(Shale) Insight to (Leadership) Action
“Insight without action is worthless.” - Marie Forleo
On the heels of this year’s SHALE INSIGHT® conference, what leadership actions can you take to strengthen and sustain yourself, your team, your company, and your industry?
To help you answer that question, this episode of The Energy Detox will translate a theme from each of the conference keynotes into proven and practical leadership steps you can take today to go from “insight to action.”
keynote / action outline
Speaker: Jezree Friend
Topic: Energy: The Bedrock of the Manufacturing Sector
(Shale) Insight: Everyone is looking for “the next best thing.” But with natural gas, we already have it.
Leadership Action: Take stock of your existing resources—human, financial, technological—before running towards a shiny new object.
Speaker: Toby Rice
Topic: Unleash US LNG
(Shale) Insight: We’re not just digging holes in the ground for profit; we’re doing it for a higher purpose.
Leadership Action: Clearly, concisely, and convincingly connect your team’s day-to-day tasks to your organization’s higher mission.
Speaker: Nick Dell’Osso
Topic: Answering the Call for Reliable, Affordable, Lower Carbon Energy
(Shale) Insight: If you’re solving important problems—like getting people out of poverty and bettering lives—then you should have an opportunity to make significant returns.
Leadership Action: Identify and address any signs of guilt your team may harbor as a result of achieving success.
Fireside Chatters: Neil Chatterjee and Greg Floerke
Topic: Addressing Urgent Infrastructure Needs to Drive a Secure and Sustainable Energy Future
(Shale) Insight: Other countries enviously look upon America’s infrastructure and want to learn from us.
Leadership Action: Share a currently tight-chested tidbit about your team with another team to chip away at organizational siloes that can be as limiting as the frivolous lawsuits and bureaucratic hurdles stifling pipeline infrastructure development.
Speaker: Josh Shapiro
(Shale) Insight: This Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate stated that he won’t accept “the false choice between protecting jobs and protecting the environment” without taking a moment to acknowledge the undeniably positive impact that natural gas development has had on the Commonwealth of PA, let alone the United States as a whole.
Leadership Action: Demonstrate to a potential rival/competitor/antagonist that you understand their platform before parroting misleading talking points.
Speaker: John Fetterman
(Shale) Insight: This candidate for U.S. Senate did not provide many insights during his minute-long recorded message.
Leadership Action: Take some action to demonstrate to your team that you sincerely want to better understand the work they’re doing.
Speaker: Nick Deiuliis
Topic: The Awakening of Shale 3.0: Natural Gas as a Catalyst Fuel, Not a Bridge Fuel
(Shale) Insight: Natural gas has been and will continue to drive a better future for humanity; viewing natural gas as a transitory evil is dangerous and unrealistic.
Leadership Action: Ask yourself in what ways you as a leader are acting as a “bridge” that merely passes ideas back and forth instead of acting as a “catalyst” that transforms existing resources and processes into fresh and valuable new ideas and outcomes.
Speaker: Matt Mangum
Topic: The Opportunity for a Decarbonized Economy
(Shale) Insight: Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia must collaborate to maximize the potential of a hydrogen hub in Appalachia.
Leadership Action: Hold your team accountable for the construction of unproductive silos.
Speaker: Ditte Juul Jørgensen (introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin, whose permitting reform bill suffered a setback just as the SHALE INSIGHT conference was kicking off)
Topic: The European Energy Challenge: The Scale, the Impact, the Solutions
(Shale) Insight: No simple solution exists as Europe attempts to balance its continued commitment to decarbonization with the unintended consequences of past policies and an over-reliance on Russian energy.
Leadership Action: Take stock of how reliant you and your team are on handshake deals, fragile assumptions, and promises made by unreliable parties.
Speaker: Dr. Oz
(Shale) Insight: This U.S. Senate candidate and heart surgeon shared that the enemies of domestic energy aren’t acting on science, but on radical ideology.
Leadership Action: Share the facts about what you, your team, your company, and your industry does to combat the false claims made irrational, ignorant, or intellectually dishonest opponents.
Speaker: Doug Matstriano
(Shale) Insight: As a veteran who was a part of wars fought over energy, this PA gubernatorial candidate questions why the United States would ever want to put ourselves in that position again?
