Only YOU Can Prevent Corporate Wildfires
To prevent (corporate) wildfires, follow these 4 Smokey-inspired leadership tips:
1 - Speak the same language as your audience, NOT in easily dismissed or ignored talking points. For example, when speaking to an environmentalist about headlines linking fossil fuels and Canadian forest fires, acknowledge their disappointment regarding the millions of acres of lost trees...and calmly point out that you'd need to burn 3-4 million acres of forests per year to generate the same amount of energy the United States produces from natural gas.
And when trying to convince a high-potential job candidate that early career, in-person work is more beneficial than remote work, calculate and present the potential increase in LIFETIME earnings; and make the value of this investment crystal clear.
2 - Manage excessive "fuel loads" in your team. Regularly clear out rumors, uncertainties, and unresolved issues that may be causing stress or confusion.
3 - Ensure effective "fire suppression" by giving people the space they need to execute, clearly defining roles and responsibilities, and avoiding micromanagement.
4 - Eliminate the "diseases and insects" leading to large areas of dead and dying wood. Actively remove any toxic or unproductive elements causing decay or harm.
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
96% of Americans can correctly identify this character right here, Smokey Bear. And for that reason, we're going to use Smokey Bear today as an unofficial mascot for the energy detox, because Smokey Bear is by far the best person to deliver today's message, which is that only you, as a leader can prevent corporate wildfires. And what is a corporate wildfire? Well, if you spent any amount of time in any corporate setting here in America, you've likely experienced some form or another of a corporate wildfire, whether it's rumors and hearsay and disgruntled employees that are introducing all kinds of toxicity into the environment that you have to deal with as a co worker or as a manager, or whether it's the wildfires that you feel sometimes when it seems like everybody around you is throwing heat in your direction or filling up the room with smoke, whether it's your senior management, whether it's your co workers and other team, whether it's your employees, whether it's a supplier, it could be customers, it could be your external stakeholders, the community, when it feels like you're surrounded by fire, and you're choking, and you don't know what to do. That is all examples of corporate wildfires. So the question is, what can you do about that? How can you prevent those corporate wildfires? Or if you're in the thick of things, how can you prevent them from growing bigger and ultimately put them out. And so again, today, there is nobody to turn to better than Smokey Bear. The other reason that we're going with Smokey Bear today as the most appropriate person is because smoky barrel is also connected to the oil industry. In fact, he can trace his origins back to 1942, when a Japanese submarine came ashore off the coast of California and launched a missile or a couple missiles towards the Elwood oil field, and that incident scared Americans, they said, Hey, wait a second, what if our enemies started lighting intentional wildfires here in the United States? What would happen? Especially since so many of our able bodied firefighters were sent overseas to fight a war? How are we going to fight these fires? And so the US government said, Okay, well, let's come up with a campaign. Let's come up with some marketing strategy to help give Americans the tools they need to help prevent those wildfires. And so about two years later, Smokey Bear was born. So with that bit of history and connection to the oil and gas industry, let's move on to our goal today. And that goal is to take for insights, if you will, for lessons from Smokey Bear that's out there on the internet on his website, and translate those into things that you can use as a leader to put out these figurative corporate wildfires. But before we begin, I do want to point out one other connection to the oil and gas industry. One other reason that today's conversation is incredibly appropriate, certainly for the energy detox, where we weave together energy industry themes, current events, and leadership challenges. And that is that I am standing here today in Deer Lakes Park. This is a park part of the Allegheny County park system here in southwestern Pennsylvania, about 10 miles outside the city limits of Pittsburgh. And this park is a perfect example of how energy and the environment are connected, because underneath my feet are several Marcellus wells that were drilled by range resources about eight years ago, and rains successfully extracted natural gas monitor this park without having any impact on the surface of the park. But actually correction, there was an impact on the surface of the park, what a positive impact because some of the $15 million that was generated that went into the coffers of Allegheny County was used to directly improve the park, the playground you see here, the splash pad that you might hear behind me not to be confused with rain that's coming down a little bit although and protected by a nice tree here. All that being said, it's a positive example of a connection between the energy industry and the environment. And as we hear about all the wildfires in Canada, of course, it's tough not to hear the negative connection between wildfires and climate change. And then ultimately, of course, the fossil fuel industry and the burning of fossil fuels. So with that backdrop, with that introduction out of the way, let's jump into the four different elements contributors to wildfires that Smokey Bear has on his website. And those four elements are, in order, the complexity of implementing