The Epic Disasters of BP: - Part 2

Here's another mistake.

You said you'd honor all legitimate claims beyond the $75 million. Could you describe what you consider BP's commitment to B. Are you talking describe to the people who are worried about this? I think it is fishermen and others. Can I ask to finish the question for people like fishermen?

Now, Tony Hayward is clearly frustrated here, but he is being rude. He's interrupting to the reporter. Now, the reporter might be rude as well, but guess what? For the most part, nobody sees the reporter asking questions, but they do see the CEO in the spotlight answering questions. And there are a few guarantees in life, but one guarantee I will give you. When the reporter is putting together that story, the reporter's not going to make himself or herself look rude or obnoxious, but the reporter will make the CEO look rude or obnoxious. So, big rule, Tony, don't interrupt Reporters you cannot control in a crisis or any other time, reporters or control their questions or how they ask questions. You shouldn't try. What you should try to do is to focus on the one thing you can control, your mouth. Wait for the reporter to finish, then answer the question in a focused, controlled way and state your message. Here's another mistake.

I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to have been very, very modest.

The impact is modest. Really, really modest. Now, here's one of the problems that quite common in a crisis situation. Whether you're a CEO or anyone else, you want to be optimistic, you want to be helpful. Someone asks you a question, you want to answer, you also want to be optimistic. You don't necessarily intend to mislead. The problem is, as the facts come out, as circumstances change, you can be painted as a liar, as a deceiver, as someone who is horribly dishonest. We now know that the impact of this spill was not modest. This was a consistent problem with BP from the beginning. Initially, they said, well, we think we're leaking a thousand barrels a day, then it was 5,000, then it was 18,000, then it was who knows how many. The numbers keep changing. And that's a problem. When you give bad information to a reporter and it comes out later, the reporter doesn't just think you guessed wrong, they think you've lied, you deceived. You allow yourself to be painted as the bad guy, the dark hat. Don't do it. During a crisis, it is critically important that you learn to say, I don't know, don't guess, don't say what the reporter says. If it's this or this, or pick between these Two numbers simply say, I don't know. What I do know is that we are focusing on X, Y or Z. Don't let a reporter pin you down. If you really don't know and don't guess in an opportunistic or optimistic way, simply say, I don't know. Now, bp, over the course of this crisis, did get better as they tried more and more ways of stopping the spill. They did say, we don't know if it's going to do the trick. We don't want to be overly optimistic. We say, this has a 60% chance or this has a 70% chance. They did get better. The problem is, during a crisis, you don't have a margin of error. You can't be right 50% of the time or 70% of the time, because if you're right 99% of the time and off once, there's such a spotlight that that will be magnified again and again and again for years. Here's another mistake. When Tony Hayward was asked the question, hey, are you going to recognize all the claims against you? Are there going to be illegitimate claims too? He said, of course we're going to honor all legitimate claims against us. And of course, you know, this is America. There's going to be illegitimate claims. He gave an honest answer. He gave a truthful answer. He gave an answer that if you heard the whole answer, you would think that makes perfect sense. Here's the problem. In a crisis situation, every single word, every single phrase out of your mouth can and will be quoted out of context. You can't complain to the media. Every quote is a quote out of context. It's not the reporter's job to make you look good. So when this quote made its way around the world, newspapers, websites, television, radio, the part people heard was, this is America. Of course there'll be illegitimate claims, illegitimate lawsuits filed against us. Whoa. Now all of a sudden, it makes it look like, here's this huge, wealthy, hundred billion dollar plus company saying, oh, these little people, these little fishermen, these little hoteliers, they're going to be filing frivolous lawsuits. We're going to ignore them. That isn't really what he said. But he allowed ammunition to his critics because of this quote. He gave a complex answer. He looked at all the nuances of the reporter's question, gave a detailed response. In normal situations, in a courtroom, with clients, colleagues, this can be a good way to answer questions. But during an international media crisis where you're in the spotlight, this is a horrible way of answering questions. Might not be fair but it is reality. What he should have said. If a reporter said are you going to honor all legitimate claims? Are there going to be illegitimate claims? He should have simply said of course we are going to honor all legitimate claims. Right now we are focusing all of our energy on stopping the spell. Nobody could have accused him of dodging the question but he didn't have to answer in that much detail in that much nuance and this is frankly a perfect example of what often gets people in trouble during a crisis. He wasn't trying to spin, he wasn't trying to deceive. He gave too much information, too much of a complex answer. The result though for the next two days news cycles saying how, oh BP is trying to get out of paying people lawsuits. They don't want to pay damages, they're trying to weasel their way out of it. That was the subtext and it was entirely Tony Hayward and BP's fault.