Re: Industry history

[hrlane@xxxxxxxxx]

Item Subject: Industry history
     
    Mike, I suspect that this theme was true for most major oil companies in the
past.  I certainly can relate to what you have to say.  We all share 
responsibility in the events and policies that have brought us to where we are 
today.  We must now face the future with the determination that things will 
operate differently and that paleontology will play its indispensible and unique
function in the industry.  Our niche is there (time-stratigraphic and 
paleoenvironmental control) with no practical competitors.  We just need to 
effectively market and fill the niche.          

______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Industry history
Author:  paleonet-owner (paleonet-owner@nhm.ac.uk) at unix,in
Date:    6/7/95 10:09 AM


Way back on May 17, when I was out of the country, Rich Lane wrote:
     
> We can only reap what we have sown.  If paleontologists have gotten 
     the short end of the stick it is only because they have remained 
     unchanged in their approach for 50 years.  From my observations after 
     26 years in industry is that paleontologists IN GENERAL have not 
     proactively attempted to integrate their results with other geoscience 
     specialities as well as they could.  This is critical in an 
     exploration and exploitation environment.  Industry is not in the 
     business to fund hobbies.  Many have wanted to remain in their office 
     looking down their microscopes and giving answer that only other 
     paleontologists can interpret, expecting specialists in other parts of 
     geoscience to give relevance to their data.  It just doesn't happen 
     that way.  Then when they begin losing their jobs they start to shout 
     stepchild.  Sure we are handmaidens to the stratigrapher, but only 
     because we have placed OURSELVES in that role. In hard times you keep 
     the stratigrapher, and get rid of the handmaiden 
     
Well...From my observations after 15 years in the industry this is 
pretty much a problem of poor management.  True paleontologists 
generally like to look at fossils.  I'll give you that.  But until the 
time when everybody got fired the whole structure was set up to 
encourage staying the same.  Back when I worked at Mobil every month we 
had to turn in a monthly sample count.  It was constantly stressed that 
in order to keep our jobs that we had to prove that we could work more 
samples cheaper than the consultants.  No mention was made of spending 
time making sure anybody understoodthe data generated.  After I was 
laid off there I started working for Shell.  The emphasis was not so 
volume driven but it was also made clear that if you weren't looking 
down a microscope you weren't working.  Chitchat with geologists 
although tolerated on a limited basis was clearly something you could 
get dinged for (wasting their time and yours).  
Now I still firmly believe that unless an industry paleontologist has 
spent a few years behind a scope they will never really understand 
exactly what is going on but a career development plan would have been 
nice.  NO SUCH PLAN EXISTED. You were hired to pick bugs you did not 
continue on on your career to be a sage interpretorof data or a person 
who communicated it or anything else you just picked bugs.  The 
exception was the person in charge (he who did the dinging for not 
looking down the scope).  That person had risen to the top of the paleo 
group (lord knows there is nowhere to go from there) and that person 
firmly entrenched him or herself as to maintain that position till 
retirement.  The only person in a position to expand horizons in this 
situation was the one on top.  That person had no reason to.  In fact 
that person had reason not to (don't want some hot shot to come along 
and take your job).
In addition to this situation in operational groups you had your Ivory 
Tower research groups (usually off in some other city) who were 
involved in coming up with complex answers to questions that nobody was 
asking.  They wouldn't want to talk to the lowly bug pickers to find 
out what the actual problems were (just a bunch of stupid bug pickers, 
what would they know?). The result was that edicts from the research 
groups would come down from on high to the operations people, who would 
immediately file them in the approprite location (uppity research 
bastards) even if they contained some good suggestions. 
Get the picture?
So we are indeed reaping.  It was the people in charge who did the 
sowing.
Mike  
     
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      Michael J. Styzen                   Phone:  (504) 588-4308
      Shell Offshore Inc.                 Room:   OSS-2920             
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