Mike Wirth 0:00 

When I travel and meet people in our businesses around the world, they prepare to host me, to educate me, show me their operations, and I write notes back to everybody. I write a letter back. I'll come back and write 60 or 70 or 80 letters after a trip. It's important to me that I make sure people understand that I was paying attention, and I really do value what they do.

David Novak 0:29 

It's so obvious, it almost goes without saying, but if you want to be a great leader, you've got to listen to your people. But what's not so obvious is that just listening isn't always enough. Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader you can be. My guest today is Mike worth chairman and CEO of Chevron. Now get this. Mike has worked at Chevron for 42 years. He's an engineer by trade, so it's not surprising that he's approached his career as a problem solver, and he knows one of the best ways to solve problems is by listening to others in today's conversation, you'll get inspired to tap into the wisdom of the people around you, and you'll discover something about listening that most people miss you've got to show people your paying attention. Let's jump in and see how it's done. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours. Mike worth.

Mike, you're, you're a really big, strong guy, but I got to ask you, how long do you think you'd last as a roughneck?

Mike Wirth 1:46 

Now, that's real work. So a roughneck, for people that don't know, is somebody who's out in the field, in our operations, pushing pipe, working with chains and wrenches, and in doing the real work in our business, I don't think, I don't think I'd last very long. David, I went to engineering school for a reason. I

David Novak 2:09 

understand that's one of the toughest, dirtiest jobs you could have, and but it requires a tremendous amount of skills across the board, absolutely,

Mike Wirth 2:16 

absolutely they are. They're incredibly skilled, and the key thing for us is keeping people safe. We have people that work in some very demanding kinds of roles, and our first and highest priority is always safety. We work really hard at it, and in, particularly in, you know, in these very physical jobs in different kinds of settings, offshore, incredible heat, sometimes in driving snow and, you know, sub zero temperatures. We reply, rely on people to not only bring those skills, but actually to also really look out for themselves and one another. We've got a very strong safety culture and, and that's something I'm incredibly proud of.

David Novak 3:02 

How do you drive that? Mike, I mean, how do you, how do you make sure that safety is executed in such a large global company?

Mike Wirth 3:09 

Well, you have to really buy into it as a core value. And you start there, there's always time to do it right. And, and so, you know, sometimes when you see something go wrong? People were feeling some time pressure. They were hurrying and and so so we start with some fundamental beliefs like that, and then we try to build a system of work where people fail safe. You know, one of the things we've learned, which is, I think goes to some of the topics you're interested in. Is, for the longest time, we would put together an investigation team of engineers and managers, and they would come in from outside the operation and evaluate what happened and do a root cause analysis and come up with corrective actions. What we found is much more effective is to put together what we call a learning team. And the learning team is composed of people that actually do the work, not not the engineers that designed the work or the managers that think they know how the work gets done. It's the people who actually do the work, and they actually know how the work really gets done. And when you create an environment that is psychologically safe for them to speak up. They'll tell you, Hey, here's where all the risks are. Here's the things we do. The procedure is written this way, but it's really difficult because of the way this piece of equipment is installed, or whatever the case may be. And so what we've learned is that people on the front line that execute these tasks every day, the roughnecks, are the ones that really know what it takes to be safe, and when we created a system that invites their views and respects what we learn from them, and then implements the things that we take out of those actions, it's really changed our safety culture for the better. You know,

David Novak 4:56 

Mike, when you have such a large company with. Many people, how do you, as the CEO, get the real skinny on what's happening on the ground? Well,

Mike Wirth 5:06 

you know, that's that's always a challenge, as you know, in a large organization. And we're a global, global company, and when you get to into some of these jobs that have, you know, titles that separate you, you know, a little bit distance from the from the front line. It's, it's difficult. I try when I get out into the field, and I travel to the field as much as I can, not as much as I'd like, but as much as I can to go straight to the front line. I you'll appreciate this. I was with a very famous chef, Thomas Keller, at a dinner once at a restaurant. And when you show up with Thomas, the owner, uh, recognizes him, and the, you know, everybody wants to see him. What what he does is he goes straight to the kitchen, and he goes straight to the guys that are chopping vegetables, and, you know, the people at the lowest rung on the ladder working in the kitchen, and he asks him what they're doing. He watches what they're doing. He looks at their technique. And he'll spend 10 or 15 minutes talking to them, before he talks to the the sous chef, or the real chef, or the maitre d or the owner, and he goes right to the people doing the work, and he creates a connection there. He makes them comfortable so they speak to him, and and then, and then he'll, he'll, he'll talk to others. He doesn't intentionally ignore the others, but he sends a very strong signal about who he values the most, who he thinks is the most important person in the kitchen. And as I watched him do that, I said, you know, when I get out in the field, as you know, there's a lot of people that want to greet the CEO when they show up. The best thing you can do is get straight to the people that are doing the work and connect with them. There's plenty of time to connect with with, you know, supervisors and management, etc, but it's, it's a lesson I learned from from watching how he handles himself,

David Novak 6:54 

and it definitely works, you know. And I can't wait to talk more about how you're leading at Chevron, but first I want to take you back a little bit. Mike, I want to take you back to the beginning. What's a story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today?

