The media reports tracking the Gulf Oil Spill highlight the multiple facets of leadership. This provides an ideal opportunity for ydangle coaches and readers to extract lessons and share experiences on different angles of leadership.
We hope you find it informative and look forward to your contribution.
BP Gulf Oils Spill - Poor leadership or greed?
Vote
A number of press articles, interviews with survivors and also blogposts make reference to BP only being interested in money and they paid little attention to safety. It is suggested that they focussed on reducing costs, meeting project deadlines and chasing greater profits at the expense of safety! They allegedly traded off safety against costs.
Some articles refer to an unprecedented number of errors in decisions leading to the disaster. But why would this be?
Most decisions are made based on a set of criteria. All decisions by definition require a trade-off i.e. giving up something to gain something else so either the criteria used were wrong or it’s a case of human error or pure incompetence. For the purposes of this discussion we will rule out last mentioned.
It would be our contention that the criteria used to make those decisions are embedded in the driving metrics present in any organisation.
In a previous blog posting we spoke about understanding the different trade-offs that leaders at all levels of the organisation need to understand and make. These are generally encapsulated in the metrics that exist both explicitly and implicitly in a company and internalised in different ways in individuals and leaders. In a company such as BP there will be a large number of metrics at play.
BP Gulf Oil Spill - Cowboy on a high horse?
Vote
Whilst things on the PR side have gone quieter around the Deepwater Horizon gulf spill, we did witness a flurry of gaffe’s all round as the seriousness of the spill suddenly dawned on leaders and politicians alike. Tony Hayward was singled out for a number of unfortunate statements and actions which appeared like manna for a media and public looking for a ‘lynching’. Was this fair?
The problem with high profile disasters of a corporate making is that many people and organizations climb onto the bandwagon with perfect hindsight and analyse the decisions post-event. Leaders need to be aware of this and ensure that they act SWIFTLY, DECISIVELY and with EMPATHY and HUMILITY. They will become the sacrificial lamb on the altar of anger unless they build a base of support and sympathy from people. It is always best to act with HONESTY and OPENESS - there is nothing wrong with saying “we don’t know yet , but are working 24/7 with best experts to find out”. Overestimating vs underestimating the magnitude carries risks either way - but if people and the environment are involved we would rather overestimate the potential damage and over react, than see estimates change upwards at regular intervals and worse still at the pressure of others who are more correct that our own experts. Public messaging must help maintain a leaders credibiltiy. Without credibility it is impossible for a leader to lead. Being consistantly wrong destroys credibility.
BP Gulf Oil Spill - Poor leadership or bad management?
Last weeks blog led to a pertinent comment from one of our readers reflecting on the role of BP’s leadership and management in the build up to the spill crisis. This led us to contemplate the differences between leadership and management and whether this distinction serves any purpose? Could this distinction allow leaders to play a blame game or does it actually enhance the running of the company? Traditionally the difference is described as “Leaders do the right things, managers do things right”. There is a large body of writing on the topic and we will not attempt to delve into the depths of academic rigor in this post, but rather try to stimulate some thought in this regard around the BP issue.
When CEO Tony Hayward took over as leader of BP he stressed that safety was his number one priority and was focussed on driving an improvement in the operational safety of their business following some serious incidents. One could argue that Tony Hayward was “doing the right things”.
We assume for our discussion that risk management was on the leadership teams agenda and that deep water drilling was seen as high risk.
Just bad luck or poor leadership?
Some articles and discussions with oil industry players suggest that BP have "just been unlucky”. Could this Gulf Oil Spill have happened to any oil industry player active in deep water drilling? What could this possibly have to do with Tony Haywood’s leadership of BP?
We will use this incident over coming weeks to highlight different dimensions of leadership and the role of a leader in preventing such events as well leading the reaction and response in the event of an incident such as this. There are clearly many lessons that will come from an analysis of the incident and related responses and actions by all players and stakeholders.
It should be noted that the ydangle philosophy is to use the media reports we all see as the basis for comment on particular topics, in this instance the gulf oil spill (See the sidebar for some links to a selection of articles). We will use the ‘facts‘ as reported in the media to highlight leadership lessons - both positive and negative as the story unfolds.