Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest.
Speaker 1: His name is John Brown, perhaps better known as Lord
Speaker 1: Brown or Sir John Brown. He is the former CEO
Speaker 1: of BP and the author of numerous fascinating books. He
Speaker 1: is incredibly forthright and straightforward. Without any hesitation, he discusses
Speaker 1: all sorts of really fascinating things, from engineering to his
Speaker 1: personal life, to BP and the impact of hydrocarbon's on
Speaker 1: the environment. If you're interested in what it's like to
Speaker 1: run a company, what it's like to lead a double life,
Speaker 1: what it's like to be at the vanguard of engineering,
Speaker 1: then you're going to find this to be an absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating conversation. So, with no further ado, my interview of
Speaker 1: Sir John Brown. This is Masters in Business with Barry
Speaker 1: Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My special guest today is the
Speaker 1: Right Honorable Lord Brown of Mattingly, better known as John Brown.
Speaker 1: He was the CEO of British Petroleum from to two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. He is also the former president of
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy of Engineering. Since two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: he has been a member of The House of Lords.
Speaker 1: He is the author of five books, most recently Make Think, Imagine, Engineering,
Speaker 1: The Future of Civilization. John Brown, Welcome to Bloomberg. Very
Speaker 1: good to be him. So you have a fascinating background
Speaker 1: and and quite an interesting career. But I have to
Speaker 1: go back to your education. You you earn a degree
Speaker 1: in physics at Cambridge and then you get a MS
Speaker 1: degree in business at Stanford. What was it like going
Speaker 1: from the UK to California. That must have been a
Speaker 1: little bit of a culture shark. It was very different.
Speaker 1: I found the whole It was ten years after I
Speaker 1: graduated from Cambridge. I went to Stanford. And I went
Speaker 1: to Stanford because everybody said, don't go to Harvard. It's
Speaker 1: just a pale shadow of what Cambridge actually is. Founded
Speaker 1: by someone who graduated from Cambridge. So go somewhere years ago.
Speaker 1: They have a very short memory of long memories, I
Speaker 1: should say. So I went to Stanford, and of course
Speaker 1: I found a completely different set of people, a very
Speaker 1: great set of people, entrepreneurs even then. This was in
Speaker 1: the late sevent the early eighties, and they were fascinating
Speaker 1: and the teaching was interesting, the leading edge thinking was interesting,
Speaker 1: and the quality of people both the students and faculty
Speaker 1: was something you couldn't see elsewhere. I don't think so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna cross Harvard off my list, second
Speaker 1: year school, Cambridge and Stanford. That's what wouldn't have send
Speaker 1: the kids. So you graduate, you literally joined BP as
Speaker 1: an apprentice while at university and you were a mean
Speaker 1: with the firm your entire career. That that's fairly unusual
Speaker 1: these days tell us about having a career with a
Speaker 1: single company. Well, in those days, it wasn't that unusual.
Speaker 1: I have to say. I joined I technically joined BP
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six the day I went up to
Speaker 1: Cambridge University. They helped pay for my studies, which was
Speaker 1: very important. In fact, I paid for myself entirely from
Speaker 1: the age of eighteen for everything I did by winning
Speaker 1: a couple of scholarships to Cambridge, one which was involving
Speaker 1: the across disciplinary approach if you were a scientist who
Speaker 1: had to write a thesis on something to do with arts,
Speaker 1: and I wrote a thesis about Iran where I had
Speaker 1: lived at the Safavid architecture of Isfahan. So I won
Speaker 1: a lot of money and that kept me going through university.
Speaker 1: But I joined, and about every year I thought i'd leave,
Speaker 1: and so I be offered jobs, and somehow BP offered
Speaker 1: me a better job, and every time I was thinking
Speaker 1: of going, I had a bigger and bigger challenge. So
Speaker 1: I I went to Alaska in nineteen sixty nine because
Speaker 1: I had asked to go to the United States. Alaska
Speaker 1: was not quite what I had in mind, but I
Speaker 1: found myself working two hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle,
Speaker 1: near Point Barrow on the testing oil wells, which turned
Speaker 1: out to be the Prudeo Bay oil Field, one of
Speaker 1: the greatest oil fields ever discovered in North America. So
Speaker 1: that's what I did, and up from field work it graduated.
Speaker 1: One day my I was about to leave my Bosque
Speaker 1: aim In and said, um, would you like to come
Speaker 1: to New York with me? I said, when do we pack? Uh?