Mike Wirth 7:09 

Well, I'll give you maybe two. One of them. I grew up playing sports. I love playing sports, team sports, the typical us sports, baseball, basketball, football. When I was 10 years old and showed up for my first football practice with this youth football team. We were coached by a guy who I grew up in Golden Colorado. He worked for the Coors Brewery. He'd take three weeks off work his full allotment of vacation for our fall practice before the football season began. And we used to have three a day practices. You know, most people hear about two a days. We'd actually practice three times a day, early in the morning, kind of in the middle of the day, and then in the afternoon. And he had built blocking sleds and these ropes and shoots things that look like medieval, you know, systems. And we're bunch of 10 year old kids out there, and he taught us technique and and hard work and and he walked around, and he was always giving us, you know, these kind of development and leadership, inspiring quotes and bromide some have been stolen from, from people like Vince Lombardi. Some of them were, were his own. But what would happen by the time those three weeks were up and we showed up to play our first game, we were so well prepared that we for the three years I played for this team, we not only did we never lose a game, there was only one game where a team scored a point on us and we didn't have any special talent, we worked harder than everybody else, and what I learned is you can outwork the other guy and and he taught us. He taught us to believe in ourselves, to believe in one another. It was a little bit like Ted lasso before Ted lasso came along.

David Novak 8:59 

I love Ted lasso.

Mike Wirth 9:00 

I do, I do too. So, so I learned. I learned, look, leaders can, can? Can keep people focused and they can, you know, they can really change the outcomes if you can get a team fully aligned and absolutely committed to a specific goal. Second one I mentioned from my youth was I was in high school and playing high school basketball, and a high school coach who was basketball coaches an Ironman competitor back in the early days of the Iron Man, this is in the 1970s and and he taught me that the only thing holding me back were the the limits I put on myself. And the way I learned this is I broke my thumb. I caught a tip a pass on the tip of my thumb, fractured my thumb and and so I had a cast on. I couldn't practice. And so he said, Well, you're going to stay in shape, so let's go out for a run. So I go out for a run one day with him. And in Golden Colorado, it's a little town at the base of the Rocky Mountains, and there's a big mountain there called. Lookout Mountain, and at the top of it is one of, like, three or four places in the western US where Buffalo Bill, allegedly, is buried and but there's a it's a windy road up, you know, several a couple 1000 feet to get to the top of the mountain. And so we're running through town, and him gone maybe a couple of miles. So I'm getting a little winded, and I say, Mr. Myers, where are we going? He says, we're going to run up Lookout Mountain. And I said, No, really, where are we going? And the next thing I know, we're on this road, this windy road with switchbacks running all and there was no way I could get to the top. I said, I can't do this. But, you know, I was 16 years old, and he was, I don't know, you know, more than twice my age, and I wasn't going to admit that a history teacher was going to be able to run farther than than I could run, and do something I couldn't do. So 45 minutes later, there we are at the top of Lookout Mountain, and he had this habit. He'd run. He had his always tuck his keys in the waistband of his shorts. And so I thought, Oh, he must have his car parked up at the top here, and we're going to drive back down. And we got up, and he took two laps around the parking lot, and then we started running back down the damn mountain. And the only thing harder than running up a mountain is running down one. And I managed to get the run in. And then I realized I could do that, but I didn't, I didn't think I could do it. And I've used that a lot in life, and one of the most rewarding things I ever, ever am involved in, is when I'm working with a team and they accomplish some goal that is way beyond what they envisioned they could do. And actually see this a lot in people is, is they don't see the greatness in them. They don't see the opportunity in themselves. And my coach saw in me something that I didn't see in myself. And I try to look for that in people and try to help them achieve things that that maybe they didn't think they could. You

David Novak 11:48 

know, Mike, speaking of that, when did you or did you have this aha moment, this epiphany where you realized that you really had what it took to be to be a leader too.

Mike Wirth 11:59 

You know, I coached, I played sports. I loved sports. I thought all the lessons you learn in sports really can apply in life. They can apply in business, but they also just apply in life, right? Perseverance, how to overcome a setback? How do you pick yourself up after putting your best effort into something and it didn't, didn't succeed, and you learn the lessons of that, and you become better. So as I was still playing sports and got into college, I started coaching. I coached. I had a younger sister, I coached her in some sports. So it's really through, through coaching. I think that i i started to I had such great role models growing up, and I wanted to pay it back or pay it forward, I guess, and and so that's really where I started to get into it. And then, you know, early on in my career, I was an engineer that just did engineering work, and it was a little while before I got a supervisory job, and I was pretty awful at it when I when I first started. But I loved I love coaching people. I love coaching teams, and that really has translated across into my professional life.

David Novak 13:08 

So, you know, you love being a coach. So if you have somebody on your team and you have a one on one coaching session with them, what would it typically be like? Well,

Mike Wirth 13:18 

you know, one of the things I've learned in a business environment is and you're dealing with people that are pretty driven to perform constructive feedback, can feel like criticism a lot of the time, and so I've learned to try to not make it personal. I mean, when you're trying to help somebody, they have to understand you're coming from a good place, you're really trying to help them. And and there's a technique I use where, rather than saying, you know, you talk over people in meetings, and you shouldn't do that, I'll say, you know, I've observed in some of our meetings a situation where somebody will be making a point or explaining themselves. And there's been a time when I've seen couple of times I've seen you break in before they've finished their point. And you may not notice it, but what I see in them is they then believe that you don't respect what what they had to say, and and are trying to get in and and it's it's a demotivator for them. And so next time, maybe what you do is you wait until somebody's finished a point and then give it a couple of beats before you have to come in and speak. And so it's you describe the situation, a behavior that you've observed, the impact it has on a team or on another individual, and then make a suggestion for how they could do it differently. And it now doesn't sound like it's criticism, but it's, it's it's a way to get to a different outcome, to avoid an impact that's maybe not a desirable impact, and and so I've really learned that the way you give feedback can make the difference between somebody receiving it in a way that. Um, they appreciate and they view it as it was intended, or they just view it as kind of picking at them and criticizing it, which tends not to help people. If

