Intro -- Robert (Bob) Plautz

rdplautz@amoco.com
Thu, 25 May 95 07:51:12 -0500

My name is Robert (Bob) Plautz and I work for the United States
Operations Group (USOG) Exploration and Production (E&P) sector of
Amoco Corporation. Over the past three years I have headed a
reengineering effort within Amoco, using CSC Index and the
"Reengineering Diamond", to completely change the way we do business
internally and with vendors. I am now head of the Department called
Vendor, Asset, Materials, and Services Management for this business
sector. For reference, the combined efforts of all of the Amoco USOG
E & P Business Units saved in excess of $98 million in 1994.

Early on in the reengineering effort, the group of us became aware of
the Fifth Discipline and through the course of the next year started
to integrate those concepts into our thinking, business process, and
rollout program both internally and with our vendors. Part of our
initial training internally and with vendors includes exercises on
mental models, systems thinking, and team learning. We provide free
copies of The Fifth Discipline, Ishmael, The Path of Least Resistance
and lately the Fieldbook internally and to all of our vendors and
their management teams as reference material on how we will do
business in the future. The training has been a focused on a "bottoms
up" approach. The actual process that we are trying to foster
includes all of the suppliers, sub suppliers and suppliers of
suppliers and all of their costs from "mother earth" until the
material is abandoned back to "mother earth". We dubbed this process
Supply Chain Management and the cost Total Systems Cost. Personally,
I have done guided imagery visioning sessions with several of our Vice
Presidents and also with my Church. Interestingly enough, the church
is where I have the most success as far as them wanting to continue on
to build a Shared Vision among all of the members.

My questions follow along the general theme of culture. First, the
Amoco organization has a long history of "we know best" to the point
of every person individually knows best, "shoot the messenger", and
though we take risks on exploring for oil and gas we are very "risk
adverse". The guided imagery sessions on visioning that I mentioned
above have gone nowhere as the vice presidents have a strong fear that
they will be embarrassed if a "picture" gets out. My specific
question then is has anyone had this problem and what did you do to
get beyond it?

My second question is does anyone have a "silver bullet" program for
changing a deeply embedded culture?

My third questions is has anyone had experience building shared vision
at a church. The church by the way is very conservative.

Thanks!

--
Bob Plautz
<rdplautz@hou.amoco.com>