Action: Take the time to revisit and understand history—of your team, your company, your competitors, or your industry—before making decisions.
Other Contributors: Marcellus Shale Coalition President Dave Callahan, his MSC team, other speakers & breakout session participants, sponsors, exhibitors, the staff at the Bayfront Convention Center, organizers of various happy hours, and all attendees who spent countless hours in conversation
Topic: Quality Connections
(Shale) Insight: Some of the most impactful insights arise not from people on stage, but from the authentic, conscious, enthusiastic conversations that ensue when the right mix of people are brought together in one place.
Leadership Action: Do one authentic, conscious, and enthusiastic task right now that better connects you to one or more people on your team.
Additional Content
“Decoding the Leadership Lessons of S.H.A.L.E. I.N.S.I.G.H.T. 2023” (The Energy Detox, Episode 85)
“Shale conference forwards solutions amid energy crisis” (Pittsburgh Business Times)
“Natural gas can’t be replaced by green sources, industry argues” (Washington Examiner)
“Candidates for Pennsylvania governor, Senate detail energy policies at shale conference” (Erie Times-News)
“Appalachian Basin Primed to Lead Global Energy Evolution, Speakers Confirm at Shale Insight” (Marcellus Shale Coalition Blog)
Disclaimers
Although Witting Partners is a member of the Marcellus Shale Coalition, everything expressed during this podcast episode and anything contained on this page in no way represents the opinion of the MSC, which has not authorized, approved, or endorsed this content.
All information contained is deemed to be in the public domain; and all insights could have been reasonably derived using such public information by someone who was not present at the conference.
Speakers highlighted in this episode were limited to keynote speakers and the 4 political candidates; this in no way is meant to diminish the insights shared by those who also came to the main podium or who contributed to the various breakout sessions.
Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Have you ever heard the phrase insight to action? If so, there's a good chance that you've heard it in the same context that I first heard it several years ago, when a manager working for me on a data governance and analytics team would repeatedly talk about this idea that we weren't just there to generate insights, be they dashboards or reports or whatever else. Our job is to generate insights so that leaders within the company can take some sort of action, so they can make some sort of decision. And this idea came to me last week, while sitting at the shale insight conference in Erie, Pennsylvania, when I was inundated with lots of good insights, sitting there and listening to speakers and participating in workshops and having lots of casual conversations. There were plenty of insights that were being tossed around and ingested by me and hundreds of other attendees. But the bigger question is, so what, what do you do with those insights? What actions can you take, and in some cases, the actions that were being requested of us as attendees were very clear, it was to enhance our understanding and in turn, share that understanding with others, whether it was others within our companies, or whether it was friends and family, especially with an election looming, our action was to share those insights to inform people to educate people so that they can take some action, particularly as it relates to those upcoming elections. And so today, I want to take that same concept, and apply it to you as a leader to take some of the insights that I gained last week at the shale insight conference, and translate them into leadership actions that you can take to be more effective. And so that's the plan. Today, we're going to step quickly through the agenda from Shalin site, we're going to take most of the keynote speakers, if you will, and we're going to look at their topics, we're going to take one insight from each of them and we're going to translate into something that you can do to be a better leader. And before we begin, I want to throw out three disclaimers, the first of which is that while I'm my company reading partners are members of the Marcellus Shale coalition which puts on the shale insight conference, this podcast and everything I'm going to share is in no way endorsed by or approved by or authorized by the Marcellus Shale coalition or any of its member companies. The second disclaimer is that everything I'm going to share is largely in the public domain. So I'm not divulging anything that you needed to be at shale insight to have gleaned from the agenda, which I have in front of me here or from several of the news articles that were written or in some cases from the material, the content that presenting companies shared after the fact. So again, the insights that I'm sharing, not proprietary, and I'm in no way representing myself as a member of the media, relaying everything that went on at shale insight. And the third disclaimer is that I am not