Episode 6: Leadership Without Assumptions

Lord John Browne:

[00:00:00 - 00:00:47]

I was born of a mother that was a Holocaust survivor. And it was a miracle, I think, that she managed to have me as a child. She taught me lessons about being self reliant, being very cautious with people. Never tell a secret to a stranger, she said, because they'll surely use it against you. Be very careful how you present yourself. Because she said, you know, the minority always is hurt by the majority when the going gets tough. I mean, so many bosses I know they say, you know, I really do a lot with my team and you watch them, they go in and the first thing they do is talk. They talk, talk, talk. And then the question is, well, I'm sure you all agree, don't you?

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:00:52 - 00:02:02]

John Brown, Lord Brown of Maidingley was once known as the Sun King of British industry. Chief executive of bp, the leader of a great national enterprise which he'd served for decades and which he built into a globally dominant force in the oil and gas sector. Company became one of the first to recognize the significance of climate change and the energy transition. Today he leads Beyond Net Zero, a climate growth equity venture and is an advocate for the importance of engineers and engineering, having served as president of the Royal Academy of Engineering as well as being a philanthropist and supporter of the arts and culture in the uk. As boss of bp, he presided over a huge organization straddling the globe, now employing over 60,000 people, turning over some $160 billion a year. Today we're going to find out what it takes to lead such a giant and what lessons the rest of us can learn from his distinguished career. Can we start with your background? I think looking at your biography, it's impossible to escape the significance of your parents and family. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Lord John Browne:

[00:02:03 - 00:04:55]

Well, my parents were obviously very significant to me. I was born of a mother that was Holocaust survivor and it was a miracle, I think, that she managed to have me as a child and she always remembered that my father was a British army officer and a professional. And as a result we traveled the world with the army until 56. My father said his role was to shut down the empire because we went to places where he was sort of shutting things down. And then after that he joined the oil industry. So we did it again. We traveled all over the world. So I had a very different background. I mean, we always had a house in Cambridge and I was dispatched off, as someone in the 50s would be, to a boarding school in the depths of the Fens, which was freezing cold. Having come learning how to fly on BOAC from Very hot climates to very cold climates and back again. So I did that. And we lived in Iran, we've lived in India, we lived in Singapore, we lived in a whole variety of places and it was kind of great fun, but very different. So I learned a lot from my mother, who, in spite of the terror she went through, never spoke about them. My father never spoke about the war either. But she taught me lessons about being self reliant, being very cautious with people. Never tell a secret to a stranger, she said, because they'll surely use it against you. And never be very careful how you present yourself. Because she said, the minority always is hurt by the majority when the going gets tough. And just remember that, just remember that there is no entitlement here. And so that's what I learned and it sort of set me up for life. My father was very practical man. So when I graduated from Cambridge and announced that I was going to stay and become an academic doing research, he thought that was truly ridiculous. And he said, isn't it time you actually earn some money and go and meet real people in the real world? So off I went and got a job with BP for a year to go to America. And that was the start of everything.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:04:56 - 00:05:31]

I'm very struck by what you said about your mother and her advice in the sense about dealing with other people. If I can read a bit from where you've described your background and some of this I think I share. Being constantly in a new place, a sort of repeat immigrant, having to understand what other people are like, what matters to them. Do you think that made you a different kind of manager or leader, if I can put it that way?

Lord John Browne:

[00:05:32 - 00:07:18]

Well, I think inevitably did. I think just on being cautious with people, I think I wanted to make sure that first I could read them and understand what they were thinking and secondly, be very careful to take it step by step with people. Never quite sure until you get to know people on a one, on one basis just how reliable they are. And actually that influenced my whole thinking about when I, you know, I knew I was gay. I knew at the time this was not a good thing to be in industry, certainly not in the oil industry. And it took me a long time to realize that I could actually, you know, rely on people and tell them who I was. I never did that. I was outed, I. But after that I realized that I could have done that. It's just that my mind didn't update with the circumstances around me. So that was one thing. I think the second was you have to get to know people, many, many people who are very different, if not people like, you know, the traditional people like us, as it were, they didn't exist around me. My mother was very individual. I remember when we. She would take me to school, you know, she'd be dressed rather well, and I know that the other boys would say, well, your mother's a continental, you know. And that was sort of saying, okay, different, you know, be careful. And I was always sort of different, I think. And so I had to figure out how to blend in. You know, the majority ruled here.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:07:18 - 00:07:37]

That is so interesting because the, the. I suspect that most people today wouldn't quite understand the significance of that word continental, which means rather exotic, very different and probably slightly disapproving sense of it.