David Novak 15:09 

you're a baseball fan, you know, the playoffs for Major League Baseball start this week, so it's the perfect excuse to scroll back in the feed and listen to my conversation with MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred. I love his insight about how leaders need to stay out of the defensive mode. When you get into

Rob Manfred 15:30 

the mode, particularly publicly that you are defending yourself, you should stop okay, because in today's world, once you're in that defensive mode, people know it, almost without exception, anything you say is not going to make it better, and you just have to learn not to engage in those situations. And look, I'm the first to admit it, I have a combative aspect to my personality. And when you know the institution's attacked or I'm attacked that you know, I do have this natural reaction to defend. And I have learned over time, once you're in that defensive mode, exit stage right and just leave it alone, because you're not going to change it.

David Novak 16:15 

Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Rob, Episode 91 here on how leaders lead. You know, Mike, I was so impressed to learn that, you know, you graduated from the University of Colorado. You went straight to Chevron. You've, you've worked at Chevron your entire career. And it was interesting for you to say, you know, you got your supervisor job, you You were pretty bad at it, you know, what's, what's the when you think about that person that joined Chevron, you know, you know, nearly four decades ago, and then who that person is today, the mic worth today. How much have you really changed? What? What? What skill or, or a couple skills you just had to pick up so that you really became the leader you are today. Yeah,

Mike Wirth 17:03 

yeah, it's been 42 years. If you can believe that, next week, I'll hit my 42 year service anniversary. Congratulations. And yeah, you know, there's a lot of things, I think, at the core that that are innate, that are part of your the way you were brought up and the things you learned early in life. But then there's, I think there's things along the way that you have to learn if you really are trying to grow and develop. You know, when I was a first time supervisor, I was so focused on trying to do my job well and what I needed, I didn't do a very good job of focusing on what the people who worked for me needed. And I'll give you a story that really crystallized it for me. I was running a group of people that did real estate work. So you could relate to this. It's, you know, we had a bunch of retail sites all across the Western US. And in our business, you know, you lease sites, and then, you know, you leave some of them. And given the operating practices historically, sometimes there would have been an underground storage tank that leaks some petroleum or something, and then subsequently, somebody's developing it years later, and they dig a hole, they kind of smell something. They go back and look at the chain of title, and they say, Hey, standard all the California used to be here. So we had these, you know, environmental cleanup projects that would come back to us some we would refer to them as orphan sites that would have gone and then come back. And I had a person who worked for me, who was really good at managing the legal issues, the regulatory issues, and working with our environmental team to clean these sites up. And she would come into my office and plant herself in front of my desk and give me in gory detail, all the things she was working on. And I would sit there, and, you know, after about 20 minutes, I'm, you know, drumming my fingers, and I'm getting antsy, and it's like, oh, my Betty, you're, you know, in my voice, in my head, is, how do I get out of this? This is not this is I'm not being very productive here. And, and it used to really drive me nuts. And, and then I talked to somebody who had worked with her for a long time. He said, Well, he gave me a suggestion. He says, Why don't you drop into her office and and see if you can take a little bit of control over the conversation. So what I did, she used to get in a little bit earlier than I did, and I'd walk in in the morning, and I'd stop in her doorway, and I'd say, Betty, what are you working on this morning? And she'd tell me, and I'd ask one or two questions, and I say, I am so glad we've got you on top of this. You're doing a fantastic job. And I could, in you know, 60 seconds give her what she needed was, which was affirmation that her work mattered to her boss. And it was kind of backward looking activity, as opposed to developing new sites. It was dealing with, with sites from days gone by, and she just really needed to know every day that I care. About what she was doing, and it was like I could stand in the doorway. I could walk away when I was ready to and she never dropped back into my office again. But it was, it was only once I understood what she needed that I was able to become a better supervisor for her and and she was happier, and I was happier. So along the way, you know, you pick up little, little lessons like this. So one other one I'll share is I worked for a supervising engineer at one point in our marketing business. And we'd kind of have the sales and marketing part of the division, and then the engineering and operations side of this division and but I thought all the salespeople worked for him, all the marketing people, the region manager, seemed to work for him, and and he was just a first level supervisor, and he was so effective, and I realized that because he was very aware of what everybody's role was and how these pieces fit together, he could influence outcomes in very subtle ways. He didn't know everything about all the activity, but he knew who did, and I watched him effectively, almost kind of run this, this division office, on his priorities and in a way that was subtle but highly effective, even with people who were, you know, above him in the organization. And it was because he really understood the power of knowledge and relationships and understanding, kind of the way the work all fit together, so everybody accomplished their goals. And he was just kind of a master at this. And, you know, I realized that, you know, you can never know everything, but you can know the people who know everything. And if you show them respect and you understand what everybody does, you can actually help integrate, you know, a complicated set of work activities very effectively. And so, you know, those are the kinds of things. As you get into bigger jobs, you say, Okay, well, now this is really my responsibility to do this. He was doing it at a time when it wasn't really even his job. And so, you know, I

David Novak 22:06 

understand when you started that Chevron, you got off to a bit of a slow start, because some of the projects that you worked on were, you know, not necessarily the big hits. You know, what you learned from that? Well,

