Guest contributor Jim Ward writes:
Interested observers of past OHS failures would do well to pay close attention to the insights of former BP employee Ross Macfarlane in the SafetyAtWorkBlog – A personal insight into BP and the corporate approach to safety.
His erudite observations of some of the underlying issues surrounding BP’s succession of calamities during the noughties and the company’s subsequent struggle to come to grips with the implications for its brand, culture, ethics and self perception are rare.
They are the sort of insights not usually captured during a formal root cause analysis of an OHS disaster. Irrespective of who is found to be right and who is wrong some things just don’t help when it comes to trying to achieve a safe workplace. But, Macfarlane’s insights do.
Macfarlane’s apt description of the “Cult of Lord Browne” is given further weight by the erstwhile CEO’s own account of his life and times as the head of the oil giant in his memoir Beyond Business.
In my view Browne is a narcissist. In his book he portrays himself as
“a visionary leader who transformed a lacklustre organisation into one of the world’s biggest, most successful and admired companies”.
My take on it is that he was admired by his peers but not as much as he was by himself. Continue reading “Leadership starts with the truth”