It has been 68 days since I first wrote about the BP oil leak.  At the time, I thought it would be a quick fix and BP would be tested in their crisis management for a few days.  As it turned out, this has redefined crisis management and corporate identity protection/destruction.  Never before has a company had to be on guard for so long, never before has an organization had to redefine the landscape and the message more times than BP has over the last three months.

First of all, I believe there was no possible way for BP to perform perfectly.  The only satisfactory response for those who watched the oil spew into the gulf was to stop the leak.  No words, no actions could create a positive short of complete success. I don’t care how well known or respected the company was before the leak, each day of the leak would have eroded confidence.

By most traditional measures of crisis management, BP followed the rules.

• Make the highest ranking individual in the organization accessible.
• Keep the flow of information coming.
• Accept responsibility where appropriate (moved to this after an initial stumble).
• Don’t hide what is happening (how do you hide with a 24/7 camera on the leak?).
• Offer to compensate those impacted and then start that flow quickly.
• Admit each failure with the same speed as any successes.
• Don’t over promise on when things will be corrected (may have even gone too far here).
• Start an active campaign to tell the story of what they will do going forward.
• Keep your web site up-to-date with information.

On the other hand, they did quite a few things wrong as well.

• Tried to be human by making it personal to their own lives (this backfired because of language used “I want my life back,” and “the little people” come to mind). In a crisis, people don’t care about your life, they care about their own.
• Misjudged the fact that people would want them to suffer a lack of any normalcy (yacht races).
• Seemed oblivious to what should have been obvious causes for public uproar (yacht races).
• Tried to diminish the severity of what was happening (“small spill considering the size of the ocean”) which diminished their empathy for those directly impacted.
• Didn’t seem open to, let alone ready to embrace, the help and expertise of others.

In part, the missteps of BP most likely came from the fact that they treated this like a single crisis, a single event – oil flowing out of a pipe.  In reality, this was a conglomeration of many different events each needing their individual analysis and attention.  Think about how different the situations were:

• Death of employees.
• Environmental concerns.
• Impact on the livelihood of communities and individuals.
• A media ready to criticize and looking for dramatic stories every day.
• Financial concerns (Consider the two sides of wanting to make good on the damage versus the damage to the economy of England if they go under. BP is the most held stock by British retirement funds.).
• Lack of success on a daily basis.
• Constant scrutiny of every word spoken and action taken.
• The balance between competitive pressures of the industry they are in versus the cooperation needed within the industry.
• Completely unchartered territory in terms of length of crisis.

No company has ever faced a crisis of this size, this complexity and this duration.  I do not think a management team anywhere would have come through without severe reputation damage.

I believe the real test for BP is just about to begin.  Like Tylenol after the shelves were cleared of poison, Jet Blue after the flight delay firestorm subsided, Exxon after the tanker was emptied, the real test will be what BP does next.  How do they rebuild, how will they balance righting their wrong without going under (is that even possible)?

And, while the challenge is just beginning for BP, I pity the next company that has to face a reputation disaster because they will be compared at every step to BP and as a result be painted with the BP brush.

I hope I never witness a case like this again, because another case like this means somewhere in the world people are suffering for a prolonged period.  But, even if there is never another BP (see, there I go making comparisons), there is no doubt that the rules, the expectations and the cynicism surrounding crisis management have been forever changed.