Preparing for Change with OU’s Executive MBA in Energy

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00:04 Voiceover: Members of the Energy Institute’s advisory board from the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma discuss the merits of the Executive MBA in Energy program. The moderator is Mike Stice, former CEO of Access Midstream and dean of OU’s College of Earth and Energy. The panelists are Jay Jimerson, managing partner of Cardinal River Energy, and Mike Ming, previously the VP of Baker Hughes and Oklahoma’s Secretary of Energy. All three teach in the EMBA in Energy program.

00:34 Mike Stice: I’m Mike Stice, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s panel discussion. Today, we’re here to discuss the merits of the Energy Executive MBA program put on by the Price College of Business at the University of Oklahoma.

I’m joined here by two distinguished colleagues, Mike Ming, former Secretary of Energy in the Environment, but more importantly, an engineer by training and a technologist, and I can’t think of all the different things I could say about Mike and the things he’s accomplished in his 40 years. Likewise, J. Jimerson, who’s an attorney by training, who made a commitment to being an entrepreneur at some point in his life, hopefully, he’ll share that with us. Thank you for taking part in today’s discussion.

We all three sit on the Energy Institute board and help develop the curriculum for the Executive Energy MBA and specifically making sure that we cover all the areas that might be important to a mid-career person who’s looking for continuing education.

Let me start with you, Mike. Obviously, you’ve got a lot engaged with all the different technologies in the science that’s been changing from horizontal drilling to hydraulic fracturing to things that are going on in climate. You seem to be an expert in all those things. Why don’t you share with us the view from an energy transition standpoint, what’s been going on over the last 20, 30 years?

02:02 Mike Ming: Well, energy transition is an important word, and I would like to say transition doesn’t necessarily mean elimination. We’re really more in an energy addition scenario now. What that means is the world needs more energy across the board, and it needs it with less carbon and less impact.

What is the toolbox that we need to think about and help students develop both a personal toolbox and what I call the three-legged stool technology policy and markets of how those things can intersect for scale that the world needs, and the world is going to evolve, developing economies are going to evolve. What we do at the Executive MBA in Energy program is help rising executives in the energy industry and their critical thought process.

As you both know, I’m an energy wonk. That’s what I do, that’s what I talk about the opportunity to teach in this program, and I’ve taught a course called Global Perspectives in Energy, and we’ve evolved that course into energy and the environment. But it’s going to be around the trade-offs, system optimization that we need to have more energy with less impact. If you think in a Native American term, maybe don’t think about a year from now, maybe think seven generations from now, and the things that we have to do.

Then one more comment, energy is the largest industry on Earth, and it needs scale. Any new form of energy has to scale, or it doesn’t matter. The only way you can get scale is a combination of technology, policy, and markets. Sometimes the most transformational things aren’t actually a new widget or a new invention. It could be a market mechanism, or it could be a policy mechanism. I know Jay’s going to talk a little bit about the policy side. But importantly, of that three-legged stool, it requires leadership. You’re going to talk about that.

In my course, I want a focus on critical thought for these students on their energy journey, how they can incorporate all that for their own growth and their own career. I think that’s what’s been most fun in my seven years in the program is working with aspiring energy leaders, how they can think more broadly, how they can open their mind up to possibilities, how we can create a safe space for them to think outside of the silo that their company intentionally unintentionally may have forced them into because they have a job, they have metrics, they have to do things and now a bigger picture as they move up in the executive leadership ranks, what are the tools they need? What’s the toolbox we have today in energy? But what’s tomorrow’s toolbox going to look like? I think for me, that’s been one of the most rewarding things of this program is helping students adapt to change what tools they need for the toolboxes the world needs.

05:34 Mike Stice: It’s well said. When all three of us are members of the Energy Institute board and got the opportunity to form the curriculum of this program, and when we did, we created these two paths, both renewables and fossil fuel.

Can you speak to the strategic aspect of an all-energy strategy?