Speaker 1: And off I went to New York and for four
Speaker 1: years and life carried on from that. Our weather in
Speaker 1: New York is not great, but it's certainly better than
Speaker 1: than the Arctic Circle. You mentioned the work you did
Speaker 1: in Iran. I'm reminded of of some of your travels
Speaker 1: in your book Beyond Business, where you describe meaning some
Speaker 1: of the world's let's call them most colorful despots, Colonel
Speaker 1: Kadafi in Libya, Vladimir Putin at his country, Docta, Venezuelan
Speaker 1: leader Hugo Chavez, as well as UH communist despot despots
Speaker 1: in Kazakhstan and secret meetings with Russian oligarch's. The obvious
Speaker 1: question is why this motley crew? But I think we
Speaker 1: all know the answer. They seem to be where the
Speaker 1: oil is correct. I mean it's I think someone said
Speaker 1: once that God had played a joke on people and
Speaker 1: put the oil in places where people didn't want to go.
Speaker 1: We can't find oil under London, it's probably very good thing.
Speaker 1: We would never be allowed to produce it, or or
Speaker 1: in New York. You can find oil in California, and
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to develop and produce. There's plenty of
Speaker 1: oil in the North Sea, so you have access not
Speaker 1: too far fur not, but not enough. It was a
Speaker 1: very important discovery the North Sea, both in the UK
Speaker 1: and Norway, and it's still producing quite a lot of
Speaker 1: oil and gas, but there's more oil and gas outside
Speaker 1: those areas. And and in those days, of course, the Permian,
Speaker 1: the Permian Basin was a place which was declining. I
Speaker 1: went there for field training when it was sort of
Speaker 1: on decline, and you were taught how to save one
Speaker 1: cent because that made all the difference to the profitability
Speaker 1: of a well. So it really taught you the basics
Speaker 1: of act. But now, of course it's a tremendous place
Speaker 1: where everybody wants to invest and growing like gangbusters. And
Speaker 1: that's strictly because of the new technology of fracking and
Speaker 1: the ability to take what was previously not productive fields
Speaker 1: and turned them to giant winforce. So it was a
Speaker 1: way of releasing what geology put in place, what history
Speaker 1: put in place that couldn't flow naturally. So this is
Speaker 1: so called hydraulic fracking, hydraulic fracturing, a technique which I
Speaker 1: may say was invented by one of the companies in
Speaker 1: the bp group, by AMCO, the Standard All of Indiana,
Speaker 1: which is part of bp UH. And so it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very very h the likely used activity until
Speaker 1: suddenly the Permian appeared and when it was became a
Speaker 1: very heavily used and quite controversial technique. So one of
Speaker 1: the things you mentioned in in I believe it was
Speaker 1: beyond business. Vladimir Putin was one of the few people
Speaker 1: you said you were determined to say goodbye to before
Speaker 1: leaving BP. Why is that? Well, I think I had
Speaker 1: Whether this is the Stockholm syndrome working, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but I'd spent so much time with him. Recall that
Speaker 1: we're pulled together a big deal in Russia called t
Speaker 1: NK BP, and we were the biggest foreign investment in
Speaker 1: Russia and also the fastest growing or in gas company
Speaker 1: in Russia. We applied modern management, contemporary technology to some
Speaker 1: very good assets that were declining under the Soviet Union's rule.
Speaker 1: So I met him at least once a quarter and
Speaker 1: we had a standard agenda which I went through to
Speaker 1: tell him how well we were doing, and he would
Speaker 1: always say you must do more, and then we would
Speaker 1: have a discussion about who owned it. And I did
Speaker 1: a deal, a very important deal which said that BP
Speaker 1: and and the Russian part and Mr Putin always said
Speaker 1: that will never work, it will blow up and really
Speaker 1: should be and I'm Mr Putin want fifty one, and
Speaker 1: so when Mr President, I want the other way around.
Speaker 1: So that's why we're fifty fifty. And actually it worked
Speaker 1: remarkably well. Now things a number of people have over
Speaker 1: the years have complained that it's very challenging to do
Speaker 1: business in Russia, that the rule of law is not
Speaker 1: the same as it is in Europe or the United States,
Speaker 1: that you can't rely on contracts, that there is a
Speaker 1: black market as well as an underground that makes business challenging. There.
Speaker 1: You guys seem to have done pretty well there. What why? How?
Speaker 1: First of all, how accurate are those descriptions? And second
Speaker 1: why was BP able to succeed where lots of other
Speaker 1: companies were unable? So I think the description is accurate,
Speaker 1: but it changes over time, you know so, because Russia
Speaker 1: doesn't stand still either, so it gets better and worse depending.
