The gulf oil leak is now officially sealed but there are two leadership lesions that can be derived from this disaster that can be directly applied to leading downsized organizations.
Blaming and scapegoating are not leadership. I have a vision of a circle of boats surrounding the site of the leak. In one boat are President Obama and his staff. He is standing, waggling an accusing finger at a boat filled with BP executives on the other side of the circle. The executives in the BP boat are pointing at a dinghy filled with sub-contractors, who in turn, are angrily pointing back. There is a bloated barge filled with congressmen, all shouting at once, their fingers forming a confusing tangle of directions as they point at each other, and both the Obama and the BP boat. The circle is completed by a boat filled with BP’s competitors, pointing and blaming BP; a boat filled with state officials, blaming the feds; one filled with local politicians, blaming the states; and a very large, sleek yacht, filled with lawyers sporting wolfish grins, licking their chops, and pointing to their wallets.
Cross-cultural studies show that the US is the most individualistic of all national cultures. The good news is that this proclivity stimulates individual initiative, an entrepreneurial spirit, and innovation. The bad news is that we tend to over reward individuals with obscenely large bonuses and give too much individual credit for group efforts. The flip side is that we are quick to blame the individual and slow to blame the underlying system. The result of our cultural conditioning is that, in times of crisis, the knee-jerk reaction of most people in leadership roles is to find someone or some organization to blame. Blaming is easy, and in the public sector, sometimes reaps political currency; responsible leadership is hard because it involves dealing with less popular core issues.
Leadership involves the courage to move beyond finger pointing and facilitate painful choices. The core issues in the gulf are our appetite for oil and the inherent risks of deep water drilling. Despite all the rhetoric, drilling a mile below the surface will always have risks and the potential for disaster. This is true whether the drilling is done by BP, Exxon, or – horror of horrors – even our own federal government. Adequate safety and oversight is important but the real issue is seeking alternative energy sources and breaking our addiction to oil. Leadership both in the public and private sector must address this core issue regardless of the pain and stop wasting time, energy, and money with posturing, expensive public relations campaigns, and political one-upmanship.
For leaders in organizations attempting to recover from the ravages of downsizing both these lessons can help make their organizations more competitive.