fire suppression to the complexity of implementing fuels treatment programs, three, the climate change, of course, and for the overcrowded stands and drought patterns that result in cyclical insect and disease outbreaks. And we're going to step through those not in the order that he has on the website because Honestly, I was a bit surprised, I expected that climate change would have been. Number one again, you can't hear any story, read any story about wildfires and not hear climate change front and center. So I'm actually going to move that to the top of Smokey bears list, and talk about climate change in terms of controlling the narrative controlling the headlines. And what I don't mean is trying to debunk climate change. That is not the goal today, the goal is to make sure that no matter what conversation you're having, you're doing it in the same language that your audience is expecting to hear, or is at least going to resonate with your audience. Because, as is often the case, when it comes to climate change, and the positive or negative net impact of the oil and gas industry on the environment, too often, as you know, conversations are on two ends of the spectrum, right? There's attempts to kowtow and say, Yes, we are absolutely causing climate change. And we are very sorry. And we're going to run 100 miles an hour away from fossil fuels. And we're going to make amends. And we are again, if we haven't said it already, we are very sorry, that is one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum, of course, is no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we don't even know if climate change is real. We need more fossil fuels, because fossil fuels lead to a bettering of the human condition. And again, that's the other end of the spectrum. Now, again, you probably know from energy detox, what end of the spectrum I lean on, but regardless of where you are, what do you need to do, you need to use language that's going to resonate, it's gonna get people's attention, just like that submarine attack in 1942. got the attention of Americans. So how do you do that? How do you do that as a leader? Well, instead of not, instead of actually doing the the environmental, anecdote, or or example, I'm going to start with the corporate example. And that comes down to something that, again, tends to fall on one end of the spectrum or the other. And that is work from home versus working in person, or in the case of the oil and gas industry, working out in the field out in the elements, again, as I am exposed to today. Because what happens? Well, companies and individual leaders tend to default to the same talking points about the pros and cons of each the financial benefits of each this and that. But my suggestion for you, because I've seen it implemented is to take it to the next level and say, No, we're not gonna talk about the financial benefits of, hey, if you work from home, that's a nice perk, you save 10 or $15,000 on commuting, and maybe you know, maybe you can have a simpler wardrobe. And you know, so you know that there's a lot of value there. In fact, in some cases, you're actually going to dock your pay 10 or $15,000. To make up for that, again, we've seen that play out, it doesn't work. But what can companies do on the other end of the spectrum? What do companies say, hey, no, we need you to work in person. Do they just say the talking points how Oh, it's easier to mentor. And, you know, it's good for osmosis. And it's good for the company. Because guess what, people don't care what they care about. They care about money, but not just a 10 or $15,000 a year difference? What is the difference long term for their whole career. And again, apologies for those of you who've heard me hop on my soapbox regarding this in the past, but what happens if you could quantify the value over the course of their career of working in person, especially for somebody that's early on in their career? What if in the first five years, you say, hey, look, if you work in person in the first five years, or work out in the field, over the course of your career, you're gonna make $1.5 million more than you would if in those first five years you were remote? Or you were mostly in front of a computer, whether you're in the office or not? What if you drew that distinction? What if you can come up with some numbers? Again, lots of back of the envelope numbers, but that's, that translates, right? So that's a perfect example of that outside of the box thinking to say, why don't why are we stopping short and making, you're making the individual calculate the value of investing 10 or $15,000 a year over the course of a 30 year career? Do the math for them? And you're gonna have better success. Now, bringing that back to the world of wildfires. How does that matter? Well, what are we talking about with wildfires? We're talking about trees, right? Beautiful trees, millions of acres of trees. And here as an industry, again, I think we have a lot of missed opportunities to actually talk about how we positively impact trees directly and indirectly. And I'm not just talking about the handful of trees that companies will plant on Earth Day or Arbor Day. Hey, that's great. Do your social media post. Congratulations. Nobody cares. Know what people care about. People care about saying, hey, look,
