When I travel and meet people in our businesses around the world, they prepare to host me, to educate me, show me their operations. I write notes back to everybody. I read 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. 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 a really big, strong guy, but I got to ask you, how long do you think you'd last as a rough neck? Now that's real work. So a rough neck 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 doing the real work in our business. I don't think I last very long, David. I went to engineering school for a reason. I understand that's one of the toughest, dirtiest jobs you could have, but it requires a tremendous amount of skills across the board. Absolutely. Absolutely. 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 particularly in these very physical jobs in different kinds of settings, offshore, incredible heat, sometimes in driving snow and sub-zero temperatures. We rely on people not only to bring those skills, but actually to also really look out for themselves and one another. We've got a very strong safety culture, and that's something I'm incredibly proud of. How do you drive that, Mike? How do you make sure that safety is executed in such a large global company? 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 so sometimes when you see something go wrong, people were feeling some time pressure, they were hurrying. And so we start with some fundamental beliefs like that. And then we try to build a system of work where people fail safe. 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 has composed of people that actually do the work, 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's 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 in a 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, Mike, when you have such a large company with so many people, how do you, as the CEO, get the real skinny on what's happening on the ground? Well, that's always a challenge, as you know, in a large organization, and we 're a global company. And when you get into some of these jobs that have titles that separate you a little bit distance from the front line, 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, 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 recognizes him and everybody wants to see him, what he does is he goes straight to the kitchen. And he goes straight to the guys that are chopping vegetables and the people at the lowest wrong on the ladder working in the kitchen. And he asks them 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 sous chef or the real chef or the matar deer and 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 then 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. It's a time to connect with supervisors and management, et cetera. But it's a lesson I learned from watching how he handles himself. And it definitely works. And I can't wait to talk more about how you're leading the 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 ? 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. 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 in these ropes and shoots, things that look like medieval systems. And we're a bunch of 10-year-old kids out there. He taught us technique and hard work. And he walked around and he was always giving us these kind of development and leadership inspiring quotes and bromides. Some of them had stolen from people like Vince Lombardi. Some of them 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 for the three years I played for this team, not only did we never lose the 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 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. I love Ted Lasso. I do too. So I learned leaders can keep people focused and 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. I'm a high school coach who was an Ironman competitor back in the early days of the Iron Man. This is in the 1970s. And he taught me that the only thing holding me back were the limits I put on myself. And the way I learned this is I broke my thumb. I cut a pass on the tip of my thumb, fractured my thumb, 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 got for a run one day with him. And in Golden, Colorado, it's a little town at the base of the Rocky Mountains. 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. But it's a windy road up several thousand feet to get to the top of the mountain. And so we're running through town and I'm gone maybe a couple of miles. I'm getting a little windy and I say, "Mr. Myers, where are we going?" And 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 the way. And there was no way I could get to the top. I said, "I can't do this." But I was 16 years old and he was, I don't know, more than twice my age. And I was going to admit that a history teacher was going to be able to run farther 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 always took 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 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 the team and they accomplish some goal that is way beyond what they envisioned they could do. And I actually see this a lot in people. 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 maybe they didn't think they could. You 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 a leader too ? You know, I coached, I played sports. I love 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 succeed? And you learn the lessons of that and you become better. So as I was still playing sports and I got into college, I started coaching, I coached at a younger sister, I coached her in some sports. So it's really through coaching, I think, that 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 so that's really where I started to get into it. And then 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 first started. But I loved coaching people, I loved coaching teams and that really has translated across into my professional life. 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? 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, but you're really trying to help them. 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 a 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 they had to say and are trying to get in on it. And 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 a, 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 a way to get to a different outcome, to avoid an impact that's maybe not a desirable impact. And so I've really learned that the way you give feedback can make the difference between somebody receiving it in a way that 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 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 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 competitive aspect to my personality. And when, you know, the institutions attacked or I'm attacked, 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. 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 worked at Chevron your entire career. And it was interesting for you to say, you know, when you got your supervisor job, you were pretty bad at it. You know, what's the, when you think about that person that joins Chevron, you know, nearly four decades ago and then who that person is today, the Mike worth today , how much have you really changed? What skill or a couple skills you just had to pick up so that you really became the leader you are today? 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 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. So, 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 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 U.S. 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 have these, you know, environmental cleanup projects that would come back to us. And we would refer to them as orphan sites, the 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 and 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, I'm Betty." You know, 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 it used to really drive me nuts. 