Does the Bottom or the Middle Ever Listen to the Top? And, Who Cares?

One of the interesting things about being unemployed is that one has time to watch during the day. Today, I stumbled across the Congressional hearing of BP CEO Tony Hayward on MSNBC.

First of all, Hayward has been amazingly even and calm throughout this whole two months since this still moving disaster started. If he wasn’t British I’d have to say he’s been on drugs. Don’t get me wrong, the man is an ass, as are much of the decision making crowd of the company. No different to the vast majority of the corporate world but still not excusable. He knew there were real and huge issues with the safety in BP for years. There is more that could have been done to monitor and rectify those issues, and in a much more timely manner.

Anyway, much of the discussion so far has been about the decisions that set off the chain of events that resulted in this murderous and horrifying event. Hayward has been asked about the supposed transformation (my word) in safety precautions and procedures that began when he came to power. Some answers have been side-stepping the questions. Other responses by Hayward have been that he was not part of the decision making process. (The latter is kind of understandable since they were to do with the on-the-ground drilling processes.)

The thought that popped into my head is to do with how much the bottom, or even the middle, of an organization listens to the top and implements any mandated changes. I have worked in companies and government departments ranging in size from a few dozen to tens of thousands of employees. All have suffered from an internal inertia that can boggle the mind.

As a small example, one office I worked in, which was part of a very large company but functioned as its own little kingdom, had a maximum of eighty people. The CEO frequently tried to change the culture in the office regarding the way managers applied employee policies. For instance, some managers would allow comp time for employees working long hours on projects while others refused to do the same.

In a much, much larger company, the policies were for all employees, but the application was pretty much left up to the subsidiaries, the management structure and even locations, right down to the supervisors of the very bottom level employees. There were no consequences for people breaking the rules. None. Promotions, pay increases and bonuses were handed out year after year without regard for what the transgressor did or did not do.

And, you know what the reason is? Well, the major reason. The bottom line. As long as the sale is made, the project is finished, the cost gets cut, no-one at the top really cares about the rest. There are other reasons, of course. The need to feel power over others, laziness, incompetence and plain stupidity are a few.

The main thing is that the top is worried about the bottom line, whether this is private sector or government. One is profit and stock price. The other is just plain limited budget.

BP, the other oil companies, Massey Energy (think coal), and God knows who else, have been getting away with safety infractions and cutting corners since the beginning of time. The top will pay lip service to safety even when people die and disasters happen. The middle ignores the lip service because they either don’t care or don’t have the luxury of time and manpower to care. The bottom is just too worried about their jobs.

And us, the rest of us? We don’t care as long as we have cheap gas for our cars, coal for our central heating, our iPods, 56 inch LCD TVs, beer and pizza. Even though we ourselves live in the same situations, we don’t really care that much about the other guy.

The media will move on to the next big thing as soon as it happens. The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster happened in April 2010. This year, just two weeks before Deepwater Horizon blew up. It killed 29 men and through many more out of work. Who is talking about it now? Who will care when fall is turning into winter and coal fired furnaces need coal to warm the house?

Hurricane Katrina happened when? August 2005. The miserable decrepitude of the levees and pumping stations caused untold misery and death apart from the destruction by the hurricane. What’s happening there now? Too few care because the only thing coming out of the gulf that might have impacted us all was seafood. The shrimp are a little more expensive for a season or two? Buy hamburgers.

Once the gusher is capped and the next big thing happens, who will care about the gulf? Only the people that live there. The rest of us will be worried about cheap gas for our cars, iPods, 56 inch LCD TVs, beer and pizza.