Skype Dates and Corporate Reticence

I spend my life trying to convince people that Oz really isn’t that far away from Europe and North America.  I have two good reasons for this. 

The first is that large parts of the social fabric of my life are sewn around threads that live in these locations.  As we all know, relationships are the largest contributor to our happiness, so it seems obvious that I would want to shrink the world in order to  maintain the overseas relationships that I find valuable and nurturing. 

The second is that the US and UK are home to two of the major capitals of the offshore oil and gas business – a business which seems less concerned with having international offices communicate than with racing to the finish line.  This drives me crazy.  In this day and age we have an arsenal of tools at our disposal for connection with the world, and yet suggesting a Skype date to an overseas colleague often earns you a long pause on the other end of the phone line and a suggestion that the office’s teleconference facilities are wondrously sufficient.  Even if the facilities being mentioned are simply a phone equipped with a speakerphone button. 

I often wonder what it is that holds back such a wealthy, fast-moving business. Why is it that we can find more (and better) methods of pulling fluid gold out of the ground, and yet investing any time and effort into greater communication methods – methods which could build more solid business relationships – are given a gentle head-shake with an accompanying eye-roll? 

There seems to be quite the dichotomy at play in this industry, as it may very well be in others too.  While we develop great methods of doing what we do best (for us, that is producing energy), we struggle so hard with the technological enhancements that make communication easier, less formal and more cost efficient.  I have a few theories on why this might be, but they are young and changing as I learn more about my work environment. 

Theory 1. Business Risk is Relative to Where Your Business Is Right Now  

It takes money and business risks to make money in a business.  You take a big risk, let’s call it Risk A, and it is fortunately successful.  Once you are making money, however, it is very difficult to see how anything except Risk A will result in great rewards.  Risk B might make your business more efficient or more competitive, but Risk B isn’t tried and true like Risk A is.  Risk A might be a risk, but it’s the devil we know. Risk A is a safe risk. 

Theory 2.  We are Overly Specialised – Which is Scary 

Yes, we can develop the next thingamajig that will drill faster, flow smoother, refine more economically or deliver more efficiently, but do you know how to do it?  No?  What about you?  No?  What about the guy down the hall in cubicle C43?  No?  Well who does?  The same goes for communication implementation.  Someone, somewhere, knows how to do it, but damned if we know how to (a) find them, (b) ask them and (c) pay them to do it. First it requires admitting that you don’t know the first thing about thingamajigs (because, obviously, your specialty is whosawhatsits).  Second, it requires you putting some of your time and energy into learning about thingamajigs (eek!) and implementing their use in your business.  What we don’t know is often a scarier thought than knowing how inefficient or outdated our current processes are. 

Theory 3. A New Tool is Measurable (Communication Is Not… Yet) 

Your company makes a new tool, whether it is for painting, refining, or fixing someone’s heart, and you have something that you can show people.   You make use of a tool for communication, however, and it is very hard to show the communication to anyone who might think it beneficial.  How do you measure corporate success in communication?  Unfortunately, we can still only measure our successes in communication by secondary quantifiable measurements.  Yes, effective international communications may result in higher sales or more clients, but how do we measure that in a way which reports our success to the shareholders?  Hopefully someday I will have an answer to this question. 

I have one more theory, but it is still a little fuzzy.  I wonder sometimes if my attempts to convince my above mentioned ‘threads’ of the world’s petite size is futile for more than simply financial, time or convenience reasons.  Enter the Eyjafjallajökull eruption.  Are you working in Germany waiting to go home to your family?  Well, that’s unfortunate because there aren’t any flights.  Do you have an important client meeting in Poland?  Well you can grovel in person for missing it once the airspaces have cleared.  No matter how much technology we produce, there are still some things that we just can’t control.  The reality is that a single natural disaster just made the world a little bit larger for any of those people who were stranded while flights were cancelled. 

My fuzziness comes from wondering if trying to make the world smaller, by enabling easier communications, is simply counterintuitive.  We know the world is big and so we unconsciously avoid using tools to make it smaller because the two concepts are incongruent in a way.  In my defense, I did say this theory was fuzzy.  It’s a work in progress.