Today was my last working day at Murphy. It has been three long and rather exhausting years. I was given a nice little farewell at the KL office. That said, I have to admit that I am somewhat relieved that it is all over, and that I can finally return to doing what I do and like best.
I received a word of commendation from the Shore Base Manager for the Valedictory Address that I e-mailed to my team in Labuan. So, I thought I would post it here for posterity, and perhaps as a measure of inspiration for the future.
* * * * * * * * * *
To:
My esteemed Labuan team
Firstly, I apologise for failing to make the trip to Labuan for last Friday's Monthly Shore Base HSE Meeting, as an unfortunate series of hiccups with the flight plan changes resulted in my not being able to secure a seat on the plane. I hope you will kindly accept this written valediction in lieu of my presence in the flesh to deliver it in Labuan to all of you. Besides, being intrinsically shy and having mild speech impedimus, I am of the opinion that I tend to write a lot better than I speak (in just about any language I am familiar with, other than swear).
A three-year journey - one that began on 1 November 2007 - has finally come to an end. I walked in through the portals of Murphy, not knowing much about the Oil & Gas industry (other than that oil rigs look like miniature Eiffel Towers spitting flames), even less about boats (other than that they have sails, anchors and a feisty-and-bearded skipper) and nothing about drilling equipment (I thought a pup joint was a place where hounds congregate). The learning curve was steep, to say the least, but I have come out of it hopefully with a decent appreciation of how the industry operates. I will not claim to be an expert by any measure, but I believe I should be able to carry out a decent conversation on the industry at a cocktail party, without running the risk of having a casual eavesdropper who happens to hail from the oil patch harangue me for talking through my backside.
I sincerely thank all of you for the support that you have given me. In particular, I thank you for your patience, and bearing with my occasional ignorance about things in the oil patch, even as I fumbled about trying to provide all of you with some sense of direction. You will notice that often-times, and contrary to what I gather is the norm in the oil patch, my leadership style has been one of participation rather than autocracy. This is partly due to the fact that you all probably know a lot more about the operations than I do.
But more importantly, it also stemmed from a leadership style that I learnt from my mentor at Hewlett-Packard many years ago, and one that I successfully applied myself later on: It is the belief that all employees inherently want to do a good job - provided they are given the necessary tools, support and encouragement to carry out their duties with enthusiasm, and recognition where it is due (by the way, the afore-mentioned statement encapsulates what has been fondly called the "HP Way"). To that, I would add the words "respect" and "empowerment" - I do not subscribe to the management style of hounding over my staff (read: "management by fear"), and believe that all of you are capable and mature enough to be empowered to make decisions and take action where appropriate. What works in military does not necessarily (and oftentimes does not) work in the workplace. Employees need a certain degree of freedom (through responsibility, of course) and empowerment to grow, and an autocratic and micro-management style does little to promote such growth.
My job as a leader, as I envisaged it, has therefore been to clear the path, and eliminate the distracting and detracting bureaucracies and manholes, such that you are free to execute your tasks and lead your own teams without frustration or trepidation. In addition to that, and contrary to Sun Tzu's "Art of War" which proscribes the policy of "keeping the troops in the dark", I try to provide you with what necessary background information is available from the KL ivory towers (as and when it is apt to do so), so that you know the reasons (good or bad) behind the instructions I pass on to you, and more importantly, so that you are well-informed of the overall picture and therefore in a clear state of mind to, in turn, provide me with feedback, should such oftentimes high-handed decisions made upon this lofty perch called "the KL office" run totally against the grain of good operational sense (this I learnt from a 1980's BBC-produced documentary on good leadership). It is too easy to make decisions on paper in a nice swanky air-conditioned boardroom (the Chinese have a saying for it: 紙上談兵 "discussing warfare on a sheet of paper"), but the fact is, the real business takes place at the docks, in the yards and on a rig 120km out at sea. Being the boys in the front-line of the battlefield, you would know aeons better than us chaps in cushy offices, what works at base and what does not. To cite just one example, I once took away a valuable lesson from Rob that a "500m2 clear deck area" quoted on a vessel specification sheet very quickly translates into 300-odd m2 in reality, once you take into consideration fouling of pipe inlets and other deck appendages conveniently omitted from the literature - there is no substitute for standing on the vessel's deck and running through the drill-pipe load-out patterns in person with the skipper.
I leave all of you with just one request, i.e. that you continue to provide that same level of support to whoever my successor shall be.
I bid all of you adieu, and in an ever-connected, ever-shrinking world and ever-diminishing borders, I am sure our paths shall cross again in most unexpected ways.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Yong
No comments:
Post a Comment