It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.......
Chevron has been on the bottom, found the top and has managed to become a shell of what we were. For ten years, with self driven hard work and ingenuity we become number one, we lead in Safety, ROCE, and virtually every category for a decade. We did it by working hard and smart, by using the talents of our number one asset, our people, by trusting ourselves and cutting trails where there were none, guided by us and our knowledge of our business. We adopted a mantra of "Better Than The Best" and became "The Best."
Where did the wheels come off? As with most large corporations we were always prone to "Fad Surfing." We always had initiatives such as Hoshin, TQA (Deming), etc etc. and each of these ran it's course and left behind value added tools that were used in our arsenal and drive to overall excellence in Safety and Performance. But somewhere after the turn of the century something changed, when initiatives such as Lean Sigma (which can be and remain incredibly valuable when used right) came in they became the drivers, not the tools for improvement. Where other initiatives ran their courses, improved us, and then went off into the sunset, leaving behind a residue of thoughts and tools that drove continuous improvement, these were different. In a sense they become a life form of there own within Chevron, they became primary business drivers, clearly goaled at some point to not making Chevron better, but to self propagation of the process. Though we were number one in every category we could imagine, we were programed to believe that we were not number 1, that we were grossly inefficient, that we had to get even better. By the metrics we did, we began (and continue) to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in annual "savings" sometimes even saving more money than we spent (don't challenge the financial verification), we held celebrations, we talked about how good we are and how initiatives such as Lean Sigma saved us.
In the meantime reality struck, valuable time and band width were eaten up, calendar time was (and continues to be) consumed in the drive for paper efficiency and the validation of the initiative (not what it brings to the table), and the fall of the champion became real. Our best people became slaves to the process, those who demonstrated ingenuity and creativity and brought back real dollars were chastised for not following "the process," predictable dissolution occurred and the fall was on. The lines of reality in business became blurred and the focus that lead us to greatness became diluted. When we achieved greatness we had a keen vision of what was truly value added and low tolerance for that which was not in our business. We trusted people (us) who knew our business, listened to those who offered ideas, and implemented what made sense, driven by us, not consultant "experts," those things which would truly lead us to greatness, not those which would validate and make good "the process," we drove, we were not driven.
I think, my opinion, that Chevron still has a chance, that we still have the horsepower to climb back to our throne in the crown jewel of oil companies. But we have to get back to the focus of what made us great. We have to recognize when the wheels came off, exploit the learnings of Lean Sigma and other initiatives, but learn to drive the company again, not be driven, to wag the tail, not be wagged by it, to let the horse draw the cart, not ride in it.
In closing, I think that most of us in Chevron want exactly what I want, to go to work each day and to be allowed to work, to not spend most of my time and effort engaged in meaningless activity that is not truly value added, to be trusted and have our opinions valued on what exactly is value added and what is not. We became a great company by doing that, let's do it again.
The question here is if Chevron's legacy will be that of a Titanic, or a Phoenix, that answer is within us.