THE INTELLIGENT OPERATOR LEADERSHIP PROGRAMME
Carry the decision through.
30 Sessions · 25 Minutes Per Day · Six Weeks · Free · For leaders in Nigeria’s oil and gas sector
Hello — I am Coach Ritchie. I am the AI assistant for this programme. Ritchie Wingo built me, and your work is marked against the rubric he published; anything that falls below the mark to continue, he reviews himself, because that is the point at which a person needs help rather than a score. I am here for the moments in between, when the steering committee meets on Monday and you want to argue a point through with someone first.
Thirty sessions, twenty-five minutes a day, six weeks. A production shortfall can survive several meetings without becoming a decision. A model may improve the diagnosis or give an earlier warning; it cannot settle who may approve the purchase, make cash available or provide a safe work window. Those responsibilities sit with leadership, and this programme is about carrying the decision through — from the reservoir to the bank account.
Every assignment is about your company and the one decision that currently costs it time, money or operating opportunity, and every assignment comes back with a written letter: what holds up and why, and where something is thin, exactly where to look. By Session 30 you will hold a signed ninety-day operating plan for your company.
Ask me anything as you work and I will help you think it through, but I will not write your plan for you, I do not give investment, legal or engineering advice, and I switch myself off while you sit a quiz or an exam.
There is nothing to buy and no licence key to redeem. You sign in with your Google account so that your work can be marked and returned to you, your progress page follows you between devices, and your certificate can be issued in your own name.
With your Google account. Name, email, the company you work for and your role — that is the whole enrolment.
The responsibility to act and the six frameworks. Name your company and the one decision that costs it most.
Twenty-five minutes, then one written assignment. It is marked against a published rubric and comes back as a letter.
You assemble and sign your ninety-day plan, sit the final, and your certificate is issued.
Already started? Open my progress page → · Just looking? Read Week 1 →
This programme assumes you are not a data scientist and do not intend to become one. It ends with you able to ask of any AI proposal what decision it changes, who owns the action, what evidence shows it worked — and to choose a simpler method, or stop, when that is the better answer.
Sense, decide, act, learn — find where your loop breaks, and give the decision an owner, an authority route and funding.
Find the binding constraint from the reservoir to payment, and build a record leaders can trust.
Connect field systems without exposing the plant, earn autonomy separately for each use, and build the workforce that can use it.
Appraisal, recovery, well delivery, interventions and a deferment ledger that can be reconciled.
Flow assurance, gas delivery, product value, maintenance, integrity, utilities and commissioning to agreed criteria.
Custody transfer, security, process safety, environmental performance, host communities and contractors.
Revenue reconciled to the bank, the funding trough, growth, regulatory assurance and lifecycle stewardship.
A decision record, acceptance gates, a benefits ledger, a scorecard that leads to decisions, and the first ninety days.
| It is written for | It is not written for |
|---|---|
| Operations leaders who carry production, uptime and safety in Nigerian operating companies — COOs, asset managers, heads of production, maintenance, integrity and HSE | Engineers looking for model-building or coding work — that is a different course |
| Managing directors and executive and non-executive directors of operators, including those with operated and non-operated interests | Anyone looking for investment, legal or engineering advice on a specific asset |
| Commercial, finance, supply-chain, community and assurance leaders whose decisions the operating plan depends on | Anyone wanting a certificate without writing about a real company |
| Leaders of service companies and partners who need to understand how an operator’s decisions are made | Anyone expecting twenty minutes of video and a pass |
This programme does not end in a folder of notes. In Session 1 you name your company and the one decision that currently costs it time, money or operating opportunity, and every session after that writes one section of a single document — your 90-Day Intelligent Operating Plan — around it. By Session 30 you assemble and sign it. Written properly, it is the paper you table at your next executive committee or board meeting.
