Introduction
On April 20, 2010, the oil drilling rig, Deepwater Horizon, operating in the Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded and sank resulting in the death of 11 workers on the platform and the largest spill of oil in the history of marine oil drilling operations. Nearly four million barrels of oil flowed. It was an avoidable human-caused environmental disaster. On December 15, 2010, the United States filed a complaint in District Court against BP Exploration & Production and several other defendants alleged to be responsible for the spill. However, putting aside the actual disaster itself or its engineering problems, The crises also exposed dysfunctional organizational cultures built by those leaders. The behaviors and attitudes of leaders have been disappointing and irresponsible at worst. In this crisis, even some basic elements of leadership have been flouted by those leaders. The leaders of BP, who are ultimately responsible for this environmental disaster, ignored expert advice, overlooked warnings about safety issues, hid facts, and sanctioned the extreme risk-taking organizational culture. The disaster was a direct consequence of this flawed culture.
However, before we consider the appropriate leadership styles of the BP and the Deepwater Horizon Disaster of 2010 event and evaluate which one would be the most beneficial to execute radical change, we must understand The Five Stages of Radical Change and the Different Leadership Styles.
The Five Stages of Radical Change
i. Planning
This stage emphasizes creativity, garnering important information, identifying obstacles, considering alternatives, and selecting among those alternatives.
ii. Enabling
The focus in this phase is on explaining the plan to those who will be involved in the change effort. In this stage, empowering employees provides needed assistance in preparing to launch the change process.
iii. Launching
This step is where the change effort commences, required to meet specified launch goals, achieve early results to demonstrate the value of the plan, and assess progress.
iv. Catalyzing
Here people become the focus. Making the change effort and rewarding small successes along the way to keep energy up in the change process.
v. Maintaining
This phase also emphasizes people. Persuasion becomes crucial and guiding people to continue their efforts and providing them with motivation and assistance.
Different Leadership Styles
According to The Leadership Style Inventory (LSI), which is designed to measure the unique leadership style of current managers, executives, and other types of organizational leaders, there are four basic styles, commanding, logical, inspirational, and supportive.
The commanding style focuses on performance, short-term goals, productivity, and results-oriented. The logical style pertains to leaders who insist on covering all alternatives, using analysis, and for long-term goals. The inspirational leader is those who are able to develop meaningful visions of the future by focusing on radically new ideas. They learn by experimentation.
Now, let's get on a time machine and recommend this company some radical change, trying to change the result of this event, and save those workers. According to the investigation, BP made the mistake of trying to spin its way out of this crisis rather than tackling it head-on. This is the first thing we have to change, a dysfunctional organizational culture. Secondly, the duty of leaders, politicians, and investors to adhere to regulations was pushed aside in the drive to build successful businesses, create jobs, and deliver shareholder profits(Corkindale, 2010). However, they refused to remember that true leaders are stewards of their organizations and must lead for the longer term(Corkindale, 2010). Therefore, the second thing that needs to be changed is the leaders need to work together rather than scoring points or deflecting blame. Remember, leaders are there to serve their companies, people, and communities, rather than just taking the benefits and blaming each other.
With so many engineers on the platform, I suggest that adapting logical leadership is an effective way to ensure that everyone understands the risks and possible tragedy behind these small steps. Starting with the planning stage, the leader must emphasize garnering important information about safety and identifying obstacles. When the leader values the safety issues, all workers will know what is the top priority. Instead of blaming each other, workers now understand they are on the same platform and they have to be safe together as a team because everyone is part of the safety rules. Then, after explaining the plan to those engineers who will be involved in the change effort, everyone should understand that they have the ability to avoid a possible disaster and consensually launch the change process. Now, we have to keep it up as long as the platform is still working. Logically persuading them to continue their efforts and providing them with motivation and assistance is a crucial part of the plan.
References
Environmental Protection Agency. (n.d.). EPA. Retrieved July 30, 2022, from https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/deepwater-horizon-bp-gulf-mexico-oil-spill
Five leadership lessons from the BP Oil Spill. Harvard Business Review. (2014, July 23). Retrieved July 30, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2010/06/five-lessons-in-leadership-fro
(Corkindale, 2010)
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