05:52 Mike Ming: You’ve heard, and I like to describe energy system. Mother Nature doesn’t work in silos. Energy can’t work in silos. For example, if you want to reduce carbon emissions but still provide the electricity the world needs in an increasingly, especially in the most developed countries, an increasingly electrified economy, we need to have places where you can make 1+1 = 3.

For example, in the state of Oklahoma, we have an abundant natural gas resource. Natural gas has displaced coal in the primary generator of electricity, and it’s done that reducing carbon emissions and other affiliated emissions. Well, natural gas combustion still produces carbon, so now we say, well, let’s pair that with wind. We have an abundant wind resource. We’re a top five wind producer. But wind doesn’t blow all the time. Now you have a variable resource that you want to use as much as you can. What’s the optimum way to mix that with natural gas?

Then this third component, which would be energy efficiency opportunities, and that’s not a path of sacrifice or conservation. That’s just getting more units of GDP out of the same molecule. This systems approach is really important. In an academic standpoint, like the field of operations research, that’s, by definition, what it is. You have a set of resources with a set of constraints, and you have a desired outcome. What’s the optimal mix of resources given constraints for that outcome?

You create energy as a system and we end up producing the electricity we need for an electrified economy, whether it’s data centers or AI centers or frankly just electrification in general, whether it’s vehicles or buildings or homes or things like that. This is the way to think about how to get there.

08:06 Mike Stice: I think it’s well said. One of the things that I find fascinating about the rapid change in technology and some of the comments you made about having an all-energy strategy and marrying variable resource with more sustainable resource like fossil fuel is organizations have to learn to change and make those changes sustainable in their culture. That’s the course that I teach. I teach the course where you lead through change, and obviously, no leadership takes place without change. I spent quite a bit of time on the theory and the concepts that allow you to be successful in changing organizational culture.

With that said, Jay, I think one of the things that I’ve always been excited about having you participate in these conversations is as attorney billing hours and then making a change to being an entrepreneur, both in midstream and upstream, you made a significant change. Maybe you can tell us about your role in this program and how you see it benefiting mid-career candidates.

09:13 Jay Jimerson: I want to follow up a little bit on what Mike said within the context of that question because when I look at energy transition, I just think of change.

We’ve been through this in our careers before. We had technological changes. Think back when we had the advent of horizontal well technology and stage fracking, that was a big change. The Internet was a big change. When you have big changes like that, that usually means they’re driven by something. It’s either technological advancement or it’s a policy change.

The current change that we’re all facing and the challenges that we face are driven more because of climate concerns right now. One of the things that we try to do in the MBA program is provide, as Mike said, tools for the students who are managers and executives to take away and use to face the challenges that this major change is presenting.

I’m going to put on my legal hat and my business hat right now and say that I’ve been practicing law either general counsel in private practice and then wearing a business hat now for over 40 years. I think that as a part of this change, usually when it’s driven by policy like this one is, it’s concerns about climate change that result in policy changes, it’s been like a ping pong match the last 15 years or perhaps a tug of war because we’ve had administration changes all the way from Obama to Trump’s first administration, then to Biden and then Trump again, and it’s been a 180-degree shift in policy as well as how do you implement policy? Through rules, regulations, executive orders, and legislation.

I can tell you over the 40 years, I’ve been practicing law, I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many rules and regulations come down the pike as we’ve seen in the last decade. It has been overwhelming and daunting. I spend an enormous amount of my time just trying to keep up with the rules and regulations and how you apply them to our business and how you comply. It’s a challenge and a lot of people have been burying their head in the sand. I think that’s the wrong approach.

From a leadership standpoint, one of the things we do in the program, we have a class on policy and on regulations. I teach a class on hydrocarbon laws and regulations where we talk about some of these policy changes, what these new regulations are and how you comply, how you put them into practice. We have the same thing for the renewable program. I think from a leadership program, you can’t put your head in the sand just because you have overwhelming policy changes and regulations, you’ve got to adapt. You’ve got to know what they are and implement them. That’s my addition, Mike, to what you talked about.