Mike Wirth 22:17 

I specialized in spectacularly unsuccessful projects. For the first part of my career, I worked on an oil shale project, which is different than the kind of shale you hear about today. In western Colorado and eastern Utah, there's this very hard rock called kerigen, which has oil locked in it, but it's like mahogany. It's like, it's really, really hard rock. And this was back kind of Arab oil embargo. The world's running out of oil time. And we built a plant to mine this rock out of western Colorado, and then crush it into a very fine powder, and then heat it up. And you could extract this and create a synthetic crude oil from it. Very expensive to do, if you went to the Salt Lake City refinery today. This is the first project I worked on where we built this great big called a semi works. It was a field bigger than a pilot plant. It was kind of a pre commercial plant. There's no sign of it today. There's no steel structures. There's no heat exchangers and pumps and reactors. There's no concrete. Foundation is gone. I worked on a project offshore Southern California, off the coast of Santa Barbara, which we sold for pennies on the dollar, because the state of California made it very difficult to operate there. And then I was working on a project in Sudan that was canceled when there was a civil war, and a couple of contract employees were killed in the Civil War. And so I realized, Wow, big, unsuccessful projects does not sound like a great career path. And I said I'd like to get into something that's smaller. Maybe it's not as doesn't have as much kind of sex appeal in these, these massive projects take forever, but it's closer to the business. And that's when I got into the service station, end of our business. And, you know, I started out doing it was in the days when we would take the little clickety, clackety wheels that spun around with numbers on them, and first would replace those with electronic displays, little LED displays, and the first wave of electronics into into retail self serve gasoline pumps and replace leaking underground steel storage tanks with double wall fiberglass tanks to protect groundwater. And these projects weren't nearly as exciting or big, but they had a beginning and an end. You had this sense of accomplishment of doing something. And I could see the business. I saw customers, I saw revenue. I started to understand the business model. And in the other projects that go on for so long, you almost can lose the plot, because you drop in part way through, you comb out part way through. Very few people see these decade plus long projects all the way from beginning to end. And so for me, it was finding a way to get into something that felt a little bit more rewarding. And most importantly. And to learn how our business worked.

David Novak 25:01 

Well, you know, speaking of your business, you know, Chevron is one of the most recognized brand names in the world, but I don't think people necessarily know all that your company does to make money. I mean, you just talked about a number of different projects there, and then the service station business. Give us a snapshot of your business and all that you're responsible for as chairman and CEO,

Mike Wirth 25:22 

sure. So in our traditional business, which is oil and gas, there's kind of three big segments of that. One is referred to in the industry as upstream, or exploration and production, and that's going around the world and having Earth scientists and geologists that understand the history of the planet and how organic material was deposited in ancient seabeds and Lake systems and then compressed over time, and that organic material would break down and develop into oil and gas underneath the surface of the earth, and much of it out under the surface of the ocean, and so exploring for oil and gas, and then producing it and getting it to market is one big, big part of our business. They we have a part called the midstream, which is essentially logistics, and it's connecting the raw materials that we produce out of the upstream to the processing part of our industry, which are essentially refineries that turn these raw materials into finished products. And so in the midstream, we have a pipeline company, we have a power company, we've got a shipping company, we've got a large trading organization. Do a lot of commercial activity there to connect these various pieces of our value chains. And then in our downstream business, we refine the raw materials into finished products. There are 1000s of products that are derived from from petroleum, everything from the ones you're familiar with, gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, to lubricants and petrochemicals and ingredients for cosmetics and medical products and the like. So that's our traditional business. And we, you know, we make money across all of that around the world. And we also now have a new energies business, which is working on technologies that are inherently lower carbon, and so renewable fuels from biofeed stocks hydrogen and different ways to manufacture hydrogen, carbon capture and storage. How can we take CO two emissions that are coming off a power plant or a refining facility or chemical facility, and capture that and then kind of reverse engineer what we usually do. And rather than taking molecules from inside the earth and moving them around and doing something with them to make them useful to customers, we'll take molecules like CO two that we really don't want to see out in the atmosphere, and we can run them through infrastructure and put them back inside the earth, and then store them in these containers that we understand very well. We're working on geothermal. We're looking at lithium, nuclear. There's a bunch of different technologies we're working on our new energies business right now that's a consumer of cash, because many of these things are not very economic today. The technologies are young and need to be developed, but it's one that we have committed billions of dollars of capital to a lot of really talented people, and we're looking to find solutions, particularly for the hard to electrify parts of the economy. You

David Novak 28:15 

know, I was in the restaurant business, and it is really simple, but as you describe your business, and I know you're an engineer by trade, and you you cover a gamut of very complex businesses. How do you as a leader, just get knowledgeable enough to be able to ask the right questions and make the right decisions?

Mike Wirth 28:36 

Yeah, well, 42 years helps you hang around long enough and you pick up a few things. But, you know, Curiosity is kind of at the core of it. You know, if you ask people what they do, they're only too willing to share that with you. And you know, I've always tried to let people know that I don't think I've got all the answers. I don't understand what all of our people do, and so I'll just ask questions. So tell me what you're working on. Tell me how that fits into our business. When I talk to young people in particular, you know, some of my advice is, you know, understand the strategy of the unit you're working in. They've got, they're trying to accomplish something. Understand how they make money, because, you know, it's a commercial enterprise, and so understanding the business model, which a lot of times in large organizations, people are involved in processes or internal activities, and they don't really think about the business model, which is, which is helpful. And I try to ask questions about how this, you know, something fits in. And so, you know, showing the respect that our people know a lot more than I do, and and asking questions is, is probably the, you know, the main way that I learn. And then, of course, you have to trust a large organization our specialists in any one of the disciplines that are important, and we have so many of them in a highly technical industry like this, you know, you have to really trust that you've. Got good processes to bring in talented people and to help them grow and succeed and and then you have to empower them to, you know, be clear on where you're going, but then empower them to apply their unique talents to, you know, to do things better than I would ever be able to direct.

