Soft Skills From the exploration and production of oil and gas to the ultimate distribution of petroleum-based products to customers, the oil and gas industry is global and multidisciplinary. The global nature of the industry is reflected in the membership of SPE: Professional members of SPE live in 147 countries, and a review of the student membership suggests that the Society will become even more diverse in the years to come. Given that mergers and acquisitions are the global climate in the industry today, as a young professional, how do you feel about change? Do you feel confident that your job is secure and you have room for growth, or are you worried? It is inevitable that change will be part of your future in this industry, and soft skills hold the key in helping you successfully navigate it. If you imagine yourself standing in front of a pyramid face (Fig. 1), there is something that you cannot see—the third corner at the back of the pyramid. But without it the pyramid cannot stand. Such is the role that soft skills play in career success. Take the case of a major professional sports team with highly paid players. They all want to win, but sometimes they let their own importance get in the way of the team’s success. Diversity is having a team of players, each with his or her own unique level of physical capabilities and experiences. Inclusion is all of the team members, including the star players, accepting the talents, strengths, and experiences of others, along with the insight of the coach, to move the team to a higher level of excellence. Embracing Diversity and Inclusion Diversity and the ability to accept, adapt, and change with the global climate of the industry is a gift that not every person possesses. To appreciate a gift, you have to understand how valuable it is to you. In a 2014 Ernst & Young series called “The DNA of the COO: Time to claim the spotlight,” a report titled “An oil and gas sector perspective” states that mergers and acquisitions are on the rise as oil and gas companies seek to divest noncore assets. Three-quarters of the chief operating officers polled for the report said that highly developed leadership qualities and interpersonal skills are the most crucial attributes to success, while 60% emphasized communication and influencing skills. These are professional people in charge of the operations of major oil and gas companies who cited soft skills as a large percentage of the most important attributes they needed to be successful.

Pillars of the Industry Ruben Caligari, Senior Adviser, Knowledge Management, Petrobras, is optimistic about the future, despite the current downturn. He reminds us of the long-term growth prospects for global energy demand and the wide-ranging challenges we will face to fulfill it.

A career can easily span forty to fifty years. Over that time span an engineer in the petroleum industry will earn several million dollars in income. According to the 2010 SPE Salary Survey, the mean salary for all respondents with 19 years experience was $139,194 with over a 5% salary increase from the prior year. Almost a third of respondents had a car allowance. On the front page of USA Today, May 24, 2011, the headline read "Petroleum engineering majors can grease skids." Further in the article, the projected salary for a petroleum engineering major over a 40-year career was $4.8 million! Associated with the revenue, there will be living expenses and capital investments for items such as house and these will also amount to several million dollars. Each of you will have to make decisions that will impact both revenue and expenses. Each of you is equivalent to a small business! How come more engineers don't make use of established business planning best practices to manage careers? There are several things every engineer must remember. It is your career and, therefore, your responsibility to manage it. Each of you has the skill set learned through your university education or your industry experience to manage your career. This is a global, interconnected industry and your reputation will follow you from location-to-location and company-to-company. Finally, when you look back on your career, are you going to be happy with how you managed it? This paper will provide an example of using business planning practices, including decision analysis, to manage a career. There are other ways to manage your career, including just letting it take its own course. Each person needs to determine what approach works best for her.

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In many organizations, knowledge management (KM) plays a central role in the process of value creation, and terms such as "intellectual assets" are now popular in business literature. Sometimes, however, companies find it difficult to shape KM concepts into a specific program. This paper presents a KM program developed and implemented for an E&P company. With solid management commitment, the program utilized currently available human resources and existing, installed technology. Three key drivers led to the program's success: Moving from the abstract to the concrete: Identify KM advocates, and choose knowledge examples clearly linked to the bottom line. Focusing on content rather than platforms: Define knowledge that is critical to the business, and identify those within the organization who can furnish that knowledge. Promoting cultural change: Transform the cultural paradigm by redefining everyone's value in the organization. Specific programs developed for knowledge sharing are discussed, as well as use statistics and the importance of incentives. In spite of the difficulties in identifying program results, the need to define metrics is also addressed. Finally, results, difficulties and challenges faced during the first year of implementation are described. Introduction PECOM is an integrated energy company with operations in Latin America. The PECOM E&P segment operates oil and gas fields in five countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Current production amounts to approximately 180 MBOE/D, and operations take place in more than 20 locations with about 1000 personnel (Fig. 1). Apart from external incentives to implement knowledge management (KM) practices, two characteristics of PECOM's E&P business brought out this need by the mid 1990s:Expansion of E&P activities into different countries (geographic and cultural spread of knowledge)Increasingly complex and competitive business environment involving a greater number of experts. Though several previous initiatives had been implemented, a formal program was not launched until late in 2001. This new program involved all personnel who had previously been working in KM and was supported by upper management. In the early stages of the program, specific resources were assigned around the central idea of using existing personnel and technological resources rather than hiring consulting services or expanding currently available platforms. Overview "Intelligent organization," "learning organization," "intellectual capital" and other related concepts are common in managerial literature as far back as the 1970s and '80s. These models generally concern the impact of the information era on business management and the resulting transformations in a given context, includingHigh volume of easily accessible dataIncreasing competitivenessComplicated problems requiring highly complex solutionsKnowledge specialization and disseminationNecessity of alignment of expertsHigh labor turnover and shift in loyalty from company to career.