12:02 Mike Stice: What’s great about your comments is that we have a lot of exogenous factors coming our way, whether it be new technology gets developed, new policy that gets developed, and you’re right about the rate of change. It seems to get faster and faster.

The course I teach, which I invite Jay to come as well, is about creating organizational capability. Not only can we adapt to those changes, we can thrive and maybe self-generate our own changes so that we can take advantage of the opportunities some of those changes bring. I want to switch gears with you on a little bit and let you talk about entrepreneurship because an entrepreneur is somebody who actually sees that change has an opportunity.

12:41 Jay Jimerson: That’s for sure. I will say that in looking back at my career, where I see the biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs has been during times of transition and change. Go back to what I was talking about on the Internet and the changes and the opportunities that presented for entrepreneurs. How many new companies did we see spring up out of the fact that we had the Internet? Same thing with horizontal well technology and stage fracking. That era that we had in the late ’80s to mid-’90s was a time of tremendous change, but tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs.

You look at what Jeff Bezos did. He was in the late ’80s to mid-’90s, working for a hedge fund in New York City. He had this yearning to be an entrepreneur. We all know that. He decides to leave this well-paying hedge fund to go do what? Form an online bookstore. Is that crazy? But he did it. When you listen to him talk about that, it’s because he had this yearning to be an entrepreneur.

He applied this test he called the regret minimization test, if you remember that where he said, I projected myself to when I was 80 years old. I look back on my life doing that process and said, “Will I regret pursuing this opportunity, this dream I have and failing? Or would I regret never trying it at all?” We know his answer. He decided to become an entrepreneur.

I went through that same process at about the same time and actually applied the same process that he used in making the decision to leave a law firm that I’ve been with for 12 years. I was a partner. I was doing well. I had young kids. I was married. It was a tough decision, but I really like Jeff Bezos, wanted to be an entrepreneur.

We had new technology. We had horizontal well technology that we were starting to apply to develop gas storage wells or gas storage fields, as you remember, together with some regulatory changes that enabled small companies to organize, become a small company, and go develop independent gas storage companies applying this amazing new technology.

I had a chance a client of mine asked me to come join him in a small startup company to go exploit that technology and those opportunities that originated because of regulatory changes. It’s a big decision. It was a gut check because I had a good paying job, stable job, but I wanted to become an entrepreneur. I did the same tests. I look back and realized I would regret it later on while I look back on my career if I didn’t seize that opportunity. I did. I seized it and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I don’t regret it, but in direct answer to your question with that backdrop, it all unfolded, and the fact that I made that decision was because of opportunities that arose during a period of transition, a period of either new regulations, regulations on the hills of new policies, policies on the hills, in this case, of the need to address climate change concerns. There are so many opportunities for entrepreneurs out there.

Right now, we have carbon capture and storage. We need better batteries. We need better wind and solar capabilities. Just in my business alone, when it comes to the new innovations that are being used for methane leak detection repair and things like that, I can tell you my mind swirls about the opportunities out there for entrepreneurs to start up a business to address those.

I think it’s a great time for students. We talk about this in the EMBA program. We talk about it at dinner with the students. They always love it, and so I wanted to make sure that I did at least let people know we do address those challenges. We know they’re out there and we do talk about those.

16:34 Mike Ming: I think that theme of uncertainty. The greatest amount of opportunity comes with uncertainty. Once you lock in no risk, no uncertainty, you lock in your upside. With the amount of uncertainty right now and change, like in the energy system. I talk about, for example, natural gas resources. In terms of human timescales, we effectively have an infinite supply. Will we use all of that? We won’t. For this reason, we’ll use something different when we come up with something better and cheaper?

But people are going to choose what best provides their energy services. From an oil and gas standpoint, you can lock in that the only transportation fuel there is gasoline or diesel. But the reality is there’s a lot of fuels. It just so happens, those are the most convenient right now, probably the most affordable.

