What Wild Things Can You Do to Build a Dominant Energy Team?
What Wild Things Can You Do to Build a Dominant Energy Team?
Find out in Episode 109 of The Energy Detox, which uses local, statewide, national, and global headlines connected to Washington County's Natural Gas industry to help you answer the following questions:
1 - How can you use the recent renaming of Wild Things Park to EQT Park as an excuse to consider what you want people to think of when they see or hear YOUR name?
2 - On the heels of last year's Cecil Township setback ordinance (and de facto ban on future natural gas development) and tomorrow's presentation of a statewide setback rule (frac ban) to the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) in Harrisburg, what better time than now to ask how often you're unwittingly fueling harmful ideas that might SEEM benign at the surface?
[Note: If you are a PA resident, use this link TODAY to make your voice known on proposed setback rules: https://marcelluscoalition.org/united-shale-advocates/take-action/natural-gas-setbacks-campaign/ ]
3 - How does last week's visit to Washington County by Doug Burgum, Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, and the comments he shared alongside leaders of Range Resources, EQT Corporation, Halliburton, and AXPC inspire you to not merely strive to lead a "winning" team, but instead to set your targets on a far more inspiring goal of achieving world-renowned, best-in-class, DOMINANT results?
4 - And speaking of results, how does last month's announced formation of Energy Corps by Scott Tinker and Toby Rice—who reminded attendees during Sec. Burgum's visit that the development of the world-renowned and globally impactful Marcellus Shale began in Washington County 20 years ago—challenge you to focus on metrics that actually matter (like lifting every human in the world up to 50 MWh and $50,000 per year in 50 years) and metrics that can lead to some truly wild things (like eradicating energy poverty and saving the lives of 3+ million people who die each year from indoor air pollution) instead of wasting time, energy, and money chasing fluffy, intangible metrics with minimal impact on your stakeholders?
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to The Energy Detox coming to you today from outside EQT Park in Washington County, Pennsylvania. And the reason that I, Joe Sinnott, your host, am standing outside the home of the Washington Wild Things today is because Washington County is connected to various energy related headlines that cover local news to statewide news to national news to global news.
00:23
And all of those headlines don't just come back to Washington County, but come back to you as a leader in the energy industry. So as we always do here on The Energy Detox, we're going to connect those headlines to you so that you can become a more effective leader. And before we dive into all the details of those headlines and the connections to you, I'm going to step through quickly what those headlines are, starting with the news a couple weeks ago that the home of the Washington Wild Things is now called EQT Park. And moving beyond that local news, the statewide news that we're going to reference today is a conversation tomorrow in Harrisburg about setbacks. That is the distance between activity on a well pad at the well sites themselves and other structures where people live, go to school, work, etc. The more national news that are going to be connected to this episode is the fact that Governor, or former governor, Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is now the interior secretary for the United States, and also a member of the United States is Energy Dominance Council. Well, he visited Washington County a couple days ago. And so we'll talk about that, and again, some of the things he said that can help you ask better questions as a leader. And finally, we're going to dive into some global news that is the energy core initiative that was announced by Toby Rice, president of EQT, and Dr Scott Tinker, just a couple of weeks ago.
01:50
So that being said, let's come back to this EQT Park news. As I said, couple weeks ago, it was announced that this ballpark for at least the next three years will be known as EQT Park, which calls to mind the question of, well, why do companies like EQT invest time and energy and, of course, money to put their names on things? Well, it's pretty straightforward. You want positive name recognition that works in any industry, because when people hear EQT, well, there's certain things you want to come to mind. And while many people might hear you Qt and have lots of different thoughts. Whether it's the activity here, the fact that they used to be the biggest natural gas producer United States, maybe it's the jobs that they produce. Well, why not also have individuals or families that come to a ballpark like this to watch the Washington wild things and the independent pioneer league to enjoy an evening for a reasonable price? Why not also associate that with a big community partner like EQT? Well, again, we can talk for hours about the types of things that EQT does in the community. We could talk about the things that other natural gas companies here in the area do, like Range Resources and their annual 2000 turkeys campaign that has delivered, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of pounds of turkeys to the area, or CNX resources and their Mentorship Academy, which positively impacts high school students in the area. But again, that's not the point today. The point today is to ask you, well, what name recognition do you want to have when people hear your name or see your name? Well, what do you want them to think and again, I you know, we've covered this on the energy detox before, and one of the rebuttals is, well, Joe, I don't really care what people think. You know, I'm hearted, you know, I'm going to do the right thing no matter what. But again, that's very short sighted approach, especially if you're a leader, because if you're not conscious of what people think of when they hear you or your team or your company's name, well, again, there's a very good opportunity that you know might be missed.
