Starfish Taylor designed and facilitated a sustainability workshop for the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) to bring together industry members to tackle the question of how to get on the right side of history.

The Question: “How do we generate trust, enable engagement, stimulate innovation, and bring about pathways to sustainable solutions to make sure the oil and gas industry is on the right side of history?

Johana Dunlop, an SPE board member and Director of Sustainability and HSE, approached Starfish Taylor about designing and facilitating a sustainability workshop. The sustainability workshop—dubbed the Gaia Summit—would be designed around SPE’s objectives to bring together stakeholders and industry experts to discuss how to be more proactive and collaborative in meeting sustainability challenges. Starfish Taylor worked alongside the Gaia Summit Steering Committee and designed the sustainability workshop through a series of Design Meetings.

“Design meetings are a series of interviews with stakeholders, to understand and document Success Indicators, Risks, Expectations.”

Our Design

Starfish Taylor co-built a workshop design that delivered on SPE’s objectives.

To do this, Starfish Taylor relied on the careful, custom tailoring we provide for each client alongside the consistency of our proven Nutcracker method. We worked closely alongside SPE and the GAIA committee to understand their goals and vision for the Gaia Summit. Oil, gas, and sustainability are demanding topics, so we conducted a series of interviews with stakeholders, to better understand and document Success Indicators, Risks, and Expectations. These interviews gave Starfish Taylor a baseline of information. Based on the interviews and design process, Starfish Taylor made suggestions to SPE to create an effective workshop.

The Event

Starfish Taylor facilitated SPE’s sustainability workshop over two days.

Day 1 was about sharing experience, exploring sustainability, and becoming comfortable listening to ideas and points of view from other people. Our model for SPE was focused on bringing participants together and facilitating conversation throughout the workshop space. Our design team worked to incorporate as many points of view and ideas—“balloons in the air”—as possible. This involved a workshop schedule aimed at finding alignment in vision. For SPE’s Gaia Summit, we used an icebreaker, points of view, a fireside chat, and an external visionary speaker, the engaging Dr. Subramanian Rangan. Through simple but probing questions, our design model ensures participants and facilitators start to see the elements of what should be tackled, the big ideas emerging, ideas people agree on, and roadblocks. Day 1 was building in parallel: building information, ideas, different complementary aspects—building towards the endpoint, but without letting participants stop and think they have the answers. The answers are for Day 2.

Day 2 was about finding solutions and building the pathways to the right side of history. At the end of Day 1, the Gaia Steering Committee and Starfish Taylor met to agree on the big category topics. We then presented those topics back to the group at the beginning of Day 2. The group then agreed that these were the pathways that needed to be built out during the rest of Day 2. Our design model used power sessions to flush out the visions and the pathways to that vision. Participants then focused on building the pathways and the roadmap, actions, and milestones to follow those pathways into the future. This meant drawing on all the information and experiences that had been brought to the forefront on Day 1. At the Gaia Summit for SPE, participants produced six execution pathways and four principles.

The Results

Starfish Taylor delivered on SPE’s goals.

We helped SPE bring together stakeholders, industry representatives, and sustainability experts to ensure the oil and gas industry is on the right side of history. The Gaia Summit took considerable steps to incorporate proactive, collaborative pathways to sustainability. Starfish Taylor also provided SPE all the media, graphics, and materials from the workshop. We have followed up with SPE’s sponsors to ensure everything needed was provided at the workshop, and also to prepare additional information for the journey ahead.

I’ve seen a lot of different facilitation approaches, and have facilitated events myself. I’ve not seen any approaches that are as creative, engaging, fun, and impactful as what Starfish Taylor is doing. They are in a league of their own! From their use of music and visual story-boarding to keeping the dialogue moving forward and organizing the day, to the innovative techniques deployed to solicit and structure insights from participants, to the professional and polished feel they bring to the whole event, every detail was carefully thought through and executed with grace! I highly recommend Starfish Taylor for your next event.

Josh Etkind
N. America Deepwater Decom & Abandonment Manager, BOM , Shell