Articles & White Papers
Client Success Story: Marathon Oil and the Power of Partnership
Some people look at the classes we offer at Leadership Strategies and wonder if they will really get value for their money. Well, Jeff Heath knows he does, and so does Marathon Oil Corporation. Every day.
Marathon Oil is engaged in worldwide exploration, production, refining and processing of crude oil and natural gas. They are among the leading energy industry players, using innovative technologies and unique partnerships to deliver value.
Prior to 1996, most facilitation at Marathon was done was on an informal, ad hoc basis. Then in 1996, the company began to see the immediate and positive impact of facilitated Strategic Project Planning Workshops. They decided to ask several key employees to develop the skills to facilitate these workshops. Jeff, along with one other coworker, took The Effective Facilitator class from Leadership Strategies in Dallas in 1998. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since then, a number of other Marathon Oil employees have taken the class. As word spread about their great results, the demand for their facilitation services began to grow, increasing on average 50% a year. Now, Marathon Oil has an entire department dedicated to running facilitated sessions to support improved project performance. The projects they work on range anywhere from small software acquisition and process reengineering projects to $10 million dollar exploration wells and $1 billion dollar production facilities construction projects.
Today, Jeff heads the Drilling and Development Project Management Services Group at the Houston headquarters. His title, Manager of Project Management Services, reflects what he and his team do best. They get people together from across all their business units and functional areas, to work better at delivering value for Marathon and their shareholders. His group speaks their language on a technical level. They know all the ins and outs of how the business works and what each department brings to the table. And they use their facilitation skills to get people to communicate effectively with one another and get results from the projects they work on. Jeff and his staff are known throughout the company as the people to call to run effective meetings. But are they resting on their laurels? No! In fact, Marathon Oil has just held a Leadership Strategies Advanced Facilitation Workshop to keep their facilitation team's skills sharp and help them to move to the next level.
Interested in how you can get more out of your organization's meetings and workshops? Learn more about our training classes.
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