In our November webinar, a respected senior executive, Bob Newhouse, shares strategies for enhancing your career. He discusses the evolving skills landscape in the energy industry as we approach 2025. Newhouse emphasizes the shift from traditional career paths to a project-driven framework, highlighting the importance of both technical and non-technical skills. He offers valuable advice for job seekers on how to make the most of their time during slow periods, understand what qualities make them more attractive candidates, and refine their skills to appeal to employers and clients.
Watch the Webinar:
Transcript:
Jason Assir
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone to November's Energy Gigs webinar. We have our esteemed guest, Mr. Bob Newhouse. Excited for this, this webinar we're going to be talking about skills and sort of gearing up for 2025 and how you can stay relevant in this ever changing energy industry. Bob is a great friend, advisor, former boss, tons of experience on the side of talent and consulting and freelancing. He was the former Vice President of People, Partner in Talent Development at KBR, Vice President of Learning and Development, Noble Drilling, also Director of Human Capital at Resources Global Professionals. And then he was also a consultant, management consultant. He had his own firm, ran his own firm, employed me for some strange reason, for a little while he was the CEO of Newhouse Consultants. Bob, we're so welcome. Thank you so much for coming. Love for you to like take it, take it away from here if you don't mind saying a little bit about yourself and we can go from there.
Bob Newhouse
Oh, happy to. Thank you, Jason. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks to you and Julia for having me today and I'm excited to talk about this stuff. Obviously, as you well know, I kind of geek out on this and, and I'm real happy to share some thoughts and hopefully we can get some good conversation going with folks online today. You know, I love what you do with energy gigs because I think it's leading the future for where all of, you know, career development and the flux between, you know, worker as an independent person and organization as you know, this kind of consolidated set of activities. And what's happening, I think is that line is blurring a lot and that's part of what I really want to talk about today. I think you've covered the highlights of my career. The only thing I would add is that I learned a long time ago that to be successful you have to hire smarter people than yourself. So that's why I brought you in. Jason, it was great working with you. So I just want to give some kind of overview thoughts and ideas, some kind of really big ideas and big trends because all of this stuff is in such rapid flux. You know, as we're facing into the AI revolution, things are changing so fast that it literally it is impossible to keep up on a day to day basis. You know, I kind of, I'm using this tagline of from pedigree to portfolio because I think that really captures this transition and transformation really truly that we're seeing around work from what was a traditional approach, which is I go and I get an education And I build experience and that creates my pedigree, right? And then that's what I'm going to go sell in the marketplace, typically in the form of a resume, an interview and then landing a full time job, which we used to say permanent, right? And we all know that there is no such thing as permanence, but that was the trajectory. What's really interesting about the time that we live in is that that system still exists and at the same time, you know, kind of meshed in together is this permeable, project driven, rapid fire, agile approach to work. And there's a real conflict between those systems. One is kind of more hierarchical, more future planning based long term and the other is rapid and quick and agile. And organizations are really struggling with this, right? So I've worked in some large organizations, you know, 10,000, 35,000 employees with global footprints and in very different sectors as well from offshore drilling and with Noble and just absolute diversified different solutions and services with kbr. But one thing that's common is that yes, we still go to market and we're looking for good people, right? And the mechanisms that we go to market to look for good people with are still those kind of old, those old mechanisms, we still kind of go looking for the CV and the resume and the, you know, recruiters are still using that as the viewpoint. And simultaneously, as I said within organizations, what talent professionals are starting to realize is okay, but that doesn't solve this rapid problem we have. We're deploying a new system, we're buying a company where we are automating using large language models and replacing process with, you know, automated bots. You know, that's a mindset and an ability to move and pivot that you might not even capture on a resume, right? So there's this again, this real tension. So within organizations what we're seeing is a shift to what I would say is a project mindset and there's still that tension. So we've got both of those worlds kind of existing simultaneously. And I think on the one hand there's huge opportunity, right? So you know, what Energy Gigs does is helps companies find skills that match those rapid fire project related needs that we have. And then for the individuals it can be frustrating, right, because it's harder to access those things because a lot of those project based things are happening internally and we don't have the visibility of that from the outside. We go to a company website, you know, and we see the big arc of what they do. But really understanding where is it that we're driving value within our organization is kind of opaque from the outside. So what I see, you know, in an energy gigs doing is boundary spanning.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
What you guys are doing is moving across that boundary from organization to market and back to organization and linking skills via individuals into those projects. And that's really cool. And I think honestly that's the future of work and that's where we're going. It doesn't mean organizations going to disappear.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
