“A company can’t prioritize everything, and while BP was prioritizing PR and acquisitions, it wasn’t prioritizing operations.” Holman Jenkins, WSJ

A preventable catastrophe is unfolding along our Gulf shores and much of the region is going to suffer for years.  Who’s to blame? The easier question may be who isn’t to blame. However, one thing is clear; a combination of bad politics, policy, and corporate leadership can claim a significant portion of the responsibility.

My concern focuses on corporate leadership, and their role in allowing such a massive operational failure. The Weekly Standard has an excellent article titled “Beyond Pathetic”.  The Standard is a conservative magazine so be prepared for jolts of politics throughout the article.  However, from a business perspective the article is a fascinating study on poor executive leadership and how its failure to prioritize operations into the company strategy has led to an unmitigated disaster. Much of this is from Oberon Houston’s perspective.  He was an engineer who resigned from BP in early 2004 for reasons summarized below.

“In short, Houston no longer trusted the company to do the right thing. As someone who grew up idolizing the company, he came to the reluctant conclusion that BP itself was an accident waiting to happen: It was taking on increasingly ambitious exploration and production challenges, while demonstrating an increasingly indifferent or cavalier attitude toward engineering discipline and excellence. On top of all that, senior management seemed less than fully engaged in the difficult task of extracting and producing petroleum.”

How is that possible that executives of a petroleum company show little interest in what the company actually does?  What did they think their jobs were? What were they focusing on? Simply put PR and growth, concerns that have little to do with the long term needs of running a safe oil company.

Now the company faces a PR nightmare from which it may not awaken.  Changing its logo to a gold and green flower, and its tagline to Beyond Petroleum are now seen for what they are, failed gimmicks.  Branding is useful, but it cannot hide reality forever.  Eventually, a company has to do what it says it does.  BP seemed to believe the risks of running a marginal operation would be covered by its political connections and green branding.  All of us are now paying the price for that hedge.

If only BP made safely extracting energy resources an actively managed part of their strategy, we wouldn’t be having these discussions today. So what about your company?  Does it actually do what it claims it does or is it just an attractive veneer? If you’re not sure, you may want to ask your employees, just be prepared to listen and act accordingly.