
I’ve had the chance to work for 3 majors. I’d take the XOM culture any day of the week versus the others. It takes most people 7-10 years to really understand how we do our business in totality at a manufacturing site.
So when you ask this question I think the person answering needs to be experienced enough to know that and it helps if they’ve worked elsewhere.
What I love is we’re standards driven and I’ve seen people from all trades and engineering specialties get an opportunity to grow past their station. If you understand the systems and can articulate your case by them, you can change anything your willing to for the right reasons.
From a field level focus, using OIMs and Process Safety to protect people and do the right thing is real in my experience.
The bad; too many people moved in attempt to make managers versus growing expertise and since they openly know the rotations last 18 months at best, they make c-appy decisions that allow them to shine and f— the people who live with it long term.
LPS isn’t effective because most of the ones pushing it couldn’t tell you if the risk awareness is correct or not because they didn’t spend enough time in a role to learn so it’s a political tool more than how it should be used.
A person with the right reasons and who cares, can make an impact and do well, but for every one of those there are 5 “managers” who couldn’t lead anyone. My solution would be put to stop the people movement and require people to live with their decisions at least for 5 years in a role. The culture has gotten so used to movement that people quit when not moved but those are the ones we need to weed out.
We know when we’re working for a future VP versus another cog in the wheel. Let’s just be honest and tell the 99% they won’t be a VP and grow in their role.
@ Tex Rillerson.... 100% Facts!!! 😂
They may have found a way to legally conceal layoffs from investors but didn’t do such a great job of protection out CEO since we saw his face all over news sites telling the public we have plans to lay off. When you lie to the public and a week later have a “non lay-off “ lay-off your credibility is gone.
@dmo+16qS4Vd0. LMAO That is so true!
From what I’ve seen it’s, everyone pretend to do something really important while you play on your phone all day, then do an LPS on that fake activity , have a meeting about that fake activity, have six more meetings about that fake activity, tell your boss how great you did at that fake activity so he can have something to talk with his boss about. Then they can get together and plot how they will pitch to their boss in a PowerPoint about how important all these activities were. This is why we make no money. Keep taking out loans to pay robinhood investors, you’re doing great sweetie.
There's 2 types of culture. The ideal and the reality. The ideal (which is thought up by upper management - executive level) is to teach all new hires as they come in (through training/orientation/meetings/seminars) that what is right is right. You are expected to stand up for safety/quality/integrity no matter what. You must always do your job correctly, honestly, and hold all your coworkers to the same standard. See something, say something. However, the reality is that when you buy into this and try to embody it, you get push back from middle management (FLS/SLS/Department heads etc.). You get labeled a 'trouble maker' for speaking out and not 'falling in line'. The executives keep churning out their flowery b—s— which isn't truly supported by middle management, even though they smile and nod and repeat it to the their underlings. And in the end it's the rest of the employees who either act blind, or lean in and play the game, or stand against and get fired. That's ExxonMobil culture in a nutshell.
We’re the crème de la crème