Canton on Emergency Management

Scenario-based Planning: Five Rules for More Effective Contingency Planning

Download Newsletter June 2010

BP's Crisis Communications Strategy

There's been an interesting development in the ongoing oil spill saga. BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg has replaced CEO Tony Hayward as the person in charge of the oil spill cleanup with Managing Director Robert Dudley. Ostensibly, the change is being brought about by Hayward's rather abysmal handling of public relations and demonstrates decisive leadership by Svanberg.

However, this move is right out of the crisis communications handbook. It axiomatic that you never use your top person as your spokesperson in a crisis. This allows for plausible deniability if your initial message goes south and allows your top person to step in and "resolve" the crisis.

While there is no question that Hayward has committed some serious gaffes, one has to wonder why. BP certainly can afford to hire the very best crisis management consultants and for a crisis of this magnitude, it is inconceivable that they haven't. Yet it seems that Hayward has not had access to competent crisis communications advice.

Even someone new to the concept of crisis communications could have suggested that denying your responsibility for the oil spill in a Congressional hearing is a non-starter. I'm willing to believe that Hayward really didn't know about the bad decisions surrounding the spill. After all, it's good management to delegate decisions to the lowest level. However, when you're the CEO, you're responsible for those decisions.

And what about the yacht race vacation in the middle of the crisis? Certainly, Hayward is not really essential to day-to-day operations and is entitled to some time off. But again, even a crisis communications neophyte could explain the importance of symbolism and sending the wrong message.

So one has to wonder - has BP been using a very subtle strategy all along or are they really inept at crisis communications? 

You Can Run But You Can't Hide: Another Lesson From the Gulf Spill

My good friend, Art Taber, sent me a link to BP'sRegional Oil Spill Response Plan - Gulf of Mexico dated June 30, 2009. Although Art is not an emergency manager, he took the time to read the 583 page document and offered the following observations:

1. In a section titled “Sensitive Biological & Human-Use Resources,” the plan lists “seals, sea otters and walruses” as animals that could be impacted by a Gulf of Mexico spill;
2. It lists a Japanese home shopping website as the link to one of its "primary equipment providers for BP in the Gulf of Mexico Region [for] rapid deployment of spill response resources on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis". While I can't read Japanese, it does seem to me that: http://www.msrc.com/Equipment.htm is not a purveyor of oil-spill related cleanup supplies or heavy equipment;
3. It directs BP media spokespeople to never make "promises that property, ecology, or anything else will be restored to normal." {Like the statements that their CEO has been making?};
4. It contains no information about tracking sub-surface oil plumes from deep water blowouts such as those now billowing from the damaged oil well that the Deepwater Horizon was drilling before it exploded on April 20. {Like those plumes that BP denies are occurring?};
5. It includes no information about currents, tides, prevailing winds, possible hurricanes or other oceanographic or meteorological conditions, even though such data are essential for effective oil spill response;
6. It contains no information about preventing disease transmission (such as viruses or bacteria) to captured animals in rehabilitation facilities, which was identified as a serious risk after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989;
7. In the chapter on "Worst Case Discharge" offers assurances that within hours of any incident, regardless of size, "personnel, equipment, and materials in sufficient quantities and recovery capacity to respond effectively to oil spills from the facilities and leases covered by this plan, including the worst case discharge scenarios" will be deployed.

Whether Art's observations are accurate is not the point. What is important is that in this day and age, your plans are readily accessible to informed and involved citizens like my friend Art and you will be held accountable for their contents in the court of public opinion. And before you use this as an argument that your plans should notbe posted on the Internet, remember that these plans must be provided to a private citizen if you're a government agency under the Freedom of Information Act or during pre-trial discovery in a lawsuit if you're a private organization. Regardless, electronic media files are still easier to leak to the media than hard copies were in the days of the Pentagon Papers. Sooner or later, the public is going to get to read them.

So what's the solution? Do I really need to spell it out? Stop writing plans merely to meet requirements and start writing plans that really address the problems they were intended to solve. Want it simpler? Do the right thing.

Learning from Catastrophe?

A recent op-ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle by Ian Mitroff dealt with lessons that we should be learning from the recent oil spill in the Gulf. Mitroff is a professor at Alliant University in San Francisco and a senior investigator in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at UC Berkeley. He makes four very salient points:

1. preparedness before the event is essential in reducing the impact of the event,
2. your record of past performance is readily available making it futile to try to reduce liability by pleading ignorance or unforseeability,
3. mitigation is cost effective - it's cheaper than paying damages in most cases. and
4. it's pointless to try to blame others when you are responsible for your failures

Part of my frustration is that this is the same message we've been trying to communicate for years as emergency managers but our leaders are still not getting it. Part of the reason is that deep down in the hidden recesses of their hearts, most people really don't believe a disaster will happen; that if it occurs, it won't happen to them; or if it does happen to them, it won't be that bad. That's human nature.

However, when you're in a position of responsibility with the lives and livelihood of others depending on you, it might just be in your own best interests to listen to your advisors and do something about mitigation and preparedness before something bad happens. It's cheaper and better than trying to explain to the public and your shareholders after the event why you didn't do spend a few dollars to prevent a catastrophic loss.