Episode 42: The Leader's Guide to the (Energy) Galaxy
• 42 years ago, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘩𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘳'𝘴 𝘎𝘶𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘹𝘺 was published.
• In that book by Douglas Adams, the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything" is the number 42.
• 149 years ago, the Petroleum Producers Association officially adopted the 42-gallon standard oil barrel.
• Last week, DOE's leader Jennifer Granholm couldn't recall how many barrels of oil the U.S. consumed per day.
• This morning, oil is up 4.2% on speculation that the market's reaction to the omicron variant may have been a bit overdone.
• And in this 42nd episode of The Energy Detox, we weave all of these points together in an attempt to help you define the numbers that SHOULD be driving you to be a more effective, more impactful, and more sustainable leader.
The headline: 𝐆𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐦 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐔𝐒 𝐨𝐢𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐩
The goal: to (𝐆)𝐫𝐨𝐰, (𝐏)𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 (𝐒)𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
💡 What number best measures your growth as a leader?
💡 What number will best define your legacy?
💡 What number best indicates potential barriers to sustained performance?
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to episode 42 of the energy detox a petroleum based blend of leadership conversations guaranteed to boost your professional and personal output by flushing away the hidden and often toxic barriers to peak performance. I'm your host, Joe Sinnott, a chemical engineer, executive coach and 16 year energy industry veteran helping you tap into the same resources fueling today's most successful and sustainable leaders. And today, we're going to talk about how those leaders use a focus on numbers to help drive them forward and help drive their companies forward and their teams forward. And in some cases, their families or friends or organizations, whatever it is that they're leading forward by using numbers. And we've talked about numbers repeatedly throughout the other 41 episodes of the energy detox. But today, we're going to focus on numbers. If for no other reason, then this is episode 42. And if you're familiar with the book that was published 42 years ago, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you will know that the number 42, in that book was determined by a supercomputer that spent 7.5 million years calculating the answer to the question of what is the answer? What is the the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? And the answer to that ultimate question was the number 42. Now, as an aside, in that book, you'll also know that the problem is, after 7.5 million years calculating that that answer? Nobody actually knew what the ultimate question was to begin with, and then that you don't have to spoil the book that that begins a another whole exercise in determining what the question was in the first place. of, you know, what the question was, that was the most important question for life, the universe and everything. All that being said, we're going to use that number 42 as an excuse to drive today's conversation about you and your ability to determine what is the ultimate number or numbers that should be driving you forward. And of course, I'd be remiss not to mention the fact that 42 also has plenty of importance in the world of oil and gas with 42, of course, being the number of gallons in a barrel of oil. And with recent headlines here is, as we have off guiding this conversation today, recent headlines regarding oil, of course, going back to last week, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve release, and Secretary granum of the Department of Energy, who was unable to say how many barrels of oil is used in the US each week. Now, again, the story is a little bit stale. I believe it was Tuesday when she held the press conference where she was pressed on, on how many barrels of oil we consume and was unable to answer and, and certainly plenty of people jumped on that to say how absurd it was that the Secretary of Energy was unable to, or the leader of the Department of Energy, I should say, was unable to answer how many barrels of oil we use per day, which of course is on the order of 20 million barrels of oil. But all that being said, we're going to take all these headlines, we're going to take all this focus on the number 42, we're going to take episode 42 and help ask you some very simple questions, not the type of question that requires 7.5 million years of calculations as was the case in the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but we're gonna ask you some simple questions that you can at least do on today, as you begin your week that will help answer really what you should be focused on for you to continue being a successful leader, a sustainable leader, and to continue navigating this ever changing world of the energy industry, because of course, it will continue to change and certain things will continue to stay the same. I think it's safe to say that, you know, since it's been 160 years, since a barrel of oil was determined to be the standard and to have 42 gallons within it. Some things like that will not change. But of course, the demand for oil will continue to change the reaction to each and every variant that pops up, which of course has been the news over the weekend. And in fact, this morning, oil prices are back up because people are beginning to question whether or not the Omicron variant is indeed as bad as it was purported to be initially. All that being said, what can you focus on? What number should you be focused on? So
