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V a l i o s o A B

Executive Database Ltd’s (eXDb’s) vision is toprovide decision-makers in the industry with anoptimal network of people, so they can conduct theirbusiness in the most efficient manner possible. eXDbhelps people make connections and expand theirnetworks. You can network to expand your business,build your competence and knowledge, find a joband make sales. Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to othermembers. They can also join special networks relatedto their part of the industry, interests or location.

eXDb Ltd, based in London in the UK, offers anetwork database with in excess of 20,000 contactsand cross-reference to company, areas of interest, etc.In addition, eXDb Ltd offers tools to make anydatabase of contacts available into Microsoft®

Outlook® tools.

Our work concentrates on three components:network building, competence transfer and businesspolitics. eXDb should be an important arena for oilcompanies, consultancy companies, investors,individuals and politicians. Utilising the networkone’s self and gaining access to a global network ofupdated lists of industry people, will help theindustry bring down the total costs in various phasesof exploration and production work.

Network is a tool with which to increase the ‘control’of the surroundings. The benefit of knowing manypeople is that it provides access to more and variedinformation, whether a decision-maker in a major oilcompany or a consultancy company. One has to takeresponsibility for one’s own daily business.

Network is highly underestimated, as about 70% ofthe labour market is unseen, and tools are needed toproduce knowledge in this segment of the market.Over 50% of projects are not found – and they needto be brought out into the open.

More than 30% of a resource base is known toindustry when trying to staff projects, andorganisation of this information needed.

Several million people employ e-mail for a significant

portion of their professional communications. Yet, inour experience, few people have worked out how touse the network productively. A great deal of effortis going into technical means for finding information,but hardly anybody has been helping to figure outwhere the network fits in the greater picture of theirown work.

We will attempt to fill that gap, building on the mostsuccessful practices that we have observed throughoutour 20 years in the business. We will focus on the useof electronic communication in the oil and gasindustry, but the underlying principles will beapplicable to many other communities as well.

The first thing to realise is that the realm of theInternet is part of reality. The people youcorrespond with via the network are real peoplewith lives and careers and habits and feelings of theirown. Things you say on the Internet can makefriends or enemies, famous or notorious, included orostracised. The electronic part of our lives should betaken seriously. In particular, users need to thinkabout and consciously choose how they wish toutilise the network.

e-Mail should be regarded as part of a larger ecologyof communications media and genres — telephoneconversations, archival journals and newsletters,professional meetings, paper mail, voice mail,chatting in the hallway, job interviews, visits toclients, consultancy meetings and so forth Eachmedia possesses its own attributes and strengths.The relationships among media will probablychange and new genres will probably emerge as thetechnologies evolve, but it should be ensured thatthe all-too-common fantasy is not harboured thatsomeday we will live our lives entirely throughelectronic channels. It is not true.

One might engage in many forms of communicationon the net — one-to-one electronic correspondence,application service provider solutions, Webpublishing and so forth. These interactions might beemployed as part of a wide variety of professionalactivities: sharing data, setting technical standards,collaborating on projects, chasing down offers,

Execut i ve Database Ltd

B U S I N E S S B R I E F I N G : E X P L O R A T I O N & P R O D U C T I O N : T H E O I L & G A S R E V I E W 2 0 0 3 – V O L U M E 2

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Technology & Services

commenting on reports, editing job specifications,planning meetings and trips, etc. Underlying all ofthese different activities, though, is the activity ofbuilding and maintaining professional relationships.Electronic communication is wasted unless it is usedto seek out, cultivate and nurture relationships withother humans. Unfortunately the existingmechanisms for electronic interactions, by reducingpeople to abstract codes (such as [email protected])make it difficult to keep this deeper dimension ofinteraction in mind. Still, there is no escaping it –unless you are consciously building relationships, youare probably getting lost.

Our real topic is not (technological) networks but isdiscussed in a general way before describing how itcan be accelerated by e-mail. In the past, the onlyways to learn networking were to be born to asocially well-connected family or to apprenticeoneself to a master of the arts. This not to just beingpart of a social network, but having the skills forsystematically seeking out and becoming acquaintedwith new people in the service of professional goals.

Many people resist the idea of networking becausethey associate it with ‘playing the career game’,‘knowing the right people’, ‘kissing up to thepowerful’, ‘cynicism’ or ‘politics’, or becausenetworking supposedly takes time away from‘getting real work done’. Some people grew upbeing told the dangerous half-truth that ‘if you dogood work then you will be rewarded’, as if rewardsmagically appear whether anybody knows aboutyour good work or not. Others are allergic to thetheory of ‘how to win friends and influence people’.Indeed, people will accuse you of all sorts of terriblethings if you admit to having worked out ideas aboutnetworking. This is all terribly unfortunate, not leastbecause it helps to stratify the world of the oil and gasindustry – networking is about community, nothierarchy, and people who do not learn to networkare less likely to succeed.