going to step through every single person that came up on stage, I'm not going to step through all of the various people that led or participated in workshops at shaylen site, and certainly won't be representing the insights shared by the hundreds of attendees and the insights that came forth during lunches and those casual conversations and conversations at the hotel bar or happy hours. Although needless to say, some of those insights were perhaps more valuable and more actionable than some of the ones that were shared on stage. But nevertheless, I want to make sure that no one feels slighted because again, lots of people participated in this, including, of course, Dave Callahan, president of the Marcellus Shale coalition, and his team of employees at the Marcellus Shale Coalition who put on a tremendous event. And I think taking Dave and his team and all of the attendees and everyone else who participated, we can wrap that into one big insight to kick things off. And that insight is that when you bring people together, in one venue, one event, you are going to generate tremendous insights and connections. It's kind of a no brainer, right? Any conference you go to you bring people together, and you should have some amount of enthusiasm that is generated by the act of bringing people together. And so the leadership action for you to consider at the outset here is what is one thing that you can do today, to better connect with your team. Whether it's your team collectively, whether it's one member of your team, what can you do beyond the ho hum normal activities that you have, whether it's a meeting or a phone call or a team's message or whatever? What's one thing that you can do perhaps a little bit out of the out out of the ordinary but certainly conscious and authentic, what can you do to better connect with people instead of putting on some giant and tremendous conference like was done by the measure sell a shell coalition this week in Erie. So there's your first leadership action that you can take today. Now, moving on to the keynote speakers, the first keynote speaker on Wednesday of last Week was jazz refrained. And Jeffrey is a member and employee of the I've got my cheat sheet here my agenda, the manufacturer and Business Association. And his topic was energy, the bedrock of the manufacturing sector. And the one insight that I gleaned from jaziri, among many insights was that everyone is looking for the next big thing. But right here in Pennsylvania, we have it, we have the next best thing. And that's natural gas. And so the leadership action that you can take from that insight from Jazayeri is that you should take stock right now, of all of your existing resources, whether it's personnel related, whether it is technology related, maybe you got some software resource that's been hanging on the sidelines, or even in your family life, right? You know, what's the first step towards a fall cleaning exercise in your home, going around picking things up looking at it and saying, Do I have use for this or not. And you may uncover one or two things that's sitting and collecting dust literally in that case, or figuratively, in the case of your business, or your team that you could put to work instead of trying to find that next new shiny object. So take that action today. Let's doubt your resources and ask yourself whether you're being distracted by the next thing instead of taking advantage of what's in front of you. The next keynote speaker was Toby rice, President and CEO of EQ T America's largest natural gas company. And Toby as has been the case for the last several months spoke about the need to unleash us LNG. And again, Toby's message EQ T's message is out there in the public domain. So many of the insights you shared are ones that you may have heard before. But one of the insights that stuck with me that I jotted down next to my agenda here was that we're not just digging holes in the ground for profit, we're digging we're doing it, we're digging those holes for a higher purpose. And again, from a leadership standpoint, one action that you can take with that insight from Toby in mind is to identify the ways in which the day to day tasks of you and your team members are aligned with your company's higher purpose. Because for far too many leaders, and far too many teams that I work with, there is a big disconnect. There's the day to day churn, but the individuals are unconscious, or can't articulate how those day to day tasks tie to some bigger purpose. And that's not to say that they don't, of course, but if they're not conscious of how it connects, and if a leader can't clearly articulate how they're connected, then it's inevitable that you're going to have some effectiveness, at least in terms of morale and enthusiasm. When it feels like you're going through the motions and you don't see how it's connected. So go ahead, look at your company's mission statement. Look at the day to day tasks that your people are doing, and build a clear connection between the two so that people don't drift away and lose motivation and lose morale.