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you're not distracted by the constant ups and downs and volatility? And this doesn't just pertain to market conditions, of course, and you're trying to time your best estimates of when to invest and divest and strategically release resources as the case might be. But more importantly, what are the numbers that should be guiding you to long term success? And whether you are the CEO of a company who's trying to figure out what investments you need to make in your organization, whether you're the head of human resources and trying to figure out which numbers best indicate how strong and how engaged you are? workforce is whether you're an individual who's looking for a new job. And again, you're trying to look for the best metrics, the best measures of how successful you are in your current hunt for a new role, or more importantly, what you should be looking for in a new role, all of those types of things can be boiled down to some simple numbers. But the reality is, there's a lot of numbers that are distracting. And of course, we've seen this throughout the last 10 or 15 years in the any energy industry, particularly when it comes to growth. And when it comes to companies who are many cases, you know, focused on numbers that aren't really the best indicators of sustainable growth really aren't the best indicators of profitability really aren't the best indicators of how strong that company is. And so with that, we're going to jump into the first of the three questions that we'll ask this morning. And that is, what number best measures your growth as a leader and by extension, your growth as a company, as an organization, as a team, and again, your personal life, as a family as leader of an organization, whatever the case might be. And, again, this is an open ended question. There is no preconceived answers to answer that I have, which is part of the beauty being a coach, right, I get to ask these open ended questions and, and have you think and ponder and, and maybe you think of some things that might be different from what you're focused on day to day, because of the outside pressures that you're facing from your stakeholders, whether they're investors, whether they're board members, whether they're employees, whatever the case might be. So ask yourself this morning, what number best measures your growth as a leader. And again, if you're the leader of a company, it might be as simple as stock price. Perhaps it's as simple as production. And again, as I alluded to, a couple seconds ago, one of the measures that many companies used for years, especially as shale continued to grow with was simply the growth of production, you know, what was their kegger? Was it you know, that they were growing 10 15% per year, double digit growth? And that was by far from any company's the best indication of growth? Because in fact, that's what it was. Right? It was, how much production are you growing? But what that might have been missing was, you know, how are you growing in terms of your finances? Are you growing healthily? Are you just growing your debt? Are you just growing the amount of hydrocarbon you're getting out of the ground without focused on your growth as a stable company? Are you growing your employee base? Are they becoming stronger, better, more informed? Or are they simply going through the motions to grow a number that at the end of the day was not going to be sustainable? And again, we saw that obviously, two years ago, as, as things began to roll over several months before the Coronavirus, you know, did its job of helping things roll over? Of course. And so the question for you is, what is a better indicator? In fact, what is the best indicator of growth for you, again, in your professional life, and your personal life? And as I work with individuals, this is a fun question to ask, right? Because typically, you start to set aside the normal financial metrics, and you get to something more meaningful. You know, as a coach, one of the best measures of my growth as a coach is how many people I've helped achieve results, how many people how many individual human beings have I helped, whether in their professional life or their personal life, and we're talking first degree and second, third degree people as well, how many people have I impacted through my coaching, through my one on one coaching through group engagements, whatever the case might be. And for me, that's a great measure, yes, within that I can measure individual results. And whatever that happens to be whether it's landing a new job for an individual that's in a career hunt, whether it's increased profit, whether it's increased visibility, whether it's increased, you know, sales calls, whatever the case might be, depending on who the individual is, the reality is, I get to measure my growth as a coach based on how many people I've helped, and so to for you, as you're a leader, you know, perhaps the CEO of a company, it might be tempting to just measure your success, your growth based on stock price, of course, and that is typically a pretty good measure if you're a public company. But what else what else might be more meaningful, more purposeful, and quite frankly, more indicative of your ability to successfully and consistently lead others? So we can ask yourself, what is that number? What is that metric? And in fact, from your personal life,
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too, it might be something vaguer than that it might be how many people have you helped move forward towards some ultimate objective? In fact, one story that one of my friends often uses, you know, when he got married, somebody told him said, hey, you know, the most important thing that you will do as a spouse, your goal as a spouse is to help get your spouse to heaven. Again, that's that's a pretty big goal there and whether or not you're religious, it, you know, it stems a pretty, you know, impactful thought there, right? You know, what is a better measure of you as a human being, then your ability to move someone, an individual, another human being towards some ultimate objective, and whether that's heaven, whether that's helping somebody get a new job, whether it's helping somebody start and grow a family, whether it's helping somebody start and grow a business, whatever the case might be? Pretty impressive. That's pretty impactful. And while going down, and using a religious analogy might not, might not go over well with the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. With Adams who've been doing some research this morning for the show, I've realized he described himself as a radical atheist, not just a normal atheist, but a radically atheist. So again, he might not appreciate my analogy here. But the reality is, you know, if you were to measure how many people you helped get to heaven, that's a pretty good measure. And that's, again, the type of question you need to be asking yourself to maybe go beyond the normal measures and the metrics that the outside world might be telling you to lean on. And all that being said, we'll move on to the next question is, which is, what number will best define your legacy. And this number, of course, might be different from the number that you say right now is best defining your ability to grow and to adapt and to to lead successfully. Because of course, we all have short term goals that we're driving towards. And again, go back to stock prices, a very easy one. And stock price is nice, because you can bring everybody on board, you can help demonstrate to everybody how well they are connected to this one ultimate goal within an organization, regardless of the role, regardless of the department they're in or the tenure that they have, everybody can be contributing towards this one goal, that's one number in some, you know, small way, some big way, whatever the case might be. But at the end of the day, those individuals and you as a leader are probably not going to be hanging your hat on whatever stock price increase, you saw, while you were employed at a given company, at least again, I hope that isn't your your measure of what your legacy is, your legacy, I would hope, again, is based on something bigger, some of those other bigger items that we alluded to, on the first question, moving people forward touching people from, you know, from a career standpoint, and you know, from a personal growth standpoint, you know, making sure that you help others people move towards some greater purpose and greater good. So the question for you is, what do you want your legacy to be staked on not where your short term goals are, which are important, but what do you want your legacy to be based on, and again, for that we can turn to another perhaps the most famous number 42 In sports, which is Jackie Robinson, his legacy, of course, is someone who crossed the career color barrier in professional baseball, that is his legacy. Very few people can just spout out, you know, the stats from Jackie Robinson, his career and and what his, you know, career lines were in terms of performance on the field, if you will know, most people recognize that he is the first he is the number one person to cross the color barrier. And because of that his numbers retired in all of Major League Baseball, there is no more number, you know, no more person who were number 42, that is as famous as Jackie Robinson for that reason, that is his legacy, that is a number that, again, maybe doesn't define his legacy, but certainly represents it in the fact that on Jackie Robinson day, a Major League Baseball, you will see every major league player donning the number 42 on the back of his jersey, that's significant. That is, that is a number that will go on in, you know, to, you know, for, I would imagine for as long as Major League Baseball continues to exist. So the question for you is, is there one number that will define your legacy? And conversely, is there a number that you don't want to define your legacy? And, you know, in dealing with, again, individuals from a professional standpoint, sometimes that's the number of, you know, layoffs that you oversaw throughout your career, you know, dubious number, but there are some some famous examples of leaders who, you know, are, you know, again, you could take the, the Jack Welsh approach, right, the, you know, his legacy, you could turn to many positive numbers, many things that he built, of course, but at the same time, there are a lot of people that would point to his approach to, you know, be sure that the bottom 10% of companies basically removed every so often. And, you know, again, we're not going to dive into the pros and cons of that, because there are lots of pros, there's lots of cons, but the reality is, do you think he wants to be remembered as the 10%? Guy? No, he wants to be remembered for other numbers. He wants his legacy to be on how he helped build companies, how the 10% of people that are asked to leave a company like IBM, every so often went on to do great things. And, you know, again, that's, that's that's what a leader does, right?
