Will net-zero AIMs be killed before they reach age 20?
Today is not only "National Cat Herders Day," but it's also the 4th anniversary of the death of AIM: AOL Instant Messenger.
Born in May 1997, AIM left this world on December 15, 2017 at the age of 20, providing a great excuse for The Energy Detox to ask how you might unwittingly be killing whatever "aims" you have as a leader...and whether the time, energy, and money you're devoting to achieving your stated intentions are really just masking the fact that you're an ineffective leader who is aimlessly trying to herd cats.
The headlines:
📰 ‘Enormous buying power of federal government’: Biden aims for carbon-neutral U.S. by 2050 with new executive order (MarketWatch)
📰 Music Industry unites to pledge net-zero emissions by 2050 (The Guardian)
📰 Nebraska aims to decarbonize its power sector by 2050 (The Hill)
The quotes:
💬 "If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time." - Zig Ziglar
💬 "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
💬 "Aim small, miss small." - The Patriot
The questions:
💡 (G)ROW: How well can your stakeholders articulate your supposed goals?
💡 (P)ROTECT: What's holding your team back from taking the shots needed to secure victory?
💡 (S)USTAIN: How well can you shift between big picture targets and discreet intermediate steps?
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to another Live episode 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 do a good job of establishing clear targets, aiming for those targets. And of course, bringing other people on board as they to attempt to aim for those targets. And to drive today's conversation we're going to look to basically what is an unlimited number of headlines out there that talk about companies within the energy industry, who have aims who have targets. And of course, some of these targets. Many people are casting stones at because they are far reaching they are long term. In some cases, they are incredibly vague, even if they have some specific numbers in them with one number in particular being a most common one, of course, that is the number zero net zero emissions, Net Zero targets carbon neutrality, whatever you want to call it. There's a lot of headlines out there that talk about companies and governments and other bodies who are aiming for net zero emissions at some many cases, far distant time in the future. And I could have filled today's screen with such headlines, many of which include the word aim, aiming, targeting, looking to accomplish whatever. But I chose three this morning in the interest of time to go ahead and get this kicked off at a at a regularly scheduled hour A few minutes later than usual. And the three headlines I have here are one, President Biden's claim that again, by 2050, we as least as federal, from a federal standpoint, are going to aim for carbon neutrality. There's another headline that the state of Nebraska again, aim to decarbonize its power sector by 2050, and one outside of the energy industry. But again, energy related the music industry has united to pledge to aim for a net zero emissions profile by 2050. These long
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forward looking out there claims that within the next 30 years, all of these entities are going to be net zero. And why are we talking about that today? Well, we are not talking about the merits of whether they're actually gonna be able to get there or not, and how laudable it should be that they're going to get there. We're not talking about the mechanisms of how these, again, organizations or government bodies or wherever the case might be, we're going to get there. No, instead, we're going to talk about you and the claims that you make, the targets that you have and the things that you are aiming to achieve. And quite frankly, whether or not they're realistic, whether or not they're clear enough, and whether or not, you're able to actually bring all of your stakeholders on board and continue marching them towards that target for the next 1020 30 years. And driving this conversation is not only these headlines that again, pop up pretty much every day. But it's also the fact that today is National cat herders day. And for many leaders like you, as you have these moving targets, as you have these different aims, it might of course, feel like you are trying to hurt pets and for good reason. Because in many cases, the you know, the targets are shifting, the goals are shifting, the language is shifting. And for many of your stakeholders, it's tough to keep up, I would argue for you, it's probably tough to keep up at times, especially if you're working for an organization who seems on a you know, every six month basis to be shifting its goals shifting its language, you might not even know if your company is targeting 2030 for Net Zero 2050 2040. And again, that's not to knock the ambitions of these companies, but merely to point out the fact that many stakeholders, especially internal stakeholders simply can't follow. And they're running around like cats, and your job, of course, is to herd them. But that takes energy. In many cases, it takes time and it takes money to bring everybody together and keep them focused on a target that again, might be moving one way or the other. The third thing that we're going to weave in today's conversation, because again, we like pulling together just seemingly disparate headlines and fake holidays and