I received one of the most useful pieces of career advice from my supervisor during my time as a Project Manager in an oil company in western Siberia. He said to me: "You can't memorize and know everything. That's why you have to communicate, listen, and hear."
At that time, I was leading a project studying hydraulic fracturing technologies and supervising several wells in a couple of oilfields. It wasn't a very large volume, but I had to monitor the work and coordinate the process constantly. There were always a few "surprises" or tasks that came up. Also, I didn't have much experience. So I communicated. I asked questions, learned, and showed interest. I listened to people in neighboring subdivisions, contractors, mentors, and management. I accumulated knowledge, organized it, and built a coherent picture of the world in a particular subject area.
You can have five MSc or PhD degrees and 50 years of experience, but you'll never be able to take everything from the top of your head. It’s obvious. For example, there might be a problem with a certain field, well, or project. Of course, you can read tons of reports, study, find information in the literature or on the Internet, and waste a lot of time. And in the end, you'll find something, but it might take too long — unacceptably long. Or you can ask various people in subsidiaries and listen carefully to what they say. Understand what the problem might be within a few hours, and apply your experience to new circumstances. You can never get as much relevant information from any document or report as quickly as by talking directly to an expert.
After that, I moved to the corporate headquarters, where I worked on estimating the reserves. I was now managing over 800 fields in different countries. Several thousand reservoirs had to be analyzed and reevaluated every year. A gigantic and constantly growing amount of information. No one can hold such a large amount of information in their head. Of course, we had databases, big data, various forms, and reports. However dry databases cannot provide the high-level insights or operational status updates that can radically change the approaches to evaluate a particular reservoir. Therefore, soft skills for interacting with specialists in the field became a crucial competence and an indispensable requirement for me as a Project Manager for this job.
In other words: "to communicate, listen and hear".
Electromechanical Engineer
1wWe're do I sign? Ramón Rojas Díaz, PhD