The biggest challenge oil and gas companies face in addressing digital changes in the industry is equipping their people with a common base of understanding of digital. Without a common base of definitions, terminology, and frameworks, organizations run the risk that their digital agenda will be defined by specific vendors which can have unintended consequences. Suppliers of technology, IT professionals, universities and consultants all use variants of their own proprietary approaches to digital that, well intentioned, can create poor transparency, bias and prejudice. Without a common base, teams drift into silos, management blocks innovation and Boards cannot execute their oversight role.
Leveraging my book, ‘Bits, Bytes, and Barrels: The Digital Transformation of Oil and Gas’, I provide a one-day digital awareness training program specific to the oil and gas industry. Suitable for Boards, management, and digital delivery teams, this course addresses a broad range of the oil and gas industry and the nature of digital innovations that are most important. The course includes key management topics like the nature of digital impacts and timing, risks that must be managed, the business case for change, the role of new methods like agile in driving success, organizing a digital team, the impacts on people, and how to set roadmaps.
The course is laid out around a (almost) fictitious technology company that sells a traditional but valuable solution to the oil and gas industry. The company and its products are not very digital, and the company is under competitive threat to its market. Attendees are presented the basic concepts of digital technology, and learn to apply it to the case company.
The course is highly interactive, with plenty of team work, collaboration and quizzes. Participants are actively engaged using techniques like world cafe and rice storm, and the curriculum incorporates mini lectures, round robins, large group discussions, individual and team work, work sheet completion, and short presentations.