David Novak 30:16 

You know, when Americans go to the gas station, the price always seems to be different in simple terms. Explain why that is, and in the part Chevron really plays in that, yeah.

Mike Wirth 30:31 

So I'll give you for our company. We've got roughly 8000 retail locations in the US where we sell gasoline under two brands, Chevron and Texaco. Out of those 8000 there are less than 400 that we actually own and operate. And so a lot of times, people think that's Chevron Corporation selling you gasoline. The large, large majority of these sites, 98% or whatever the numbers are, are independently owned and operated locations. They operate under a kind of a franchise agreement with us to meet certain standards on customer service, product quality, uh, cleanliness and image, etc. But they're independent businessmen, so they buy from us at a price which goes, you know, we sell in, you know, specific geographies. You know, everybody gets the same price, and then they're competing locally against other brands. And some are recognized major brands. Some are independent brands, and in gasoline and convenience retailing, which has grown up to be the kind of alternate profit center alongside of gasoline at the at the retail level, people have different strategies. Some people operate on a low margin and they look for big volumes. Other people have, you know, want to go to their customers with a higher margin and a more comprehensive offering of service and products and things that they package along with it. Some street corners are highly competitive. There's four stations on a street corner, and people have lots of choice. Other locations tend to be a little more isolated in the land development didn't allow as many sites to be built, and so competition gets to be very local in at the retail end of the chain. And we try to encourage our dealers to be competitive and to understand their local market, but we can't set their prices. That's, you know, there's a there's laws that we can sell at a wholesale price, but we can't tell a retailer at what price to sell. So you see this dynamic playing out and and everybody's kind of got their their value proposition for their customers. We've always been a high quality brand, and so we've never been the lowest price out there, but we've got a very high product quality standards. There are other major competitors who'd go just the opposite. They have bare minimum quality standards, and they want to be a low, low price brand, and they serve a different part of the market. And so these are all things that you know, you as a retailer would appreciate, that there's lots of different types of customers out there, and we have retailers trying to target different segments

David Novak 33:03 

Absolutely. And I got to ask you this, and what comes to mind when you hear drill, baby drill.

Mike Wirth 33:08 

Well, it's, it's an oversimplified slogan that's become, you know, I think carries probably more political weight with it than than it ought to. But you know, what I hear is a message that says, our country is blessed with great natural resources and and we should take advantage of them. I travel around the world, and I talk to leaders in other countries, political leaders, presidents, prime ministers, business leaders, and they'll look at the US and they say, Wow, you've got the deepest capital markets, you've got the most innovative economy, you've got the rule of law, you have all these great advantages, and you've got more energy resources than anybody else. Why is it that it seems like your government doesn't want to take advantage of these resources to make your country even more competitive. And they'll say, you know, if we had, we were blessed with the resources you have, we would be, you know, running a very different game plan than we think the US is. And so I think it's a statement that says, Look, you know, we should, we should take advantage of the bounty that this country has, in so many ways, for the benefit of our people, for the benefit of our allies in the world to responsibly produce and the regulations and the standards for people in our industry, in the US are as high as there anywhere in the world. There's no place where it's done better, safer, with less impact than in the United States. And I think is a call to say, look, we should, we should take advantage of our resources and use those to our benefit.

David Novak 34:46 

You know, your industry is, is vilified as much as any industry. You know, it's like in his I'm sure it comes a lot from people just not understanding. But I really admired it, Mike, when you. You wrote your open letter to President Biden about, you know, the fact that there needed to be a better partnership between the oil companies and the government. What was it that, really, you know, ticked you off enough to get that done, to write that letter and and how long did you work on it, and what was the reaction just by your employees?

Mike Wirth 35:25 

Yeah, so I had been in the White House just a few days before that letter came to me, and I had been meeting with key senior officials. I did meet with the President, but I met with people that worked very closely with the President, and President and had been talking about a whole host of issues. This is back, you know, when the Russia, Ukraine war had begun, prices had spiked. There were concerns about supply. We were working closely with various agencies to be sure during hurricane season that we had supplies positioned, and we're doing all we could to be ready if we had a storm. And, and so I was in there meeting with people, and then I get this letter, and I know the people who I was meeting with were involved in writing the letter. They didn't. I didn't get a hint of it when I was there face to face with them. And and the letter was filled with, you know, allegations and inaccurate kind of invective, very inflammatory invective, against our industry. That was just wrong and and so I was a little bit annoyed that a, it was, it was inaccurate and misleading, and B, that nobody had raised any of these issues with me when I was when I was with them. And so I happened to be on vacation in Montana with my family, and I started getting text messages people saying, Have you seen you know, what do you think of the President's letter? And I said, What letter? And I hadn't received it. And I called my office, I said, Did I get a letter from the White House? And they said, No, we haven't received anything. And, you know, then I open up my laptop and I look and the New York Times had it and CNN had it and, and I didn't have it and, and so, you know, I took some time on my vacation. I worked on it every morning for three or four mornings, because the first draft is probably not the draft you want to send. You have to write it something like this, and you shouldn't write when you're my initial state of mind was a little bit more agitated than I should ever send anything out, and so I do all work on it. I'd set it aside. I'd come back a day later, and I was calmer, and could look at it and say, let's take this out. And I but I wrote the letter myself. I didn't hand it off to a team of people to do it and, and so after, I don't know, three or four iterations and a little bit of time to let things calm down, I went ahead and sent it to our Washington, DC office. I said, Look, I'd like you to make sure this is hand delivered to the White House, and we know how to get things there to senior people and and make sure that happens before it goes anywhere else. And then once we're sure it's at the White House, we're getting a lot of requests from the media. What do you think? What's your response? And I said, Well, I owe the President a response before I say anything to anybody else. And so we did that and it, you know, it, I can't say we got a lot of traction afterwards, to be honest with you, David, but internally with our employees, the reaction was, thank you for standing up for us. Thank you for not letting people say things that are untrue about our industry, our company and our people, without defending and and so internally, the reaction was, was very positive. You know, one

