Simon was aware that reducing the workforce was not the only one solution to reduce costs, so he used a strategy of partnerships: for instance, in 1996, Simon signed a merger with Mobil Corporation concerning the European refining and marketing activities. But those practices were not enough to completely boost employees’ morale and the management of BP’s people was very difficult for the new CEO. He was saved thanks to oil price increases which permit to reach a sales’ record of $76.6 billion in 1996 (Jones & Dougal Gasbarre, n.d.).
Describe first Horton’s and then Simon’s leadership styles. Identify the differences, if any, between them. How do you perceive these two leaders and, in view of class readings and discussions, how appropriate or inappropriate in your opinion their actions might have been?
Horton’s Leadership Style:
Thanks to the reading of the case study written by Elizabeth Florent-Treacy and Raoul de Vitry d’Avaucourt, British Petroleum: Transformational Leadership in a Transnational Organization, we know that the history of Robert Horton and its involvement in British Petroleum is actually quite old: he joined BP in 1957 where he started as an engineering trainee. We first understand here that Horton had a deep understanding of BP’s culture and practices after more than three decades passed within this organization. The most surprising thing is that at the time Horton was still a student, he already knew that he would become CEO of BP. While climbing the different levels in thirty years, Horton became CEO of Standard Oil Co. in Cleveland, Ohio, which became BP America Inc. when BP bought entirely Standard Oil and merged it with other North American holdings.
His leadership in North America was so successful that he was elected business executive of the year by the Chamber of Commerce in 1989. This is a result of a good correlation between leadership style and American culture. He had been able to transform his old image of “Horton the Hatchet” (Horton preferred to use lay-offs to reduce company’s costs), to a person that people could trust and respect because of his adaptability and brightness. All his style was based on the ability to convince employees that his strategy of personnel cuts made sense. The company’s staff agreed watching a British CEO that was Americanizing himself. Their opinion was: “the boss is able to adapt himself to us, why couldn’t we do so?”. This was pushed by the fact that Horton presented himself to all BP divisions across the United States. The staff saw its boss involved and thus encountered morale again.
When Horton became BP’s CEO of the worldwide organization in 1989, his first announcement was: “BP is (…) more of an American company than a British company” (Florent-Treacy & de Vitry d'Avaucourt, 1997). This sentence was probably the biggest mistake of his leadership with BP. Actually, he wanted to adopt the exact same leadership strategy as the one he used in the United States. The problem was that he faced a completely different culture in United Kingdom. He was confused between the fact of showing that he was the example and the fact of actually being the leader’s example for the company. At the beginning, people were not sure of what BP’s five-year strategy and mission were but Horton benefited from its reputation to rapidly become responsible and implement changes in an organization in bad situation. Fortunately, he did so with the implementation of its new Project 1990 created “to understand the old as well as the present culture at BP, to transform the prevailing ‘civil service’ mentality and to create a new culture based on OPEN: ‘Open thinking, Personal impact, Empowering, and Networking”. Even if key executives such as David Simon supported his Project 1990 and if people were first confident with it, three factors of wrong leadership style were at the origin of Horton’s failure:
- BP’s financial situation was getting worse and worse due to the current economical situation. Instead of using his collaborative system of Project 1990, Horton cut costs using massively company’s downsizing which resulted in a severe morale loss from employees.
- While encouraging people to delegate their work empowering people to reach trust and teamwork, Horton never gave any of his tasks to someone else nor listened someone else’s opinion. To show the example, you have to be the example.
- The British culture is less ready to accept a leader that only thinks about him with a high degree of directness and ambition. Being more conservative, British people prefer more discrete CEOs who do not “show off” (Florent-Treacy & de Vitry d'Avaucourt, 1997).
Simon’s Leadership Style:
First of all, the problem of cultural mix that Horton had during his function as CEO of BP, David Simon seemed not to have the same being a real European. Thanks to his multi-cultural education, Simon speaks five different languages. Moreover, he is a member of the European Competitiveness Advisory Group. Since school, his ambition is large and we know that he likes challenges as we learn that “Simon found that he could speak French better than anyone else, including the teachers” (Florent-Treacy & de Vitry d'Avaucourt, 1997). His cultural background also permits him to express himself in an informal manner using sports metaphors. As he pointed out, “half of like is playing soccer, rugger, tennis, that sort of thing”.
This ability to speak different languages is the basis of his entry in British Petroleum at the age of eighteen years old as a university intern. He became a member of the marketing department staff after graduation. He actually develops all his skills within BP, escalating the levels, to finally replace his CEO, Horton, in 1992.
