Strategic Leadership: Essential Skills -Why Oil & Gas Needs Them at Every Level.

“Buy when the cannons are firing, and sell when the trumpets are blowing,” - is often attributed to Nathan Rothschild.

In a world of shifting alliances, sanctions whiplash, supply disruptions, and an accelerating energy transition, oil and gas companies can’t rely on yesterday’s playbooks. Strategic leadership isn’t a “C-suite only” trait anymore; it must permeate product lines, field operations, digital programs, and compliance teams alike. SLB (formerly Schlumberger) has been explicit about this shift: digital at scale and decarbonization are now central to value creation and resilience, not side projects.

What HBR Says Strategic Leaders Do Differently

Harvard Business Review’s “Strategic Leadership: The Essential Skills” (Schoemaker, Krupp, Howland) distills six habits that separate true strategic leaders from good managers. In brief: anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, and learn. These are practiceable skills, not personality traits, and they can (and should) be cultivated across the organization.

Anticipate

Scan wide beyond your immediate market to spot inflection points early (policy changes, tech cost curves, logistics constraints).

Challenge

Create a healthy dissent surface and stress-test assumptions and counter groupthink.

Interpret

Turn weak signals into shared meaning. Synthesize geopolitical and policy signals into scenario ranges.

Decide

Make calls under uncertainty with reversible stage gates. Use pilots and phased rollouts.

Align

Orchestrate stakeholders' operations, HSE, digital, compliance, and customer initiatives around a clear value proposition.

Learn

Institutionalize after-action reviews and telemetry loops. Treat deployments and outages as data.

Why This Matters Now in Oil & Gas

- Geopolitics is back at the center stage. Strategic leadership turns volatility from threat to edge.

- Energy transition is a digital transition. Delivering lower-carbon barrels depends on digital and AI.

- Capital productivity is under pressure. Strategic leaders reallocate toward technology, data, and partnerships.

Applying the Six Skills in Practice (SLB & Peers)

Anticipate: Maintain a rolling “watchlist” of indicators.

Challenge: Run quarterly assumption-busting sessions with cross-functional teams.

Interpret: Build scenario matrices with triggers for action.

Decide: Use reversible decisions and phased digital pilots.

Align: Map KPIs from project to enterprise strategy.

Learn: Capture lessons and update playbooks.

Five Questions Every Leader Should Ask Right Now

• What are the three most plausible geopolitical scenarios that would stress our plan, and what pre-baked moves do we have for each?

• Which digital capabilities most improve resilience per dollar, and how fast can we scale them?

• Where are we overexposed to single points of failure (basins, vendors, routes, policies), and what options can diversify?

• How do our project KPIs roll up to enterprise goals (safety, cost, emissions), and who owns alignment at each layer?

• What did we learn from the last price or policy shock that permanently changed our standards, architectures, or contracts?

The Bottom Line

Strategic leadership is not a title; it’s a system of habits that help organizations like SLB see around corners, make smarter bets, and turn turbulence into advantage. In a market where decline rates eat capital, policies are in flux, and digital decides the emissions and cost curves, the organizations that anticipate, challenge, interpret, decide, align, and learn at every level will define the next decade.