Energy & Environment: The Yin and Yang of MVP-Level Leadership
As 2013 NL MVP Andrew McCutchen closes in on career hit number 2,000, another MVP (Mountain Valley Pipeline) is finally closing in on completion of its ongoing construction/permitting saga that will have taken over 2,000 days from start to TIL.
So, what can these 2 MVP milestones tell you about sustainable leadership and, more specifically, the importance of striking a balance between energy & environment?
To find out, check out Episode 79 of The Energy Detox.
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello, and welcome to the energy detox on this the fifth of June 2023. I'm your host, Joe Sinnott. And as I stand here today in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there are two MVP related headlines that tie back to you as a leader in the energy industry. The first of those MVP headlines has to do with 2013 MVP Most Valuable Player Andrew McCutchen, of the Pittsburgh Pirates, because Andrew McCutchen has only three hits away from collecting his 2000s career hit. And with the pathetic Oakland Athletics coming into town tonight, there's a very good chance that Andrew McCutchen will reach that career milestone over the next couple of days. The other MVP related headline that's out there has to do with Mountain Valley pipeline, a different kind of MVP. And that pipeline project just got word that it is likely to achieve a major milestone by the end of this year, that being the completion of this project that is years over its initial timeline and billions of dollars over its initial budget. And the reason that both of these MVP related headlines tie back to you as a leader in the energy industry, is that they both demonstrate a potential mismatch or miss balance or a error and the yin and yang, if you will, that needs to come when you're talking about energy and the environment. And when it comes to the mountain valley pipeline project, it's pretty literal, when we're talking about energy in the environment, because the mountain valley pipeline is going to deliver energy from here in the Appalachian region down to the southeastern United States in the form of natural gas. And there's no question there's no question for anybody whether you happen to be an enemy of the pipeline or proponent. There's no question that the energy will be there, the energy is important that energy can and will produce meaningful results. The questions that were raised by some parties had more to do with the environment and the environmental impacts. And a question of whether the mountain valley pipeline would have a net positive impact on the environment or a net negative impact on the environment. Now, certainly here on the energy detox, we know that the answer is clear that mountain valley pipeline and domestic natural gas in general has had and will continue to have a net positive impact on the environment. But that didn't stop some parties, some entities over the years of getting out of whack and neglecting the energy benefits and over emphasizing the potential negative impacts to the environment of a pipeline project. And when things get out of whack like that, people make questionable decisions, projects get delayed, and even things that haven't, again, an undeniable net positive impact on all parties involved at the end of the day, get delayed, they get set aside, they have lots of enemies against them. And that ties in a more figurative fashion, to Andrew McCutchen. Because when it came to Andrew McCutchen, who was traded from the pirates back at the beginning of 2018, right around the time that MVP was initially beginning construction. Well, Andrew percussion came back to the pirates this year. And the decision to bring him back again had to do with energy and the environment. And what do I mean by that? Well, unlike now, family pipeline where the the energy piece was unquestioned, right, there was no doubt that there was energy there, there was energy that can produce results. You can't be Andrew McCutchen and aging star, if you will. That was a question of whether he would be able to have the energy that would produce the results in terms of wins for the team. But fortunately for pirates management, they also recognized that there was an environmental impact, right. And there was no question going into this that Andrew McCutchen would have a positive environmental impact, both in terms of the fan base fans like me, who remember the Andrew McCutchen of 2013, and would be happy to come back and cheer him on if this were to be his final season, which I don't think it's going to be but again, a positive impact to the environment, a beautiful environment in terms of the ballpark, but bringing back that, you know that that energy, if you will, even if the energy that he produced on the field wasn't there. Now, as things turned out, of course, he's delivered on both sides of the equation, both the energy and the environmental sides of the equation, the environment, building a clubhouse being that veteran presence that's allowed future energy, potential energy to flourish, to grow and to produce wins, which of course the pirates have been doing over the last couple of days, despite a fairly miserable May. All that being said, what does all this have to do with you? Well, you as a leader, if you're anything like many of the leaders that I've worked