Speaker 1: So I think the most important thing about this sort
Speaker 1: of business that BPS in or any other company like that,
Speaker 1: is you have to be sure you're wanted and you're
Speaker 1: doing something that the country really wants you to do.
Speaker 1: And so that's what kept BP in the position that
Speaker 1: it could do business the way I wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: because Putin said, I see I need a foreign investor,
Speaker 1: I need to demonstrate to the world that these people
Speaker 1: are doing good things. I'm growing, I'm modernizing, And BP
Speaker 1: did all those things, and as a result, we were
Speaker 1: able to with scale, with the big scale that we had,
Speaker 1: and with our partners, who were pretty good, they're very good,
Speaker 1: we were able to navigate a path which kept us
Speaker 1: on the straight and narrow, and that's really what we did.
Speaker 1: Do you still have a good relationship with the Putin
Speaker 1: or has everybody's interests move on and they've all moved on?
Speaker 1: I mean, I haven't seen Mr Putin since I left BP.
Speaker 1: And what what he was by that point in time?
Speaker 1: He was President of Russia? Yes he was, Yes, I
Speaker 1: remember he. I first met him when he came to London.
Speaker 1: Let's see, I think in late nine when Yeltsin was
Speaker 1: the president and we were all looking at Mr Putin
Speaker 1: saying this is a young and refreshing person who talks
Speaker 1: about the rule of law and getting things done, and
Speaker 1: we thought this was terrific. Um. And actually his first
Speaker 1: term that's exactly what he did, quite quite quite interesting. UM.
Speaker 1: I wanted to bring up something you had said in
Speaker 1: an interview not too long ago along the those lines
Speaker 1: you mentioned you would like to see more scientists and
Speaker 1: engineers in top corporate and political positions. Explain you're thinking
Speaker 1: behind that. I would like to see them in these
Speaker 1: positions because they're trained in a way of thinking that
Speaker 1: is different from being trained in economics, that sale, political science,
Speaker 1: or journalism. It's very different. It's a it's a very
Speaker 1: different way of looking at facts and building theories and
Speaker 1: testing them, and very practical too. Engineers, after all, have
Speaker 1: to get things done and they were and they have
Speaker 1: to get them done, and they have to work without
Speaker 1: beyond a shadow of doubt. I mean, you don't want
Speaker 1: to walk across a bridge which has a fifty probability
Speaker 1: of standing up. It's not a good idea as opposed
Speaker 1: to the forecast of the average economist may or may
Speaker 1: not career remotely. You can't do that. So it's a
Speaker 1: different way of thinking. It's a practical way of doing things,
Speaker 1: and it's actually a very truthful approach. I think most
Speaker 1: scientists and engineers are taught that in the end, you
Speaker 1: have to say that you have to talk about the truth.
Speaker 1: You have to be fact based and you can't spin
Speaker 1: anything or add a layer of complexity to it. So
Speaker 1: people can't quite understand it in the end, because advances
Speaker 1: about challenge, and it's about challenge and testing, which is
Speaker 1: based on facts and truth. So perhaps that explains why
Speaker 1: there are so few scientists and engineers as politicians. It's possible,
Speaker 1: it's possible without the spin, it becomes very much a
Speaker 1: challenge to get elected. If you're telling the truth and
Speaker 1: telling people what they don't want to hear from time
Speaker 1: to time. I suppose that's called a technocratic politician. And
Speaker 1: sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, uh, you know. For example,
Speaker 1: Italy has had a series of when they really get
Speaker 1: into a trouble, they have a technocratic prime minister and Monty,
Speaker 1: for example, Mario Monty work pretty well, sort of dow
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. Very unpopular though, because he kept
Speaker 1: talking about the truth. And I have to start with
Speaker 1: the quote of yours early in the book. Engineering is
Speaker 1: wrapped all around us like a protective and life sustaining blanket.
Speaker 1: Explain which is what I firmly believed. Let me say so,
Speaker 1: I like to start a little bit back from there.