things of that nature. And today, we're also going to bring in the fact that four years ago, AIM, AOL Instant Messenger died, it was killed off after a 20 year life of, you know, some ups and downs peaking there sometime in the in the mid or to early 2000s. Perhaps. And of course, if you're familiar with AOL Instant Messenger, you know that it was a pretty revolutionary communications tool. And again, I could spend the next I'll be 30 or 40 minutes talking about aim and the impact that it had on my life as a as a teenager and you Young Adult and certainly the impact that it's had on many lives of millennials out there who are in the workforce and who have since graduated to other forms of communication that have since replaced ame, including, of course, Twitter, and texting and Slack channels and all that. But the reason we we even if not force ame into the conversation today is because, again, ame died at the age of 20. It had a very useful life, it did, again made a very big impact on how people communicated. But at the end of the day, its usefulness came to an end after 20 years. And then using the aim acronym, if you will, can bring us back to you and what are your aims? Are you unwittingly killing off aims of yours because, again, you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, or you're running around like a cat herder. So we're gonna try to take all of those things too, as always, each morning, ask you questions that will help you continue moving forward to help you avoid getting stuck. And quite frankly, to help you know, from being looked at as a leader who simply has these vague targets these ill defined targets at times, or in some cases, no target at all. But yet, you're there acting busy spending money, using your time and your energy and your people's time and energy to no avail. So with that being said, let's jump into the first question today, which is prompted by a quote, a quote from the movie, The Patriot, actually, in fact, we're going to go with a different quote here to stay in order. And that is a quote from Zig Ziglar. And that is, if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. And again, there's variations on this quote out there, whether Zig Ziglar was the first one to say it or not, I don't actually know I don't actually care. But for you, it begs a question this morning, which is how well can your stakeholders articulate your supposed goals? What are they aiming for? What are they moving towards? How many of your individual whether they're employees, whether they're customers, whether they're investors, whether they're board members, whether they're colleagues, whether it's your boss, how many of those people can actually define what your goal is, what your organization's goals, what your team's goal is, because if they can't define it, then it might look to them like, again, you're out there just aiming for nothing, you're tossing darts out into the wind or shooting arrows or whatever the case might be. So ask yourself how well can others articulate you're supposed to goals, you might be able to in your mind, or perhaps in your, you know, in your, your, whatever the equivalent is of an away message these days, your your profile, your Twitter profile, your LinkedIn profile, whatever the case might be, you might feel like you're articulating your goals and what you bring to the table and what you're looking to achieve.
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But can other people see that? Can other people understand that? Or to them? Does it look like again, you're just shooting blind, and you don't have a target, and you're not focused? Because again, this quote from Zig Ziglar is pretty straightforward, right? If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time. If you're in shooting a basketball towards the hoop, and you're not looking, you're just, you know, throwing it in the general direction. While again, what do you expect to do, you might get lucky once in a while, but for the most part, you're going to hit nothing, you're not going to achieve your goal, you're not going to score you're not going to win. So again, ask yourself, How well can others see in you a clear goal, a clear aim, because if it's not well defined, if you don't have that mission, then again, it's doomed to fail. And again, in the energy industry, like every industry, it's very common for leaders like you. And again, I see this all the time, who think you have a clear goal, we'll come back to the net zero headlines, again, that prompted this episode. All of these Net Zero aims seem like they might be good seemed like they may, you know, make sense to certain stakeholders. But Can all of them actually articulate what your goals are? Why you're doing it, how you're going to implement it? Because if not, again, what good are they you're basically shooting for nothing, you're shooting for the same headlines that again, are, you know, growing by the day regarding these Net Zero targets, these Net Zero aims, which will undoubtedly begin to lose meaning and they will begin to fade and they will begin to cause confusion. And if that happens, they will inevitably, inevitably die. A death much as as a well, that's mature died 20 years ago. With that being said, we'll go on to the next question, which is what's holding your team back from taking the shots needed to secure victory? So let's assume for a moment that you do have a clear target, you do have a clear, overarching goal, you have convinced everybody that whether it's Net Zero targets or whether it's some stock price target or whether it's some production target, whatever the case might be, you have goals, you have clear goals, and you've clearly defined them and you've got all the internal and external communications to back that up, which then asks, begs the next question, which is, well, what's holding your team back from taking the shots, the steps necessary to secure that victory? And to drive this question again, we now turn to somebody else, which is Wayne Gretzky. Wayne Gretzky, of course,
