Tony Hayward - the fall guy?

As I write this on a cloudy Monday afternoon in central London, BP chief executive Tony Hayward is busy negotiating his exit deal from the company.

There has been much speculation across the media that it is Hayward’s various PR gaffes in the handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that have led to his departure. And gaffes there have been. Things like stating you want your life back in the middle of a huge environmental catastrophe (that also killed 11 workers). Things like attending sailing events in June. And things like giving a generally uninspiring performance at a congressional hearing. All of this has played extremely poorly with angry residents of the Gulf Coast and among US politicians.

I don’t doubt this has contributed to Hayward’s precarious position in BP. But I suspect it is only part of the story.

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is exactly that, a disaster, which happened on this man’s watch. When Hayward became chief executive in 2007 he told the world that he intended to focus ‘laser-like’ on safety issues. Whatever Hayward may have done in this arena pales into insignificance after the Louisiana explosion. As soon as this happened, Hayward’s days were numbered.

But I think we should give the BP leadership some praise for being, in my opinion, pretty cute in relation to Hayward. When the explosion happened in April, both Hayward and the rest of the company probably knew he would have to walk the plank (perhaps along with others). The company’s inclination was likely to have been that they would like an immediate change at the top. New brooms and all that.

But then BP was likely to be aware that it had an awful lot of muck to absorb in a post-disaster world. Maybe too much for a new chief executive to absorb without getting badly tarnished in the process. But if you get the existing chief executive, already marked by his involvement in the run-up to the disaster, to take the blows while the new guy waits in the wings for a fresh start – now, that could be a winner, particularly if a temporary cap is seemingly having some success in stopping the oil.

I suspect that whatever Tony Hayward did or didn’t do mattered very little in the final analysis.

Lyndon White
Editor, Processingtalk

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