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Open Comments: S2 Ep.2 - Merging Collaboration and Innovation within The Open Group OSDU® Forum with Huub Streng

• The Open Group • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Collaboration isn't just a buzzword—it's the engine that powers innovation in complex technical environments. Huub Streng, OSDU® Data Platform Advisor at Total Energies, joins us to unpack what makes teams truly successful.

From his remarkable journey starting in mechanical engineering to becoming a data management leader, Streng shares how adaptability and continuous learning shaped his career trajectory. The conversation reveals practical wisdom about creating environments where people genuinely enjoy working together toward common goals. At the foundation? Trust, clear decision-making processes, and well-defined objectives that everyone understands.

Streng offers fascinating insights into the delicate balance between individual accountability and collective responsibility. "Without individual accountability, team members would be looking at each other rather than taking ownership," he explains. We explore how mentorship accelerated his professional development and why he considers achievements as never standing alone—always building upon the contributions of others.

The discussion takes a deep dive into conflict management strategies, with Streng revealing that most workplace tensions stem from miscommunications rather than fundamental incompatibilities. His approach involves acknowledging conflicts directly, understanding individual perspectives, and facilitating productive dialogue. We also tackle the unique challenges of maintaining team cohesion in virtual environments, where deliberate community-building becomes essential.

Perhaps most compelling is Streng's passionate advocacy for diversity in collaborative settings. Through examples from the OSDU Forum's working groups, he demonstrates how diverse perspectives lead to more innovative solutions and more efficient problem-solving. Ready to transform how your teams collaborate? This conversation offers the blueprint you need.

Don't miss The Open Group Summit in Amsterdam (May 19-22, 2025) featuring OSDU Forum sessions, success stories, and collaborative working group meetings where these principles come alive. Learn more here. 

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome back to Open Comments with me, ash. Today we have Hoob Strang, who serves as the OSDU Data Platform Advisor at Total Energies. His responsibilities include representing the company at the OSDU Forum, where he is engaging as both co-chair and active contributor across multiple working groups. Thank you, hoob, for joining Open Comments today and we look forward to talking about collaboration with you in more detail.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, hello Ash. Thank you very much for the invitation. I'm really happy to be part of this podcast.

Speaker 1:

Perfect, thank you. So to start off with, can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay. So yeah, it has been quite the adventure, ash. I my my Educational background Is in Mechanical engineering and After I've ended my studies, I felt that I wanted to do Something A little bit different and I applied for a job position at Fugro at the time where they needed somebody who was able to read technical engineering drawings to help them for a cartographic construction project for an industrial client. And so that's why I started, and that very quickly changed in the direction of the EMP industry. So I started to work for the first EMP clients for Fugro and it's something that really fascinated me. I really felt, yeah, this is where I want to go to with my career, and so I further developed my career in that direction and it started already at Fugro, not only through working with EMP clients, but also for following various courses, for example, on geology, geophysics, etc. To understand the business better.

Speaker 2:

From this cartography it moved to GIS geographical information systems and from GIS it also started to move towards data management. And, yeah, after a while I changed. So I started working at at Total Energies from 2003 onwards, total Energies in the Netherlands and, yeah, from there onwards, my career really became focused on data management. So it started veering away from geographical information systems and moved more in the direction of data management, or 100% in the direction of data management actually. So, yeah, with Teltow Energies I've had various positions in that sense, so project management positions, team leadership positions, and I also was expatriated to various EMP affiliates of the company and, yeah, that's how I got where I am now.

Speaker 1:

And can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with the Open Group so far as well, please?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, ok, so I actually joined the OSU team of Total Energies a little bit under two years ago and this was also the first time I got in contact with the Open Group. So I joined the OSU forum. As soon as I joined the OSU team in Total Energy, I joined the OSU forum as well, and that's also when I got in contact with the Open Group. So, yeah, during the onboarding I actually received immediately great support. I must say that's great. Yeah, thanks to the Open Group for that. The OSU Forum is quite complex. It's not so easy to find your way around. So I could use all the help I needed and, yeah, I really appreciated the support I got from the open group there and also from the community, from the OSU forum itself. Yeah, people are very helpful. I found out and it helped me to ramp up quite quickly. So that's how I ended up contributing to working groups and even co-chairing some of the working groups.