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said you miss 100% of the shots you don't take and again, there's other variations on this. Larry Bird has a has a similar quote about that. Who knows what the original origins are this again? It doesn't matter. The reality is, again, if you're not taking shots, you're not going to make them. So what's causing your teammates to not take those shots, what's causing them to become too fearful? Is it you as a leader, is it other circumstances is the culture that you've that you've created, because again, I see this all the time, whether it's in corporate cultures, whether it's in the oil and gas industry, whether it's in other industries, or whether it's those who are in a job hunting, again, who are afraid to take that step who are afraid to reach out to a hiring manager or recruiter who are afraid to pick up the phone or shoot an email or, or update their LinkedIn profile or headline for some reason, or change their picture, whatever the case might be, there's so many things that are holding people back. And again, we can spend hours talking about all of those things and all those examples, but the question for you today, because, again, these episodes are about you is what is holding you and your team back from taking the shots needed to secure victory. So ask yourself that question today? Do you have a clear objective? Do you feel like you'd have a clear enough objective or goal or aim in mind, but the execution isn't there, because people that are scared, because perhaps the goal is to well defined it is too lofty, it is too scary and big and bold for some people. And And again, if that's the case, you might want to ask yourself whether, you know, you really want to be surrounded by those people. But you also need to acknowledge that they exist. And some people might be too scared to take a shot that could perhaps throw them slightly off course, or that might not follow what is perceived to be some very clear cut plan when in reality, the plan probably is is more flexible and and meant to be more changeable and swappable and whatever word you want to make up then it might actually appear to certain employees of yours or stakeholders. So again, ask yourself, What's holding them back? Is it you is the culture? Is it bad communication? Find the answer to that question. Ask yourself, which, you know, elements of you and organization, your leadership today could be holding people back and address it. And the third question today is from the movie The Patriot here, and that is Aim small, miss small again, another quote that, you know, probably didn't originate from the movie, the patriot and Mel Gibson. In fact, I think it was somebody on set who actually was talking about Aim small, miss small and talking about some of the, the approaches to, to, you know, firing guns in the movie. Whatever the origins again, we can examine the quote, and the quote there leads us to our third and final question, which is how well can you shift between big picture targets and discrete intermediate steps. Because the idea behind Aim small, miss small, of course, is, again, the more focused you are, the more likely it is that you're going to hit your target, it goes back to the first quote and the first question, which is, can if you aim at nothing, you're going to hit it every time. And this is a another take on that, of course, but it is meant to make you alright, say, look, you're on a path, you've got a clear path, you've
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got a clear objective, you've got a team in place that could do things or feeling good about yourself. But now when it comes to execution, and each step along the way, are you focused enough? It's good to have big picture goals. It's good to have a good worldview, if you will. And I'll, as an aside, it'll take a page from CEO Chris Callinan, who spoke last week at Doug east and again, he spoke about the need to have a big picture worldview that is a goal, it's fine to have a big picture wide target wide aim, if you will. But then you got to use that to work backwards and frame all of your intermediate steps and decisions that you have to make. And that's where we land on this question in this quote today, which is Aim small, miss small, how well can you shift between the big picture target which is important to have, which in many cases, you can articulate somewhat clearly, and then get down to the intermediate steps and the intermediate decisions that you need to make? And are you as a leader capable of switching between big picture targets, and those small discrete steps, because for many leaders, and quite frankly, for many individuals, they allow themselves to be pigeonholed into this. Unnecessary or this false choice between again, being in the weeds being a micromanager