03:39
Case in point here, you know, certainly the local operators will speak of their you know their license to operate, right? Well, again, without that license to operate, without that name recognition, without that positive sense of what these companies do, it's only going to be more difficult for them to operate in this area. So to you as an as an individual, right, leading a team? How much more difficult is it when people hear your name or hear your team's name and don't have that positive association that, again, you would want them to have? So again, take the time today to ask yourself, well, what do you want people to say about you and your team? What are they currently saying about you and your team? And most importantly, what actions can you take to help again, form those positive associations that could be valuable to you, much like EQT made an investment, and its peer companies make investments to form those positive associations. And as one final note on this topic, this headline, I'm not just talking about existing leaders and organizations. I'm talking also about people in career transition, because I see this all the time as a coach of people in career transition who have stellar resumes, stellar backgrounds, but they can't articulate that message in a short, punchy way, and they can't, quite frankly, answer what they want other people to say about them when they hear their name, or, more importantly, what they want their colleagues, what they want people in their network to say about them in a very short, impactful. Whole effective manner if somebody says, Hey, tell me a bit about Joe or Sally or John or whatever. So again, your homework today is, what do you want people to say about you, and what actions can you take to make sure that they're actually saying those things that you want them to.
05:14
That being said, let's move on to that second headline, that statewide headline, and that has to do with setbacks, because coming up here tomorrow, as I speak so tomorrow, April 8 in Harrisburg, the Environmental Quality Board, the EqB, will always are poised to hear some conversation about proposed setback rules that are rather extreme, setback rules that would limit the development of natural gas to areas that are no closer than 3000 to roughly 5000 feet, so upwards of a mile setback distance, compared to what is now pretty standard of 500 foot setback distance. And without getting into the details of why that is and what the intentions are, let's talk about what the impacts of this proposal would be, well, the impacts of expanding setback distances to upwards of a mile would mean upwards of 99% of land mass in some counties here in Pennsylvania being off limits to the development of natural gas. And again, regardless of what your opinion is of natural gas, that's quite the impact. But obviously, that's not what the proponents of this increase in setbacks are touting, right? They're touting things that sound relatively benign, relatively positive, right? Hey, for the health and the safety and well being of people that are in areas of natural gas development, why not look at expanding setbacks again? It sounds relatively innocent until you ask the very simple question, well, what are the impacts of doing this? And when you uncover that this is essentially a ban on natural gas development for much of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, well, now you kind of get into some other questions that really should be raised and really should be focused on by the people that are potentially making decisions that being potentially the legislature in Pennsylvania, or perhaps more dangerously, unelected officials in say, departments like the DEP who may be able to implement draconian setback rules by regulation. Now, again, without getting into the details, what does this have to do with you? Well, how often does somebody bring to you some idea that sounds good, that seems almost positive, if not benign. And so you give it some credence, you give it some oxygen, if you will. You say, yeah, go ahead and run with this. Yeah. Let's see what happens. Because again, on its surface, that's not a bad default as a leader, right? As a leader, we're told not to say no, right? You want to encourage thought and creativity. You want people to bring you ideas. And that's all well and good, but it's also important as a leader, to ask crisp, clear questions that could help uncover things that maybe other stakeholders aren't even seeing. And that simple question in this case, is, well, so what? What are the implications? Tell me more about this. What happens if this setback proposal were to take root? And by asking that simple question. Again, if you're getting honest or at least semi honest answers, you'll uncover that, in essence, it is a frac ban. And so again, coming back to you, how often do you find yourself unwittingly fueling ideas that really are going to lead nowhere or potentially lead to harm because they seem innocent and because you simply want people to run with it? How often are you unwittingly allowing people to waste time, energy resources on things that, again, are essentially a dead end, even if they work out as intended? That's the question. And what's nice about that is you don't have to get into the intentions of the parties. You don't have to ask whether the intentions of the people promoting these setback rules are positive or negative, or if they're truly all about the health and safety of the constituents of Pennsylvania, or if their intentions are to ban natural gas activity. It doesn't matter if you're asking the right question, which is, well, tell me what the results are going to be. So that's the challenge for you. In what ways can you better ask those questions up front to save time, energy and money in the long run?
