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E49: CEO-speak and the road to major disasters · Safe As Podcast

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  How does the CEO's visionary language or what's called CEO
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  speak conflict with logics of safety?
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  Let's find out. OK everyone, I'm Ben Hutchinson
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  and this is Safe as a podcast unpacking safety and risk
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  research. Visit safetyinsights.org for
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  more research. Today's article is from Imernik
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  and Craig 2017, titled CEO Speeches and Safety Culture,
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  British Petroleum before the Deepwater Horizon Disaster.
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  Published in Critical Perspectives on Accounting, the
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  study evaluates the then CEO of BP, Tony Heywood, prior to the
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  2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion.
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  Specifically, what language did the CEO use in their public
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  speeches? Had used A social constructions
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  perspective, conducting interpretive analysis of
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  Haywood's speech at the B PS Annual General Meeting just five
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  days before the disaster, along with eighteen other speeches
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  that he delivered prior to the event.
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  So what did they find? A central insight of this
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  research is that the language used contributed rhetorically to
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  an ideology of economic efficiency and cost control in a
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  manner that was inconsistent with an enduring safety culture.
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  That was a direct quote, by the way.
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  The authors found that while Haywood claimed safety was his
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  number one priority, the term safety itself was hardly
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  mentioned at all in these speeches, with cost cutting,
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  financial matters and organisational efficiency
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  dominating the discourse. To illustrate, this paper
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  highlights that the word safety appeared only twice in Heywood's
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  2323 Word 2010 AGM speech. Similarly, in his eighteen prior
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  speeches, safety appeared only 17 times.
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  This is notably low given BP's history of safety incidents.
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  Heywood's predecessor, Lord Brown, also mentioned cost far
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  more frequently than safety in this extensive collection of
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  speeches. I think that's probably a little
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  bit unfair of the authors of this paper, though, because you
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  would generally expect costs to come up more.
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  I mean, businesses are there to make money.
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  The paper underscores that BP had a history of significant
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  safety accidents in the decade leading up to the Deepwater
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  Horizon disaster. These include a major oil spill
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  in Alaska in 2006 and a refinery explosion in Texas City in 2005
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  that killed 15 people. Following Texas City, the Baker
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  Report of 2007 expressed strong concern about BP's lack of
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  leadership in setting the process safety tone at the top
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  and establishing appropriate expectations regarding process
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  safety performance. There were probably some of the
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  nice comments out of the Baker report also.
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  The USCSB also concluded that BP Texas City lacked a reporting
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  and learning culture. What these warnings?
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  The paper notes that the lessons from the 2005 Texas City
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  explosion and other crises at BP had not permeated the company at
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  the time of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster.
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  Evan Hayward's successor publicly acknowledged July 2010
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  that PP didn't have an adequate safety culture before the
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  Deepwater Horizon event. So what is the role of this CEO
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  speak? The research highlights that
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  CEOs of large, complex, risky organisations have a pivotal
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  influence on safety because of their rhetorical contribution to
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  discourses on safety culture. The authors define safety
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  culture as the ongoing construction of underlying
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  assumptions, beliefs, values and attitudes shared by members of
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  your organisation in moving to an environment characterised by
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  a quest for an absence of harm. Within its definition, CEO speak
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  is accorded a critical role. The paper explains that CEO
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  language can propagate and enable shared beliefs and values
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  lying to safety, influencing the tone at the top that can
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  reinforce a safety consciousness mindset and a commitment to the
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  idea of moving towards the absence of harm.
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  The paper then unpacks Haywood's 2010 AGM speech through a close
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  reading analysis by the authors of this paper.
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  The research has identified specific instances where
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  Haywood's language subtly or not so subtly, prioritised financial
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  metrics over safety. For instance, while safety was
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  listed among priorities which alight at the heart of all our
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  operations as a quote alongside people in performance, the
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  speech seemed to regard safety as a separate, perhaps
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  compartmentalised construct. And quoting the paper, this is
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  noted as inconsistent with the view that safety culture is an
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  integral constituent of the organisation culture.
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  So managing work safely and efficiently is just part of what
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  organisations should be able to do.
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  They have to navigate these tensions and trade offs.
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  Safety was said to be subservient to profit.
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  The language established a link between safe and reliable
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  operations and ultimately led to benefits of improved operational
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  performance flowing through to the bottom line.
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  Therefore, safety appeared rhetorically subservient to
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  improved operational performance, with the ultimate
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  criterion being the bottom line. I mean that was emphasised, the
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  bottom line. Out of 24 performance measures
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  cited by Heywood, only one recordable injuries referred to
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  the safety. The speech was overwhelmingly
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  dominated by accounting based and economic performance
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  measures highlighting quoted the paper and apparent privileging
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  of financial performance over safety.
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  The speech also used repeated words like drive and driving,
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  which conveyed A relentless push towards the increase of
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  efficiency and to reduce costs. This was the stance deemed
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  inconsistent with the construction of a safety
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  culture. According to the authors.
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  Haywood speech didn't use common safety relay words such as risk
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  and hazards, maintenance, repair, prevent, or even
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  accident. It also used euphemisms for
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  risk. Phrases like a real opportunity
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  to make this portfolio work harder for us were interpreted
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  as a euphemism for push operations and safety to the
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  limit in the quest for profits. The portfolio metaphor was
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  really seen as a way to obscure the complexity and humanity of
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  the business. The overall rhetoric, with its
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  really strong assertions of improving the efficiency and
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  effectiveness of everything we do, appear to be public
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  relations discourse rather than a credible accountability
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  report. There's also only one mention of
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  employees in the entire speech's conclusion, indicating point of
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  the paper. Little genuine concern for
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  people issues. Through this lens of metaphor,
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  ideology and rhetoric, the researchers identified a master
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  metaphor throughout Heywood's speech.
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  BP is on a journey towards a great financial prize.
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  This metaphor, likened to a waggon train journey, presented
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  a vision where the prize is a reward to capital, not a reward
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  to labour or the environment or a social equity.
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  And notably, the prize is not an exemplary safety performance or
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  a work environment that represents an absence of harm.
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  So I've covered quite a lot. What are some final reflections?
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  The paper concludes that the leadership words in public
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  speeches of a succession of CEOs of BP are really quite
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  troubling. The discourse, paper argues,
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  helped to form a company culture that really gave short attention
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  to safety and instead encouraged greater attention to financial
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  and operating efficiency. Ultimately, the analysis and
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  inquiring directly to the paper did not find evidence in the AGM
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  speech by the CEO Hayward of language actively aiding in the
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  social construction of a safety culture or a culture of safety,
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  whatever you want to call it. This research serves as really
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  an important reminder that again, quite in the paper, close
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  monitoring of the language of CEOs is important in this age of
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  powerful global corporations, particularly preventing a
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  disconnect from things that matter most, such as having
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  really sound, robust and practical risk management
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  processes. And my own thought is that
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  really based on the research around how complex systems fail,
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  it's a bit utopian to expect safety to literally be the
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  number one priority since businesses ultimately save to
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  deliver goods and services to generate value and profit.
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  So the real finesse, or really where we straddle disaster is in
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  the balancing between safety and productivity.
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  And this constant flux of trade offs between larger or smaller
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  safety margins is where we find the successful organisations
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  that navigate risk within complex social systems.
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  Those that can't balance these trade offs serve as our
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  cautionary tales. That's it on safe.
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  As I'm Ben Hutchinson, please help share, rate and review and
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  check at safetyinsights.org for more research.
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  Finally, feel free to support Safe As by shouting a coffee
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  link in the show notes.