being somebody who can who can dive into the detail who prides himself or herself on diving into the details, or somebody who's able to just think big picture and, and you know, not sweat the small details. You know, people almost wear these things as a badge of pride, when in reality, you don't want to live on one extreme or the other. You want to be able to ask yourself at each step along the way, which approach you need to take and in turn, encourage your people, your employees or your peers, colleagues or bosses, whatever the case might be, you want to be able to encourage them to also switch between thinking big picture and small picture. But the reality is for many individuals, and you know, quite frankly, probably for you at certain periods in time, you're not able to do that. So ask yourself today, how well can you shift between big picture and small picture? Are you finding it difficult to go from one extreme to the other in some cases? And if not, why not? So ask yourself that question. Ask yourself what might be holding you back from doing that. And again, you might come up with some pretty powerful answers. That of course will save you time, money and energy and bringing this back to your own gas industry. Again, the focus of today's podcast So in all the other 48 podcasts leading up to today's episode 49, we can look at how these companies are developing plans how these developing companies are developing strategies to, again achieve their stated goals of net zero or production growth or free cash flow or whatever the case might be. For some companies, they have these big goals, and they're, they're working backwards, and they're allowing their employees to to again, ask themselves, how is your effort? How is your plan helping us achieve these goals, whereas other companies are so defined are so rigid and are some cases aiming too small, and they're too focused on, quite frankly, intermediate steps that might not matter, that might be distracted, they're looking at metrics, they're looking at reports, they're spending time developing these reports, spending time focused on these metrics that might seem sexy, they might seem like they make sense. But at the end of the day, they're not actually aligned with the big picture. And again, this is all related to the same question. And the same quote, Aim small, miss small, there's a time and a place to Aim small, miss small, there's a time and a place to be specific and say that on December 15, of 2050, you are going to be net zero. Sure, that's fine. It's ridiculous, some might say, but it's nice to have a finite number that you need to put in place, right, it's like the weather, right, you know, the weatherman, can't get away without giving a specific high temperature for today, it might be you know, 42 degrees, it might be 45 degrees, you know, he knows that he might only be able to get within five degrees, and most people will be fine with that. But at the end of the day, if you're gonna fill out a chart, or you're going to fill out a, you know, five day forecast, you need a specific number. But some people are, you know, they're unable to do that, right. And it cost them time, they're unable to just just pick a number, pick a temperature and run with it. And quite frankly, some audiences are unable to, you know, hear a number like that, and not get all up in arms when the temperature is off by a degree or two, when the production rate of a well is off by a degree or two or, you know, when whatever target whether it's the net zero target on December 15, of 2050, or whatever the case might be is off by a day, or two or a month, or two or a year or two. So you need to ask yourself, though, what's holding you back from making either bold, big, large predictions or small finite predictions that are necessary to at least move forward? Ask yourself who what might be holding you back? answer that. And again, I promise that you'll be able to move through life and through your business and through your professional and your personal world much more seamlessly, much more smoothly and in a manner that allows you to achieve your aims to achieve your goals without unwittingly killing them off prematurely. And so with all that being said, as always, I thank you for tuning in. I thank you for your feedback. I thank you for your comments and questions. And I do see that we have one comment this morning from Dane greaser. Who says good morning, Joe S. Well, good morning to you, Dane, and thank you for tuning in.
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Thank you for commenting. Thank you for watching. Because again, nobody were watching and nobody were listening. I'm not sure that I would devote the however long we've been going on here 1518 minutes this morning. So with that being said, I encourage you again to ask the questions on where your focus is where your aims lie, and whether you're doing things unwittingly that could quite frankly be causing premature death. And so with that, again, thank you for tuning in. I hope you have an excellent rest of the day to kind of weave together today's theme regarding AOL Instant Messenger. I will divulge here at the end for those of you who are still listening that my AOL my ame handle was Joey Irish. oh five. So with that Joey Irish oh five is signing off from this live episode of the energy detox and of course, I encourage you to tune in because we will be our be tomorrow morning.