Thread regarding ConocoPhillips layoffs

10 Questions for the ELT

In case you are wondering what we talk about, here's our questions.

1 If you had an employee in your organization where 2 out of 3 of his supervisors said he was overpaid and not performing well, what action would you take? Do you see the connection here to the 68% shareholders vote?

2 Surely you have heard about the definition of insanity? So why do we have the same leaders in exploration?

3 Every morning we walk in and see "Accountability" flashed at us. The 2015 COST ("Cost Optimization for Sustainable Transformation") effort does not seem to have been Sustainable. Who has been held accountable for this failure?

4 A $200 million currency loss of course implies risk. Company procedures demand a decision tree in these situations. What was the risk associated with this loss, and what did the "success" branch value look like?

5 According to the firm Semler Brossy, less than 1% of companies do not have their "say on pay" executive compensation approved by stockholders (this is easy to verify). Given this horrific benchmark, what are you doing to regain shareholder confidence?

6 If you think about it, if the organization is already "right sized", there would be no employee reductions in a disposition because there would only be necessary employees that would go with the buyer. Given employee reductions in 2015 and 2016, why were there such horrific staff reductions with the recent dispositions?

7 At the February townhall meeting, you said that Eagleford earnings were negative because you disagreed with reserves booking. Do you disagree with SEC guidelines or accounting standards, and what are you doing about this?

8 If you look at the promises made at the Split 5 years ago, none of the objectives (promises) have been met and 5-year cumulative earnings are negative. Who is accountable for this?

9 A consulting firm has been hired for cost reductions. What is the cost of hiring this firm and why could we not do this internally? Isn't this what you pay your managers for? How many employees will be severed this year? Is this the end or will we do this again (again) next year?

10 "Leadership" implies people will follow you. Would you be willing to take a "no confidence" vote of employees and if the response is 90% or more, admit your failure and resign?

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| 2021 views | | 4 replies (last June 16, 2017) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+NN1epYW

4 replies (most recent on top)

Regarding #5, does the BoD or ELT have a clue on how rare this "say on pay" vote is? Are they this ignorant? Target, for example: the stock is down 30%, yet 94% of the shareholders voted "yes" on "say on pay".

If the BoD and ELT are this ignorant, you can bet there's some individual out there willing to take a position on our stock for leadership change, assuming he can get 68% of the shareholders to back him. The ELT death countdown has started.

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Post ID: @1jbe+NN1epYW

Correction, an intelligent ELT is required.

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Post ID: @1chu+NN1epYW
  1. ConocoPhillips is the only E&P that still uses dated decision trees, everyone else uses probablistic texhniques. The question shareholders will ask is why didn’t the ELT hedge the currency risk, why didn’t they hedge oil/gas price risk - who do they think they are, Exxon?

  2. The reserve bookings are they way they are because of the debt level - it’s what the market for ConocoPhillips debt demands. It’s not a technical problem, it’s what our debt customers demand. A common theme here of the ELT not listening to external stakeholders and acting like they know best.

  3. The type of consulting company looking at costs is important - if its a restructuring firm they will only focus on the next three months cashflow. Everything else is out.

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Post ID: @mxn+NN1epYW

The answer is layoffs to all questions.

Layoffs ^10

3000 employees, mostly the millenniums and not ELT.

ELT is required.

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Post ID: @qng+NN1epYW

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