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 see if you can take a little bit of control over the conversation?" And 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 they'd 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 sites from days gone by. And she just really needed to know every day that I cared 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 only once I understood what she needed that I was able to become a better supervisor for her. And she was happier and I was happier. So along the way, you know, you pick up 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 managers seemed to work for him. 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 division office on his priorities and in a way that was subtle, but highly effective, even with people who were 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 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 a complicated set of work activities very effectively. And so, you know, those are the kinds of things that you get in a bigger job. 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 understand when you started at 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 did you learn from that? Well, I specialize 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 Carrig in, 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-work. So 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 fundage 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 massive projects to take forever, but it's closer to the business. And that's when I got into the service station end of our business. And I started out doing, it was in the days when we would take the little click ety-clackety. And I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. 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I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. I had a couple of different things. Give us a snapshot of your business and all that you're responsible for as chairman and CEO. Sure. In our traditional business, which is oil and gas, there's three big segments of that. One is referred to in the industry as upstream or exploration and production. 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 se abeds and ancient 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. Exploring for oil and gas and then producing it and getting it to market is one big part of our business. 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. 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. Then in our downstream business, we refine the raw materials into finished products. There are thousands of products that are derived from petroleum, everything from the ones you're familiar with, gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, to lubricants and petrochem icals and ingredients for cosmetics and medical products and the like. That's our traditional business and we make money across all of that around the world. We also now have a new energy business, which is working on technologies that are inherently lower carbon and so renewable fuels from biofeedstocks, hydrogen, different ways to manufacture hydrogen, carbon capture and storage. How can we take CO2 emissions that are coming off a power plant or a refining facility or chemical facility and capture that and then reverse engineer what we usually do . 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 CO2 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 electr ify parts of the economy. You 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, 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? Yeah, well 42 years helps. You hang around long enough and you pick up a few things but curiosity is kind of at the core of it. If you ask people what they do, they're only too willing to share that with you . And 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're trying to accomplish something, understand how they make money because 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 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 asking questions 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 then you have to empower them to 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. You know, when Americans go to the gas station, the price always seems to be different. You know, in simple terms, explain why that is and the part Chevron really plays in that. Yeah, so I'll give you, for our company, we've got roughly 8,000 retail locations in the U.S. where we sell gasoline under two brands, Chevron and Texaco. Out of those 8,000, 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, 90s, you know, 8% or whatever the numbers are, are independently owned and operated locations. They operate under kind of a franchise agreement with us to meet certain standards on customer service, product quality, cleanliness and image, et cetera. 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, you know, recognized major brands, some are independent brands. And gasoline and convenience retailing, which has grown up to be the kind of alternate profit center alongside of gasoline at the retail level, people have different strategies. Some people operate on a low margin and they look for big volumes. Other people 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 and the land development didn 't allow as many sites to be built. And so competition gets to be very local at the retail end of the chain. And you know, 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 laws that we can sell at a wholesale price, but we can't tell a retailer what price to sell. So you see this dynamic playing out and everybody's kind of got their value proposition for their customers. We've always been a high quality brand. 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 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. Absolutely. And I got to ask you this. What comes to mind when you hear drill baby drill? Well, it's an oversimplified slogan that's become, you know, I think carries probably more political weight with it than it ought to. But you know, what I hear is a message that says our country's blessed with great natural resources. 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, you know, 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 produce, responsibly produce and the regulations and the standards for people in our industry in the US are as high as they are 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 as a call to say, look, we should, we should take advantage of our resources and use those to our benefit. You know, your industry is, is vilified as much as any industry. You know, it's like, and it's, I'm sure it comes from a lot from people just not understanding. But I really admired it, Mike, when 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 down to write that letter? And how long did you work on it? And what was the reaction just by your employees? 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 didn't meet with the president, but I met with people that worked very closely with the 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 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 the letter was filled with allegations and inaccurate kind of, very inflammatory and effective against our industry that was just wrong. And so I was a little bit annoyed that A, it was inaccurate and misleading and B, that nobody had raised any of these issues with me 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 I didn't have it. 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 in. So I'd do a work on it, I'd send it aside. I'd come back a day later and I was calmer and could look at it and say, well, let's take this out. But I wrote the letter myself. I didn't hand it off to a team of people to do it. 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 and 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 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, I can't say we got a lot of traction afterwards, to be honest with you, David, but internally with our employees, their action 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 so internally, the reaction was very positive. You know, one 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 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, you really have to ground in, you know, a set of core beliefs about your strategy, about where your competitive advantages are, 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. That project can take 10 or more years to execute, and then it can operate for decades. We have assets that are more than 100 years old. 