David Novak 38:40 

of the things you said in that letter is that You increased your capital budget, you know, to really provide more resources to the world, basically, $18 billion I mean, that's that is a lot. I don't know what on what that was on top of, but obviously you have to put capital into a lot of different things. You know, how do you stay focused with your capital versus maybe chasing the bright, shiny object? Yeah,

Mike Wirth 39:05 

you really have to ground in, you know, a set of core beliefs about your strategy, about where your competitive advantages are and and be very clear minded about the kinds of things you believe you can do very well, and that you can create value for shareholders through executing. And you have to be honest that you can't do everything. And I oftentimes tell our people, we can do anything we want as a large company with all this great capability, but we can't do everything that we want, and so we have to make choices, and I think in capital allocation in particular, we have to be very careful, because we put capital into our business in large quantities, and then it has very long lifespans. A project can take 10 or more years to execute, and then it can operate for decades. We have, we have assets that are more than. 100 years old and and so these decisions have to stand the test of time. They have to be able to compete through market cycles and technology evolution and political cycles. And so you have to really focus on that, that set of beliefs about, what does the world need? What can we do very well, and then how do we execute that in a way that's that's efficient, safe, reliable, and can deliver energy to the world over time in a way that can generate a return for investors. And so capital allocation may be the most important, you know, part of our overall, you know, kind of stewardship processes inside, inside the company.

Koula Callahan 40:39 

Hey, everyone. It's Kula. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app. In the app, every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead, download the how leaders lead, app, and start your day every day with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds. Go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead.

David Novak 41:26 

You know, Mike, I gotta give you a big compliment. Here, you are a master at communications. I mean, you were able to simplify the complex, which I know has to be a big asset. But what are some of the communications best practices that you could recommend to others to keep in mind. I mean, how do you think about it?

Mike Wirth 41:47 

Yeah, you know, it's funny. As an engineer, you grew up being a problem solver. I did anyway, and seeking the right answer was kind of what you did in school and communication and people and relationships were not necessarily. You know that people went into liberal arts that were good at those things, and if you're good with numbers, but maybe not so good with people, you went into engineering. And so I've learned that communications essential in my job, and I've worked hard at it. I work hard at my written communication, and I try to do a lot of that myself. And if I have people that are helping me, they get a lot of, you know, edits and feedback because I care, because I think it really matters. And then in oral communication, I've learned that approachability matters. You know, we're all part of the same team here, and so I try to have a style that doesn't talk down at people, but meets people where they are. I try to take complex things and make them simple because it's, you know, that's difficult to do. Taking simple things and making them sound complex is easier than the reverse. Stories really matter. You can illustrate a point with an effective story, and people will remember the story, if you just give them some point or principle that's not as easy to remember as a memorable story. And then you kind of, you practice at it. You know, if I'm going to go do a speech somewhere, I've got one coming up here in a month. I was just going through a draft of it today, and, you know, marking it up so that I own it, but then I'll practice it, and I don't just show up to read it, you know, I put the work in, because if I'm going to speak in front of a large group of people, and they're going to give me the attention, and this is going to be several 1000 people for, you know, I mean, 20 minutes, and then a little Q and A session, that's a lot of man hours that I'm commanding the attention of, I should put the work in to give them something that I've actually committed to and and I practiced at it. And so whether I'm going to go on TV, to do media, or I go to do a speech, like I'll be doing here this month or early next month, you know, you still got to work at it. And I just, you know, I've learned that what you practice, you get better at. It's like golf, right? You can't just show up and play. One

David Novak 44:05 

of the things that happens, unfortunately, is a lot of times when people become CEOs, they disavow their predecessors. They, you know, there's, you know, it's now their their domain, and they're going to set, you know, set their agenda, etc. But, you know, I understand you, you have lunch with your your predecessors and and, you know, what's the biggest takeaway you've taken from one of those lunches? I think you have, you have three of your predecessors that you've have lunch with. Or how does that work? Yeah,

Mike Wirth 44:37 

sadly, one of them passed away just a month ago, but up until that, my three immediate predecessors, each of whom served in this role for a decade, all lived within stone's throw of where I live, and so a fellow named Ken durr had operated was CEO of our company in the 90s. Dave. O'Reilly in the 2000s John Watson in the 2010s I would invite, I invite them in for lunch two or three or four times a year and share a little bit of what's going on with the company. Because I think their friends and acquaintances think they always know what's going on, even if they're no longer with the company. And so I try to update them on developments and and help them understand, but then I get to ask them for advice. Tell me the history of how we got into this country, or our relationship with that that leader, when covid hit, I reached out to each one of them and said, you know, you didn't face a pandemic, but you faced oil embargoes, terrorist attacks, wars, and these kind of huge shocks to the economy, where our company was front and center in market convulsions and these unpredictable circumstances, what did you do? What did you learn? What would you do differently? What What advice would you have for me as we head into this unknown situation with a pandemic, and I've got pages and pages of notes that I took during these conversations with them. And so we've always had very orderly successions at our company, and there's never been any acrimony or bitterness or, you know, anything that would leave anything but a very collaborative spirit. So I've been blessed with decades of experience that I can draw on from people that did the exact same job at the exact same company, and they've been incredibly generous with their with their time and their advice with me, and I, you know, I just actually, two days from now, will be at the memorial service for Ken Durr, who who just passed away and and I've talked to both of the two you know, remaining predecessors of mine, who will be at the services along with me to honor him. And it's been been a real loss for us, but it's been a great, great pleasure to have access to Ken along with Dave and John.