08:10
The next speaker that we'll talk about here is Nick dill, also the president and CEO of Chesapeake. And Nick's talk, his subject was titled, answering the call for reliable, affordable lower carbon energy. And one of the insights from his talk is that if you're solving important problems, like getting people out of energy, poverty and bringing a better quality of life, then you should expect to be able to make good returns good financial results. And it's true, I don't think anybody in the room was arguing against that. And certainly Nick is proud of his company's enhanced focus now, which will lead to substantial returns. But the leadership lesson for you is to be on guard for those times when people within your sphere of influence might actually feel guilty about being successful about winning about generating good returns, whether their financial returns or whether they're being recognized for some good work. So you need to identify those times where for whatever reason, people are inclined to shy away from the pride that they should have in their work, you need to squash that and you need to make it very clear that it is okay to be compensated for to be rewarded for hard work and success. Because that feeling of guilt, even if it's unconscious can be incredibly toxic for a team or for an individual and can slow people down and can can spread out and can allow them to be susceptible to voices out there that are pointing fingers at an industry like the energy industry who's doing noble work, moral work, good work, necessary work solving problems, As Nick said, and it makes sense that when you're doing that work that you do get rewarded. So as a leader, make sure that your people recognize that, you know, as silly and simplistic as this might sound, it's okay to be rewarded for doing hard work and first Solving important problems. The next speakers that were up on stage that I'll talk through here was part of a fireside chat. And those two speakers were Neal Chatterley, who was a former FERC chairman, and Greg flirty, who's vice president and CEO of NP LX. And their fireside chat was titled, addressing urgent infrastructure needs to drive a secure and sustainable energy future. And one of the main insights there that I gleaned is that other countries look upon the United States with great envy because our infrastructure, as much as we we might point to the flaws in infrastructure development and the hurdles of infrastructure development, which was the point of the fireside chat, the reality is that our infrastructure as it is, is a heck of a lot better than the infrastructure you're going to find in lots of other nations. And getting that insight leads to of course, a leadership action that you can take, and that leadership action is to share. Again, this, this might sound like something you would be doing in a preschool class, but encourage your yourself and your team to share best practices, just as the United States is often asked to share best practices and the FERC and other regulatory bodies are asked to share our country's best practices when it comes to infrastructure. What are you doing as leader to share your best practices with others, within your own organization outside of your organization, at events like shale insight or through other trade organizations? What are you doing to break down those silos so that everyone can benefit. And certainly when it comes to the Marcellus Shale Coalition, a lot of those insights are related to safety and environmental best practices, which means that when you're sharing best practices, everybody wins. An incident of any sort, whether it's health and safety related, or whether it's environmental related, doesn't do anybody any good. So bring that same idea internally to your company where you might have divisions, and you might have some barriers and silos. But do something today take some sort of action that breaks that down, offer an olive branch in the form of some information, some best practice to break down that silo for the good of the organization. Moving on to the next couple speakers, here is a pair of politicians who are vying for statewide office here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the first of which being Josh Shapiro, who is the Democratic nominee for governor. And one of the insights if you can call them an insight that Josh Shapiro shared was that he will not accept and these are his words here, the false choice between protecting jobs and protecting the environment. And so what was interesting about that quote, is that I saw it as somewhat insightful, because the way in which he said it implied that
12:58
we aren't already having good paying sustainable jobs in the natural gas industry. And as if we aren't already making the environment better. There was a clear track record. And this was shared by multiple speakers, there is a clear track record clear results of our industry and the positive impact that we've had on the environment. So the way in which he shared that as if there would be a false choice, as if we're operating under some false choice between having these natural gas jobs and protecting our environment, shares, quite frankly, what's going on in Mr. Shapiro's head, which is that he believes that he is going to fight first and foremost, for protecting the environment. And he's going to make sure that those jobs are supporting that and almost implying that you can't have both which, again, it takes a bit of a wordsmithing to get around to his insights. But nevertheless, for as confusing and cryptic and almost antagonistic, as his message was, what is the leadership action that you can take? Well, my interpretation is, you can demonstrate right now to a potential rival or antagonist or whatever you want to call it, that you understand their platform, before you start making misleading or irritating remarks and rehashing political talking points. So again, Josh Shapiro showing up and recording a video. So showing up virtually, if you will, he was there but what he said really didn't demonstrate that he has any appreciation for what the industry has already done, had he come out