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 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 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 part of our overall stewardship processes inside the company. 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 workday. So go to the App Store, start 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. You know, Mike, I got to 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? 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 are 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 a 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 thousand people for, you know, I mean, 20 minutes and then a little Q&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 I've 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 of the things that happens, unfortunately, is a lot of times when people become CEOs, they disavow their predecessors. They, you know, it's now their domain and they're going to set, you know, set their agenda, et cetera. But, you know, I understand you have lunch with your predecessors 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, 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 a stone's throw of where I live. And so a fellow named Kendur had operated, was the CEO of our company in the 90 s, Dave O'Reilly in the 2000s, John Watson in the 2010s. I would 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 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 leader. When COVID hit, I reached out to each one of them and said, "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 advice would you have for me as we head into this unknown situation with the pandemic and I've got pages and pages and 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 anything that would leave anything but a very collaborative spirit. So I've been blessed with decades of experience that I can draw in from people that did the exact same job at the exact same company and they've been incredibly generous with their time and their advice with me. And I just, actually two days from now, we'll be at the Memorial Service for Ken Durer who just passed away. And I've talked to both of the two remaining predecessors of mine who will be at the services along with me to honor him and it's been a real loss for us. But it's been a great, great pleasure to have access to Ken along with Dave and John. Yeah, 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, a 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, patient, listening and family. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? The Zamboni driver. What's your biggest pet peeve? People who speak first and listen second. Who would play you in a movie? I've been told Nicholas 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 filling that day with? Around a golf with my wife. 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? It was overwhelming. If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Right now you hear Zach Bryan. Love Country. What's something about you a few people would know? When I was in college, I used to compete in something called the trivia bowl, which was like the old GE knowledge bowl, which you may remember. But rather than asking questions, teams of people, 60, 14 bracket like March Madness, but instead of asking real academic knowledge, it was about old TV and movies and sports and music and kind of the arcane trivia of the world. And I competed in that for years. It was a great reason to drink a lot of beer with some good friends. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? I read a dozen different periodicals first thing in the morning. And now lightning rounds over. 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 Wohlberg of the corporate world. You know, why so early 345? Come on. Well, I've 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. 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 you go to the University of Colorado, you're a alum now. I got to 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, he's certainly put him 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. But 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. It's Colorado and Nebraska resumed their, their long standing rivalry in the buffs won that game. So, you know, they're, 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. Be fun to see. Be fun to see. What's your unfinished business, Mike, when you think about it? You know, 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 you know, in, in our industry, and I think this is true in, in many others, you can copy a strategy. You can license a technology or a brand. You can acquire assets. So there, 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, to try to strengthen that and, 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, the single most valuable asset. You know, Mike, when I was running young brands, the, 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, the, the one thing that you'd, you'd like to be known for in terms of the, the, the culture at Chevron? Well, recognitions, I think are really important. One, one of the practices I have David is when I travel and, and meet people in our businesses around the world, they prepare, you know, to host me, to educate me, show me their operations and, and take me out to see customers and whatever. And I, 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, 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, I think back to when I was early in my career and, and, and if the 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, 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, and it's, it's important to me that I make sure people understand that I was paying attention and, and I really do value what they do. Fantastic. And last question here, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? Just ask. I, I give you a quick story. I was in my second supervisory job after the one I mentioned earlier. 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 go in 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, well, 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, went 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 he'd worked up from a truck driver. He started out as a truck driver. And so I saw him in the airport and 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 and he said, "Mike, 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 a leader, he or she may not be a leader 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 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 them." And so he took five minutes, literally. But he talked about how do you connect with one person 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 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 asked. Talk to other people, ask for their advice, and then learn and apply it. 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 be with me and to share your many, many insights. And congratulations on all your success and 42 years at Chevron. 42 and just a week or so, right? Yes, right. Fantastic. Next week. 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 the leaders don't realize that can actually backfire if you don't respond to what you've heard. So when you ask questions, you got to pay attention, but you got to 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're going to 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 dialogue 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 that 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 high a conversion rate as you can have in the consumer retail world. I'm in our conversion rates and our best stores in 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. 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 may get 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.