David Novak 47:01 

Yeah, Ken. Ken was a great guy, and I'm sorry to hear that. And you know, this has been so much fun, just to, you know, have this conversation with you, Mike, and I've learned a lot from the conversation, and now I want to have a bit more with my bit more fun with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Okay, what are the three words that best describe you? Oh,

Mike Wirth 47:25 

patient, listening and family.

David Novak 47:35 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who

Mike Wirth 47:38 

would it be the Zamboni driver?

David Novak 47:42 

What's your biggest pet peeve?

Mike Wirth 47:43 

People who speak first and listen second,

David Novak 47:46 

who would play you in a movie?

Mike Wirth 47:53 

I've been told

David Novak 47:56 

Nicolas Cage, I see a little bit of that. I don't know if you're as wacky as that guy you know, you've got a vacation day to yourself. What are you feeling that day with

Mike Wirth 48:05 

a round of golf with my wife?

David Novak 48:09 

Where's the best scuba diving spot you've experienced the Maldives? What did it feel like when you got the call to become the CEO of Chevron?

Mike Wirth 48:18 

It was overwhelming.

David Novak 48:19 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear

Mike Wirth 48:24 

right now? You'd hear Zach Bryan, love country.

David Novak 48:27 

What's something about you? Few people would know.

Mike Wirth 48:30 

When I was in college, I used to compete in something called the trivia bowl, which was like the old GE knowledgeable, which you may may remember, and but rather than asking questions teams of people, a 6014 bracket like March Madness, but instead of asking real academic knowledge, it was about old TV and movies and sports and music and and kind of the arcane trivia of the world and and I competed in that for years. It was a great reason to drink a lot of beer with some good friends.

David Novak 49:03 

What's one of your daily rituals? Something that you never miss? I

Mike Wirth 49:07 

read a dozen different periodicals first thing in the morning, and

David Novak 49:12 

now Lightning Rounds over. Okay, but I understand, and you did a great job, by the way. I understand you wake up at 345 and do a 90 minute workout every day. Now you're the you're the Mark Wahlberg of the corporate world. You know Why so early 345 Come on. Well, I've

Mike Wirth 49:35 

learned as I have gotten older, I don't actually sleep as much as I used to when I was younger, and so. And I also get up a little bit more frequently through the night. And so there's a point at which you may as well just stay up. And that's about the time when I say, Why do I want to go back to bed? And my brain is already starting to turn on. Let me just get up and watch CNBC and ESPN and get a, you know, get a little exercise in. You know. You need to stretch a little bit more. I've learned as I get older, and a little more resistance training, a little more cardio, so I just try to do enough to make it through the day. So

David Novak 50:10 

you go to the University of Colorado, you're alum. Now, I gotta ask you, you know, when we're talking about leadership, what do you think of what Coach prime is doing in Colorado? I mean, how do you feel about what's happening there? Well,

Mike Wirth 50:22 

he certainly put them on the map again. And they were, they were sliding towards irrelevance. And, you know, nobody cared about Colorado football, other than a few of us. And and you never heard him be talking about it. And boy, he has put them right smack in the middle of the conversation. College sports has changed so much the whether it's the economics, athletes now being paid, the conference realignment. And I think there's more, I think there's more change ahead of us. So it doesn't really resemble the college sporting environment I grew up loving myself. It's just different. And you can't, you know, we can't unring the bell. That's what we've got. And he seems to understand how to bring in players through the, you know, the transfer portal, and understands what young people want today, which is, you know, social media exposure and and, and, you know, rappers and other interesting people on the sidelines. So he's made the program interesting again. They were more competitive last season than they had been. I actually won a $5 bet with Warren Buffett on a game last year because Colorado and Nebraska resumed their their long standing rivalry, and the buffs won that game. So you know, they're moving in the right direction this year. Who knows? There's a lot of new talent on the roster. We'll see what happens

David Novak 51:44 

be fun to see. Be fun to see. What's your unfinished business? Mike, when you think about it, you know,

Mike Wirth 51:52 

I'd say it's culture. Our company has a great culture, and I'm really, really proud of it, but it can be even better and and I think you should never be satisfied that you're done working on culture and in our industry. And I think this is true in many others. You can copy a strategy, you can license a technology or a brand. You can acquire assets. So there are many things that you know you can if you don't have it, you go get it culture. You got to build the old fashioned way. It's one day at a time, one person at a time, one interaction at a time, and and it can be a real differentiator. Companies in our industry have very different cultures from one another, and I'm proud of ours, and I always want it to be better, and so that that's probably the one thing that I will never be finished with. And I hope those that follow me will will stay committed to trying to strengthen that and and treasure it. You can lose it quickly, and then you've got to build it back up. And I think it's the single most valuable asset,

David Novak 52:57 

you know, Mike, when I was running young brands, the single biggest thing that I tried to focus on was recognition. You know, recognizing and valuing other people and having fun doing it. What would be the one thing that you'd like to be known for in terms of the culture at Chevron?

