Resilience

Nila and Giovanna

Let me tell you about my two Grandmothers.

Giovanna lived through two world wars, the Spanish Flu, a bombing of her hometown, and more stories I can recall.

She used to tell me "Enrico, love your family and care for your neighbours, everything will be all right”.

Nila, lived through “only” one world war and more stories I can recall.

She used to tell me, “Enrico, when one door CLOSES, look for the two which opened”.

I would say my two grandmothers had it all figured out, well before Harvard University, the internet and all those memes about leadership.

They taught me resilience, 

my Name is Enrico and I lead a Drilling Services Team in Asia Pacific for an Energy company.

Today I would like to talk to you about Resilience

·     First, why you, as an Energy Professional need Resilience

·     Second, how you can build resilience

·     Third, what the prize is for being resilient

My first point

There are many definitions of resilience, all similar, but the one I like is Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties.

You cannot know if you have it until a crisis hits, but I can tell you for sure, you will need a lot of resilience in our industry and the best way I can explain why is by showing you this chart.

On the X axis we plotted the year, on the Y axis the Oil price. You do not need to be an economist to understand when things did not exactly go as planned for our industry.

It should also be intuitive that, if you would have started your career in the early 70s you had a very good 30 years run, with only one crisis in the middle.

If you, like me, started in 2003 or later, you’d now be in your 3rd major downturn. If you start now you will probably experience 5 or 6 by the time you retire.

These frequent, fast swings in oil price are the new normal and only leaders who will build resilience not only for themselves, but also in the way we operate, will thrive in our industry.

This brings me to the second point. How you can build resilience.

They do not teach that in school, but the internet is not only cats and memes, there also are plenty of books about resilience, but I hope I can get you started as It is quite simple.

Take care of yourself, especially in good times.

1.             Read

2.             Exercise

3.             Control what you can

These are not new concepts; “mens sana in corpore sano” The Romans Used to say which translates into "a healthy mind in a healthy body".

You can exercise your mind by reading - Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for example, are known to read hundreds of books per year.

How you might say? They must super-human? I’ve got no time for that.

Trust me, they are not, and you do!

We always take time for what is important, they prioritize reading over other stuff.

After this video go check your phone statistics

When I did it, I cut my screen time by 50% you will also give yourself back the time to read 50 books per year, if you do this.

if I can do it anyone can.

My next suggestion they also do not teach you in anywhere, but they should because it is extremely important.

Exercise at least 30 minutes per day or more. Find your sport; it will quite literally become your drug as exercise produce dopamine, a neurochemical which boosts mood, motivation, and attention, and helps regulate learning and emotional responses. It cannot be taken in pills, it takes as most things in life, hard work.

The third and most important advice on how to build resilience and be resilient is to focus entirely on what you can control.

You are the master of your own destiny, the orchestrator of your fate.

You will not stop a virus pandemic or influence global geopolitics (maybe some of you eventually will) but NOW you can influence only yourself and very important for any leader, people around you.

At this point you might ask yourself, or your friends might ask you, why even bother to be in our industry.

It is filled with uncertainty and to be successful I must read books and exercise?

Why? This is the third and final point of our conversation - what is the prize?

I work at Baker Hughes, an Energy company and this makes a huge difference if you think about it.

Oil and gas are in rocks and we extract them, but what we really do is provide safe and reliable energy to millions of people who still need it.

Stone age did not end because humanity run out of rocks, similarly the oil age will end well before we can extract all the energy stored underground, but this is not that time yet.

Developing countries still need energy and a better alternative to coal and we are providing that, our work, your work still matters, every day to millions of people and this is no small prize.

On a closer to home level my prize is the smile of the people who come to work every day and through all the challenges are growing personally, building a career, and very often their family with us. 

When you consider all of this, we positively impact people’s lives.

This is my prize.

I would really love to hear what your prize is, if we were in the same room, but I hope you will contact me and I commit to reply to all the question you might have.

I will not take more of your time, you must read and exercise now. 

In conclusion my message to you is: 

·     Build you resilience, this is the best of time to do that.

·     Focus relentlessly on what you can control

·     Never forget the final prize.

The world still needs energy, your energy and my grandmothers would be proud of you!  

Stay Strong! Thank you

Enrico Biscaro