and acknowledged everything that the industry has already done for the environment, in addition to good paying jobs, and quite frankly, the you know, energy stability of of all the residents and certainly the pocketbooks of all the residents in the Commonwealth, had he come out and said that and then alluded to what he wants to do to build upon that that would have been an entirely different message, but instead he comes out and says that, hey, you know, we don't always see eye to eye and I do not buy on into this false choice between jobs and the environment as if we weren't already doing it. So again, a missed opportunity for him there and an opportunity for you as a leader, to proactively demonstrate that you understand what your competitors, if you will, are already doing you understand what they're doing. So that when you now build upon that message and build upon some things that you don't like, what they're doing, you don't like how they're doing it, you're gonna be in a much stronger spot than say, Josh Shapiro was moving on to the next speaker who also appeared virtually, it would be John Fetterman candidate for US Senate, again here in Pennsylvania. And in the roughly 60 seconds that he spoke in his pre recorded message, there wasn't a whole ton of insights to expound upon. So we'll stick with, we'll kind of jump straight to the leadership lesson, if you will, from Mr. fentimans. Top. And that is to take some action to actually do something or even just say something that demonstrates to your team that you sincerely want to better understand what they're doing so similar to Josh Shapiro's message, which was sort of a missed opportunity, John Fetterman is message was so short, and so devoid of any substance, that he's allowing everyone else to basically make up a story of what he thinks or doesn't think he missed an opportunity to demonstrate that he actually understands what this industry does and how important it is. But he didn't take that. So people are led to believe that he either has no understanding, or is so intellectually dishonest, that he doesn't want to acknowledge the good that the industry has done, or that he's simply a politician, or of course, with things swirling regarding his health that he simply can't piece together something more than 60 seconds, that would, in any way, shape or form demonstrate his commitment to the natural gas industry. And not just as he put it, the current natural gas workers that he wants to transition into something else as quickly as possible. And speaking of transitions, let's move on to someone who demonstrated a tremendous amount more intellect to then we witnessed from John Fetterman. And that is Nick Dooley as president and CEO of CNX. And Nick, far from a 62nd, non insightful recorded message, he delivered the recorded message, but it was more like a 25 minute
17:35
college level class on, quite frankly, leadership in many ways, and the difference in those who are in leadership positions who embrace this idea of bridging to the future and transitioning to the future, and who believe and who speak about the fact that natural gas is merely a transition fuel, a bridge fuel, and those who have this catalyst mindset, who believe in building and new ideas and all of the above solutions. And again, I will not go into the details on what Nick shared because CNX and Nick shared his entire talk, it's all written out and all the support materials that you can see LinkedIn, these notes here. But again, coming back to the main topic, natural gas as a catalyst fuel and not a bridge fuel, something that Rob with Seneca resources spoke to at the very beginning of the conference, and something that Nick has been talking about for months publicly in different talks on his podcast, and certainly in CNX earnings releases, so again, not necessarily a new concept, although there's a lot more meat to it, than he has shared before. But what's the takeaway for you? What's the takeaway from you from this idea that natural gas is a catalyst fuel and not a bridge fuel? Well, it's this idea that you as a leader, want to be a catalyst leader, and not a bridge leader. Because what is a bridge leader, bridge leader is somebody that simply passes things back and forth, right? Doesn't necessarily add a whole lot to the equation. But it's simply moving things here and there, and maybe, you know, putting a twist on things once in a while and acting as a as a filter. As a pinch point. As you might see driving through Pittsburgh at rush hour, some of our bridges can turn into pinch points. So the action for you today is to lay out the ways in which you might be more of a bridge leader than a catalyst leader. You want to be a catalyst leader and somebody that sparks something new that transforms existing ideas and resources into something that is going to add much more value that can multiply value that can encourage others to multiply value and come up with new ideas, new insights, that's what you want to be. So again, your action today is to take stock and ask the ways in which you are a bridge leader. And then if you want to spend some time identifying the ways that you're a more of a catalyst leader, that's a decent exercise to do as well but nevertheless, a little introspection they're supported. by Nick Julius is very academic and entertaining and worthwhile talk if you want to give that a listen, again linked in the show notes. The next talker was Matt Mangum, business opportunity manager who works on carbon capture and storage with Shell. And Matt's talk was the opportunity for a decarbonized economy. And, you know, Matt, a lot, a lot of insights, certainly a lot of, I think, technical information,
20:27