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He Institute's numbers that aren't just arbitrary. He didn't just put that 10% number in place, he did it for a reason to help other people grow. So to again, in your personal life, what number best defined you? Is it related to the number of relationships you formed? Is it related to know the number of hours of community service you performed? Whether or not community service was dictated by some, some judge or whether it was out of the goodness of your heart? I don't know the answer to that. But what do you want your legacy to be? And what does that one number because people can talk and fluff and they can write in your obituary about XYZ. But is there a number that's going to resonate? Is there something that's going to stick in somebody's mind? Is there something that best represents who you were in your life? And if so, therefore, I should say if that's not the case, then maybe ask yourself what you want that number to be. Because we live in a world that is going to be increasingly governed by metrics as much fluff as there is out there. And as much as you have politicians out there who you know, might not know what the numbers are, in the case of Secretary random for example, but all that being said, what is the best number that's going to define your legacy? And then the final number is, what number best indicates potential areas to sustain success. So we've talked about in the first question, the best number to indicate how well you're growing and how well you're moving forward towards something. And the next question, we talked about what you want that one number to be at the end of your life that best represents who you were as a person and who you want to be continued to be remembered as and as long after you die? Well, the question now is, what number best indicates potential chinks in your armor, if you will, and potential barriers to that sustained success? What number best indicates something that is going to stand in your way? And again, moving back to the corporate world? One of the biggest focuses right now, of course, is employees and employee engagement. So what are the numbers there that indicate potential barriers? What are the bets numbers regarding engagement regarding people who are quitting your company, regarding the amount of time it's taking to hire qualified people? Perhaps there's some other metric brigade regarding people that is a good indicator of the loss of engagement, the loss of morale, if you will, and and quite frankly, the loss of your ability to keep moving forward from from a financial standpoint, again, there's no shortage of leading indicators that could be showing problems, whether it's, you know, slight increases in costs, whether it's your hedge book, again, to bring it back to your oil and gas world, whether you know, for you as an individual leader, again, what are the best indicators? Is there signs that you're slowing down? Is it the amount of time that you're having to spend in, I don't know, silly meetings with people putting out fires, perhaps it's the amount of time that you need to spend, you know, alone and recovering and, you know, perhaps, you know, exercising or meditating, because you're so overwhelmed. And you're having to spend more time almost recovering from some of these damaging things that you might not see, get similar to sports, in many cases, you know, you can look to injuries, you can look at the number of innings that a pitcher is pitching in a given season as an indicator that yeah, maybe his statistics are still good, but his productivity is decreasing, because he's injured more, he's tired, more whatever the case might be. So again, for you and your own world, ask yourself, what are some of the leading numbers? What is What are the numbers that are showing that, hey, wait, maybe there's some barriers ahead that are going to prevent you from sustaining success and sustaining momentum, find those numbers are best case scenario, find one simple number that you can look at each and every day, that is going to reveal some sort of problem long before it actually becomes a significant problem for all of your stakeholders. And with all of that I appreciate, again, the the amount of time that you've taken today and over the last, you know, 41 And now 42 episodes of the energy detox, to engage, to listen to ask these questions. I certainly enjoy asking them and listening to your answers, whether again, you're you're sharing them, you know, after the fact or live here on these, these live renditions of the energy detox are certainly engaged in one on one conversations, I appreciate the time that you're taking to, again, provide feedback on the content of the energy talks. And I continue to welcome your feedback, your suggestions, your commentary, your critiques, whatever the case might be. And at the end of the day, I hope you understand as I do, and as I've enjoyed during my two plus years now as a coach that the key to understanding the the energy galaxy, if you will, is through questions is by asking good questions of yourself and others. And then listening, listening to yourself listening to others, and listening to the right resources out there to help move you along, to help guide you to help get you not just from point A to point B. But to help keep you moving past the short term, these intermediate stops. But the key to that is understanding what your ultimate objective is, what your ultimate destination is, and working backwards and asking the questions to help you understand the best path to get there. And the best, you know, indication if you will of those barriers that could prevent you from getting to your ultimate destination. And so with that, I
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hope you have an excellent week. I hope you had an excellent Thanksgiving weekend. And I wish you have the very best as you continue to ask them the questions that you need to ask to make sure that you are achieving your maximum potential