Public trust is the single biggest hurdle facing Canada’s oil and gas sector.
Not emissions management. Not water usage. Not seismicity related to hydraulic fracturing. Not pipeline safety. Not any of the things for which it is currently demonized.
None of that matters if we’re not trusted. None of the great things we’re doing – the great stories we can tell – matter at all if we’re not trusted.
Indeed, Canadian politicians take clear advantage of the public’s lack of confidence in the petroleum sector to sally forth with often ill-formed policies that often illustrate the law of unintended consequences. Politicians, with a degree of public trust on their side, are no slouches when it comes to using that trust cudgel to beat the industry.
Many Canadians either outright distrust the energy sector or are suspicious of its ability to do what it claims it is doing and can continue to do: extract oil and gas in a way that is economically advantageous to Canada while mitigating environmental impact on air, water and land.
Sounds like a tall order. The confounding thing is that it’s happening but nobody knows about it because we haven’t made it sufficiently important to make it matter to them.
We’re just not talking about our stories in a way that’s meaningful. The secrets of our successes are truly secret. We’re not talking about the things we do and how we do them in a way that connects to the people we typically think of being not of the sector.
Except they are of the sector – ordinary Canadians are the real resource owners. They consume the products we produce and enjoy their lifestyles because we do what we do.
That means they should be a receptive audience. And all we have to do is ask them to listen, because trust is at stake.
Great storytellers also listen carefully. They play what they hear back to the audience in a way that binds the audience to a storytelling pact.
Here’s an example of how a great energy storyteller tells a story effectively – and how the audience gets to be part of the story and the narratives that support it. The result is a stronger relationship forged in trust.
Seven Generations Energy is a bright star, but this isn’t just about its value-creation strategy in Alberta’s Montney Formation, its environmental ethos, or its super-pad drilling and pre-processing innovations.
It’s about how Seven Generations tells – and listens to – stories. It also about how the company has created a platform for its various communities to tell their stories.
Seven Generations invited stakeholders to tell their stories and they did, in a unique publication called Generations. It’s a fascinating compilation of perspectives on relationships with the energy sector. Its storytellers include a college president, a First Nations leader, a city mayor and an MLA. Also weighing in are families, hospital foundation directors and museum heads.
Through Generations, the company gave its stakeholders unfettered access to a platform to explore how they are connected to the energy industry. The company merged those stories with its own into a powerful tool that defines trust in action. The Seven Generations’ aspects are more muted than the other stories, indicating this wasn’t driven by self-interest.
Share it with your colleagues, friends and family. Discuss it. Critique it. Measure its efficacy.
If you’re a company person, ask yourself how your organization could benefit in the trust department with a similar initiative.
Ask yourself: “Is this what trust feels like?” Then imagine what would happen if every Canadian oil and gas company told a similar story.
Here’s betting we in industry wouldn’t have to fret so much about trust.
(In the next chief story officer instalment: how to help your staff tell our sector’s stories.)
Bill Whitelaw is president and CEO at JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group.
Bill is a Troy Media contributor. Why aren’t you?
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