a lot of visuals about how a potential hydrogen hub and carbon capture hub and all of the different hubs that we're talking about here in Appalachia, how they all come together, and how do you have all these different pieces. And really, the the biggest insight there that I jotted down is that Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia must collaborate to maximize the potential of a hydrogen hub and a carbon capture hub and, and whatever hub you want to call, right here in Appalachia, I'm talking about collaboration, again, at a very high level, you know, software topic, if you will, but with very practical implications when we're talking about billions and billions upon dollars, not just the billions of dollars that the government is offering for hubs here in Appalachia, but obviously the billions of dollars that such a hub would generate in revenue and certainly impact over the next several decades. And so for you, what's, what's the takeaway, what's the action is it just to go out and collaborate? Well, kinda. But it's also kind of harkening back to one of the other actions before and that is to make sure that you are sharing your best practices with others. So we talked earlier about sharing best practices as a way to demonstrate to others that, hey, you already understand a little bit about what they're doing. And same idea with what Matt was sharing, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, it behooves them, it behooves the region to share their best practices. And so for you, as a leader, hold your team accountable for the construction of unproductive silos. So you need to make sure that if say, You were overseeing Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia figuratively, you need to put things in place to ensure that they are collaborating. And from a team standpoint, you need to be the one on guard, making sure that, you know, the individual employees that might be under your purview, are not setting up silos, because they might be subtle. And the worst thing that can happen is that you find out about silos that they're putting up because they're not communicating from some other leader. So it's up to you to be proactive, and hold them accountable, and make sure that they are collaborating, don't just again, talk about it, don't just share insights, but set up some sort of system where when they are not doing their job, when they are not sharing when they are unnecessarily unproductively building a silo or a wall, you know that they're going to be held accountable. They know that they're going to be held accountable. Moving on from Matt's sort of hyper local view here in Appalachia, the next speaker was detained jewel Jorgensen, who's the Director General for energy with the European Commission? And what's interesting about her talk in you know, among other things, is that she was introduced by Joe Manchin, a mirror, gosh, I think less than 48 hours from his bill, his permitting bill, suffering a pretty big setback, because it wasn't included in all of the efforts to keep the government open, and he had to withdraw it. So a big setback for him. But I think that setback for Joe Manchin and some would argue for the industry and for, you know, the need to have better permitting and better regulations and less bureaucracy. It in many ways ties in to some of the themes from the ambassador general, or director, general, I'm sorry, because the insight there is that no simple solution exists in Europe right now, to overcome the, you know, decades of policy that were in place that in part led to this and to overcome, of course, the impacts of their reliance on Russia. And what's interesting about that is it parallels Joe Manchin, who again, had this reliance on handshake deals with some of his fellow Democrats to get the, the IRA, the so called inflation reduction act through and part of that, of course, part of him being on board was these handshake deals this this agreement from some people on his side of the aisle to go ahead and support a permitting bill. After the IRA, our Ira was passed. And of course, that hasn't happened. So all that being said, the question for you channeling Europe as a whole and channeling Joe Manchin is
24:39
take stock of how reliant you and your team are on handshake deals on fragile assumptions and promises made by unreliable parties. That is an action that you can take right now. think through how strong your progress really is, how sustainable Your progress is, if it's relying on Have fluffy, non binding handshakes and nods of the head and other parties, not maybe not quite as extreme as Vladimir Putin, but other parties who don't have any firm commitment to continue supporting you in the way that they have been. So that's a, again, another sort of introspective action you can take but an action nonetheless, that can ensure that you're not surprised. And you're not going to perhaps your other stakeholders, perhaps managers above you, when things don't go wrong, saying, Well, I wasn't able to get this done, because this other party didn't come through and then inevitably saying, Well, why should they have come through? What did you have in place to ensure that they would come through? Don't allow yourself and your team to get to that point to ask that question today? Are you relying on a shaky foundation, much as Europe's been relying upon for decades, quite frankly, as they, again focused on bridging and transitioning and not strengthening what was already in place. And of course, Joe Manchin, who, again, decided to go along with something he wasn't a complete fan of based on some shaky foundation based on shaky agreements that he made with others. And with that, move on from Joe Manchin, the politician to two other politicians that concluded the keynote speakers from the Shaolin State Conference, the first of which was Dr. Oz, who, of course is running for US Senate here in Pennsylvania. And one of the insights from Dr. Oz who was there in person on like his counterpart, John Fetterman. Dr. Oz, made the claim that you read my notes here to get you to get exactly what I jotted down. But basically, you know, he said that those who are opposing domestic energy. And we talked a lot about opponents throughout the shale and state conference, but those who are opposing domestic energy, are not relying on facts, not relying on signs. And of course, Dr. Oz says all this as someone who's pretty smart, a surgeon, he talked about, you know, inventing things and new approaches and technologies. You know, he obviously he did all of those things before he was the talk