| Week | Sections you write |
|---|---|
| Week 1 Leadership and the Operating Foundation | 1. Section 1 — Our company, the one decision that costs us most, and where its loop breaks. 2. Section 2 — The mandate: owner, authority route, funding and the evidence the board can challenge. 3. Section 3 — The route to payment, the binding constraint and our constraint register. 4. Section 4 — The record behind our decision and its data contract. 5. Section 5 — Connectivity, separation from control, vendor exit and recoverability. |
| Week 2 Governance, People and the Subsurface | 6. Section 6 — The system register entry, evaluation and the permission it has earned. 7. Section 7 — The roles, knowledge, supervision and incentives our decision depends on. 8. Section 8 — Where AI challenges our technical interpretation, and the information worth paying for. 9. Section 9 — Surveillance designed around decisions, and the evidence for action. 10. Section 10 — The delivery objective, the limits of prediction and our contractor interfaces. |
| Week 3 Wells, Production and Processing | 11. Section 11 — The intervention case, its probability and the evidence that would change it. 12. Section 12 — The volume definition, our deferment ledger and how recovered value is verified. 13. Section 13 — The physical picture, testable treatment and the full consequence of change. 14. Section 14 — The delivery basis, the priced obligation and the improvement framed as a project. 15. Section 15 — The economic boundary, evidence for quality and the cash test. |
| Week 4 Reliability, Projects and Delivery | 16. Section 16 — Failure consequence, the actionable condition and the closed response chain. 17. Section 17 — The bounded integrity question and an honest action register. 18. Section 18 — Our utility dependencies, a consistent comparison and the degraded-operation plan. 19. Section 19 — The project from the operating problem, its commissioning criteria and a protected handover. 20. Section 20 — The available route, reconciled custody evidence and what reaches the customer. |
| Week 5 Protecting Assets and Operating Relationships | 21. Section 21 — Detection without inventing a cause, preserved evidence and protected relationships. 22. Section 22 — Barrier condition, careful document assistance and emergency readiness. 23. Section 23 — The inventory boundary, verified detection and physical progress. 24. Section 24 — Duties and commitments, credible grievance handling and accountable community work. 25. Section 25 — The outcome we buy, Nigerian-content duties and the contractor in operation. |
| Week 6 Commercial Value, Governance and Execution | 26. Section 26 — The real alternative, the contract as commitment and revenue reconciled to the bank. 27. Section 27 — The case from operating evidence, the funding trough and benefit verification. 28. Section 28 — The growth thesis, the diligence that tests it and joint-venture authority. 29. Section 29 — Obligations mapped, reports from controlled evidence and lifecycle stewardship. 30. The signed 90-Day Intelligent Operating Plan. |
This programme is free, and nothing is upsold to you inside it. When you finish, you receive an ERW CommandOperator certificate of completion in your own name — issued on a pass, not on attendance.
| To receive it | What that means |
|---|---|
| Every assignment passed | Sessions 1 to 29, each marked at 70 or above against its published rubric. Work below the mark comes back with what to fix; resubmit and the new mark replaces the old one. |
| The capstone passed | Your signed 90-Day Intelligent Operating Plan, Session 30, marked at 70 or above. |
| The Final Exam passed | Fifteen questions, three of them rebuilt from your own earlier mistakes, at 70 or above. |
The certificate is emailed to the Google address you signed in with. It certifies completion of an ERW leadership programme; it is not a professional licence, an engineering qualification or a university award.
Only people who have finished the programme can write one — the Session 30 capstone passed and the marked Final passed, both recorded by the server rather than by anyone’s say-so. They are shown exactly as written, never solicited and never edited.
One session a day, twenty-five minutes. Each one teaches part of the doctrine and makes you use it on your own company.
Every session ends in a written assignment — a diagnosis, a value case, a pilot design, a plan section. Four hundred to nine hundred words.
Against the rubric printed under the assignment. A written letter comes back, usually within minutes.
Session 30 assembles twenty-nine sections into one document, then the final exam — three of whose questions are rebuilt from your own mistakes.
No mystery, and no waiting days for a mark. Here is the whole loop.
One document per session — Word or Google Docs — with the first line reading Session: N. Your own company, your own numbers.
Against that session’s published rubric, criterion by criterion. The same rubric every time, for everybody.
Not a score — a letter naming what holds up, what is asserted without evidence, and exactly where to look to fix it.
Your mark joins your progress page and the corrected section goes into your plan, so Session 30 is assembly rather than writing.
