Ive told this story before but ten years on it may be due a retelling! Back in 1998 Shell was going through a top down generated change management process. This one was called BFI but I cant for the life of me remember what the initials stood for. It had two main elements. The first was about measuring the business and trying to improve performance. The idea was that you drilled down to examine the business in minute detail to try and find your business strengths and weaknesses. Where did the money come from or where did it go. It was a bit dull and a bit accountant led and rather micro in scale – but it wasnt totally daft. The totally daft bit came from the other part of BFI.
We were supposed to bond better by revealing our feelings and aspirations as individuals – one member of one of the groups I was in was a Managing Director of Shell (he is now Chairman of a very big company). He removed his tie (the first time anyone had been him without neckwear in an office) and shared with is how his marriage had been in difficulties when he was GM of a Shell company years ago. Curious stuff and rather embarrassing. Anyway to bond us all better as a unit we had to go into the community to do good works one afternoon. The good works in our case involved the demolition of a perfectly good childrens playground in a small town in Holland. The playground had recently failed an HSE Test (although it looked pretty good to most of us). So it had to go. Quite why a group of middle and senior Shell executives had to demolish it I to this day have no idea.
It was a dreadful day pouring with rain throughout and the playground resisted our efforts to reduce it to rubble. The swings and roundabouts were cemented hard into the ground as were the slides and the other play things. One of my colleagues, who was from Nicaragua, said that if the playground had been in Managua it would have been by far the best playground in the city. But here in Holland it had to go and we had to send it on its way. It was an utterly pointless even offensive thing to do. Most of us were not in the first flush of youth and certainly unused to too much physical effort (away from a golf course bunker that is!). And the pouring rain drenched us all and turned us from puzzled to angry as well as wet. Did this farrago achieve its objective did we bond better as a result. I very much doubt it. Did our opinion of senior management increase at the end of this utterly senseless day what do you think?
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
