Most talent discussions tend to circle around themes related to: How do we recruit enough top external talent? How do we appeal to younger generations of employees?

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These are legitimate questions. But they can also become a distraction, because they keep our focus on who we might get, instead of what we are doing with who we already have.

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External hires will only ever cover small parts of the new competence required. The people who will truly determine whether we succeed through the energy transition are, in fact, largely already here.

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So instead of asking whether we have, or how we can attract, the right people, we should be asking: Are we creating the right conditions for our employees to grow into who the industry needs them to be?

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Combining experience with fresh thinking

If the energy transition is going to be driven from within, this is where it starts: in the powerful combination of deep expertise built over decades, and fresh thinking arriving with new talent.

Experienced professionals know how things actually work. They have seen projects fail, markets collapse, and assumptions break down. They understand the operational realities that never make it into strategy presentations.

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Newer professionals bring something equally valuable. Digital fluency. Modern problem-solving approaches. Cross-disciplinary perspectives. And often, a willingness to question how things have always been done. This combination is exactly what navigating the energy transition requires.

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So why does it not happen more consistently?

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When organisations absorb potential instead of unleashing it

Organisations have a gravitational pull. Culture shapes behaviour at every level: what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, and what quietly gets discouraged.

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When people arrive with energy and fresh perspectives, that is an asset. But without deliberate effort, organisations rarely change to meet new people. New people change to fit the organisation, and the edge they bring is gradually smoothed away.

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At the same time, the pace of technological and organisational change means that standing still is no longer an option. Roles that existed five years ago already look very different today.

Many experienced professionals are actively adapting, and becoming more valuable as a result. Others are not being given the conditions to do so, and the gap quietly grows wider.

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This raises a question: Are we actively enabling development, or are we simply assuming that it will take care of itself?

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Differences as a source of strength

The energy industry is facing some of the most complex and consequential challenges in the world. The energy transition is not a threat to meaningful work, it is an explosion of it.

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The real value emerges when strengths are combined:

• An engineer who understands how a system behaves in the field, working alongside an analyst who can model and optimise it at scale.
• A commercial leader who has navigated multiple commodity cycles, paired with a strategist mapping the next decade of policy and regulation.
• Operational experience blended with digital and analytical capability.

Cross-functional and cross-generational collaboration is where the hardest problems are solved. But it does not happen automatically. It has to be actively designed and facilitated, or else we leave our most valuable capability unused.

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The goal is not to choose between experience and new thinking. It is to build organisations where both continue to develop, and where differences become a source of strength rather than friction.

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What this actually requires

This is less about launching new initiatives and more about what leaders choose to prioritise every day.

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It means making development a continuous leadership conversation. Not once a year, but all the time. Where is this person growing? Where are they stuck? What would help them move forward?

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It means actively protecting new perspectives. When people join with an instinct to question and challenge, that is not resistance — it is value. The question is whether the organisation is strong enough to welcome it.

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It means building bridges deliberately. The most valuable learning flows in both directions. Cross-functional and cross-generational collaboration should be built into how work gets done, not left to coincidence.

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And it means rewarding curiosity and growth, not only predictable delivery. If the people who consistently advance are those who stayed safely within their lane, that is the signal the organisation is sending, regardless of what the strategy document says.

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The real workforce advantages

I am positive that the energy industry has the technical depth and intellectual capacity to lead through whatever comes next.

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However, it will not come for free. It will require organisations where development is expected at every level, where new thinking doesn’t get absorbed into old culture but challenges and strengthens it, and where the distance between those who have been here the longest and those who arrived most recently is actively bridged rather than quietly widened.

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I would argue that the people we need are largely already here.

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The question now is what we are doing with them.

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