17:34 Mike Stice: Mike, I want to take advantage of having you here on this panel discussion. Jay referred to the rapid changes in public policy, but as a former Secretary of Energy and Environment for the state of Oklahoma, you created the state’s first strategic plan. I’m sure a lot of those conversations are being repeated in DC these days. What are your thoughts about this rapid change that we see in public policies and, frankly, changes in administration and viewpoints and how we as industry, need to adapt or respond?

18:03 Mike Ming: Well, first of all, I’ll say, policy matters. Sometimes it can be matters good and sometimes it can be matters bad. We’ve seen good policy and bad policy.

The second is going back to one of your points, Jay, around the leadership tools for students in the EMBA program. You talked about four different administrations, so just put yourself in the position of being a CEO for a company for 15 years. That means you’ve now had to navigate your company through all of those pendulum swings. You can’t think in four-year election cycles, you have to have some kind of a north star for your value proposition because a president is going to come and a president’s going to go.

From my own experience, when we worked on Oklahoma’s policy, we said, Number 1, let’s focus on those resources that we have. Second of all, let’s focus on what’s pragmatic and actionable and affordable. Our focus ended up being on natural gas, wind, and energy efficiency. The combination of those things, ironically, for doing it for the right reasons, for the right resources here, both physical resources and human resources in terms of companies and things like that, when the Obama administration came out with the Clean Power Plan, which never went into law, but it had carbon emissions standards.

At the time, I had extensive conversation with Governor Fallin about this. I said, well, Governor, I know Oklahoma is not probably going to support an Obama initiative, but I said, the fact of the matter is we don’t have to worry about it. We’re in compliance with the Clean Power Plan because of our natural gas, wind, and energy efficiency, and by the way, we have the cheapest electricity in the nation. So these things can intersect.

What we did, we did listening events with all the stakeholders. We didn’t make it a big bureaucratic process. We gathered their input, we put some on paper, we took it back, we think this is what we heard, and we ended up with a policy that matters. We ended up with 26 states signing on to a natural gas CNG vehicle fuel. We were the most improved state in the nation in energy efficiency.

20:41 Mike Stice: Yeah.

20:42 Mike Ming: Policy can matter. It has to be done practically. I think if you go too ideological either direction, it can struggle.

20:50 Mike Stice: Let me attempt to wrap up here a little bit and just talk about, Jay mentioned the 40 years, I’ve been trying to not say that. But each of us have over 40 years of experience.

One of the things that we think we’ve created with the Executive Energy MBA is something that speaks to all these changes that are going on, changes that are no longer viewed to be a threat but really an opportunity. We talk a lot about in my class, what’s our relationship with chaos? Making sure that we understand chaos can be a good thing.

But what I think is important about the program is that it’s a hybrid program, so we have both in-person as well as online curriculum. We cover a variety of different topics. But I think the most impactful part is that we travel. The people who participate in the program spend a week or two in Europe and a week or two on campus here at the university where they meet with us and we do have a very nice dinner and we talk about some of the challenges.

All I want to do is encourage people to consider the merits of this program. The Executive MBA program offers, especially someone in a mid career transition, like where you were, Jay, it offers them feedback from the wisdom of people who’ve been there, done that. I can’t thank you all enough for sharing your wisdom here today, and appreciate the opportunity to share it with all the possible candidates for this program.

22:15 Mike Ming: I think that’s a real selling point. If you just look at the faculty here, there’s a lot of us that have been there, done that. I think the students have really appreciated that real life experience.

0:22:27 Mike Stice: I know for a fact that each of you continue relationships with many of the students.

22:32 Jay Jimerson: I was going to mention that. The follow up after the program, the relationships you develop and their desire to continue to just call and ask questions, that’s one of the funnest parts of the program for me, is just the relationship you build with the students and then the follow up after the program is even over.

22:51 Mike Stice: Thank you for your commitment to the board of the Energy Institute, but also as instructors in the program, and I look forward to many of you joining us for this MBA program. I think it’ll be well worth your while.

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Visit the OU Online website to learn more about the online Executive MBA in Energy degree from OU’s Price College of Business.