Wayward Words Land BP’s Hayward in Russia

The other oily shoe finally dropped on the head of BP’s Tony Hayward, the man with the lousy communication skills. The guy who gained world fame for bungling the oil well crisis along the Gulf Coast is not getting fired. Worse: He’s getting shipped to Siberia. Well, Russia actually.

The executive who whined on network TV he wanted the oil spill saga to stop so he could “get his life back” will get his life back in October by heading up TNK-BP. It’s Russia's third-largest oil company and BP owns half of it.

Here’s a reminder of some other Hayward-isms that lead to his demise:

· "I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest." (May 18, 2010)

· "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." (May 13, 2010)

It makes me wonder how people in high powered positions can have such poor communication skills and have the inability to think first before saying incredibly dumb things.

Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s top boss once told Fortune magazine: “If all consumers exercised, did what they had to do, the problem of obesity wouldn't exist.” This from the person heading the corporation selling sweet, sugary junk? Was that comment well thought out?

Why do CEOs say such dumb things? Here’s an explanation from Joel Weinberger, of The Huffington Post: “How do we explain this? Stupidity? Greed? Arrogance? Callous indifference to the opinions and feelings of others? To a degree, all of the above. But there is more going on and that more is part of human psychology. These people acted exactly as people who hold such positions can be expected to act. It was their nature.”

Back to BP. With the announcement of Hayward’s banishment to Russia, BP’s stock rose 5-percent. The stockholders were communicating to BP –very loudly- that Hayward’s banishment to the tundra was a good move.

What so many executives fail to realize is that each word they speak in public carries a lot of weight and if they don’t choose their words carefully they can pay a heavy price.

Ogilvy & Mather CEO Shelly Lazarus once said “Everything a CEO says and does is no longer personal. It is attributed to the company.” That’s so true. Hayward’s frighteningly insensitive comments became BP’s comments. He didn’t think before he spoke and it cost him. Now he’ll be thinking in Russia, where it’s too cold to think.