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I'm at a park here. 1200 acres, 1200 acres, which is probably about a million trees. Again, you do the math. It depends on the tree density, of course, the type of tree all kinds of different stuff, but call it a million trees here at Deer Lakes Park. Do you know that to get the same amount of energy that you would get out of one? Well, like one of the wells drilled underneath my feet by Range Resources, you would have to burn about a million trees, 1 million trees to get the same energy as one Marcellus well, and of course the burning of those trees would be far worse for the environment. The burning of those trees would produce far more carbon dioxide and particulate matter and we'd be you know, we'd have air around here. Air that would mirror the air that existed and it would probably be far worse than the air that we were experiencing last week, thanks to the Canadian wildfires, think about that, and then scale it up just like we did with the work from home or work in person example, scale it up. Here in Appalachia, we make what 30 To 35 BCF a day in America, it's about 100 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. Think about that in terms of energy. Now we're talking, oh, I don't know, 5 million trees a day, about 10,000 acres, again, back of the envelope, math, 10,000 acres a day of trees that you would have to cut down and burn to get the same amount of energy that we get from natural gas. millions of acres per year. Now you're starting to speak the same language. Wow. That's what natural gas does have from an energy standpoint, tree equivalent energy. Again, we're making stuff up here. But that's going to collect a lot of people's attention better than talking about, you know, $15 million that the county got because of Range Resources. Well, guess what, a lot of people are gonna dismiss that as blood money, they're going to dismiss the splash pad as a blood pad. Maybe that's a bad example. Anyway, the moral of the story is, how can you translate that carbon dioxide? Same thing, we talked about planting trees? Well, guess what? The amount of carbon dioxide we reduced by switching from coal to natural gas powered power fired power plants? Yeah, we could talk about a 50% reduction, because of the just the mechanics of the different hydrocarbons. But what does that mean in trees, guess what, 23 billion trees, that's how many trees it would take, to offset or to, to have the same amount of carbon suck, or to remove that amount of carbon from the atmosphere. 23 billion trees. That's what we've done here in Pennsylvania, if you take that 30 billion a day of natural gas, more or less, and you have that in coal, power, energy, instead 23 billion trees, you're not plant 23 billion trees. And the point there is that its innovation, and its creativity and science, and all of these industrial actions, which people are very quick to set aside that you're not going to replicate through natural means you're not going to plant 23 billion trees. So again, translate that into things that are gonna resonate with people. Anyway, moving on from that. The next element that we're going to talk about is the complexity of implementing Fuel Treatment Programs. What does that mean? It's the fuel load, it's how much fuel you have on the forest floor, the more fuel you have from dead trees and vegetation, the more likely it is that fires are going to grow out of control. We can talk for hours about forest management and how that's changed over the years, thanks to environmental practices and different things. But the question for you as a leader is, what is the junk that's on your figurative forest floor that you can remove? Whether it's rumors, whether it's, you know, concerns about getting your company getting bought or sold, or whatever? How can you run towards those little fires and put those out and remove that fuel? Too many leaders are scared, they're afraid to go in? They don't think it's their place. They don't think it's there is the role, but what can you do to again, you know, to get rid of those things, those those undefined roles that are there those on resolved issues? How can you put those out to remove the fuel, remove one of the elements on the fire triangle, right? fuel, oxygen, and heat, you're always going to have oxygen, you want people talking, you're always going to have some sort of Spark, but the fuel you can remove. Moving on to the next element, the complexity of implementing fire suppression. What does that mean, Smokey Bear? What does that mean? Well, he tells us on his website there, basically what that means is, hey, look, we're getting overcrowded, right? As we put new developments in place, we encroach on the forest. And, you know, Mother nature's natural spacing, if you will, kind of goes away, you're getting into her territory. So in a corporate environment, are you micromanaging? Are you crowding people out? Do you have undefined channels? And you know, we could talk about racy charts all the time? But are you actually using them? Are you talking about a separation of roles and responsibilities? Or is everybody on top of each other, which means it's very difficult when you need a little bit of breathing room like fire does to avoid jumping just from, you know, from place to place? You need a little bit of breathing room? How can you create that breathing room? How can you avoid that overcrowding. And then finally, the last piece there is also related to overcrowding, but specifically, it's the it's the disease and the drought and the insects and again, as we see when you have disease outbreaks and insects and, and all kinds of stuff, and you have a lot of dead wood in an area. What does it do? Well, it causes bad conditions, it causes lots of dried out dead wood. So what can you do to avoid that toxicity? What can you avoid? Do to to squash those, those diseases? If you will, what can you do to get rid of those insects that are thriving in the environment, and that are causing all kinds of toxicity? Because my guess is those insects that you might have around you. You're much better off getting rid of them than having a hang around because they're causing more harm than good. So anyway, those are the four elements. Thank you for joining us today. And of course, remember here that only you can prevent corporate wildfires.