Case Study: People Development and Rapid Organization Building During Challenging External Environment

Abstract

AbstractThis paper highlights the successful building of the Subsurface/Modeling Division (SMD) within the ExxonMobil Bengaluru Technology Center (EMBTC) over the last three years in overcoming challenges resulting from a combination of: 1) rapid growth since its inception in 2017; 2) the global pandemic; 3) a young organization with majority staff with limited oil and gas industry experience.This paper describes the strategies and initiatives adopted to overcome these challenges within the following framework: leadership commitment, people development, capability development, organizational culture and processes. A strong and consistent leadership commitment played a vital role in growing SMD through challenging external environment. On people development standpoint, significant gains were realized through initiatives like "sessions with expert"- a focused, short duration session with company experts, "communication workshops" to improve communication skills, "Innovation Hub" to promote idea generation, focused "mentoring sessions" and a structured program for onboarding new-hires. During the early years, teams were embedded within global teams to ensure smooth knowledge transfer and capability development; strategic areas were identified to develop into potential Centers of Excellence in the future. Experienced technical and managerial staff were impatriated from global teams into the EMBTC Subsurface/Modeling divisions with a clear mandate to increase technical competency, business acumen and leadership skills while onboarding staff onto company culture and assist with capability development. Concurrently, global ExxonMobil subject matter experts (SMEs) were engaged on periodic basis. Experience gaps in teams were addressed through selective external hiring. Sustained engagement with staff was ensured through periodic surveys, informal chats and town halls through the pandemic period and continues to this day. The results of all these efforts has culminated in the EMBTC Subsurface/Modeling division successfully growing at a rapid pace to build a workforce that has developed strong capabilities and work culture while demonstrating its potential to generate significant business value for EM.