We're still going to have large economic entities that drive value, you know, for, for society and drive value for shareholders. That's not going to go away. But the way that gets defined and operationalized, I think we're going to see massive shifts. We're already starting to see some of it. So you know, kind of the old economy is that pedigree, the new economy is what I would call this portfolio career. So when we talk about portfolio careers, you know, often we talk about the individual and you know, I'm going to build this portfolio career and that's great, you know, and I think we should think about ourselves in, in terms of that. But increasingly there's the ability to build a portfolio within a company as well and some of the HRS systems are supporting that. So it's a really interesting dynamic that's, that's happening there. So while you've got energy gigs, which is gig career from the outside in, many companies are also looking to create gig platforms within the company.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
Which again pivots from that pedigree education background, what I've done to what skills do I have? And I think that's really driving the conversation around how we look at the future of skills. So I just started looking online and there's nothing magic about this number one. And number two, I want to put out the disclaimer, I am not technical in any way, shape or form.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
I had to actually look up a few of these things to know what they were. But so this is, this is from pluralsight, it's a recent post, so I just thought it was of interest. But you know, top technical skills for 2025 and we have AI agents and LangChain which was new to me but you know, the integration of large language models into applications, so the retrieval, augmented generation and agentic regeneration and then some, some ones that most people recognize like Python and, and aws. So cloud computing, Azure, you know, SQL Linux. So you know, these are technical skills that we know is driving digital transformation in our organizations. The challenge with technical skills is that they come and go rapidly and the prioritization of those skill sets shifts really rapidly, right? So there's no way that we can say this skill is invaluable for the next 10 years of your career. Like we used to do with, in that pedigree world, right, where we would say you get an engineering degree, you become an electrical engineer and therefore you have a whole, you know, a whole career ahead of you. And, and again, that's still going to happen, but within that are these skills that drive value creation even within the realm of electrical engineering and systems design. You know, now we're coming at it in very different ways. And so I think this view of skills is super fleeting, right? It's transitory. And in a sense, and I don't mean to insult anybody that does have these skills because you're way smarter than me, but it is transactional, right? It's, it's transactional in the sense that I carry the skill to the specific problem and I solve that problem, I build something new, we need that and that's really important. And so for people out there who are looking at your own portfolio career, whether that's internal or external, you know, understanding how my skills stack up vis a vis what organizations are looking for is really important. And we have to know what our transactional skills are. We have to know what would make us attractive for a project, for an employer, you know, to go in and add value. What I think is maybe harder to get to is what I would call, I have called for many years, non technical skills. You often hear the term soft skills and I really dislike that because there is nothing soft about them. Some of the interpersonal, human relations, leadership skills that we absolutely need, you know, as we move forward, are some of the hardest skills that we have to onboard, right? So what I find interesting is that while there's so much focus on the technology and digital transformation that we're going through, you know, in our businesses, more and more, both companies and, you know, organizations I just picked on the World Economic Forum because they have really focused on this and have published on skills of the future, are really starting to realize the underlying critical thinking, analysis, relational skills are absolutely imperative as we move forward. And especially when we look at the digital transformation and the automation and the somewhat frightening but also hopeful opportunities with AI, we are not going to be the masters of technology in a lot of ways. We are going to be the guides of technology because it is going to bring so much capability which really enhances the need for these non technical skills. And so I just wanted to highlight from that, from the World Economic Forum, what they are currently saying are the top 10 skills of the future. Now you'll notice they snuck in about three skills for each of the top 10. So they use, they use a lot of commas and ampersands, but you see analytical thinking and innovation, active learning and learning strategies, complex problem solving, critical thinking and analysis. You know, these are those elements of a person's skill sets that are very invisible.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
It's hard to talk about those things. It's hard to put that on a resume. It's, it's easier to, to know when you see it or experience it in someone. But these are those, these are those non technical skills that wrap around the technical that, that really are the value creators ultimately and they are the sustainable skills. So that's why I said some of the technical skills are a bit transitory and transactional. These sustainable skills, when we think about long term value creation really are in these non technical skills. And so all of us, regardless of where you are on that spectrum, kind of from, you know, super technical to generalized, you know, leadership or something, we all have to think about how we develop and utilize these types of skills in order to enable the technology and the value creation in the organization.