Speaker 1:

Nice. So let's dive a little bit deeper into collaboration now. What does effective collaboration look like to you in a work setting?

Speaker 2:

Collaboration is what keeps the forum going. What keeps the LSU forum going so it's a very important topic forum going? What keeps the lcu forum going? So it's it's a very important topic. To me, it all boils down to having an environment where people enjoy working together to achieve desired outcomes, right? So so it should actually yeah, why not? One could say it should be perceived as fun to the people who are collaborating, enjoyable and rewarding. It should be enjoyable and rewarding to them.

Speaker 2:

So there are some ingredients you would need to achieve that. And, yeah, first of all, you need an environment of trust. So people need to have confidence in each other. There needs to be a decision making process in place and then, very important, there needs to be clarity on outcomes. So setting common objectives and key milestones and stuff like that. That is really helpful in creating that environment. Also, if you want to work together as efficient as possible to achieve these desired outcomes, it also means that individuals need to take ownership and feel responsible for what they're doing. So that's that's, uh, yeah, these are, my opinion, important ingredients to make a collaboration work successfully so how do you balance individual accountability with teamwork in collaborative projects?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, so well, I don't think there is any effective collaboration possible without individual accountability, because without it, yeah, team members would be waiting for each other and do nothing. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but people will be looking at each other rather than take ownership of something. And so, yeah, there are always natural leaders in any team. It's okay if they take the initiative, I think, and when the balance is right, ownership and accountability is shared by the team and not carried by just one person. So that's really something you need to look for. It always requires a little bit of coaching to find that balance. Um, yeah, and that's that's really important to make sure that everybody is on board and everybody feels feels responsible for what the team is doing.

Speaker 1:

Would you say that also helps with engagement in terms of how motivated people are, how they feel seen in collaboration and working with others and making sure that everyone's voice is heard that that's very important too.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, that's super important. Yeah, there are always people who speak up easier than others, people who speak up easier than others, and yeah, I think it's really important to keep an eye on that, to find a balance in that. Sometimes you need to help people a little bit to speak up, and that could even be upfront. Right Before collaborative meetings. Maybe you could have a short one-on-one meeting with them where you coach them a little bit on what they could say during the meeting and and that has to be open, right I'm not saying that the leader should then impose their opinions on that person, but it should be more about, uh, yeah, encouraging that person to speak up and help them to formulate that if necessary. So, yeah, you have to invest a little bit of time in that sometimes as a leader, but once things are rolling and going, it gets easier. So, yeah, it requires a little bit of investment up front sometimes, and what role, would you say, mentorship plays in that?

Speaker 1:

So for you personally, have you found mentorship has helped you, you know, within your career, but also maybe motivated you as well along the way?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, if I look back to early times in my career, I already mentioned that I took various courses to learn things, but there was, of course, a whole lot more to it. I mean, I have learned throughout my career a lot from other people on the job if not most people on the job, if not most so it means that people took the time to explain things to me and also to coach me on how I could approach things, and that really helped me in being where I am now. And so, looking back on that, that's also something, yeah, I like to do with other people, with newcomers or people who still need to learn, and and help them in in learning and coaching them in how they could approach things. So it is super important. I really don't think. Well, there are always people and talents who are use some mentoring. I definitely needed some, and I think it's just a primary task of a leader to uh to make sure that that happens, would you also say as well?

Speaker 1:

lifelong learning probably plays a part in that, as in. You know we may have different mentors during our lives, whether it's career whether it's. You know we may have different mentors during our lives, whether it's career whether it's. You know, hobbies that we have as well. But do you think, with lifelong learning, that it also aids that, in the sense of it helps us to continually grow and, as you say, like you know, learning from others but also putting into action what they've taught us and then passing that knowledge and experience on to others also helps with that too I think that's very, very important.

Speaker 2:

Um, I believe that achievements never stand on their own. So you learn from other people, you learn from situations, you learn from mistakes, right, and I am still learning today. I'm learning lots of things which are very interesting from other people, not only from reading or or from self-studying, but also from other people, and it's really what makes a job interesting, right I? I, if, if I would sit on a job, I would learn nothing, I would probably get bored, so it. So it's essential in a career to always be open and learn from other people, from experience and from the occasional mistake, because nobody is perfect, right? So it's essential, yeah.