Concerning the financial situation of BP at the time Simon became CEO, he had to move very fast in order to improve this very bad situation. He first found the targets or the objectives of this mission and stated them in a three-year plan called “1-2-5”: “to cut debt by $1 billion per year, to build annual replacement-cost profits to $2 billion per year, and to keep capital spending below $5 billion per year” (Florent-Treacy & de Vitry d'Avaucourt, 1997). The fact that all persons of the company were aware of those objectives brought success to Simon while the goals were achieved one year in advance and while BP got better results than Shell within only four years.
The most important skills of Simon are communication skills and people skills. His communication skills are based on the settlement of simple goals in order to develop a culture of continual performance improvement. Simon thinks that it is critical to first target and measure, to think next, in order to be able to achieve at the end. This is what he did with his “1-2-5” plan. About the people skills, Simon really focused on this issue to rectify BP’s situation of 1992. People described Simon “wily, subtle, diplomatic, and knowledgeable about (…) the British establishment” (Lascelles, 1992). He also has the ability to anticipate issues. Actually, Simon’s leadership style could be summarized by the encouragement and guidance of people through a leadership strategy of marshaling the company while setting clear goals and providing solutions to the staff in order to reach those targets.
Differences and Similarities Between Both:
The first similarity between Horton and Simon is that they both evolved professionally with British Petroleum because they both started as intern for the company to reach the highest level of CEO while escalating the levels. But this is not the only one. Despite the fact that Horton didn’t succeed with his Project 1990, Simon paradoxically chose to follow this project. One of his remark was “This is about the style of running the company at the top. It is not about changes in strategy” (Florent-Treacy & de Vitry d'Avaucourt, 1997). He actually was completely right. Even if Horton and Simon were both severe and strict, Simon had something more than Horton had had: the communication and people skills that provided him with more diplomacy.
On the one hand, Horton was not able to listen to his staff, he only wanted to do his own way. He asked for trust but he didn’t even trust in someone else. He asked for empowerment but refused to delegate his own tasks. He asked for involvement but he didn’t give advices to his subordinates. On the other hand, Simon focused on teamwork, he communicated simple goals to reach, and he is a listening leader. One big difference between the two CEOs is that Simon used to walk around the company and meet every person in order to improve his personal contact with the personnel. Actually, Horton forgot that the most important asset of a company is its people and didn’t take time to listen to them in order to boost morale while the necessary downsizing of the company was occurring to reduce costs.
Another difference between the CEOs is that Horton wanted to “Americanize” BP in United Kingdom which had a negative impact for the company that is well anchored in its roots. On a larger scale, British people are reluctant about the American culture. They are more conservative and discrete and don’t like people who show that they are proud of themselves. They prefer modesty and compassion. The American culture is more individualist and try to reward the best person, not the best group as would do people in the British culture. Horton took care only about his self-accomplishment while Simon aimed to encourage teamwork and involvement in society.
Do you believe Horton’s and Simon’s leadership styles to be determined by personality or do you see them as acquired or both? Bearing in mind class discussions and readings, justify your answer.
Horton and Simon both became CEO of BP the first after the second. They both have almost the same background in terms of evolution inside the company. They both started as interns: Horton as an engineering trainee and Simon as a university intern. After both having escalated the levels of the company, they became CEOs but as we saw, Simon was more successful than Horton was. So, we can assume that in their evolution within the company, one of them acquired better skills than the other one. It can also come from the education of one compared to the other.
Horton and Simon both had a personality of leaders since their youth or at least their philosophy was to become the best in any kind of topics. Horton predicted that he would become one day the CEO of British Petroleum and Simon was so ambitious that he was sure he could speak better French than anyone else, even the teachers. It is actually a really audacious behavior that Simon adopted in any situations and especially when he entered BP at the beginning, competing with other employees. Thus, one of the qualities of a leader is to be ambitious, Horton and Simon both have it and it comes from their personality. Some people are satisfied with their day to day life, not thinking about what will happen tomorrow. Horton and Simon are not that kind of person and they prefer to plan future projects, aiming to become better and better. Many persons try to have that kind of behavior but they don’t succeed. Thanks to this ambitiousness, Horton and Simon inspire people.
Referring to the MBIT (Myers Brigg Type Indicator), we can try to analyze both Horton’s and Simon’s personality. The indicator is presented as a table composed of four scales which are Energizing (extraversion or introversion), Perceiving (Sensing or Intuition), Deciding (thinking or felling), and Living (judging or perceiving). Within the framework of their mission as CEOs for BP, Horton and Simon had two completely different personalities while having proven that they were both good leaders in the past. Horton was more introverted as he took decisions based on his own ideas, emotions and impressions whereas Simon was more extraverted because he took into account people’s ideas and activities. Concerning Perceiving, they were both sensed and they didn’t act intuitively. For the Deciding part, Horton was more based on feelings than Simon was on thinking because the first one organized information to decide in a personal, values-oriented way while the other preferred to decide in a logical and objective way which is the one of “first listen, then think, to act”. Finally, concerning Living, they would both agree to say that they prefer to live a planned and organized life because they both settle plans for the future (Project 1990 for Horton and “1-2-5” plan for Simon).