Mike Wirth 53:14 

Well, recognition is, I think, a really important one. One of the practices I have, David, is when I travel and meet people in our businesses around the world, they prepare, you know, to host me, to educate me, show me their operations, and take me out to see customers and whatever. And I write notes back to everybody. I read a letter back in old school on paper, the kind you don't get many of anymore, and I pay careful attention to each person that I interact with, and I try to send a letter back to each one to thank them for taking the time, and to recognize what it was that we talked about, that they shared with me, and tell them how, how much I value that and and so it's, It's, it's a way of recognizing, you know, I think back to when I was early in my career, and and if a CEO had sent me a letter and actually knew what I was doing, it would have been a really big deal for me and and so I try to remember what it was like to be in the jobs that I'm visiting and that I had those jobs myself one time, and I want to make sure that people know that I appreciate them. So that's a little practice that I know some other CEOs that do things like that, but I'll come back and write 60 or 70 or 80 letters after a trip and and it's it's important to me that I make sure people understand that I was paying attention, and I really do value what they do. Fantastic.

David Novak 54:44 

And last question here, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

Mike Wirth 54:50 

Just ask. I give you a quick story. I was in my second supervisory job after the one I mentioned earlier. I. Yeah, and I was going to run a small refinery, and I'd never been in an operating plant. I'd been in as an engineer, but not as a manager. I think we went as a plant manager. And this plant had just gone through a union organizing vote, and it was a non union plant, and by one single vote, the workforce had chosen not to unionize. So it was split right down the middle. Half the workforce wanted to be represented by the, you know, oil, chemical and atomic workers, I think it was at the time, and the other half did not want to be represented. The plant manager got moved out, and I got sent up there, and I was, you know, wet behind the years young engineer who really had no idea what to do in this labor environment. And I was going through the Oakland airport, and I saw a fellow who worked for us named Sam Patterson, who ran our transportation operations in the Western US. Sam had never gone to college. He had graduated from Oakland Tech High School. He looked like Bill Russell, who also went to Oakland Tech, I think, and a big, gregarious guy, great laugh, but he was a great leader of people. He ran the best operation and and he had worked up from a truck driver. He started out as a truck driver, and so I saw him in the airport. I said, Mr. Patterson, you wouldn't know who I am, but you know, could you give me five minutes? And I explained the situation, and he sat down. He said, Mike, let me. Let me give you three pieces of advice. Find the person who led the kind of pro company part of the workforce. He may not be in a leader she or she may not be the leader by by title, but there's somebody who everybody listens to and respects, go spend time with that person, get to know them. And then on the the other half of the workforce that wanted to unionize, there's somebody like that there too. Go find that person and spend twice as much time with that person. And then his third piece of advice is, he said, find something that matters to everybody in that facility that they can't get from the home office, whatever it might be, and go to the mat and fight for him, and and, and so he it took five minutes literally and but he talked about, how do you how do you connect with one portion of the workforce, then how do you connect even more with the one that's feeling maybe less, you know, a little bit left out and disenfranchised, and then find something to bring them all together. And it was such brilliant advice. And I went up there, I did exactly that. And in, you know, a relatively short period of time, people who had been longtime friends and had stopped talking to each other, we started to mend fences and move forward. I never would have, I never would have approached it that way if I didn't stop and ask somebody who was a respected leader, a successful leader who I really looked up to, and so my piece of advice is, is ask, talk to other people, ask, ask for their advice and and then, and then learn and apply it. That's

David Novak 57:50 

That's great advice. And I'm glad I got a chance to ask you all these questions. And I want to thank you, Mike for taking the time to to be with me and to share your many, many insights and congratulations on all your success. And 42 years at Chevron. 42 just a week or so, right?

Unknown Speaker 58:11 

That's right next week,

David Novak 58:12 

I got to tell you, I'm just blown away by Mike's habit of writing up to 80 notes after a site visit. And when he was talking about it, this line stood out to me. He said, it's important to me that I make sure people understand that I was paying attention. You know, it's one thing to ask questions and listen, but a lot of leaders don't realize that can actually backfire if you don't respond to what you've heard. So when you ask questions, you gotta pay attention, but you gotta listen more than you speak and then respond. Thank people for their input. Summarize what you've heard and, most importantly, make changes based on what you learn, and then tell people you did it because you learned it from them. I want you to go to school on what Mike taught us when you have meetings and you learn something, be sure to let people know that you've heard what they had to say and what you're going to do about it. And the way how he did it is he had those note cards that he would send to everybody that he met with, because he wanted people to know remember that he was paying attention. So I'd like you to get a stack of note cards, and then after a meeting or after a dialog that you have with one of your team members, send them a note thank them for what they contributed, and see how it motivates them, and also it'll show you that you were actually paying attention to them. And sometimes that just doesn't happen. So use Mike's note writing strategy for yourself and watch how it'll pay off. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders show their listening. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Tom Nolan, CEO of the popular jewelry brand, Kendra Scott. We have about. As

Tom Nolan 1:00:00 

high a conversion rate as you can have in the consumer retail world. I mean, our conversion rates and our best stores are north of 40% and that's unheard of, and it's because we don't focus on it like you know. The irony is, we focus on making connection with somebody, and it works.

David Novak 1:00:13 

So be sure to come back next week and hear our entire conversation with Tom Nolan, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where, every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be.