09:00
Moving from that statewide headline to a national headline, and again, that is related to the visit that the interior secretary of the United States, Doug Burgum, paid here to Washington County just a couple of days ago. And during that visit, again, we'll spare you everything that he shared and saw. You can read about all that. You can actually watch his remarks. They're all public and out there. But most significantly it's the fact that he's not just the Secretary of the Interior. He also sits on the energy dominance Council. And again, I'll ask you, well, what do you think of when you hear dominance? Well, you think about something that's a level above simply being secure, winning right domination. That's really gets people, you know, kind of saying, Hey, this is something different, right? You think about it. From a baseball standpoint, people don't just want to have a couple wins. Heck, even the pirates, who play about 25 miles up the road from where I'm standing, you know, they can amass a couple wins. They they beat the the dominant, the mighty Yankees yesterday, dramatic, fast. Position. Maybe in the next couple years, the pirates will have a winning season, but they will continue to be far from dominant. Most likely no people want dominant. That's what players want. That's what fans want, and that's what your team wants. They want domination. And again, I say this because I hear all kinds of very positive and, you know, potentially valuable language about developing winning teams. Yeah, that's all well and good, but how often do you as a leader talk about best in class or world class or dominant or best of the best? All of that language? Again, it might seem like semantics and nuance, but it's a big difference. If you're the one saying, hey, how do we become Best of the Best, or even you as an individual, how do you become best of the best? You know, I say this as a coach, recognizing that there's millions of leadership coaches out there, gurus and podcast hosts and everything else. No, my goal is to be the best of the best. When it comes to oil and gas coaching, it's very simple. And if I didn't have that mantra, well, how you know what is going to be reflected for the people that I work with? Right? Do they want to bring on somebody that's sort of mediocre, just going to have mediocre, ho hum, fine results? Well, no, at least I hope not. Those aren't the people that I want to work with. I want to work with people who are dominant. So the question for you is, how can you shift your language and, of course, your actions in such a way that you're shooting for dominance and not just having a couple of wins.
11:20
That being said, and moving on to the importance of talking about being a world class team. Well, let's talk about that global that final headline that I promised here, and that is the announcement from eqts Toby Rice and Dr Scott Tinker, the founder of the switch Energy Alliance, about a new initiative called energy core. And the idea behind energy core is like other initiatives to eliminate energy poverty and lift up many of the 8 billion people around the world who don't have access to energy and all of the many perks that come with having affordable, reliable, plentiful energy. But again, they're going above and beyond that kind of keeping with this dominance theme, you know, in their words, not just about ending energy poverty, but moving to a point of wealth, of true success, of having that long term generational access to resources that can help fuel entire countries. And well, how are they going to do that? And what's the point of this when it comes to you? Well, it's the fact that they're honing in on metrics that actually matter. So again, while there's all kinds of nice sounding, well intentioned initiatives and organizations out there that are doing great work, how many of them have a simple, Measurable, Actionable framework like these energy core folks do, because their framework, and again, it might sound a little bit of a slogan, but it's revolving around this idea of 50, 50, 50. In 50 years, getting the world to a point where your average person has access, or at least is impacted, by 50 megawatts of electricity, energy per year, 50 megawatts per excuse me, per individual per year, and also being connected per year per capita to $50,000 of GDP. Again, two very simple numbers, 50,000 US dollars in GDP per capita per year, and 50 megawatts of electricity, very simple metrics. And the reason I bring that up today is because so many individual leaders and companies focus on all kinds of different metrics that, again, sound good, but do they really impact what people's bottom lines are? Do they really speak to what stakeholders want? Because certainly when it comes to energy, I'll channel the words of Doug Burgum, and he said that the value of the kilowatt hour, he said, is more valuable than it's ever been before. And it's true, because that kilowatt hour translates into wealth and well being, and again, not just financial wealth, but education and health and everything else that is negatively impacting the 3 million plus people per year who die of indoor air pollution because they're stuck burning wood and dung and everything else. But again, I'm not going to go down that path here in the interest of time, but I am going to simply remind you to ask yourself, as we often do here, on the energy detox, are you focusing on that metrics that matter? Are you focusing on things like, again, winning championships in World Series instead of the occasional win or the occasional player who, again, attracts a couple thousand extra fans per game than you would otherwise, focus on metrics that matter instead of fluff, and again, you will find yourself in a much better position, and your team will find itself in a much better position.
14:32
And so with that, I want to close with two words that Doug Burgum opened with and closed with during his remarks in Washington County, and that is, thank you. In his words, the energy industry hasn't heard quite enough of those two words here over the last four years. So thank you for being a part of the energy industry, if you are, and either way, thank you for being a part of the energy detox. And I hope you join us again here next time. So thanks again, and take care.