Lord John Browne:

[00:07:37 - 00:08:18]

Oh, yes, it was sort of, you know, it goes into the category of sayings like, you know, the south of France was a sunny place for shady people. You know, it's all that sort of. It's that sort of very British way of saying, you know, really, unless you're like us, you're not acceptable. You know, it was the 50s and 60s, actually, in the 60s all began to change, but in the 50s it was very much. The UK was, you know, very, very sort of singular place, as it were. Place where people, you know, were different and. But they weren't fully accepted.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:08:18 - 00:08:49]

That must have been quite a. A striking union, if I can put it that way, because your father, of course, would occupy essentially the. The. The place of center of the establishment being British army, as you say, going out to close down the empire and perhaps. But also, I think he worked for what was originally called Anglo Persian Oil and so on. That must have been quite an unusual union.

Lord John Browne:

[00:08:50 - 00:09:52]

It was. But I think, you know, my father, who unfortunately died terribly early in my life when I was 30, he was again, a rather different person. I mean, he hid it away, of course, because he was from Norfolk, good English stock, went to the army and then to the bp, a predecessor of bp deal with government and local relations. He was very good in the Middle east, he'd spent a lot of time there, but he was different. I mean, he used to think sideways. I mean, at one stage he had a career as a consultant, designing new ways of getting offices to work. And he was one of the first people to introduce the open plan concept, actually to offices, which was quite interesting and very shocking for people in those days.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:09:53 - 00:10:08]

That's very interesting because you must have learned quite a lot from him about the process of handling people, making it possible for them to deliver at Their best. What do you think you learned from his experience and what he would have said to you?

Lord John Browne:

[00:10:09 - 00:12:12]

Well, I hope I learned something about, first of all, never ever make assumptions or worse still presume things that you know about people, learn about them, listen and spend time with people. My father would always say, you know, you don't think about people as a mass, you think about them as individuals. And certainly in my career, until I got to reasonably high levels, when I had, you know, huge numbers of people working for me, I really would spend a lot of time individually with my teams. When I was running North Sea production for bp, I had all these offshore platforms and I would go out most weekends and stay on one of the platforms under my supervision so I could speak to people in their workplace. And I learned a lot. I mean, I learned a lot about, you know, how people were feeling, about pay, about food, about the work, about that, you know, managers, about the stresses. And it, I think, made. It made a difference, certainly how I dealt with the department that I was running and how I dealt with my direct reports. When I said, you know, have you thought about this or shall we do it a different way? So that was all, I think, a very important piece of learning. You can't. And even when you're dealing with a very large number of people, I think it's really important to think through what is the impact on the individual? Notice what is the impact on the group? First, think about the individual. Think about how you would sit down face to face and explain what you want to do to a person to not to a screen. And I think that's quite important.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:12:12 - 00:12:56]

Part of my own experience is that people sometimes forget that, you know, the grand statements of leadership and the slogans and all of that land very differently with different individuals and indeed different groups of individuals. Taking your point about spending time with people, you're the boss. How do you actually understand what people are saying to you? Given that when you turn up in their heads, the boss is turning up, and what they might be saying to each other, or indeed to themselves, may not be what they say to you, how do you really understand what people are trying to say?

