Looney’s strong leadership could not protect him from the price of life at the top
At a recent talk I gave to a company in California, I asked the audience how many of them had ever been asked about their relationship history in a professional capacity. Not a hand went up.
Meanwhile, now-former BP chief executive Bernard Looney has this week left his position because apparently he did not disclose all of his past relationships with BP employees to the board.
Looney was a student in my Paths to Power class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005. He was one of a number of BP employees who attended the Sloan, a one year master’s in management programme, from which former BP chief Lord Browne had graduated.
I recall Bernard being smart, very charismatic and charming. He was politically savvy, figuring out that exploration and production was a good place to be in an oil company, rather than for instance refining or retail. Many of his BP colleagues, both at the time and subsequently, told me he was marked for great things in the company.