open briefing... when, page-8

re: sterling comment on chinguetti Speaking of Woodside, here's Slugcatcher's views of the recent events unfolded at Woodside...

http://www.energyreview.net/storyview.asp?storyid=62439§ionsource=s140

Culture clash or corporate psychosis?


Monday, 24 July 2006


A CLASH of culture is something Slugcatcher imagined was confined to the Middle East where east and west routinely do battle in places like Iraq and Lebanon. It is not something he expected to find in an Australian oil and gas company.


But find a culture clash he did when taking a look the other days at events unfolding inside Woodside Petroleum, where management is complaining about the business not hitting profit targets, and having a culture which is "not fast enough, slick enough, flexible enough, or responsive enough".

Readers of national newspapers will remember those descriptions of Woodside as coming from the company's chief executive, Don Voelte, in an internal memo that was widely leaked.

While investors might have agreed with Voelte's sentiment, The Slug found the self-criticism immensely curious because it seems to this simple scribbler that Woodside is a company showing all the signs of bi-polar disorder, a sort of corporate schizophrenia.

This diagnosis from Dr Blower (BA, Calcutta, failed) was arrived at by interpreting the exhortation from Voelte for everyone to work harder, smarter, and with great flexibility and responsiveness.

Failure to do so, he warned, might see Woodside miss its own production and profit targets.

But at the same Voelte was issuing his instruction for a smarter, more innovative, workforce, there were people not far from his office wrapping everyone in cotton wool, and exhorting them to take more care, to not take risks, and to strictly follow the rule book.

The "don't do anything" brigade at Woodside can be found in the human resources and occupational health and safety branch, who have drilled into Woodside staff a message which reads "step outside these boundaries and you'll get sacked". Oh, and by the way, getting sacked is for your own good because we know best!

The rules The Slug especially likes are the ones about not walking across a street except at a controlled crossing, and the one about only being allowed to walk down a set of stairs while holding the handrail.

Believe it or not, dear reader, but to breach either of those rules at Woodside risks a fine and/or the sack.

Rules like this, which most of us are taught as children, make perfect sense if we are attempting to live in a risk-free world – a place that The Slug believes does not exist.

And, while not criticising the sentiment of safe road crossing and safe stair walking, he finds it truly astonishing that these are things being enforced with such vigour at a company that then turns around and says it wants staff to be slicker and more responsive in running the business.

To completely stretch the example, consider the quickest route from the Woodside office in Perth to a cup of coffee (or a glass of chardonnay) at the joint called Bar One on the other side of Milligan Street.

Answer: directly across the road – and perfectly legally under the WA Traffic Code because you are sufficiently far enough away from the nearest controlled intersection.

If you followed the Woodside safety first manual, you have to walk down to the lights on the corner of St Georges Terrace (about 50m) and then back up the other side. Not only time wasting, but just plain silly and a rule that treats adults as children.

Comparing dopey safety rules that might apply to your granny in a retirement village with a plea for staff to work smarter and harder might seem a bit of a stretch – but it's not.

The safety first (and at all costs approach to life) is symptomatic of a company that is risk averse, and a company that doesn't like people who are fast, slick, flexible and responsive – and yet they're the very people that Voelte wants on his staff.

Perhaps it's time for Woodside to see a corporate shrink?



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