Lord John Browne:

[00:12:57 - 00:15:55]

So I think you have to talk to a lot of people and listen to them and, and then you can triangulate because people, they very often want to please the boss, but actually in the message they're sending, provided you listen to enough of them, there's inconsistency, and it's the inconsistency that really matters. So you've just got to make A judgment. And then you go back and say, what do you think? Is that what they're really telling me? But you've got to listen. I mean, so many bosses I know and I've worked for, and I still work with people like this, they say, I really do a lot with my team. And you watch them, they go in and the first thing they do is talk. They talk, talk, talk. And then the question is, well, I'm sure you all agree, don't you? And they all sit there and say, absolutely, boss, of course we agree. Until some real crisis happens. So it's turning the floor over the room over to other people and trying to understand what they're saying. It's all judgmental. You may get it wrong. Even surveys aren't bad. Nowadays you can do surveys very quickly, but again, it's all in the comments, it's not in the tick box. Bit of a survey. Unless things are really going wrong, in which case you should know that before the survey takes place. So. But it's in the comments people make and it's the way they behave. You know, people, you know, not turning up, being late for meetings, all sorts of things like that. These are all signals, all signals, very, very often unconscious. You know, people just fed up, they're not inspired, they find no purpose. These are not involuntary situations. I mean, people volunteer, they want to do something. And I have not yet been convinced that there are groups of people who just work for the purpose of being there. They actually work for a purpose. They like to be inspired, they like to be proud of what they're doing and they like to believe that what they're doing is good for humanity, not just for their pocket. It's true that there are plenty of people, again I see day to day who are really not interested in anything except what the massive amount of money is that they earn. We all earn a lot of money, but it's what you do with it, how you think about it, that makes the difference. So I do believe that almost, I think there's almost everybody wants to be inspired with a real purpose and mission. When they don't get it, they don't work, the team doesn't get together, people don't give of their best.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:15:56 - 00:16:47]

All of these things become easier if you've got the right team and you have to pick your people. Obviously for quite a long time, in fact, most of your career, that's what you did, which is to build teams who essentially projected your vision and so on. And you know, I mentioned that your nickname, I think across the industry and wider was the Sun King, which it implies a kind of imperiousness, but I think probably not quite how you worked, but central to that must have been selecting the right people. So can you talk a bit about how you spotted talent, how you came to believe in the people around you and how you kept unity and focus.

Lord John Browne:

[00:16:47 - 00:19:57]

So picking the right people was the number one job really. I mean it really is very, very important. I mean, I guess there are plenty of number one jobs, but this, without this, nothing works properly. And there's a very big difference between a company with grade A leadership and grade B leadership. And there are lots of measurements nowadays who are would show you if you can find the right leadership, and that's very broad word, you can find the right company. So I did it by. First we had systems, obviously big companies have systems to identify people who are likely to have talent. Secondly, having people, my teams, my successive teams interview people, work with them, counsel them through, see if you can make them better than they even think they are themselves. You know, how do you do that? And then identify people who are likely to succeed? And so I was very much part of that. We reviewed everyone very frequently. We made sure that one reviewer couldn't make a difference or we cross roughed people, we sent reviews to other people to get independent views of people. This is a big, big, big process. And they would identify people like to succeed. One of the things I did was have a rotating number of people come and work directly for me for what would now be called chiefs of staff. We called them executive assistants, but that's the. There's been great inflation nowadays with titles. But I had a couple of them and they came in for 18 months, nine months overlap with each, and I had about 35 of them. They used to be called the Turtles after the Teenage Ninja Turtles. One of my team said the reason that they're Teenage Ninja Turtles is they appear from places you don't quite expect, which is what they did in the, in the cartoon. And so but these people are in amongst the other people from BP, not only successful in BP but in life after BP. They've become CEOs and chairman of various companies all over the world. And it's really nice to see that we have a lot of alumni and alumna all over the place. And that I think demonstrates that the quality of human development inside BP was good. Because if it's good for bp, it does have to be checked out that it's good for other people as well. And it clearly worked that way. And I'm amazed sometimes how I go around the world and still see people from BP in extraordinary positions everywhere. Southeast Asia to the west coast of America, all points in between.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:19:58 - 00:20:49]

I always maintain that there are two kinds of leaders. And you've just done exactly what I personally look for. They're leaders who will respond to the question I asked you a moment ago by saying, I did this and I did that. And there are leaders who will respond to you by saying, look at the people that I've created. And you've done a textbook example of the second, which, to be honest, is what I personally prefer. And maybe that's also a signal of my own vanity that I like to be able to say, oh, that person that was a runner for me won an Oscar last year, which I have to tell you is actually true. And it caused me great pride, but also a certain amount of what about my Oscar?