Another aspect of Simon’s personality is probably at the basis of his success compared to Horton’s failure. Simon is actually more European than British due to his childhood when he was always in a multicultural environment. His father was welsh and his stepfather was French, he lived in France during many years where German was widely spoken at the time of World War II. Thus, Simon is use to multicultural contexts and probably had to deal with that kind of complex situations many times. Simon acquired multicultural skills that Horton didn’t. Consequently, Simon is more able to manage multicultural issues such as the one that affected BP when he arrived, and especially for teamwork.
Horton doesn’t have the same cultural background. Moreover, he was a student to become an engineer and we know that engineers more think individually than in groups. On the contrary, Simon had got his first full-time job with BP in the marketing department where most of the tasks are done in team. Simon acquired the skill of working in team and listening to others during his training within BP. Horton was more individualist and it is probably from this problem that he wasn’t able to first listen to others before to act.
Horton was actually not a good leader when he came back to London to lead BP. He was a leader in the fact that he was exciting in front of others because he had a vision and a reputation, he was a source of energy. But Horton didn’t acquire the people skill which is essential for a good leader. There is no leader when there is no follower and Horton missed to take care of his followers in this case.
Horton’s and Simon’s leadership styles are based on their personality that we analyzed earlier but they acquired different skills during their experience in BP that change their way of leading people.
What similarities and/or differences can you detect between the leadership styles of Emma, Jobs, Horton and Simon? When analyzing your personal leadership style, who would you more easily identify with and why?
This question deals with four different leaders which are Emma van Nijmegen who was the manager of the LVV company, Steve Jobs who is one of the most famous leader around the globe managing the Apple Company, Robert Horton who was the CEO of British Petroleum, and David Simon who became the new CEO of BP after Horton.
There are differences and similarities among those leaders but we can relate one to the other. Emma seems to have more similarities with Simon’s leadership style while Horton’s looks like Job’s.
Emma and Simon appear to prefer teamwork than individual tasks. They encourage group’s coalition at the company’s scale. Moreover, they both prefer to collect information from the staff prior to take any decision. They both prefer to listen to their employees. They both use the thinking way in their decision-making. Added to that, they both have a multicultural background knowing that Emma worked in Indonesia and speaks different languages as Simon does.
A similarity can be found between Emma and Horton based on the fact that they both were destined to become engineers at the beginning of their professional life. The difference is that Emma didn’t keep her individualist way of thinking being an engineer whereas Horton did, imposing his choices.
Even if Jobs is a worldwide known charismatic leader, he is also known to be very lunatic. He imposes his changing of mood everyday to his employees who have to do with it anyway. His leadership style is like the one of Horton because both are authoritative because they want to manage everyone and hate to be managed. They both have a problem of delegation. This is a little similarity with Horton but Jobs stays different, more looking like Simon and Emma, in the way that he gathers employee’s advices and opinions before to take any decision.
I would personally compare myself to Simon’s and Emma’s leadership style because my “slogan” is to always think, then study, to finally act. I also travelled a lot (USA, Canada, England, Spain, Luxembourg…) where I acquired the skill of accepting differences between cultures and, on the contrary, to be able to take advantage of a multicultural environment.
When I worked for a famous chain of hypermarkets in France as an intern, I worked with and gave directives to all departments’ managers concerning their products’ positioning in shelves. I chose to first listen to them if they were ready to get advices from a young and new intern of the company. Then, I planned objectives with them in order to boost their sales. But the difficult of the task was to decide not to work with some managers because at the first interview they were reluctant to my mission and I was a little bit short in time to work with all of them. But before to act, I chose to listen to them, then I thought about improving the situation, to finally act directly with managers in their store’s departments.
To conclude, as Simon and Emma did and as Horton didn’t, if I would work as CEO in another country with a completely different culture, I would not directly impose my way of thinking and leading. I would adapt myself to the local cultural context and think as a group before to take any decision.
List of References
Florent-Treacy, E., & de Vitry d'Avaucourt, R. (1997). British Petroleum: Transformational Leadership in a Transnational Organization. Fontainebleau, France: INSEAD.
Jones, G., & Dougal Gasbarre, A. (n.d.). The British Petroleum Company. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from Answers.com: http://www.answers.com/topic/the-british-petroleum-company-plc?cat=biz-fin
Lascelles, D. (1992, June 27). Top-Level Coup in Classic Style. Financial TImes , p. 6.