Jason Assir
And Bob, I guess it's just a question real quick and for anyone in the audience that has a question in the, you know, please do post it in the chat and we'll, we'll take it. This is a free form, pretty informal discussion, so please do ask questions. But I guess one question I would have, Bob, is you know, if you're a job seeker and you're trying to get that new job and let's just say, you know, you have these 10 skills of the future but you maybe don't have some of the transactional skills like what's sort of your recommendation or how does someone navigate that like, or I mean, or vice versa if you have the transactional, but you don't really know how to learn, you know, how to do some of like complex problem solving, you know, even though you probably already know how to do it. Like is that just marketing or what?
Bob Newhouse
Yeah, so I think there's two parts to that question which is really good for all. And I think this is kind of a lifelong learning and lifelong development thing for all of us professionally, you know, typically we're going to fall out either as a generally technical person, you know, I have an engineering or STEM background and that's kind of been my entrance into the workforce, or maybe a more general management or you Know, some other, you know, marketing or something that's, that's broader and less technical and that may be the entry point. But even if you come in through a non technical route, you can't operate anymore without bumping into technology, right? I mean it just, it is going to be there, it's going to be part of our lives. So, so I'll answer it from both of those directions. Right. And I've had the great honor of working with some really brilliant people all around the world across my career. I mean, you know, double ph in, you know, particle physics and things that I don't even understand. And for that person to be effective and influential in an organization, to sell ideas and get other people, you know, into a coalition so that we can take this technology and influence the company to move it forward and commercialize it, to take it out into the market and talk about it, to convince clients that hey, we need to onboard this technology because it's going to make our product better or whatever that is. All of those skills are non technical. All of that is about building relationships, communicating ideas, actively listening to feedback and realizing, wait a minute, maybe there's a better way. And so now this person becomes not just a, you know, kind of a barrier, but they become a stakeholder and maybe a collaborator, right? Because they're invested in the idea, but they have a different approach to it. I need to understand how to incorporate that. So you know, part of our work, my work inside organizations has been to help technical people start to open up those non technical skill sets, right. And you know, historically we've done leadership development and that's good, right? We have to develop our leaders. But increasingly it is, it is really getting to that granularity of how do I build a coalition, how do I engage people, how do I, how do I sell an idea, whether that's internally and externally. And so as a technical person, often that can be uncomfortable. You know, I want to work on the technology and stay out of it. But to enhance your career and to grow and to be effective, you know, I would argue that these non technical skills are really critical. Flip side, you may have somebody who you know is great at public speaking and they, you know, came in through a general business degree but they have no technical skills. It's critical for somebody at any stage of their career and it gets harder, deeper into a career. So the earlier in the career, you know, we can do this, the better is to enhance by understanding the technology.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
So you know, I'll take marketing for, for example. You can't do marketing without social media, without databases, and now increasingly artificial intelligence, right? So, you know, you can't, you can't hide from that anymore. And you can't just throw that over the wall to a technologist because it's all coming together. And so both of those pathways have to be. People in those pathways have to be very intentional about how they develop the other set of skills. And then the last piece I'll put out there is kind of the role of the organization itself. And because I've sat in that chair as a chief talent officer, that's that balance that we're constantly battling. Because frankly, organizations will look at the technical skills as what is driving value.
