BP Oil Spill - Unmitigated Disaster in Collaboration
27 May 2010 Tweet I must begin by saying that this is not a political post; this is not about bashing BP or the US administration. Second, although I do confess to being a news-junkie, I have the same limited knowledge of the situation that is available to all of you. I am no more plugged into the administration or BP than I am plugged into the hole one mile underwater in the ocean.
More than one month after the start of this disaster, here is how I see it from a collaboration standpoint. I shall use our 4 Ps Model for Effective Collaboration: Purpose, People, Process and Place.
Purpose
We know that the first step in effective collaboration if clearly-defined, shared goals/objectives and outcomes/deliverables. Wouldn’t that be nice!
The shared goals in this endeavor are: i) Plug the well or variations thereof, such as digging relief well(s), ii) Contain environmental/ecological damage in the ocean, and iii) Minimize the ecological and human damage on the American coast. Then there are conflicting goals.
BPs objectives also include minimizing its legal (fines and potentially criminal conduct) and financial (payment for damages) and political damage (brand image, future exploration/production permits and potentially tightened regulations). Government’s objectives are just about the complete opposite, do demonstrate politically that it is on the “people’s and environmental” side, thereby protecting its political capital and not appearing impotent.
Then there is definition of the problem on hand. Granted, the situation had been evolving and comprehending the magnitude has been a challenge. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, famously said that the oil patch is “relatively tiny” compared to the “very big ocean.”
Not so fast, Tony! Wonder if he will be knighted by the Queen anytime soon! Big-time British CEOs seem to be knighted often, but I digress.
The New York Times reports today that BPs internal memo of April 27 shows the spill to be as high as 14,000 barrels a day and BP publicly claimed that it was only 1,000 barrels. Several days into the disaster, BPs stance changed to 5,000 barrels a day. BP refused to turn over the video to independent experts until compelled by the government. The same NYT article today puts the spill at being as high as 25,000 barrels a day. BPs latest refrain has been that it is more concerned about shutting down the well and it is really not focused on how large the spill is. This is consistent with BPs objectives of mitigating potential damages.
Note to BP: If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.
Note to the government: Understand the magnitude of the problem and mobilize response.
Note to collaborators: Define the problem as clearly and precisely and as quickly as possible, even in dynamic situations.
Don’t you get the feeling that the issue of trust is rearing its ugly head! That’s next.
People
Effective collaboration requires a right mix of people based on the skills/expertise mix, and clearly-defined roles and decision-making.
In early days, the standard line was that it is a problem created by BP, BP has the solutions and government doesn’t, and BP is accountable for fixing the disaster and absorbing all the resulting damages. The political wisdom was that the minute the US administration says that it is in-charge, it will “own” the problem. Then under political pressure, President Obama said in his press-conference that the government as been in-charge from Day 1. Oh really? For which aspects? Why didn’t anyone tell us before? Who is doing what to who, and how?
Well, a couple of days ago, the Secretary of the Interior (Home Minister or Minister of the Interior), did say that the US will “keep boot on the neck of BP” and threatened to push BP "out of the way" if it did not do enough to stop the leak. Only to be then challenged by Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, “To push BP out of the way would raise the question of ‘replace them with what?’.” Circular firing squad, anyone?
No one seems to know specific roles & responsibilities and the decision-making process. Then of course the issue of trust is evident. I have written about how trust is at the core of collaboration, in Building and Sustaining Trust. Just about every tip offered in that post is being violated.
Process
I am not informed enough and competent enough in deep-sea exploration to comment on how the process is working. What is clear from the above is that, at the very least, the decision-making process is a show-case for how not to make decisions. Communicating through airing grievances in public is not a great communications process either. Conflict management, issues resolution and problem-solving processes seem to be broken as well.
Place
Well we have already covered enough; thus, no need to pile on. I would just say that asynchronous, virtual meetings/communications in public through television cameras are not conducive to effective collaboration. I recognize that politics is deeply intertwined in this collaboration, and politicians like TV cameras and microphones, and so do business executives, at least when shaping public opinion is in their interest.
I addressed what happens when any one of the 4 Ps of Effective Collaboration is lacking, in a guest post, People Collaborate, Not Tools! Yeah, BUT …, for OnePlace blog:
- Lack of clearly-defined and shared PUPOSE => CONFUSION
- Poor mix of PEOPLE skills and incentives => GRADUAL or NO PROGRESS
- Ill-conceived PROCESS for the problem on-hand => CUL-de-SAC
- Great PLACE (tools) but not right for the people and process => INFORMATION MESS
While writing this post, it occurred to me:
- When 1 of the 4 Ps is lacking: Houston, we have a PROBLEM!
- When 2 of the 4 Ps is lacking: Houston, we have a DISASTER!