with, sometimes struggle to find that balance. between an energy focus and an environmental focus, sometimes things get a little out of whack sometimes that again that that yin and yang kind of gets askew, so to speak. So today, we're going to arm you with a couple of questions that you can ask yourself to simply recognize when you're getting out of whack. I'm not going to give you answers, because when it comes to trading for players and paying for players and deciding to move forward with pipeline projects, again, there is no one right standard answer. But there is a set of questions that you need to be asking yourself so that you with all of your experience and your knowledge and your smarts can make the best decision possible. And the first question you need to ask yourself is whether you are allowing yourself to act out of fear, fear of death, because what happens when you don't have any energy, and what happens when you don't have a positive environment? Well, it leads to death, quite frankly. And even if you have a little bit of life, if you don't have an environment that fosters growth thing to die. And perhaps the best example of this is the Oakland Athletics of 2023. Because they are for all intents and purposes, a dead team, they are atrocious, they are threatening all kinds of horrible, horrible records in terms of worst record worse performance, worse, batting average all these horrible statistics. But many leaders that I've worked with, unfortunately, carry with them with this carry with them the sense that, you know, they simply want to avoid becoming like the Oakland Athletics, for good reason. But what they neglect to realize is that you can't just preserve what you have, you can't just allow the energy to bleed off over time. Because what's it going to look like? What's gonna look like an Oakland Oakland Athletics organization that has, again, a stadium that only gets a couple 1000 people per night, a stadium that is quite literally falling apart? And, you know, an ownership right now that is clearly intent on looking to the future, a future in Las Vegas and not caring about its current fan base or current results? So the question for you is, what can you do to foster a healthy environment that allows your talent to grow and flourish? And more importantly, what can you do to make sure that you're not complacent? You're not comfortable? You're not content, sitting at PNC parking, enjoying the beautiful views, as the product on the field starts to stink and stagnate. What are you doing to erase this idea that, yes, an environmental catastrophe can happen in an instant, and it could take years decades could take hundreds of years, millions of years, in some cases, to get back to where you were from an environmental standpoint, that's real, which is why industries like oil and gas and oil industries have protections in place because they recognize that, but if the single thing that's driving your decisions, when it comes to your team, and your culture, is this fear of a figurative environmental spill, so to speak, well, guess what you're gonna look like the Oakland Athletics, whether you want to be or not, maybe it takes a little bit longer. And it's not quite as atrocious as the product that we'll be trotting out here tonight. But that being said, what are you doing to erase those fears, and build up both energy and environment of your team and your organization. The next theme that I see that I hear is related to minor league talent, so to speak, your form system, are you giving them a chance to shine, you have an environment that allows that potential talent, that potential energy to flourish, and in turn, Spark, other talent, other energy and have that back and forth again, that that ying and yang when it comes to energy in the environment. And the pirates are a great example this year, they've had several exam, several instances, several examples where they've called up young talent. And not only did that young talent have a chance to shine, but it sparks something in the team, even if just temporarily, it sparks something in the team and a spark something in the fandom that leads to long term results. But so often, there is of course, default positions, both in baseball management and general managers and owners, and certainly the owners of companies to preserve that talent to keep them on the sidelines for now to not burn them out. And again, in certain circumstances, absolutely. That's the right thing to do. We're not here talking about burn out here today, though. We're talking about opportunities to spark new energy to build an environment where everybody that's sitting in the miners doesn't feel like they're stagnating. They do feel like they could be called up at any given time. And they're given the tools they need to thrive in the short term and the long term, because, again, too many leaders that I've seen, they look at it as black and white. They've pegged some of their young talent as a career minor leaguer or shooting star rising star, whereas with the pirates this year, they had somebody called up who was in the minors for years. I don't know if it was 1012 years. He was there for a while. And guess what he came up and he sparked the team. Now, you might argue that when he was sent back down the team kind of floundered throughout the month of May but that's another story. The question for you is,