Jason Assir
Right?
Bob Newhouse
Because if I'm, if I'm an offshore driller, being efficient, safe, you know, timely in drilling and all the technology that goes into that, excuse me, is really critical. And we focus on those things, and rightly so, but what we see over and over again is that efficiency, safety, customer satisfaction isn't driven off the technical skills, it's driven off of these. And so we have to pull that back. So within organizations, there's that kind of constant tension. And so that, that's what organizations are grappling with outside of the organizations. And I'll go back to the gig economy. You know, somebody who's with energy gigs and wants to get into, you know, a wind farm opportunity and help do design, probably the first glance is going to be at, you know, engineering skills, design skills, whatever that technical package is. But what a good company will be looking for as well is are they going to fit with the team, do they have the right work ethic? Can they help us better understand the problems? So they, they should be going to that next level. And regardless whether you're inside a company or working gig, those are the things that are going to make you sustainable.
Jason Assir
Right?
Bob Newhouse
Because the new reality, that new learning reality is we can teach a skill, but that deeper stuff is much harder to get to and much harder to move people to. So I hope I answered that question.
Jason Assir
No, that's, that's great. I mean, I think in like, like I come into this conversation with a strong bias towards consulting and, and freelancing. I mean, started energy gigs from freelancing and not finding your energy opportunities, right? And I think that's like spot on. Like a lot of times to win that first gig, that first project, it's initially the technical aptitude. Do you, do you check the boxes to get in and do the work? The second part of that and the way you Stay in the business with the client and get repeat business with that client are really all of the 10 skills. And these other skills, you know, that you're seeing, you're seeing more than just the transaction. You're seeing the end to end, you're seeing the bigger picture, you're connecting the dots, you're helping solve problems that haven't even fully materialized from a, from a client perspective.
Bob Newhouse
Yeah. So. Yeah, go ahead.
Jason Assir
Oh, I think we do have a question, it looks like from.
Bob Newhouse
Oh, good.
Jason Assir
From Mark. He asks, with many M and A actions occurring in the energy industry that are exposing talent duplication, do you have a view of future job opportunities in the energy category?
Bob Newhouse
Yes. Talent duplication, that's an interesting turn of phrase. I would assume that means maybe redundancy and you know, layoffs. So yeah, you know, we see that over and over again in the sector.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
And you know, and it's not just energy. I mean, it's happened in technology. You know, we saw, we saw a huge reduction in force for the tech firms, you know, after the big bulge that happened during COVID So all of the industries are going through that and you know, one of the most challenging things is to, you know, to find yourself on the outside.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
So all of a sudden I had a job and thought I was doing really well, but the company changed and so now I'm on the market.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
And what does that do for the learner? I mean, sorry, the employee. And I would say that's where taking this view becomes super critical.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
I've got to be able to adequately document and show my technical skills. But what really becomes important is the success stories that highlight those non technical skills as well. So I think the hardest part is to say, because, you know, telling somebody that I'm a good communicator, okay, fine. But if I can tell a story that, that talks about a project and how it really got stuck and the team was at loggerheads, or my team was at loggerheads with another team that was developing this and you know, we brought them together and I facilitated that conversation and we found some commonality and we negotiated that and we moved the project forward. I've demonstrated that I stepped into that space and my role may be technical, Right. I may be a project manager and maybe delivering an engineered solution, but I've still got to take responsibility for the people component of that.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
So project management is, I think central to so much of this. Right. And that's also where I think the permeability between inside and outside organizations I think project management is like a bridge because more and more organizations are going to a project focused mindset where what we realize is that we've got to stand up a project, involve multiple stakeholders across organizational boundaries to deliver something new.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
To deliver something different or to change the way we're working so we're more effective to go to market. And so if anybody can onboard project management as well as these non technical skills, I think that's super important. So that is what I would look at. And you know, for anybody who may find themselves, you know, in a, in a talent duplication, I think that was it. Mark.
Jason Assir
Yeah.
Bob Newhouse
Situation. You know, finding a way to highlight those success stories becomes really important.