Lord John Browne:

[00:20:50 - 00:21:42]

I like it because, first of all, it takes me a sense of warmth to see people doing so well and also continuing to do well. It's not if they're, you know, a quick flash in the pan. I mean, they have consistency and they're learning and they're stretching. I think this is marvelous. And that's a real purpose of organizations, I think, to feed the world as well as themselves. In the Crick Institute, for example, which I chair in London, it's an academic institution. But one of the roles I think we adopt is to provide the seed and the leadership of academic institutions nationally as we move people through our organization.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:21:43 - 00:22:00]

What would happen in your time as a leader if you had selected, for example, one of your turtles and everybody else around you said, or many people around you said, john, be careful with that one. We see it differently. How would you approach that?

Lord John Browne:

[00:22:01 - 00:23:32]

It happened. And people said, well, you've selected X, let's see how it works. And if it didn't work, I had a deal with everybody that if it didn't work, we would send them, as it were, back to virtually their original position and their time with me would be just noted, not part of a progress. And you have to do this fairly quickly. Actually, the problem with appointments is sometimes simply the mismatch between the person and the job. So a great person may not be able to fit in to a job that you want. It might require different skills, different emphasis of skills, or it's just at the wrong moment of their career. And so you've got to think about, you know, how do I move that person quickly out of the mistake I've made. And it's my mistake into somewhere where they could actually perform usefully. But you see this, I mean all over the place. Plenty of CEOs have got to CEO, but they might have been better being a COO, you know, some chairman might have been better to stay as CEOs. You know, there are all sorts of things like that happen.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:23:32 - 00:23:50]

I want to move on to ask you about a couple of contemporary issues. What would you say about the relationship between talent and productivity in the British economy and particularly within the industrial sectors with which you're familiar?

Lord John Browne:

[00:23:51 - 00:26:03]

Well, I think it's about relevant talent. It's also about relevant talent armed with the right tools to get the job done. And I think our issue here is a mismatch. So we have great people in the uk, we know that, we generate them, we educate them, we sending a lot of people to university and our universities are well sought after by people from the rest of the world. So that's certainly a mark of respect. What we have not done is upgraded the technology and the support services needed for people to perform well. And we haven't, I think, in a widespread way, trained the right management to do the job. Now, if you look at some companies that have the right tools and the right training, and there are British companies like that, they do very well. But equally, a lot of companies here don't. And I think I include that with the government, the civil service, full of great people, but not actually organized well enough. That is the leadership, the management leadership and the tools available are inadequate for the job. Everything. You know, take for example, there should be no reason why in managing something like a road network, you don't actually have people doing roadworks at the right moment to avoid traffic jams and things like that. You have big network systems that keep in touch with everything going on and you need to train people to use it and leaders to understand how to make the judgments above what the machines actually tell you to do. There are plenty of examples like that. So I think that's our problem. We have to invest into productivity. We can't just assume it's there. And it isn't just about people, it's what you provide teams with that allow productivity to get better.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:26:04 - 00:26:20]

One of the things that we hear a lot from the lecturers and the public in general about our country is nothing works. How much of that is the point of investment? How much of that is the people?