The truth is that the world is made of people. Peopleoutside of their communities are like fish out of wateror plants out of soil. Oil and gas projects of all kindsdepend critically on intensive and continuallyevolving communication among people engaged inrelated projects. Networking cannot substitute forgood science, neither can good science substitute fornetworking. A job or a project can not be attained,nor any recognition for your accomplishments, unlessyou keep up to date with the people in your industry.

Establishing professional relationships withparticular people and involving yourself in theindustry will change you; not only will youinternalise a variety of interesting points of view,but you will become more comfortable in your

writing and speaking because you will be engagedin an on-going conversation with people youknow. If no circle of ‘followers’ is waiting for you,you will have to go out and build a this, one personat a time. This ‘overhead’ can be a nuisance at first,but none of it is terribly difficult once you getsome practice and really convince yourself that youcannot sustain your professional life withoutdevoting about one day per week to it.

T emp t a t i o n s

Having surveyed the basics of networking andprofessional relationships, it is time to consider therole that electronic communication can play innetworking in the oil and gas industry. The mostimportant thing is to employ electronic mediaconsciously and deliberately as part of a largerstrategy for your work. It is fine to use the Internetin other aspects of your life – seeking people tocorrespond with, organising projects, joining a bid,etc. – but, as long as you have your professional haton, every message you exchange on the networkshould be part of the process of finding, building andmaintaining professional relationships. We cannotemphasise this strongly enough, because e-mailseems to provide endless temptations to the contrary.

These temptations include the following:

• the temptation to react; • the temptation to treat people like machines;• the temptation to pretend;• paranoia• the temptation to become overwhelmed;• the temptation to become addicted;• the temptation to waste time;• the temptation to blame e-mail for problems;

T h e T e m p t a t i o n t o R e a c t

e-Mail encourages reactive behaviour by making iteasy to respond with only a few rapid keystrokes.Keep your cool. The more impulsive you are, themore you are using the network to find friends asopposed to colleagues and the greater your unmetneeds for affirmation and attention, the more youwill be led into reaction. One slip-up will not bringyour job to a halt, but you should definitely be awareof the phenomenon. If someone abuses you in an e-mail discussion, simply do not respond.

T h e T e m p t a t i o n t o

T r e a t P e o p l e L i k e M a c h i n e s

Basic politeness often erodes. It can take real work toremind yourself that the person behind the e-mailmessage is an actual human being and not simplyanother name to add to your network. You can help


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Execut i ve Database Ltd

keep network interactions on a human level bytaking special care about the basics of politeness. More generally, practice coming up with positive,non-obvious things to say about people and theiractions. It is more difficult than coming up withnegative things to say, of course, but it makes youmuch more perceptive, articulate and diplomatic.

T h e T e m p t a t i o n t o P r e t e n d

Electronic communication affords the illusion ofsemi-anonymity; since people only know you bywhat you type, you may tend to lose the inhibitionsthat normally keep you from pronouncing onmatters that you are not really informed about.Pretending to know things is just as bad an idea viae-mail as it is face to face. Remain focused on yourown unique professional contributions and let therandom chatter slide.

P a r a n o i a

Along with your own near-anonymity goes thefrequent difficulty of knowing who exactly isreceiving your messages. As a result, you may beterrified to write anything for fear that you will bedumped on by powerful experts — an experiencesometimes stigmatised (or even celebrated, as if itexpressed some kind of power) as ‘lurking’. Thesolution is to focus on the careful, step-by-stepprocess of approaching individuals, leaving groupparticipation until you feel more comfortable –which you will, eventually. Do not feel pressured toparticipate before you are ready.


B e c o m e O v e r w h e l m e d

It is easy to sign up for everything that soundsinteresting, or to pursue dozens of people in everydirection, only to find yourself swamped withmessages to read and favours to return. If you aregetting more than about 20 messages a day, or if youhear yourself saying: “it’s all I can do just to delete allthe messages that fill up my mailbox”, then perhapsyou should review your goals and adjust your mailinglist subscriptions accordingly.

T h e T e m p t a t i o n t o B e c o m e A d d i c t e d

Addiction means getting overwhelmed on purpose.Few people take e-mail addiction seriously, but it isa genuine addiction and it can be a self-destructivewaste of time.

T h e T e m p t a t i o n t o W a s t e T i m e

Random exploration will rarely yield networkinformation resources that are actually useful to your

real working goals. Useful information is alwaysbound up with useful people. Therefore, yourexploration of the network will most usefully beguided by your goals and structured by the search forpeople to add to your network.


B l a m e e - M a i l f o r P r o b l e m s

If you are a beginner with electronic communication,you will probably have a few mishaps at some point:getting put down by somebody, acting on an impulsethat you later regret, accidentally sending a message tothe wrong person, violating the obscure protocols ofprofessional communication, getting overwhelmedwith marginally worthwhile messages, finding yourselftrapped in long, complicated correspondences, orwhatever. When this happens, you might be moved toblame the medium; you will find yourself saying thate-mail is dangerous or worthless or overwhelming. Askyourself, do similar things happen in group meetings orconferences or over the telephone or in paper mail? e-Mail certainly has its shortcomings, but it is just a toollike any other. You will have to learn how to use it,what to use it for and when not to use it.

