Robert Mills

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In 2023, Robert Mills was airlifted to Diamond Offshore’s Ocean BlackLion drillship, which was operating in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. “If you ever get the opportunity to visit a deepwater rig, do so,” he advises. “I remain astounded by the miracle of modern engineering that is deepwater development. If you want to be impressed by our industry, spend a day in the deep water.”

What has been your most challenging project to date, and how did you meet the challenge and accomplish your goal?
Doing anything for the first time is hard. It feels like everything I did for the first eight years of my career was for the first time. It’s tough to say what the “most challenging” thing was, but I think the recipes for overcoming the challenges were typically similar: ask more questions than seem appropriate, get advice from people with more experience than you, and become obsessed with details.

What qualities do you think are necessary to be a good leader in the oil and gas industry?
A subset of the qualities I consistently perceive from the best leaders in our industry include a painstaking penchant for honesty (with themselves, first and foremost); intellectual curiosity; and humility. Further, leadership should be an apprenticeship practice (likely even more so in a cyclical industry like ours). Good leadership should involve preparing the next set of leaders.

How have you exercised leadership to help shape your company?
Exercising leadership is tough to measure. My mental model for leadership is something like: we are all exercising leadership on each other, and some people’s leadership style gets more mindshare, so we call them the “leaders.” I do hope that I am thought of as someone who leads by example on my team and across our organization. My approach typically includes: 1) defending my perspectives and pushing others to defend theirs; 2) setting an expectation for consistent improvement; and 3) working hard.

What advice would you give other young professionals?
I generally find that young professionals (younger than me, anyway) are unnecessarily focused on moving quickly in their careers. They are regularly thinking multiple steps ahead when I think they ought to be more focused on learning the skills in front of them. A mentor once shared with me a simple career rubric (and I sometimes feel compelled to share it with these young people when they start telling me about the great job they’ll have in two more chess moves): Your 20s are for figuring out what you want to do; your 30s are for figuring out how to do it; and your 40s and 50s are for getting paid for knowing how to do it. That’s it. You’ve got more time than you think.

What are your long- and short-term career goals?
I love being a professional investor. I think it might be the most interesting job in the world (certainly among the jobs I’m even half-qualified to do). I have no plans to do anything other than that.

What keeps you motivated and passionate about working in the oil and gas industry?
The simple answer is that, selfishly, I find most things are more interesting the more I learn about them (this is certainly true of oil and gas). Less selfishly, of course, I do believe that the work this industry does matters. Providing low-cost, reliable sources of fuel for the modern world is a noble pursuit. It’s hard. The cumulative efforts of the people that make up this industry are remarkable. The human utility created by those efforts cannot be overstated.

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