Innovative thinkers

“There is not a single rig in the Western world without NOV [National Oilwell Varco] equipment, and I would challenge anyone to (dispute) that,” says Merrill A. (Pete) Miller, executive chairman of DistributionNOW, the recently spun-off distribution arm of NOV.

It may be an emphatic statement, but Miller has made his career by not just saying things lightly, but by doing them categorically. Under his leadership, NOV acquired nearly 300 companies, and he oversaw the development of a 1,200-person, $500-million-revenue company into a $20-billion drilling equipment behemoth that employs 60,000 people worldwide. Its investments, he says, were in technology and people.

A native of Burlington, Iowa, Miller went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., on a football scholarship. After five years in Germany as company commander of a field artillery platoon in the U.S. Army, Miller went to business school at Harvard.

In-between his first and second years of graduate school, Miller was looking for a summer job when he found a posting in the school employment office, asking for a fellow to roughneck. “I figured I had been sitting on my rear end for nine months in school, and the rigor of the oil field would be good for me. I rough-necked in Mississippi for the summer and loved it.”

After earning his MBA degree, he went to work with drilling contractor Helmerich & Payne in the Anadarko basin of Oklahoma. He worked his way up through the ranks to V.P. of H&P’s U.S. operations by January 1995. He then served as president of Anadarko Drilling until February 1996, and held executive roles at NOV, eventually stepping down in 2014 as chairman and CEO to take the helm at DistributionNOW.

It is the investment in people that Miller feels the most passionately about. “Back in the 1980s, [the oil industry] did a poor job of managing its people.” That is now culminating in a labor shortage.

He helped guide the installation of the “NextGen” program at NOV, in which an individual rotates positions every quarter, filling various roles. The goal of that program is to find, and develop, the right role for the right individual at his or her budding professional age. “Bring young people into the fold,” Miller said.

NOV set out to produce early-, mid- and late-term products that transcend the boom-and-bust cycle, Miller said. Acquisitions were the key to building NOV’s vast cache of technology, and that growth came with a vision. “We consolidated when no one else wanted to.” That aggregate build-up led to the eventual spin-off of DistributionNOW.

“The key [to distribution] is execution, and knowing how to get that product to the customer.” Miller, himself, has dubbed DistributionNOW the “Wal-Mart of the oil field.” The consumer retail giant sets the example of inventory control and inventory management, making sure that employees understand their customers, as well as their needs and locations.

“We need to understand the oil industry’s needs and locations, as well. Get them what they want, when they want it, at the right price with the highest quality, while at the same time managing our business effectively and efficiently.”

And given that calculated mindset, with crude oil prices down nearly 50% since last June, Miller prefers to stay the course through the slump, and invest continuously in people and technology.

“You cannot mortgage the future … nor can you trade short-term savings for long-term creativity. Read the future and make sure your business is adjusting, adapting and creating, to be the successful player.”