An illustration of the letter format, using Session 3’s real rubric.
| Criterion | Awarded |
|---|---|
| Draws the route through handoffs and approvals to payment, not by department | 24 / 25 |
| Names the binding constraint with its type, evidence and what binds next | 19 / 30 |
| Completes the register entry with an owner by role and a time basis | 20 / 25 |
| Distinguishes operated and non-operated interests and gross, entitlement and cash, and names a departmental success hiding system loss | 16 / 20 |
Six weeks. Five sessions a week, twenty-five minutes each, at whatever pace your diary allows. Every session ends in one written assignment about your own company, and every assignment becomes a section of your ninety-day plan.
Thirteen papers, marked the moment you submit, every question returned with the reasoning behind it. Six pop quizzes of five questions, six practice exams of fifteen, and a fifteen-question final. You are never left to guess when to sit one: the session that opens a paper says so, prints the paper beside its assignment, and flags itself on the session tab — and your progress page always names the paper due now. Closed book, no notes, and Coach Ritchie switches himself off while you sit one. Pass mark 70 — and you may resit the practice papers as often as you like.
5 questions · after Session 3
15 questions · after Session 5, closing Week 1
5 questions · after Session 8
15 questions · after Session 10, closing Week 2
5 questions · after Session 13
15 questions · after Session 15, closing Week 3
5 questions · after Session 18
15 questions · after Session 20, closing Week 4
5 questions · after Session 23
15 questions · after Session 25, closing Week 5
5 questions · after Session 28
15 questions · after Session 29, before the final
15 questions · in Session 30
Twenty-nine sections written one per session, assembled and signed in Session 30: the one decision that costs your company most and where its loop breaks, the mandate and authority behind it, the record and systems it relies on, how it is governed and staffed, what it means across wells, plant, delivery, safety and relationships, the commercial and funding case, and your first ninety days month by month.
The Intelligent Operator — A Leadership Doctrine for AI in Nigerian Oil and Gas Operations. A reader’s toolkit of six frameworks and thirty chapters across five parts: leadership and the operating foundation; subsurface, wells and production; processing, reliability and capital delivery; protecting assets and operating relationships; and commercial value, governance and execution. It follows a decision from the reservoir to the bank account, and asks what leaders must do for intelligence to produce useful results.
These 30 sessions teach the doctrine and make you use it. The book carries what twenty-five minutes cannot: every chapter in full with its sources, the worked calculations, the decision record, the acceptance gates and pilot charter, the source register and benefits ledger, the worked-economics review sheet and the management scorecard.
Nothing in this programme depends on buying it. Every session, paper and certificate is free whether you own the book or not.
The whole programme on one printable page — the six frameworks, the three closing disciplines, the five acceptance gates, the first ninety days and the management scorecard. Keep it beside you from Week 1.
The document every assignment is written in — opens in Word or Google Docs, with the first line already correct.
Read the first session before you sign in, and decide for yourself whether the rest is worth six weeks.
Your marks, your letters, your plan sections and your paper results, in one place.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Is it really free? | Yes. No card, no key, no paid tier. The certificate is free too. The book is available separately for anyone who wants the full chapters, figures and sources, and nothing in the programme depends on it. |
| How much time, honestly? | Twenty-five minutes of reading and thirty to sixty minutes of writing per session. Call it twelve to fifteen hours over six weeks, and rather more if you do the capstone properly. |
| Do I need a technical background? | No. The technical sessions teach you what to ask, not how to build. You need a real company, a real decision, and the willingness to look at both honestly. |
| Is this specific to oil and gas? | Yes. It is written for Nigerian oil and gas operations — onshore, swamp and shallow-water production, gas processing, refining and delivery, operated and non-operated interests. Every session sets a case at the asset — the well, plant, record or crew — beside the same decision in the operating review — the owner, the authority, the money. |
| Is this investment or legal advice? | No. It is an operating doctrine for leaders. Figures and regulator facts are taught only as the book states and sources them. |
| Can my leadership team do it together? | Yes, and it works better that way — but each person signs in and submits their own work, because the plan is only useful if it is argued over. |
| What if I miss a week? | Nothing happens. There are no cohort dates and no deadlines. Your progress waits for you. |
| Who marks it? | It is marked against R. Wingo’s published rubric, criterion by criterion, the same way every time. Anything that comes out below the mark to continue, he reviews himself before it reaches you. Coach Ritchie helps you think; he does not mark and he does not write your plan. |