Speaker 1:

And moving on to leadership and collaboration, how would you say leaders can set the tone for effective collaboration within their teams?

Speaker 2:

When you think about it, you realize that achievements never stand on their own, and so, yeah, in the context of collaboration, this must be celebrated. Collaboration, this must be celebrated. So successes, if they can be celebrated as a team success, that will really set the right tone, I believe. And, of course, individuals sometimes achieve something. They work very hard to deliver something. It's great to celebrate that and, yeah, if possible, you should mention who else played a role in it or, even better, encourage, uh, the individual to do that. There are almost always others who helped with something. Somebody brings in an id and somebody else turns that into a document, for example, turns that ID into a document. So, whilst the individual who wrote the document may have put a lot of time and effort in it, there's still the ID that led to it right. So there are always others and that's something that needs to be highlighted, I think, whenever it's possible, it's celebrating the collaboration in a team.

Speaker 1:

Yeah that's great, and now let's move on to diversity and inclusion in collaboration. So how can diverse perspectives strengthen collaboration within teams?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, ok. So I think diversity is another essential ingredient. It's the only way to remain innovative and to drive productivity and efficiency, productivity and efficiency. So, if you have a team with all sorts of different people, I always encourage people to speak up and share their opinion and viewpoints, and so when you bring in all that diversity, problem solving usually becomes much easier. Yeah, and there are always good ideas and very good ideas. So if you put all these ideas in the mix, you can always find a common perspective and it can always lead to conclusion. And if it's just one person who is sharing their ideas and you don't have the diversity, then you may be overlooking things and you may be yeah, yeah, maybe coming up with ideas which are not very efficient, and so, yeah, it's really really a good idea to to lean on the diversity of a team and and and share, make sure that everybody shares their viewpoints and inputs.

Speaker 1:

yeah, and can you share an example where diverse input led to a successful collaborative outcome?

Speaker 2:

oh well, I see it happening in the osu forum all the time, right? Um, yeah, to be honest, I would be doing some team short if I would point out one over another, but I've seen so many great collaborations from the start, so I'll go to one of the first ones that really was very interesting to see happening. It's something that happened in the Capability Portfolio Working Group. The Capability Portfolio Working Group is actually aiming to create a common language which can be understood by the business and by the technical people who do the developments and who are actually creating OSDU. There always has been a little bit of a gap which made it difficult for the business to understand this common language. So the capability portfolio team has been working on that and I vividly remember the first face-to-face I went to.

Speaker 2:

We had a workshop dedicated to this topic, so we were making a cartography of high-level business process steps and we tried to map what do you need to achieve these business process steps and that can be quite easily mapped to yeah, the the more technical side of osu. So that was a very, very good first step. Well, in just what was it? I think it was three, not even four hours. This collaboration actually resulted in something which could already be used. There were 20 people in a room, or 30 people in a room, I don't remember the exact figures who worked together to do this, and it just was amazing to see how it all shaped up in such a short time. So these kind of things are happening all the time in the forum.

Speaker 1:

And it's really impressive to see, and what strategies do you use to handle conflicts during collaborative efforts?

Speaker 2:

Oh right, yeah, that question is often or well, often, let's just put it this way that question can be the elephant in the room, right, and I think it's a very good question. First of all, I think it's important to realize what can happen when there is a conflict, because a conflict can be an extremely stressful experience for the people involved, especially when emotions come into play. So, leaving conflicts unattended can damage individuals and it can damage collaboration and team spirit very rapidly but we're all human, conflicts happen and team spirit very rapidly, but we're all human Conflicts happen. And, yeah, whilst resolving a conflict can feel uncomfortable, as a leader, you must do something. I think that's really important, and there's no single solution, because it really depends on the context of everything, but there are two things I think that are always important to do right. It's it's important to speak to the concerned team members separately and to understand their viewpoints, and also, you need to acknowledge the conflict and you need to acknowledge the unpleasant feelings people may have about it.