show host he was so he understands science, but he's saying no, the opponents of natural gas are not doing things based on science, or based on some radical ideology. And again, I think, regardless of where you land, politically, there's a lot of truth to that. This, you know, science is kind of down here and the ideology is up here. And unfortunately, those two are sort of running in opposite directions. So the question for you from a leadership standpoint is or the action I should say, that you can take is to share the facts, share the facts about what you, your team, your company, in your industry, are doing, so that you can combat false claims against you. Share the facts, share the signs, don't let other people you know, run with some sort of story. So if you're going to take the approach, say of John Fetterman, who is inclined to really not say much at all, and allow other people to kind of, you know, make up their own stories? Well, again, you're you're asking for trouble. So take the Dr. Oz approach and his recommendation, which is to go out and talk to people. And obviously Dr. Oz was doing so in, you know, under the guise of an election coming up and encouraging people, you know, to go out and not tell people who to vote for, but to just share the facts, share the signs. And you can do the same thing internally, whether it's some trivial thing that your your team is working on, but you want to make sure is clearly communicated to the rest of the organization, you need to be the one to do it to debunk people who might again, be somewhat opposed to you or don't have a full picture of what you're doing, and who might be susceptible to ideological opinions, if you will. The final speaker was Doug mastriano, who is a candidate for governor again here in Pennsylvania running against Josh Shapiro. And one of the insights that I gleaned from Doug Mastriano. His talk is that he is well versed in history. He understands history, and in particular, he shared his history as a veteran fighting in wars that were related to energy. And his insight that he shared with everyone is, why would we as a country, want to put ourselves in a position where we have some desire, if not need to
29:30
put our men and women in uniform in jeopardy and send them to go fight a war that's related to energy. Why would we want to put ourselves in a position where we do not have maximum energy, energy security? We've done it before. It's costly, certainly in terms of lies, let alone the trillions of dollars that are spent on war. Why would we want to do that again? And so translating that relatively heavy topic into a leadership action that you can take on I would recommend that you take the time to revisit and understand history, the history of your company, the history of the individuals on your team, the history of your industry, and understand what's been done before. So that you don't find yourself in a position repeating history. Because as you know, things cycle through over and over and over again. But one thing that I encourage people that I work with when they're looking to share their story internally, do some sort of, at least on the extreme dog and pony show, or whatever it is to, to educate people internally about what they're doing. The first thing that they should always do is start with history, what's been done before what's been tried before, what are other people doing. Because it is a mistake, it's very common, especially in a fast paced industry, or in an industry where you might be trying to make a name for yourself or differentiate yourself, it's very tempting to just go a mile a minute, and jump straight to what you plan to do and why you're the best and why you're doing what you're doing. And all of those things without slowing down and giving context into what has been done before. Because you might assume that the people that you're talking with already understand what's been done before. And if that's the case, great, but they need a reminder. And if your assumption is wrong, that people don't really have an appreciation for what's been done before, which is the case, in many circumstances, then it's on you to do that history to do that research, so that you, your team, and probably more importantly, the people that you're talking with, don't find themselves making the same mistakes and putting themselves in a position that might be unenviable. And in the case of energy security, also preventable. So with all that being said, I appreciate your your time and attention, as is always the case here on the energy detox. And I encourage you first and foremost, if you're going to a conference, certainly know that ATC is kicking off today down in Houston. So if you're going to a conference like that, don't just sit there passively and ingest insights from others do so constantly asking what actions you can take as a result of those insights. Even if they're not directly related, as was the case here with leadership. Even if you're not in the energy industry, and happened to be listening to this, hopefully some of the insights that I shared and the topics from some of the speakers translate into leadership actions that you can take, regardless of what your role is. And regardless of whether you're even thinking about it in terms of your professional life, or it could be your personal life. The other takeaway, of course, for you today, is to share your own insights with others. So as I said at the outset, one of the one number one action item, the number one takeaway from the shale insight conference is to take that understanding, take some of the stats and the figures that were shared by all those speakers and to share them with others. Well, again, I will reiterate that today that that is perhaps the simplest action that you can take. You don't need to be a formal leader to do that, of course, you just need to be a fellow human being and citizen that can take some of the insights that were shared at a conference like that and relay them to somebody else who in turn, can take his or her own actions. So with that, thank you again for tuning in. Have a great rest of the week and take care