- When 3 of the 4 Ps is lacking: Houston, we have an UNMITIGATED DISASTER
What are your views on the BP oil spill, from a collaboration standpoint?
Lokesh Datta
Just couldn't resist, although the video touches on some points in this post. Enjoy!
BP Spills Coffee
Lokesh Datta
See Related Posts:
- Christmas Terror: Spectacular Failure and Success in Collaboration
- The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
- Collaboration = Cooperative Behavior + Assertive Behavior
- If You Can’t Pass the Ball, You Can’t play!
- Get Teammates to Move "Towards" Rather than "Away"
- Short Stories From The Front
- Learning from Real-Life Collaboration Stories
Reader Comments (7)
What an outstanding post, Lokesh! Really well-written, researched, insightful and generally fabulous! :-)
From a collaboration perspective, my thoughts are, well, guys, whaddya want? This spill is destroying so much, and is going to have so many long term effects, and what's happening now? Finger pointing!
Collaboration is about bringing people together to solve problems. It's not about politicizing one's own position by either saying "it's your fault" or "it's sort of my fault but you started it" or anything else. The resources we spend publicly stomping our feet are resources not utilized in the solution. (If my parents taught my sister and I nothing when we weren't playing nice together, "don't make me come back there" was NOT something we wanted to actualize).
The fact is, nobody knows how to fix this problem right now. The oil spill was given room to happen before a lot people currently working on fixing it even had jobs.
I think your 4P model is the right one for this situation. I'd only add, "don't make me come back there" as a completely empty threat that might make everyone who's in a position to help play nice. ;-)
Great insights here. I also wonder how much this is a failure of imagination. As with the 9/11 terrorist attacks we often see that the reality is outside the boundaries of where people are looking. In my experience that holds true for group problem solving as well.
It reminds me of my stats professor who held up a large phone book and asked us to first guess how many pages were in the book, and then identify a range of page count in which we would estimate with 95% confidence the right answer would lie. The interesting outcome was that even though there was no "cost" for picking a wide margin -- we could have chosen a range of 1 to 1 million -- most of the class got it wrong. As I recall, the right answer was within the 95% confidence range for less than half the class.
One of the contributions we should expect of effective collaboration is to stretch the imagination of the group for what external factors might happen or for the potential solution space. My hope is that the thinking includes the union of the individual thoughts, rather than the intersection.
Geoff,
Thank you for your kind words!
Having lived in a few countries, I get the feeling that "don't make me come back there" or some variation thereof exists across cultures.
Cheers, Lokesh
Thanks Steve! I really like your summation of “union versus intersection” of thoughts in collaboration.
Cheers, Lokesh
Here is an exchange I had with Guy Benchimol on this post in the LinkedIn discussion group, Management Tools. Guy is the owner of this group.
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By Guy Benchimol, Technical writer
Are you sure this is a good example of collaboration?
After your 4P's terminology, you have nopt one Purpose but several ones, namely:
- stopping the linkage
- collecting the spilled oil
- cleaning the coast
- caring for out-of-work fishermen
which implies different People, Places and Processes.
It is a difficult case study because people have not the same concerns though the root cause is common. If you add legal issues, it is still more intricate.
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By Lokesh Datta
Guy,
Point well taken! This is indeed a not a “clean” situation of a collaborative effort; instead this is a “portfolio” or collaborative efforts and even some competing efforts. Moreover, various constituents have been brought together by the necessity, or even urgency, of the situation and not by desire where congruent goals would facilitate collaboration.
Even when one tries to isolate one particular Purpose, say plugging the well, and collaborate on it, the actions and behaviors of this effort impact other ongoing efforts because the “portfolio” is made up of inter-dependent problems. Continuing with this single Purpose, it is still apparent that: i) roles & responsibilities are not well-defined, ii) information hoarding was/is happening, iii) trust has eroded spectacularly, iv) clear, open and consistent communication is lacking, and v) decision-making process is challenged, at best.
Another take away for me is that when we are involved in some collaborative efforts and some “competing” efforts, trust is sustained by our overall behavior and not disparate actions in different situations.
I agree with you that this is a complex problem and even some PhD theses can be written.
Nice post. When we have a disaster like the BP oil spill, we’re usually able to see that what went wrong was, in fact, well within the company’s control. Many companies simply do not keep their control processes in proportion to the risks they’re taking. Such was the case with BP, and such was the case with the Wall Street firms that created the financial disaster. I wrote an article on this today, in case you’re interested. Cheers!
http://ragingcapitalist.blogspot.com/2010/06/importance-of-systems-thinking.html
Pat,
Thank you for your comments. You are so right! Reminds me of: Little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning. I read your article and quite enjoyed it. We hope to build on your and our ideas further. I shall keep you posted.
BTW, we are neighbors, almost. SF here!
Regards, Lokesh