A closed mouth catches no flies
2010 has been quite the year for private utterances finding their way into the public domain and causing considerable embarressment.
The general election campaign was enlivened by the comments made by Gordon Brown about Gillian Duffy in the apparent safety of his car. The English World Cup bid has also been damaged recently by comments made by Lord Triesman about illicit relations between the Spanish and Russian bids.
It's against this backdrop that an internal BP memo has been leaked today revealing the cost, benefit approach taken towards employee safety at the company. The flippantly titled "Cost benefit analysis of three little pigs." memo was revealed on the Daily Beast blog and comes at a time when the company can ill afford any further adverse publicity.
With rolling news channels and social media seeping into every facet of life this is perhaps another salient lesson that companies and managers should not say in private what they would not say in public.
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That's awful, especially after Lord Browne resigned in part because of the safety issues at the company. The new boss came in with a supposedly more hands-on approach and it doesn't seem to have worked at all.
These things always have a way of coming out don't they?
It seems to have kicked things off as I read a story in the Metro this morning about apparently lax safety on the rig that exploded.
I remember reading a quote that was attributed to one of America's past Presidents which went:
"It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt".
Sound advice?!?
You have a good point Colin. In this day and age it's always best to assume what you say is in the public domain. If you're not happy for your words to be public knowledge then it may well not be worth saying it.
Interestingly this is taking on another level with the creation of a satirical take on the PR situation at BP.
http://twitter.com/bpglobalpr
100,000 + followers and counting.
Getting worse and worse for BP. Now it seems they've 'cut costs' in the well that burst.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j0AcxgG0SVDGdVYx5c3_SohWDZYg
I wonder if now is a great time to invest in BP shares?
Getting worse and worse for BP. Now it seems they've 'cut costs' in the well that burst.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j0AcxgG0SVDGdVYx5c3_SohWDZYg
Further on this in Wired http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/bp-nightmare-email/
The fact that it was called a nightmare by an engineer so near to it all going wrong is very worrying. I've read a lot about BP and how they implement knowledge management very well etc. You'd really imagine their channels of communication to be really good. Apparently not.
I was reminded of the chapter on crisis management in Winning by Jack Welch by Wally Bock today and it provides some salient lessons for crisis management. He focuses on several assumptions: