Twenty-four young leaders received intensive exposure to the forces influencing Saudi Aramco’s future during the most recent Saudi Aramco Management Development Seminar (SAMDS) held in Washington DC.

Abdullah H. Al-Subaiyel, a senior planning analysis consultant in Joint Venture Development who attended the seminar, calls the program “A must for the global manager.”
The purpose of this long-running program is to expose the participants to the global economic, political, social and technological forces that may enhance or diminish demand for traditional sources of energy.
An essential learning objective for participants is to better understand and debate the significance of the forces and then to consider the company’s strategic alternatives.
The program is organised by Management Development in partnership with the Center for Global Business Studies at Pennsylvania State University. The Centre is directed by Dr. Fariborz Ghadar, a long-time leadership development consultant to Saudi Aramco and an internationally recognised expert in strategy and international business. Ghadar’s relationship with the company goes back to the mid-1970s when he studied Aramco (as it was then known) as part of his dissertation at the Harvard Business School.
The program, now in its 25th year, mirrors the dramatic changes that the company must address in order to maintain its leading position in the hydrocarbon industry.
The program began with a day-and-a-half “World Energy Overview,” which provided a broad economic assessment of the upstream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry. This was followed by  a half-day session focused on the developing strategies of national oil companies.
One of the unique features of the SAMDS program is the explicit focus on the political forces and energy policies that impact the environment in which global energy companies must operate. The third day’s session was kicked off with a presentation by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Adviser to US President Jimmy Carter and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
New to this year’s program was a session on the foreign policy environment of the greater Asian region by Dr. Yoon-shik Park, a member of the Samsung Corporation’s Board of Directors.
The policy sessions were enriched by a presentation on global warming by a senior representative of Greenpeace, an influential environmental advocacy group.
A session of particular interest focused on new developments in the transportation sector, the largest consumer of oil worldwide. Mary Nickerson, national manager for Advanced Technology Vehicle Marketing for Toyota Motor Sales USA, presented a timely overview of the rapid growth in demand for its new “hybrid” cars, sparking an energetic discussion about the implications of this new technology.
Erik Peterson, senior vice president of CSIS, presented his centre’s recently updated view of “global tectonics,” the fundamental trends that will shape our world over the next 30 years: population growth, natural resource degradation, international conflict, information and nano- technologies.
Ahmad S. A1-Nassar, vice president of Management Services, spoke to the group about the importance of this program to developing the company’s future leaders.
He noted, “The program I attended in 1980 is dramatically different from the program you will experience this year. Approximately 80 per cent of the program content has changed since that time in order to maintain its relevance to Saudi Aramco’s changing posture from a leading producing company to a fully integrated international oil and gas company.”
Participants spent the last three days of the program formulating, discussing, and debating strategic alternatives that should be considered by Saudi Aramco to counter threats and exploit emerging opportunities.
Dr. Ghadar facilitated this process by guiding four groups of participants to consider four different future scenarios that the company might confront. Some scenarios were favorable to the company’s current strategy and dominant role in the global hydrocarbon industry. Others would require significant changes in current strategy to overcome emerging challenges and capitalise on new developments.
The discussions yielded a number of shared ideas, including the importance of sustaining a reserve production capacity that would allow the country and the company to maintain their prominent position as a reliable supplier of energy. The participants also were in favor of investments to support emerging technologies and the need to develop leaders with a global perspective and a strategic business vision.
As part of the Seminar’s activities, Salim S. Al-Aydh, senior vice president of Engineering and Operations Services, spoke to four separate audiences on Saudi Aramco’s commitment to energy supplies.
HudaAl-Ghoson, an employee relations staff consultant in Employee Relations Policy and Planning, said the Seminar “provided a unique experience in meeting and discussing global issues with industry experts and politicians in an open forum.
“Of particular interest were the topics related to international foreign policy, industry economics, alternative energy technology, and global strategy formulation.”