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are you managing your minor league talent, so to speak your farm system in a way that makes them feel like at any given time and they can be that talent that spark? Or are they being felt like it's a foregone conclusion that they're just going to kind of drift along and hope that they don't wind up on a team like the 2023, Oakland Athletics? And the third question you want to ask yourself, and this relates to pipeline projects and oil and gas in general, it certainly relates to sports. And that is, what are you doing to control the narrative? What are you doing to control the narrative about what your project is? In the case of baseball, you know, everybody wants to peg certain teams as a rebuilding year, although I think the Oakland Athletics, I think they're well beyond rebuilding, it's, it's it's probably their own category. But, you know, is it a rebuilding year? Or is it not? Are they going to compete in the pirates, again, go through this every single year. But what many leaders within organizations, particularly in oil and gas fail to do is they feel to fail to one recognize what narratives are already out there? And actually try to debunk that narrative head on, or at least change the language to say, No, this isn't a rebuilding year, we are trying to achieve, you know, championships that if you want to win World Series, right now, we think the odds of that happening are maybe only 20%. And we're going to do everything in our power to bump it up to 25%. This year, because if you allow the narrative to only talk about next year or two years out, or three years out, as practical, and realistic as that is, and again, I listened to enough sports talk to know that that's, again, a common thread of conversation, one that can be nauseating at times. But it's it's an unnecessary black and white narrative. You can talk about this year in terms of statistical terms, its baseball statistics, and everything you're doing to improve the odds this year without having to use the word rebuilding and cast aside your current talent. Because what that does, what does that do? Well, it says, Hey, we don't have the energy this year to succeed. And in turn, you're going to allow your energy to dip. Whereas if you say, hey, look, this is where we're at on energy. But you know, we're going to build an environment where, hey, here are the small wins, we're going to we're going to do, we're going to build these, we're not worried about 2013 or 2024 2025, whatever. We're gonna build an environment where we're always building, we're always trying to find new sparks, so to speak. And we're not just content talking about the future. That's the example of an Eric same to an oil and gas, right. The narrative about MVP, that is just some big pipeline project are going to ram their way through people's backyards over the course of 300 miles. But it's going to produce jobs. Oh, who cares? Well, guess what, at the end of the day, jobs may not resonate with half the people. How do you control the narrative to say, it's not about jobs alone, it's not about cheap and reliable energy alone. It's about long term prosperity. And hey, guess what it's actually about the environment. And I'm not saying that hasn't been done. But it's a perfect example of if you want to control the narrative, you hit them, where they're at, right? They're worried about the environment. This is an environmental project, everybody that's working on it, essentially, are environmentalists that's controlling the narrative. And if you're not looking for ways to one, identify what the narrative is, and in turn, control that narrative, as a leader of a small team of a big team of an organization, well, you're missing out on those opportunities, because that's the best way to take whatever energy is there on the other side of the equation, and turn it into a positive environment for you. So you're walking in with all the tools you need to collect some bass hits, collect some, some wins, so to speak. So all that being said, the final question for you is, how can you give your team power to control the environment around them? What are you doing to give them the tools to ensure that your environment is one where whatever energy you have, whether it's monetarily talent, you know, potential energy, or whether it's veterans like Andrew McCutchen? What are you doing to ensure that they can thrive, they can produce results that they can produce wins for you and your fans, your investors and everybody else. And so with all that being said, I certainly hope that nothing in this episode, jinxes, the likelihood of both Andrew McCutchen, and mountain valley pipeline, completing their milestones, certainly anything can happen. But all signs point to the 303 mile project for mountain valley pipeline coming to fruition completion, all signs point to Andrew McCutchen, completing his 2000 Pit, which, interestingly enough, is about 57 or 58 miles if you if you look at the total basis associated with all of his hits, but regardless of whether we're talking hits, or runs, hopefully we're talking about positive energy that you can employ to make a difference in yourself, your team, your organization, your community, your fan base, and in the case of mountain valley pipeline, our country. So with that, take care and have a great rest of the day.