Global Oil and Gas Corporation

Shale Team helped their technology services with a global organizational redesign and look at cultural realignment in order to retain talent.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE SOLUTION RESULT

Business Challenge

Shale Team partnered with a British multinational oil and gas corporation headquartered in the UK, which has US corporate offices in Houston Texas, to launch an organizational redesign and cultural realignment strategy to retain their top talent. They have operations in more than 20 countries across Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, North America and South America with 5,200 employees from 70 nations. The corporation has a lean management structure which gives them the skills and capabilities of a larger corporation, while retaining the speed and agility of a small company.


Their management structure provides them with a competitive advantage in exploration and their unique LNG model has been key to their success. The corporation produces around 680,000 barrels of oil per day and has a strong track record in exploration, having added on average 1 billion barrels of oil equivalent resources to their portfolio every year for a decade. The company’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) business is the largest supplier of LNG to the United States.


The most pressing imperative for this corporation in their quest for growth was their biggest challenge of retaining talent and leadership needed to secure and sustain it. But it was not just people. It was securing the right people, in the right place, at the right time. Equally important, it was the entire organization acting in harmony to execute strategies for winning results. Like so many peer corporations during rapid growth, this company was struggling to achieve results because the disconnect between their goals and their people processes were murky or nonexistent.

Solution

For their IT infrastructure department, the corporation decided to employ Shale Team to provide an intensive, efficient, and collaborative process that enabled them to first hone in on the talent implications of their core business strategies, and then to confidently define, prioritize, and sequence the critical talent capabilities they needed to activate strategies and drive execution. The net result was senior leadership buy-in with their emergent talent strategy.


With the aim of accelerating international expansion, we engaged the entire leadership team in significantly reorganizing and reformulating work processes and their IT Infrastructure Project Management Office. We also fostered organizational change and realignment by transforming HR from a transactional service area into a strategic partner. Together, we conducted a comprehensive review of the key drivers for aligned roles and leadership actions. These included a strategy for converting plans to action, organizing for success, processes to clear the pathway, identifying people who ignite talent, forming a culture to build engagement, and critical technology elements.


We also created a new and more effective dynamic around the governance and project management delivery model. This involved meeting with top leaders to establish critical business strategies, objectives and positioning. We then facilitated a three-day off-site event where participants explored key characteristics of high-performance teams and created a roadmap for success.

Result

Through our organization design and change management services, we helped the IT Infrastructure Project Management Office thrive during a period of rapid expansion and business growth. Our program enhanced the execution of core IT processes, boost IT workforce engagement, and foster a new culture of quality, speed and teamwork.


The corporation successfully achieved its results, which provided a quick impact within eighteen months. They reported a decrease in annual turnover from 30% to less than 10%. In addition, their global IT PMO met milestones and delivered projects 25% faster and reduced costs 30% overall for a $25 million productivity improvement.