Of course, a few mistakes will not kill you and it isequally as bad to go to the opposite extreme andbecome a compulsive machine for scoring points andmaking connections. What matters, understandwhatever it is you are doing within the larger pictureof your life and work.

Con s t r u c t i v e U s e s o f E l e c t r o n i c C ommun i c a t i o n

To determine the most constructive uses of electroniccommunication, let us review the six-step networkingprocess outlined in this article and look foropportunities to use e-mail to ease the various steps.

K n o w Y o u r G o a l s

e-Mail cannot help you much here. Indeed, you willneed to ensure that your goals are not definednarrowly in terms of e-mail. Once you have beguncorresponding with people you consider wise, youcan begin to seek advice from them. Asking foradvice is an art in itself and, other things being equalit is best done on an interpersonal basis but, once youknow someone fairly well on a face-to-face basis,you can move some of the discussion to e-mail.

I d e n t i f y S o m e R e l e v a n t P e o p l e

The most fundamental way of finding people onlineis to help them find you. This starts with your Webpresence. Your company Web page is a projection ofyour company or persons – a way for people to


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know who you are as a member of the profession. Ifyou have had a past life in a professional field, thenyou instinctively understand the point: your fatedepends on how people perceive you, and so itmatters what image of yourself you project.

Whenever possible, then, approach people asindividuals. What you can do is to send messagesindividually to small numbers of people saying:“Can I ask your help? I am trying to locate peoplewho are working on such-and-such. I have tried theobvious sources, but without much luck. Any leadsyou can offer would be much appreciated.” Only dothis if you have a specific purpose in mind forfinding such people.

W r i t e t o T h e s e P e o p l e I n d i v i d u a l l y

In the old days, the letter that was sent to approachsomeone was printed on paper. Should e-mail beused instead? We actually recommend using paper.Electronic media should not be used, just because itis modern. For one thing, paper is much easier to flipthrough quickly or to read on public transport. It isalso much easier to write comments on. Use yourjudgement. If you do decide to employ e-mail forthis purpose, use just as much care as you would onpaper. Remember that first impressions count. Donot try to use e-mail for the ‘get-to-know-you’ typeof chatting that should logically follow at this point.

Mee t E a c h P e r s o n F a c e - t o - f a c e a t aP r o f e s s i o n a l M e e t i n g

We believe, notwithstanding all the talk about‘virtual reality’ and ‘electronic communities’, thatelectronic communication does not make face-to-face interaction obsolete. Instead, as stated at theoutset, you should think of e-mail and face-to-faceinteraction as part of a larger ecology ofcommunication media, each with its own role toplay. In particular, you do not really have aprofessional relationship with someone until youhave spoken with them face-to-face at length.

Having said that, the availability of e-mail willnonetheless bring subtle changes to the ecology ofcommunication in your field. This is particularly truewith regard to the telephone, the uses of whichchange considerably in e-mail-intensive communities;in fact, that many people nearly stop using thetelephone altogether (or never learn how) and try touse e-mail for unsuitable purposes like asking groupsfor information that could have been gained more

easily through resources listed in the front of thetelephone directory.

It is amazing what can be accomplished over thetelephone once you learn how. The role of face-to-face interaction will change as well, particularly sincemany kinds of routine work can be conducted almostas easily at a distance electronically as in formalmeetings face-to-face. Electronic communicationmight even allow face-to-face interaction to shift itsbalance from its practical to its ritual functions. In anycase, the general lesson is to pay attention to therelationships among media so you can use the righttool for each job.

F o l l ow - u p

Follow-up is an area where e-mail makes a qualitativedifference. Once a professional relationship withsomeone is established, e-mail provides a convenientway to maintain a steady, low-key background ofuseful two-way interactions. You might wish toforward things to people (reports, interestingmessages, business announcements, press releases,book reviews. etc) or you might wish to recommendtheir work to e-mail groups.

You might consider building an electronic mailinglist of people who share your interest areas andwould like to get interesting stuff forwarded to themroutinely – including, of course, your own work.Make it a real mailing list, run on an automatic serverthat allows people to subscribe and unsubscribeautomatically, rather than a long list of addresses thatyou send a message to.

E-mail is obviously useful for a wide variety ofother purposes, for instance scheduling andorganising meetings. Make sure that some purposeis actually being served; do not engage inprofessional e-mail correspondence simply for thesake of it. ■


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Contact Information

Executive Database Ltd

61 Praed Street, Suite 107

London W2 1NS

United Kingdom

Tel: (44) 20 7644 5546

Fax: (44) 20 7706 1777

e-Mail: [email protected]

http://www.exdb.biz

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