Gulf of Mexico
Leading from the Court Room (Update)
BP has released its report into the causes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
Deepwater Horizon Accident Investigation Report Executive summary
Of course, as expected, this report only served to point the blame elsewhere, with the BP CEO, Bob Dudley, saying that BP had ‘”a shared responsibility among many entities”, which is a bizarre statement straight-from a Hollywood Blockbuster rather than the considered remorseful words of an environmentally concerned corporation.
BP’s explanation of the disaster is that the explosion was, principally, caused by one contractor mixing the wrong cement, and another whose employees weren’t up to managing an oil-rig. How much does this go to repairing BP’s battered reputation?
Inevitably this report has failed to put the crisis to bed, and only serves to inflame the situation (no pun intended) particularly as the owners of the rig, Transocean, made their own statement pointing the finger at BP, leading to an unseemly slanging match.
This is Transocean take on the disaster:
“This is a self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP’s fatally flawed well design. In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk – in some cases, severely.”
Plus we have Greenpeace describing the report as revealing “a devastating litany of human error, incompetence and technical failure”.
There is also an interesting discussion by Robert Peston on the implications of a front-end organisation spreading the blame to an anonymous contractor.
The most interesting point in Peston’s discussion is the issue between the need to re-building a corporation’s reputation and the financial consequences of being culpable for a major environmental disaster.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Leading From The Court Room
One of the aspects of corporate communication that students find difficult is to differentiate is the difference between organisational communication and management communication. Frequently the difference is explained as organisational communication being externally communicated and management communication being internally focused.
This is to an extent true.
However the Management Communication is about leadership and leaders can often communicate to their internal stakeholders through external communication means, raising moral and showing affective leadership skills.
Leaders such as Branson and Jobs use these tools to augment internal communication and in a crisis this is particularly true. Of course a crisis creates strange situations and normally faceless bureaucrats and anonymous corporate leaders come blinking into the sunlight as we saw during the spectacular collapse of the American car industry when the three CEO appeared in public together like three Howard Hughes clones. (Extra points for students who can name all three CEOs of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors!!!)
How these leaders present themselves and how they communicate has a big impact both externally and internally. A leader can bring stability and direction to a crisis accelerating its resolution or exacerbate it. Lets’s look at two recent examples of two anonymous CEOs dragged into the public eye by a crisis and see the different way they communicated and try to draw some conclusion as to the impact of their performance in the public glare.
Let take BP CEO, Tony Hayward and Head of Toyota, Aiko Toyoda. Both are faceless leaders who had to break cover to defend their organisation and show leadership in front of politicians, public and the press alike in front of a Congressional Hearing, and in doing so set the tone of how each company was going to deal with their individual crisis. And in doing so communicate to their own organisation at the same time.
Starting with the last first. This is Toyoda in front of a Congress hearing into the reported problems that Toyota were having with their breaking system, which reportedly resulted in a number of deaths.
Though at the time there was great concern over the future of Toyota and the long term and its world leading position in the car market Toyota has not suffered any long term damage to their reputation and business performance. The key to Toyoda’s performance was he was serious, sorry and intent, plus his authority was unquestioned.
In contrast lets take a look at Tony Hayward CEO of BP when put in a similar position. Another faceless CEO, hampered by a history of failing to deliver on past promises and with the clear suspicion that he would be the scapegoat and soon departed from BP; therefore pretty much a whipping boy for the politicians eager to perform for the cameras.
a pretty unimpressive performance, little leadership, clarity and energy to deal with the crisis particularly as it came on the back of this statement
and followed a typical passing the buck episode, that is indicative of a badly managed crisis. During a previous hearing concerning partner organisation of BP, involved in the construction and management of the oil well. We have this shameful performance. At least get your story right before you enter Congressional Hearing.
And of course this then ends in ridicule.
Clearly Toyoda was more impressive and there is little co-incidence that Toyota has bee quicker to re-establish its business performance whilst BP has continued to have problems and is continuously under the microscope with regards to safety, the latest being excluded from bidding for lucrative but inaccessible oil fields in the Arctic.
As a caveat, what do we make of this, Is this the behaviour of a leader?
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Graeme Lindsay
Corporate Reputation Resource Centre 