Talent Development

By Jamie Ferguson, Vice President US and Latin America, Maxwell Drummond

The complexities of today’s global oil and gas and energy markets have created a rapidly changing role for the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The Macondo disaster, the economic crisis and the rise of unconventional reserves, to name a few, have created a vast array of regulatory framework and geopolitical uncertainties that now require much of the CEO’s focus.

Gone are the days when the CEO was focused solely on strategy. Many of today’s CEO roles require an extensive understanding of several disciplines from technology and finance to operations as well as a new set of leadership skills. They must have the networking savvy to engage with governments, policy-makers and other regulatory bodies as well as the ability to act as the public face of their company. The industry could potentially face a shortage of future CEOs and executive managers who have the experience and competencies to successfully navigate their companies through the challenges facing the oil and gas industry.

Chief Executives’ cognizance of this threat has added another task to their plates. There is now an added urgency to put more focus on leadership development, though there must be a sound strategy behind it. While companies need to develop their potential leaders quickly, they must also ensure they do not move these individuals into roles before they are ready and run the risk of failure within an often public facing role.

How should they be developed? Historically, leaders have been developed in one of two ways: functional or rotational. Many times, these leaders progress through their company in one functional discipline be it finance, operations or others. While this gives them a deep understanding of one aspect of the business, they may end up lacking knowledge of other departments, thus hindering their ability in a Chief Executive role. Rotational development also proposes challenges in that rotating through different functions within a company may not give individuals the depth of knowledge they need in each area. The key to overcoming these obstacles is to assess for potential early in employees’ careers and start exposing these future leaders to different geographies and disciplines early on so they develop a sound understanding of all business functions.

This practice is a key component to succession planning and may in fact be one of the most important steps in the process. Companies want to promote their own people and talent development gives them the platform to not only accelerate their employees into senior management and executive level roles, but to give them the proper training they need to succeed in them.

About the author
Jamie Ferguson joined Maxwell Drummond’s Aberdeen team in 2006 to focus on executive search in the energy sector. In 2007 he was promoted to General Manager in Aberdeen and in 2009 Jamie relocated to Houston as Vice President of Maxwell Drummond’s USA and Latin America business.

Maxwell Drummond International is a world leading retained search consultancy offering professional search services to clients in all sectors of the energy and natural resources industries.