Speaker 2:

It's it's really important to start there, and what I've seen throughout my career is that many conflicts, or the majority of conflicts, are based on perceptions, assumptions on incomplete information, and so very often it's just about communication. So, secondly, you must create dialogue and bring the concerned parties together to talk about communication. So, secondly, you must create dialogue and bring the concerned parties together to talk about it. And very often you'll find that people suddenly see like, oh okay, I didn't know that, now I understand, and people get closer together. So yeah, I understand and people get closer together. So yeah, these are the two main things I would say about it. But, having said that, there's no single solution. It really depends on context. But with these two rules in mind, many conflicts can be solved.

Speaker 1:

Touching on communication, would you also say, when communication is improved between parties, that that can help in understanding each other more, understanding behaviours, but also can help the overall team environment as well?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely yeah. It's essential in a team that communication is open and clear. Yeah, Also between individuals. If people work on something and they don't communicate with each other, yeah, it could lead to problems. So it's definitely something that helps the whole year.

Speaker 1:

Would you say as well just adding a bit onto that question that it can also be about different personalities in terms of everyone has a different working style, how they work best. So, would you say it's also important to understand people's personalities, what they can bring to the table, and then understanding how they work in order to understand them more and how they communicate best as well?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. That's really what coaching or mentoring team members is about. I think it's bringing the best out of them. Nobody is the same yes, but yeah, exactly, the best out of them. Nobody is the same, yes, but yeah, exactly. And and as a team leader, you can, you can help to to bring the best out out of them. And, of course, communication plays a crucial role in that. Some people talk we already mentioned it earlier but some people communicate easier than others. Some people talk easier than others, so so the silent type should be coached a little bit and helped a little bit to make sure that they're also heard and that the communication is mutual.

Speaker 1:

And before we wrap up, how do you maintain a sense of connection and team spirit in a fully virtual workspace?

Speaker 2:

I think it's really important that the team operates as a community. The people on the team should should, should see.

Speaker 2:

Sorry, I'll start again that's okay, yeah okay, yeah, so I think the team should feel as a community and uh, yeah, we already mentioned it. For that, communication is an essential ingredient and, of course, also engagement. Right, people need to need to have the feeling that they're actually doing something meaningful. In the team, there should be room for learning. It's okay if you're in an online meeting. If you have to re-explain something which other people already know, that's absolutely fine. It's something I also see happening in the OCU forum. People take the time to make sure that everybody understands what things are about, and that's that's really good. Yeah, yeah, it's.

Speaker 2:

It's also okay to discuss fun stuff, even in online meetings. Right, doing this at the start of a meeting, it feels quite natural. Actually, it sets a good tone. Yeah, one could ask about weekend activities or make fun about somebody's favorite team that lost, right, you can, you can set a nice and relaxed tone that way, even in online meetings. It's not, yeah, it's not something that you. That only works face to face. But, having said that, I would try to avoid 100 virtual and I would recommend to organize meetups. It doesn't have to be super often, right, but a few times a year. And what I find a very good example. Here are the open group face-to-face events. I find them very inspirational, and what I also see is that all the working teams are re-energized after a face-to-face. You can see that it really helps in setting new objectives and setting new common goals and make things move forward. There's always so much energy during these events, yeah, so it's something I would highly recommend, even in an environment which is largely happening in a virtual workspace.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, and can you tell us if there are any events that you are very excited to be joining soon?

Speaker 2:

Oh, yes, absolutely yeah. It has to be the Open Group Summit, which will be in Amsterdam this time. If I'm not mistaking, it's from May the 19th to May the 22nd, and, yeah, I am really looking forward to that one.

Speaker 2:

I have seen the agenda of this face to face meeting taking shape at least the agenda of the OSU Forum taking shape, and it's super exciting. There will be lots of interesting speakers, there will be lots of examples of success stories with OSU, there will be lots of working group sessions, lots of collaboration sessions where people can work together on on specific topics. And, yeah, I just can't wait to see all the people again where I'm working with on a day-to-day basis in the OSU forum. So can't wait for that one to happen.

Speaker 1:

Nice. Well, on that note, we'd like to wrap up this episode by sending a big thank you for joining us in talking about collaboration today on the Open Comments podcast, and we hope that our listeners have enjoyed this episode as much as we have as well, and we wish you all the best with your future endeavors, and thank you so much for joining us into our open comments community. Please stay tuned for similar episodes to this one, and we hope to circle back with you. Thank you so much, stay safe and happy listening.

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