Carl-Henric Svanberg, Chairman of BP and AB Volvo. Photographed at BP's headquarters in London for How to lead article.
BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg: 'Nosotros have been able to bring back BP to the size and strength it was before the accident' © Charlie Bibby/FT

Carl-Henric Svanberg's long-term prospects equally BP chairman did not wait promising in June 2010, when he emerged from an emergency meeting at the White House about the unfolding Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of United mexican states.

Mobbed by a scrum of reporters exterior the West Wing, the Swede tried to limited empathy with shrimpers and fishermen facing ruin from the black tide washing ashore from Florida to Texas. Instead, an unintentionally condescending proclamation that BP cared "about the small people" only deepened perceptions of an out-of-bear upon British visitor struggling to cope with the worst oil disaster in history.

"I was supposed to take a couple of questions but ended up taking six and it was the terminal ane which got me," Mr Svanberg, 65, recalls, still bristling eight years subsequently about the perils of going off-script in a 2d linguistic communication.

BP's initial handling of Deepwater Horizon was a case report in how non to manage a corporate crisis. As Mr Svanberg prepares to footstep down as chairman later this twelvemonth — he volition exist replaced past Helge Lund, a beau Scandinavian — Mr Svanberg's survival, and the company'south recovery, take get a source of lessons on resilience and redemption in business life.

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"We have been able to bring dorsum BP to the size and force information technology was before the accident," he says. It has been a tumultuous process that involved the sale of more than than $60bn of assets to embrace disaster liabilities, followed by a rebuilding process that has only recently begun to restore a sense of normality to the company.

Back in June 2010, it was far from clear that BP, let solitary Mr Svanberg, would still exist here in 2018. Its share price and credit rating plunged. Despite the "small people" headlines, Mr Svanberg's meeting with Barack Obama was a turning point. "Nosotros sat in the Oval Role and I said to him: 'Our boat is keeling over right now. We're not taking on h2o but we're not far away. If you lot and the administration tin be supportive going forward, that would help us practise the right thing.'"

chart: BP's share price fell in 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Mr Obama, who had until and then used BP as a political punchbag, responded with a argument that information technology was in America's interest for the company to remain "strong and viable" so it could complete the make clean-up and pay compensation. Investors and creditors took this as a sign of the president calling off the dogs.

But Mr Obama'southward message did petty to restrain lawyers, who converged on the Gulf coast to help tens of thousands of local businesses to file claims for lost profits. BP's bill for compensation, penalties and clean-upwardly has topped $65bn and is all the same rising as the final ceremonious claims become through the system. "Would the Americans [ExxonMobil or Chevron] have got off cheaper? Probably," says Mr Svanberg, speaking in BP's headquarters overlooking St James's Square in London. "Were there things that, knowing what we know at present, we could take done differently? Probably. Only you lot do the all-time you tin at the time."

Battling with US lawyers and politicians was not the task Mr Svanberg imagined when he joined BP in 2009 from Ericsson, the Swedish telecom equipment manufacturer. His main attribute appeared to be experience in India and China, from where the strongest growth in energy demand was coming. His Scandinavian roots were some other attraction when the Nordic model of responsible capitalism was the summit of mode after the global financial crisis.

3 questions to Carl-Henric Svanberg

Who is your leadership hero?

Nelson Mandela. His moral leadership brought apartheid downwards and later he forgave his enemies.

FILE PHOTO: President Nelson Mandela is accompanied by his then wife Winnie, moments after his release from prison near Paarl, South Africa, February 11, 1990. REUTERS/Ulli Michel/File Photo
Leadership hero: Nelson Mandela moments after his release from prison house in February 1990 © Reuters

If you lot were not a business organization leader, what would you exist?

My parents urged me to pursue a secure government chore. Later high school, I started preparation to get a teacher of maths and science simply, even with acme scores, you had to enter a lottery to become a job — so I decided to switch to a degree in applied science.

What was the showtime leadership lesson you learnt?

During national service, I led my platoon crawling up a hill during a alive burn down exercise. I got to the superlative 20m ahead of my comrades [who were] waving their loaded guns at my backside. That taught me the importance of bringing anybody along on the journey.

Yet Mr Svanberg's make of leadership was inappreciably soft. He made his name equally main executive of Assa Abloy by buying and integrating dozens of small family unit lockmakers, many of them badly run, into the earth's largest lock manufacturer. That earned him the top job at Ericsson, where he led a successful turnround afterward the dotcom bubble burst, but only by shedding tens of thousands of jobs. How was such a brutal restructuring possible in a country with a potent consensus civilization and labour representation on company boards? He says it is easier to enlist unions' support for tough measures when they are role of the conclusion-making process rather than outsiders engaged in adversarial negotiations.

Mr Svanberg, who also chairs Volvo Group, the Swedish truckmaker, was born in Porjus, a hamlet in the Chill Circle. He moved house x times earlier he was fifteen equally his accountant father was transferred between hydroelectric projects past the state utility he worked for. He had to adapt to new schools and communities, an feel that prepared him for his peripatetic business career. "I yet have a little bit of that nomad touch," he says. "If I move on and get-go packing things, I get a little thrill."

A swell sailor with a year-round tan, Mr Svanberg says he thrives on the teamwork of business in the same manner he enjoys skippering a boat. He prefers to persuade rather than order. "If I accept to say to someone, 'I hear what you say, only I'm deciding and this is what nosotros're going to practise,' that feels like a poor mode of going forward."

Later the Deepwater Horizon disaster, he called every BP lath member every twenty-four hour period for 100 days to keep them informed and solicit views. From this process came the determination to oust Tony Hayward, the chief executive who caused offence by telling reporters he wanted his "life back" from the demands of disaster response, fifty-fifty equally families grieved for the xi men who were killed in the rig explosion. He was replaced by Bob Dudley, the American who leads BP today.

Did Mr Hayward accept the demand for change? "I retrieve he intellectually understood it," says Mr Svanberg. "I think emotionally he didn't."

There accept been other moments of tension, such as a shareholder rebellion in 2016 over the xx per cent pay rising for Mr Dudley despite BP suffering its worst annual loss. "We could have read that situation amend," admits Mr Svanberg.

Yet, for all the turbulence, the crewman volition leave BP with his reputation enhanced for steering the visitor to calmer waters. "I didn't recollect we would past at present accept come equally far equally nosotros've washed," he says. "I feel very happy virtually that."

Ask an outsider: impairment command

"Later any crunch, information technology is vital to take the right voice out there immediately and transparently, to tell the company's story about what it knows and what information technology doesn't know so far," says Michael Watkins, professor of leadership and organisational Modify at IMD business organisation school, Switzerland, and writer of "How BP Could Accept Avoided Disaster".

He says: "If you lot don't exercise that and you lot are in a pigsty, a very deep hole, so you lot are in the brand recovery stage, and the damage has been washed." In that case, as happened to BP, the first thing to modify is the leadership, as you cannot hope to rebalance a decent dynamic once the impairment has been washed, he adds. The new leadership needs to focus on getting right what went incorrect.

The other priority, says Prof Watkins, is to ensure the crisis does not distract the leadership squad from what they normally do. At these crisis points, companies are vulnerable to things going wrong because executives are distracted.

Nassia Matsa

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