How can any place be innovative if it cultivates a ‘yes man’ culture which despises any attempt to think outside the box?
What is sad is that people have become indifferent and now they do not even try to present their idea. Great people therefore go and take their ideas and talent to other companies, where someone will respect them.
24 replies (most recent on top)
@2xxj+1ctRH9tf. I have used a couple dashboards in Agile that turned a water cooler chat about an easy-ki-l idea that could have high impact into days and days of meeting, story writing, stakeholder analysis, multi-level prioritization, rollup/roll-down review, chapter management ownership discussions, success metrics charts and other tomfoolery. Simply amazing. Unfortunately after all that the relevant investment decision had already been made and the idea was no longer of interest.
"I have seen a couple successes"... well, while some might consider antidotal testimonials offered by an anonymous source definitive validation, I for one call "a few months rather ... than years" total bu11$hit! Young bucks claiming it is so much better than before are just working for their gold star in the management echo chamber. Try asking some old goats that have been around the block a few times and know what success actually looks like (hint: its measured in barrels).
I have seen a couple successes internal Agile projects which delivered excellent MVPs in a few months rather than the old system in which it would have been years to a terrible result.
Having now been indoctrinated into the Agile system, I understand better why Microsoft does not innovate but rather rapidly follows to crush or capture innovations of others. If all work must be done very fast (on tight, short-fuse micro timelines) employees only have time to check boxes defined by managers and have no time to consider anything outside the check box. Only when something is recognized and scoped by managers as a sprint goal is the idea allowed get worked (not worked well, but rather worked just enough to check the box). In this culture there is no room for innovation or even to consider of quality of the result for longer-term viability or decision making beyond the check box. It is a management philosophy (top-down micro-management) antithesis to just about everything I liked about working for Chevron, where the rule was only broadly-defined management goals aligned to project decision milestones. Doing agile in the petro-tech world will be a disaster, because managers never understand the complexities of the endeavor and worker bees restricted from the freedom to "do the right thing" will soon learn to just provide what was asked for rather than doing what was really needed. This new myopic management focus will cycle back at us with increased failures.
On the IT side, when we have a foundations group that is so bloated and only seek to repackage up Microsoft things, some are good, some are OK, and some are quite frankly not ready for market... and anything that is not Microsoft is deemed not within the guardrails that enterprise architects put out there: that is how innovation dies.
It's hilarious watching them try to make Microsoft services compete with tried and true GIS tools. Just because something is "different," it doesn't mean it's innovation. We have the same people running our technology companies, and they're so hierarchical from top to bottom, the young and talented innovators are told to do things one way because the boss said so. All the talk about culture change and empowering the team from above is baloney. Well-intended maybe, but the organization is not technical enough to know how to innovate. Earth scientists and reservoir engineers are so much better at IT than IT employees in that middle layer.
Perhaps they will start an agile project to try to automate innovation! (heavy sarcasm)
we are just "innovating" for the sake of innovating
look at Shell and other competitors, their digitization projects are the real deal impacting downstream, midstream and upstream
The innovation needs to happen on the rig or in the well. All of the support services are a drop in the ocean compared to the capex/opex required to drill and operate wells. If you automate a report and save somebody in the office a bunch of time, that’s honestly not very important unless it makes the bit drill faster. All of the office work is off the critical path anyway.
Been in DT for 3 years now. We aren't innovating we are automating where we can. Frankly it isn't enough to ever move the needle. The end users don't want it so it's like pushing ropes. We are just going through the motions of Digital.
I have used a couple dashboards that turned a day of spreadsheet tomfoolery into a single click. Amazing.
No innovation or technology can replace or exceed the value of common sense, lacking at CVX. Let’s focus on that folks. All the digital tools are actually quite complicated and comes with a convoluted process and are at the end of the day mere distraction and shiny toy for folks to work on. Case in point…dual gradient rig or 20k+ technology. Cmon guys. How much $$ sunk and wasted….that nobody wants to talk about.
I agree. There is more innovation now than I have seen in a long time.
There is plenty of innovation all around Chevron and the virus wFh spurred a great deal more. Look around you at all the new digits tools we have developed in house. It is astounding. The digital oil field is finally here.
Chevron values diversity of skin color and gender, those things which are ‘easy’ to buy off the shelf. Chevron gave up on diversity of opinion (the source of innovation) around 2012 +/- a year or so, right around the time all those Australian cost overruns started really hurting the company. You can’t sustain diversity of opinion in a yes-man, crony environment. MW just wants low cost operations (think Motel 6, McDonalds), not risk-taking, innovative stuff. Those we can ‘buy’ from Microsoft and Schlumberger.
Died here? Innovation was neither conceived nor born here.
We drill very expensive hòles.
The day innovation died
The movie was pretty funny....
Was it there in the first place? Seems that you are a yearling yet to be broken in.
op what are you talking about?wasn’t that hr project called “hr innovation”?
What’s worse is they don’t even use Pigeonhole anymore, opting for attributable Workplace questions. So much for two way feedback.
Forget the masks, it's the never-ending transformations, re-orgs, managed-moves, and new initiatives that are suffocating.
Back when the app Foursquare was a thing, some sarcastic CVX'r tagged our old Bellaire office building with the by-line: "Where your youth goes to die"
Now I no longer view them as sarcastic, just prescient.
I honestly DGAF about the PMP process anymore. I spent maybe 45 mins total assembling and updating for opening and mid-year. I received good feedback about my work and project accomplishments.
The only "constructive" feedback I received is: "You need to attend more quarterly chapter meetings, townhalls, etc"
Really? So a big no, on actually meetings with business partners where work is done vs. sitting on a meeting being meet in the room watching attractive, but dopey PowerPoint slides go by. Ok, sure, if that is what it takes to a good review and steady paycheck then fine.
15 year employee. I bite my tongue. As your manager/supervisor controls the ranking and the bonus they will pretty much have it their way or the highway. I had numerous colleagues over the last several years try to go outside the box and innovate and not one of them are still with the company. I realize the PMP process is slightly changed but I still believe that speaking up will put a target on your back. And I definitely don’t have the friends and family pass. If you got a family to feed just do whatever the fools want.
The Chevron silence is the fear of speaking up because the money is good. Innovation does not happen when differing opinions are punished. All you need to do is go on Workplace to see all the yessssssssssss posts. Nary a dissenting opinion.