The oil and gas industry faces some difficult challenges—low natural gas prices, anti-fracing sentiment and regulatory uncertainty, among others. But these hurdles are no more onerous than previous obstacles the industry has overcome during its storied history. The people in oil and gas have always found a successful way forward.

That does not mean the industry's history has been without bumps in the road.

Not surprisingly, responses to perceived market challenges have not always been profitable. For example, Schlumberger Ltd. made a couple of bad purchases in response to fears of oil production declines through the 1980s and 1990s. Current chairman and ex-chief executive Andrew Gould recently spoke about these decisions at the Jones Graduate School of Business on the Rice University campus. He outlined the two unsuccessful moves undertaken in the face of shifts in the industry landscape. The catalyst proved to be a hollow threat: reduced global oil production.

The company made two acquisitions to offset oil's supposed demise—Fairchild Semiconductor, in 1979, and Sema Group Plc, an IT services company, in 2001. These deals were born of a desire to diversify revenue streams away from oil and gas, rather than focusing on the company's key advantages. Schlumberger's leader at the time believed that semiconductors would be essential to the oil-services business, and vertical integration was a necessity.

Instead, margins contracted, the market reacted negatively to acquisitions outside the company's oilfield-services scope (two days post-Sema, Schlumberger's stock traded down 18%), and the core oilfield-services business suffered financial losses and a drop in morale. The Sema purchase would eventually lead to the sale of a core oilfield-service business to raise cash, a decision Gould wishes had not been necessary. In 2004, it sold most of Sema Group for $1.5 billion.

The company deviated from its core business and century-old corporate culture to enter the semiconductor and IT services arenas. That is not to say companies—or industries—should not evolve. Gould cited Eastman Kodak as an example of a failure to evolve, but probably we all can think of a good or perhaps excellent company that did not change, and so fell by the wayside.

Schlumberger made some bets elsewhere that have paid off, because they were aligned with the company's vision of technological excellence. Keeping a presence in Russia when the competition left, for instance, has resulted in market leadership, strong Russian partnerships and the expansion of research facilities in that country.

From 2003 to 2011, Schlumberger completed $18.35 billion in acquisitions—largely in drilling and seismic—that were accretive and furthered its goals of technological and scientific advantage. That advantage, Gould says, is greatest when the company competes in technology, especially in the deep offshore.

Schlumberger's board of directors came to some powerful conclusions as a result of those two failed deals and implemented a new system for evaluating big moves. The board had not been aware of investor or employee concerns about those two bad deals due to its composition and the process by which it vetted opportunities at the time.

To remedy this, the company instituted a new process for scrutinizing acquisitions that now includes a senior independent director, and an executive session on any proposed deal is held without the CEO present, among other changes.

Finally the board determined it had been too reliant on the CEO to evaluate those opportunities. The company responded by going to great lengths to diversify its board members by experience and geography, and has a succession plan to replace them. To review potential deals now, the two committees—technology and finance—separately advise on these aspects of the deal, doing their own due diligence rather than relying on the CEO.

These measures did not change the fundamentals of the company. But the efficacy of the new decision-making process is reflected in Schlumberger's subsequent successful acquisitions.

Today, it appears that the success of the shale phenomenon has had some unforeseen consequences, not the least of which is the interaction of the industry with thousands of people in new geographies in new ways, and the increasing politicization of permitting, approval and leasing.

Better decision making and a different perspective on outreach and community relations can positively impact balance sheets as well as the ever-growing stakeholder population, just as Schlumberger learned a few years ago.