Jason Assir
I mean, I think what's also interesting in the M and A space is like, I mean you see this in tech and you see this to a certain extent in oil and gas is like, you know, a major will buy a smaller scrappy oil and Gas Emp Co. And by virtue of acquiring the company kill and in effect the things that made that, that small company worth buying. And you see that in tech as well.
Jason Assir
Right.
Jason Assir
Where a big company buys a small startup and then within a couple of years all of the founders of that startup move away. So there's, there's also this other. And it's not a great silver lining when you got fired but, or when you got made duplicative, whatever. Like there are these other opportunities of you know, maybe leadership from that M and A, that M and A left and they went off to start a secondary company that will and then bring that same ethos. So there are opportunities also to follow that path of, you know, there are other opportunities that are created from that M and A, not just within the organization, the behemoth that was created as a result of that merger or acquisition.
Bob Newhouse
Yeah. And you know, that's kind of like a macroeconomic, you know, almost fundamental truth about ecosystem that doesn't help the individual, you know, often. But, but what you're pointing to is really true. And I do think that again, whether you're gig and you're looking for opportunities, whether you're, you've been a traditional employee and maybe you're looking for a new job or you've been rift and you're looking. What you just said is really important because it is that, that continuous creation, you know, the creative destruction. Right. That's going on around industries, around technologies within industries. And you're very right. I've seen it multiple times where founders, you know, they are driven by that entrepreneurial urge they build a company, it gets to a certain value, somebody else swoops in and buys it because it fits their portfolio well, that founder is now freed up again to go create. And that's one great thing about you know, our system and our economy is that there's a lot of space to do that and a lot of money flowing, you know, currently to do those things. So it's pretty exciting. It's less traditional.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
It means that, that even we as job searchers or independents, you know, working in gig have to be think more as an entrepreneur and where those opportunities may arise. So I think that's a brilliant observation and something that people should keep in mind.
Jason Assir
Yeah, well, great question mark. And please do ask any more questions you all have. We do have a little bit more time left. So Bob. Yeah, let's get into fun leadership.
Bob Newhouse
I'll share a couple of other things. And I was fortunate enough to be asked to come guest teach HR manager management class over at Texas A and M and their, their business school. It's a master's program. And so one of the things we talked about is identifying potential within an organization. And, and you know, in talking to the students about that, this is one of the things I shared with them is that highly complex leadership roles can contribute 200% over average performers. So this is research based and a star performer can increase a team's output up to 15%. But one and two leaders cannot engage teams to motivate performance. So we have this separation, right where research shows us that if, if people are good at onboarding those non technical skills and living that in an organization they can produce massive amounts of value.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
And that's typically in leadership roles. And that doesn't mean it you have to be CEO. I mean you can be a leadership leader of a team that's doing a design project in doing that. But, but that one in five, I mean that's a 50% failure rate at the ability to engage and motivate teams. And when you think about 50% failure rate in terms of, of added value, that really to me points to this notion that the more we invest in those non technical skills actually we'll get, we'll get a higher rate of return because that is what is going to drive us forward. And I would argue with AI it's going to be even more so. I think that's going to be enhanced. While it might be super cool to understand those weird acronyms that I shared up front, you know, that again is transitory and somewhat transactional but that engagement of the people to move it forward embedded and create value out of it is that, is that deeper skill? So there's actually some, like I said, fun leadership math, you know, around this in terms of the actual results.
Jason Assir
That's great. Yeah, I, I guess, you know, thinking about, okay, 80, 20, we'll go into.
Bob Newhouse
That and well this, this is just my last slide and just kind of, you know, a little bit of a closing thought for the individual.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
So you know, I, I don't know of our audience, how many people are gig workers, how many are working in a, in a company currently or you know, how many are thinking about making a job transition. But you know, this 8020 becomes really important.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
So the Pareto rule was, was kind of, kind of created about 50 or 70 years ago with this notion based on some science and some studies that 80% of value is driven out of 20% of our effort. And this pattern tends to show up a lot and map. It's not, it's not a, you know, an equation, but it's a general rule. And I like to think about this in terms of talking to people about career development and advancement and what do I do?
