There's no disputing that the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has been over-analyzed by multidisciplinary external interests, but this ExecuNet member in our Sales and Marketing Roundtable group summarized it very simply, while echoing many of the sentiments coming from other senior-level professionals that someone needs to step up and display some authentic leadership.

"Two other guys there [would] have been better with the media and in general, but it would help if there were some women in BP visible too, as women are perceived as caretakers and generally better perceived in governance and accountability," this CEO of a marketing communications company added.

The Sales and Marketing Roundtable participants largely focused on the brand damage and repair solutions, while the ExecuNet members in the General Management Roundtable rallied around the event as a test of their own leadership skills. The GM of a manufacturing company went so far as to outline an emergency response plan of six autonomous teams each led by empowered functional experts: "A CEO must have the foresight and a designed plan to break a crisis situation into elemental areas and set up emergency response management teams quickly and without hesitation. Like setting in place a management succession plan, a risk management plan is tasked with just these types of crisis scenarios. Scale these groups to the severity of the immediacy of attention and set forth quick and decisive action steps with failure options and next steps. These leaders and teams must be given autonomous priority to any available personnel, outside sources, and standard operational issues."

Since the BP story has so many angles, the Consulting Roundtable participants challenged themselves to figure out how they might pitch to decision-makers at the troubled oil giant. "BP needs consultants to tell them the truth 'without fear or favor.' A consultant can uniquely do that because they would not have a vested interest in their career path at BP. They need consultants in public relations across the board, and in technological issues, because they are screwing it up left and right and should not be in this position," said an ExecuNet member who also saw this role as great opportunity for all companies: "Consultants can be the squeaky wheel, saying the unpopular things and making 'bold' suggestions. Frankly, every company culture should have a place for these types of people in order to innovate and remain competitive in a changing world!"

Discussions, solutions, analysis, criticism and approaches aside, there was a universal theme among the members — across all the functional Roundtable groups — the event was a tragedy that all wished would come to a quick end, with the most minimal environmental and economic damage possible.

Robyn Greenspan
Robyn Greenspan is the Editor-in-Chief at ExecuNet, where she is responsible for setting and driving the editorial content engagement strategy across the private business network's publications and expert-led programming. She is also a Huffington Post blogger. You can follow her on Twitter @RobynGreenspan

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