His performance to date would seem to fall into the chapter heading “Don’t Do These Things” in a textbook on how to manage PR crises.
His lack of even half hearted attempts to take charge of the crises, and his virtually running away from responsibility by claiming ignorance and lack of responsibility for virtually all technical and operational decisions made under his watch was pretty pathetic.
Was this evasive response legally necessary? Would it have been too dangerous liability-wise for him to adapt a “the buck stops here” stance? Re PR smarts this seems to be seriously lacking a clue.
IANAL, but I’m sure he’s spent days being coached by a team of dozens of lawyers from both sides of the Atlantic on exactly what to say and what not to say.
I’ve worked on a fair number of crisis situations (strikes, product liability, and other emergencies) and studied a bunch more.
The lawyers will tell you to not say or admit anything. The technical people will ignore how you look to the public, while the PR people will tell you that your survival depends on how you look to the public. The only thing that ever resolves a crisis is when the person in charge says “screw you all, we’re going to do the right thing, and we’re going to do it right now.”
Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of CEO’s with the balls to go all in.
He really needs to get new advisors with a ticket on the clue bus after this weekend: Attending a yacht event is not so much the favorite with the Louisiana oil schlubbed crowd.
How stupid can you be to do that? “Let them eat crude?”
Most of the questions asked at the hearing were of the “Have you stopped beating your wife yet” variety, so he going to be was pretty well screwed no matter what he said or didn’t say.
After that, BP took him off day-to-day oversight of the spill, so he really had no reason to hang around. Going to a yacht race immediately afterward wasn’t the brightest move, PR-wise, but what would you have him do? Hide out in a bunker?
Yes, because that is the only other option here, obviously. And the idea that the questions were “Gothca” type questions are nonsense. In fact, the congressional committee sent Hayward in advance the questions they were basically going to ask. Unless of course “When did you stop beating your wife?” is a gotcha question after you are shown video footage of the person beating their wife.
I’m getting the weird feeling that Mr. Hayward will end up having a second career as an “ironic” celebrity “you love to hate” who goes around judging reality shows and stuff like that… kind of like Rod Blagojevich… the coverage of him has taken on a strangely personal tone.
It doesn’t matter, BP has a horrible image and nothing this guy did would make people say “You know, BP is getting a bad rap.”
So his awful performance, didn’t do much to hurt anything. Public opinion was already at zero, so you can’t go any lower.
And as long as the oils gushing into the Gulf of Mexico it won’t go higher.
So he problably said “I’m damed if I do, damned if I don’t, so I’ll just make sure I don’t say anything to harm the company from a legal standpoint.”
And you have to realize it took over 20 years to settle claims from Exxon / Valdez which wasn’t as bad as this. This, from a legal standpoint is gonna be around for decades.