Lord John Browne:

[00:26:21 - 00:27:39]

Well, it's a combination of the two. You know, we need projects to upgrade our infrastructure, but if you've got, you know, A billion dollar project led by the wrong person. It's going to be done, but it's going to cost you 2 billion. So, you know, you need to get the right people in the right place. And we need, I think, you know, there are certain functions that a nation needs, one of which is continuous updating of the infrastructure, which means you need people who can run projects to get infrastructure done, which means you need to get teams that actually understand the functionalities needed, which means you need to get the people to support those functions. And again, it's getting, marshaling the resources. We have them, we don't have enough of them. They need to be trained. And you could argue that our university system trains people, but actually what we really need is much more vocational training to get the job done. And that's really important. You know, we. So it's apprenticeships, all that sort of continuous training on the job, which is a very important function of companies.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:27:39 - 00:27:53]

Well, of course, one of the things that you've been a great champion of. Of course I'm sensitive to this because of my own background. I started life as a chemist. Do we have enough people from a science and engineering background in leadership?

Lord John Browne:

[00:27:54 - 00:29:18]

No, we don't. We absolutely don't. I think we have plenty of people who are good engineers, but they are not necessarily in the right places. And we don't have enough engineers and scientists in industry to make a difference. I mean, in the end, you know, great industries are based on great discoveries and innovations and then they do something really important. And I do mean it. A company like Tesco is based on an innovation with data. Actually the modern Tesco. A long time ago, you know, BP was an innovation in geological thinking. ICI started with innovations in chemistry. So we have to get the idea that that's how we start companies. We start with innovations which are scientific and engineering based and then they're interpreted by commercial people and they have to work together. You can't start just with commerce. You can't suddenly say, how am I going to sell something? And you say, well, what are you selling? You need to invent it. So we need more of that. We need much more of that to go forward. And, you know, that's one of the areas we've got to work harder on. It's not moving fast enough.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:29:18 - 00:30:24]

You referred earlier to your own experience being gay in basically a really machismo industry. And at the time that when you started. I know because I was, as I said, I started an oil refinery. Men were men and all that malarkey. One of the issues that we talk about a lot at the moment is the question of diversity within the economy, within institutes, within the workplace. And as we know, there's. There's a very big discussion triggered by, particularly by Mr. Trump in the United States about diversity and inclusion. Now, we don't necessarily need to get too far into all of that, but how significant do you think that at the nature of diversity within the workplace, both on protected characteristics, but on, for example, the things we've just been talking about, capabilities, engineer, having a mix of engineers and so on. How important is that, do you think, in effective talent, usage and management?

Lord John Browne:

[00:30:26 - 00:31:42]

It's very important because you get, you know, you need to capture all the talent in the world and it comes in different shapes and sizes, colors, religions, background, everything. And you need to capture it, and you need to capture it in a way which gives you the right teams to work in the different places you work in the world. And so that requires you sometimes to have representative teams, sometimes to have teams doing, challenging each other, all sorts of different teams, all based on the definition of merit that is relevant to what you're trying to do. So I think it's very important, this idea that we're going to throw away everything we've done on diversity inclusion is a really bad idea. And we've come a reasonable way, we haven't come the whole way. And we need to keep that, we need to keep our approach going. So I don't agree with the idea that it gets in the way of productivity, gets in the way of progress, quite the reverse. It actually improves progress and probably will improve productivity.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:31:43 - 00:32:01]

Last question. On all of the factors you've been talking about, both your own personality, your own background, but also the nature of industry. What advice would you now give to that young John Brown who essentially went against his father's advice?

Lord John Browne:

[00:32:02 - 00:33:11]

I would say try a few things and find something you love doing, you know, because there's no point in being in life doing things you don't like. And when you find something you love doing, do it well and do it deeply. Get to know something really get to know something really hands on. I think the best thing that ever happened to me was to go to BP and then go into the field in Alaska and to work, you know, near Point Barrow, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, with people I'd never met before, understanding how they were thinking, what they were doing, you know, perpetual night and all, perpetual day, depending on which part of the year you're in, and learning a lot about people and going from place to place, thinking that, you know, remembering that to get anything done, it's about getting teams together, an individual to perform to the best of their ability, actually better than they can, to a purpose that you identify and that's what you've got to learn about and that you may as well start there.

Sir Trevor Phillips:

[00:33:12 - 00:33:21]

John, thank you for joining us today and thank you all for listening to us. For more information, visit our [email protected].