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ing around the world for nine months!

In November 1951, Bela Barnes was about to leave Arabia to
conduct a second salary survey among Aramco’s four owner companies.
He asked that I come to Dhahran to replace him. We moved to a house
in Dhahran that backed onto an Arab guesthouse. We soon found that
whenever Jean went outside to hang the laundry a group of Arabs would
come out of the guesthouse to watch her.

Before leaving Ras Tanura, I had a talk with Bob King, the Dis-
trict Manager. I had formulated a list of projects that I thought ought to
be done by the Bela Barnes’ group. I told Bob that I intended to work to
accomplish these goals in Dhahran. Bob was an old hand at administra-
tion of big organizations and he said to me, “Dick, you’ll go down there
and the bureaucracy will engulf you.” I was determined that it would
not be so. I had written these objectives on a scratch pad, and when I got
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when I came to work each morning was to open up the drawer and study
the list to see what could be done that day concerning them.
On January 1, 1952, a very thorough reorganization of the top
management of Aramco was announced. The top level of company ex-
ecutives was to move to Dhahran, replacing the headquarters in New
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Chairman of the Board was replaced by Fred Davies, who also became
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General Managers were shunted aside (they were given golden para-
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operations in Venezuela about six months before, was made General
Manager. Bob was a very quiet, unassuming man who was very capable
and easy to work with. Bob King became the Assistant General Man-
ager. The reorganization worked like magic with the new authority now
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the top positions.

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