Beyond the Drawing: The Value of the Inquisitive Mind

There's a line Eric Fidler said on Wisdom at the Wellhead that I think every leader in this industry should sit with for a minute. He was talking about his early days wiring gas turbines, and he said, "I didn't just wire things that were on a drawing. I started asking how it worked and taking things apart."

That sentence sounds simple. But think about what it actually means. He had a job. The job had a set of instructions. He could have followed those instructions, done good work, collected his paycheck, and nobody would have said a word. Instead, he chose to understand what he was building. Not because someone asked him to. Because he couldn't help it.

That instinct is the single most undervalued trait in the oilfield. We talk a lot about experience, about certifications, about years of service. But the thing that actually separates the people who lead from the people who maintain is whether they ever stopped following the drawing long enough to understand what the drawing was trying to do.

Following the Drawing Gets the Job Done. Understanding It Builds a Career.

I've always told people there are two kinds of workers in this industry. There's the person who can execute a task perfectly and the person who can explain why the task matters. Both are valuable. But they don't end up in the same place.

Eric's career is the clearest example of this I've come across. He started as an electrician. He could have stayed an electrician. But because he understood the pneumatics, the hydraulics, and the early electronics inside the equipment he was wiring, he started getting pulled into problems other people couldn't solve. He was given opportunities to tune processes that weren't working, things teams were struggling with. And because he understood how the production processes actually interacted with one another, he could see connections that the specialists couldn't.

That deep knowledge didn't come from a training manual. It came from taking things apart. It came from asking questions that weren't part of the job description. It came from choosing to understand the whole system instead of just the piece he was assigned to touch.

Curiosity is an Operational Advantage

Here's what I've seen over the years. The companies that solve problems fastest are the ones with people who understand the asset at a level deeper than their role requires. When something goes wrong on a well pad, the person who can trace the issue across mechanical, electrical, and process systems is worth more than five specialists working in parallel.

Eric made this point when he talked about his early career. The opportunities he was given to tune struggling processes happened because he already understood how the pieces fit together. Nobody had to teach him the system. He had already taught himself by refusing to just wire what was on the page.

That's not a personality trait. It's a competitive advantage. And it's one that most companies don't know how to hire for, develop, or protect. We build training programs that teach people how to follow procedures. We rarely build programs that teach people how to think about what's behind the procedure. The result is teams that can execute perfectly in normal conditions and fall apart when something unexpected happens.

The Gap Between Knowing What and Knowing Why

This matters more now than it ever has. As we push toward more automation, more edge computing, more real-time analytics, we need people who understand what the technology is actually managing. Eric said it clearly during our conversation: AI is going to be good at augmenting what you do. But without the knowledge of what you're doing, it's worthless.

That's the gap. You can put the most advanced edge controller on a well pad, and it will do exactly what it's programmed to do. But if nobody on the team understands why the process behaves the way it does, nobody will know when the controller is solving the wrong problem. Nobody will catch the moment when the data looks right but the physics are wrong. Nobody will ask the question that the algorithm wasn't built to answer.

The inquisitive mind is the safeguard. It's the person who looks at the screen and says, "That number is technically correct, but something doesn't feel right." And then goes and finds out why. That instinct doesn't come from software training. It comes from years of taking things apart and understanding how they work at a level most people never bother to reach.

What Eric Fidler's Example Teaches Today's Leaders

Eric went from wiring turbines to leading the design of a complete production facility in China to directing digital solutions at Sensia. Every step of that path was built on the same foundation: a refusal to stop at the surface. Here's what that means for anyone leading a team or developing the next generation of talent.

Pay attention to who asks why. In any team, there are people who follow the process and people who question it. Both are needed. But the ones who ask why are the ones you should be investing in. That curiosity is the early signal of someone who will eventually see what others miss.

Give your curious people real problems. Eric was given the opportunity to tune processes that weren't working. He wasn't sheltered from the hard stuff. He was thrown into it. That's how you develop someone who understands the whole system, not just their corner of it. If your best thinkers are stuck doing routine work, you're wasting the most valuable thing they bring.

Don't confuse compliance with competence. Following a procedure correctly is not the same as understanding what the procedure is protecting against. Train your people to do both. The procedure keeps them safe today. The understanding keeps them effective when the procedure doesn't cover what's happening.

Protect curiosity from the bureaucracy. In big organizations, the inquisitive mind can get buried under process and protocol. The person who takes things apart and asks hard questions can be seen as a nuisance instead of an asset. Don't let that happen. That person is your future. Make sure your culture rewards the question as much as the answer.

Final Thought

Eric Fidler didn't just wire things that were on a drawing. That one decision, made as a young electrician with no title and no credentials, is the reason his career went where it went. Not connections. Not luck. Curiosity. The choice to understand what he was building instead of just building it.

Every team has someone like that. Someone who is always asking one more question, always looking under the hood, always trying to understand the thing behind the thing. If you're leading a team, find that person. Give them room. Give them hard problems. And don't mistake their restlessness for a lack of focus. That's the engine. That's what built this industry. And it's what will carry it forward.

If this hit home, you'll want to hear the full conversation.

Join Eric Fidler on Wisdom at the Wellhead as he traces how a habit of asking questions and taking things apart built a career that spans four decades, a hundred countries, and the full arc from pneumatics to edge computing.