BP should talk to De Bono
Having just spent time listening to Dr Edward de Bono talking about creative thinking at the HRINZ Nine to 9 conference in Auckland on Wednesday (he was superb by the way, as usual) I couldn’t help but wonder why BP hasn’t contacted him to ask him to come up with a solution to fix the ruptured oil field in the Gulf of Mexico. The man’s a genius and through using his unique thinking ability I’m sure he’d be able to come up with a creative solution to solve this problem, or be able to get the key people to do so through changing how they think. He’s worked with governments and corporates for decades and found solutions to seemingly impossible problems, so why not this one?
BP has been trying almost everything since the April 20 explosion to fix the leak. Losing 5,000 barrels (that’s 795,000 litres) of crude oil each day is taking its toll on their share prices and the environment. As well as losing 11 of their staff in the initial explosion and spending enormous amounts of money on trying to stem the leak or redirecting the oil, they’ve also lost 30 billion dollars off their share value and the law suits against them are piling up. The effects on the environment will take many years to recover from and the damage to their brand must be enormous, so maybe they should think about approaching it from a different view point?
One of the biggest difficulties BP has to face is having to work on a problem that is 1.6kms beneath the surface of the ocean – it’s dangerous and exceedingly difficult – so what have they got to lose by enlisting some lateral thinking, assuming that they haven’t already? If I was a senior decision maker at BP (and thankfully I never will be) I’d be willing to try anything to fix this disaster and the call would have been made ages ago to get Dr de Bono in to work with the engineers (or other stakeholders) to find a solution.
HRINZ was privileged to be able to offer a great opportunity to assist the HR community through hosting Dr de Bono at our conference. His session unquestionably would have helped unlock the thinking of those present and hopefully they will take back what they’ve learned to their workplaces. So if a little HR membership association at the bottom of the world can see the value in doing this you’d think so too would a large organisation such as BP. But maybe this concept is so simple no-one has thought of it – just as the solution to fix the oil leak might be too?
All of the pain that BP is currently feeling will also be felt by the people who work for BP for months and possibly years to come, so this problem is also an HR problem, or will be once it filters down through the layers of the organisation.
You might recall that the Space Shuttle Columbia mission that ended in disaster in 2003 was ultimately put down to a dysfunctional culture within NASA. Can you remind me who is expected to take responsibility for any culture problems within an organisation?