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
So you know, when we go back and we look at technical skills and we look at interpersonal non technical skills, you know, what is the 80:20 there? What is going to drive my career forward and make me the most valuable to somebody who's looking.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
And we have to do that in a way that A maps to what we're good at and what we want to do, but then B really maps to what employers and project gig, you know, gig employers are looking for. And I think increasingly we're going to see more and more of those non technical skills. The ability to navigate ambiguity, deal with complexity and bring people through that is going to be a higher and higher rated skill. So I think Pareto kind of plays nicely here as we're, as we're thinking about our own role in these big systems.
Jason Assir
Well, we are coming to a close, but are there any other questions from the audience? Please do put them in the chat. We will probably have time for one more question. And while we're, while we're waiting, I'd like to maybe get your hot take Bob on 2025 and maybe frame it a different way because I know there are a lot of job seekers that are on our platform that are participating in the webinars or even freelancers, you know, or people that are sort of in, you know, trying to dip their toe into being a Consultant or being a freelancer, an expert on energy gigs or any other sort of, you know, gig type platform. What would you recommend? Like if you don't have a project maybe coming into the holiday season in the United States, or I mean, assuming, you know, towards the end of the year in other parts of the world where maybe work starts to die down a little bit. What. Any recommendations on how someone should think about using their time if they're not actually working on a gig or working at a company?
Bob Newhouse
Yeah, a great question. So you know, first I would say be patient, be hopeful. So I, I think a lot of companies were on the sidelines with the, the U.S. presidential elections and you know, we've gotten through that. Obviously the, the, the transition, you know, doesn't happen till next year. But I think the fact that the elections through year end is always hard because companies are closing books and they get really focused on that and we have a lot of holidays. You know, that's the be patient part, the be hopeful part is what I'm hearing out there, you know, talking to companies and colleagues is that there's a pent up demand. I think there's a lot of development that's going to happen, you know, in the energy sector. The IRA funding is still there. A lot of that has been difficult to get out. But you know, more and more is coming. Houston just announced that the Hydrogen Hub, you know, project is going here. So we're seeing some of those dollars flowing out. And, and don't forget that digital transformation is not dead.
Jason Assir
Right.
Bob Newhouse
Companies are still really, honestly, even though that has been around for several years, companies still aren't, are just coming to grips with, you know, what does it mean to transform from, you know, our traditional ways of working into digitized, automated, you know, data based, now AI driven ways of working. And so there's tons of opportunity that is not going to go away, that's only going to ramp up and continue. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of hope there and I think that being a project minded person, if you can capture those success stories of past projects, that's what you're going to sell in the future because that's what is going to drive a lot of value for big companies and small companies.
Jason Assir
Yeah, no, well that's awesome. I think we might have to leave it there. Bob Newhouse, thank you so much for being this month's guest on our webinar. If people want to reach out to you and maybe follow up with you after the webinar, can we send your personal information so they can contract you.
Bob Newhouse
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Love that.
Jason Assir
Awesome.
Bob Newhouse
Thanks for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. Appreciate the conversation.
Jason Assir
Well, it's always a pleasure. Well, thank you everyone for joining. Next month's webinar will be on, I guess, takeaways from COP 29 in Azerbaijan in the voluntary market and what does that mean for carbon markets more broadly with the change administration? So we'll be talking to Nathan Truitt. I think he's from the Forest foundation, so he has a pretty interesting perspective on, on carbon markets. That'll be in December. And if you want to have any other topics, January typically is our safety month. We do it start the year off on safety because safety is obviously super critical in every area of the energy industry. But if you have any other topics that you want us to cover, any other speakers, let us know. We're always look forward to your hearing your feedback. Anyways, thanks again, Bob. Thank you again. Wish you a happy, merry, happy Thanksgiving. Merry Thanksgiving. Yeah, A great holiday season ahead. And thank you everyone for joining.
Bob Newhouse
Thanks for the opportunity. Have a great day. Bye.