Speaker 1: Everything you look at in the way the progress and civilization, civilization,
Speaker 1: progressive civilization of humanity is based on engineering. Whether that's
Speaker 1: the flint ax, you know, hold a massively beautiful objects
Speaker 1: in your hand, was very important to begin to think
Speaker 1: about how you carve up an animal and how you
Speaker 1: change the way you survive through to looking at something
Speaker 1: which opens the imagination, like the James Web telescope. Butut
Speaker 1: Godard Space Center, this is an amazing thing. We're going
Speaker 1: to fire it into space a million miles away from us,
Speaker 1: the so called Second Grange in Point, and it's going
Speaker 1: to sit there unfold like a piece of ore gamy,
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty folds, and then it's going to
Speaker 1: look towards the beginning of time. Now that's incredible. It
Speaker 1: just fires the imagination to think you could actually look
Speaker 1: towards the beginning of time and you might actually see
Speaker 1: some planets on the way, you know, and they might
Speaker 1: actually tell you something about life. So I think I
Speaker 1: find that very exciting. That's about civilization. It's wrapping our mind.
Speaker 1: It's giving our mind a blanket which allows it to
Speaker 1: think securely and imagine, which is what human beings do.
Speaker 1: So I think engineering is the is the golden thread
Speaker 1: through everything. It protects us, of course it does. It
Speaker 1: protects us from disease. You know, we all get healthier,
Speaker 1: we live longer. It protects us from poverty. You know,
Speaker 1: were world is getting rich less, people living in in
Speaker 1: in extreme poverty. And actually it protects us from violence
Speaker 1: as well. When I was writing this book, what I
Speaker 1: found fascinating was the world has actually become less violent
Speaker 1: the more advanced the weaponry has become. And so that's
Speaker 1: a protective blanket. It's the engineering has allowed everyone to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I get it. If we start doing something, someone will
Speaker 1: do something to us. It's not necessarily mutually assured destruction.
Speaker 1: Not it's not, but it's a deterrent. It's it's mutually
Speaker 1: assured disturbance, you know, big, big disturbance, And that's what
Speaker 1: keeps us in equilibrium. And and engineering does all of that.
Speaker 1: And remember it really is something about safety, because I
Speaker 1: contend that engineering engineers have saved far more lives than
Speaker 1: all the physicians in the world because of the ability
Speaker 1: to public health engineering, molec fuels, engineering drugs. Go to
Speaker 1: a hospital, Look at the kit, look at the equipment,
Speaker 1: m R eyes, cat scans. Uh. You know what's in
Speaker 1: an intensive care ward robotic surgery? You know, which is
Speaker 1: you don't damage the nerves. You know, much more precise
Speaker 1: than much more precise the knives that cut the flesh,
Speaker 1: that immediately can detect whether they're close to a canterrous cell.
Speaker 1: So all of this is amazing stuff. And I I
Speaker 1: love when I spoke to Robert Langer at m I
Speaker 1: T it's a great inventor. He's called the Edison of medicine.
Speaker 1: Is is this the Da Vinci machine. No, he's the
Speaker 1: one that thinks of blood as a great chemical engineering
Speaker 1: experience and tries to get get drugs to the place
Speaker 1: they should go rather than throughout the whole body. So
Speaker 1: rather than chemotherapy going through the whole body, actually using
Speaker 1: the blood him to get something to an exact place.
Speaker 1: And I thought his phrase was wonderfully said, you know,
Speaker 1: my ambition is just is to reduce suffering, and that's
Speaker 1: what engineering allows me to do. That. That's quite fascinating.
Speaker 1: Your throughout the book, you you reference the reduction of
Speaker 1: things like not only war and crime, but the increased longevity.
Speaker 1: Reminded me a lot of Stephen Pinker's book The Better
Speaker 1: Angels of Our Nature or is it the other way around?
Speaker 1: Better Nature of Our Angels? Um Better Angels of Our Nature,
Speaker 1: which talks about what the media doesn't, which is wherever
Speaker 1: you look, whether it's literacy or childhood, hunger or just
Speaker 1: come up with a list of markers of human progress.
Speaker 1: We've done really well over the past thousand years. Certainly
Speaker 1: I agree. I mean I took a very broad sweep,
Speaker 1: and I took also somethings where today I would say
Speaker 1: to say that they're really good is controversial in many
Speaker 1: sectors of society, for example, oil and gas, for example,
Speaker 1: facial recognition for example, the social media, and the issues
Speaker 1: to do with privacy. There are many good aspects to
Speaker 1: all this. There are also some bad ones, but it
Speaker 1: it raises the more general point that all engineering has
Speaker 1: great intended consequences that most de great, sure, but also
Speaker 1: unintended consequences. And the question is how do you balance this, hope,
Speaker 1: And that's been happening since people first made a piece
Speaker 1: of kit for anything, for sailing, So it's the balances
Speaker 1: is partly about rules and regulations you don't use it
Speaker 1: for this, partly about education. You know, it's not right
Speaker 1: that engineers should say, let's do it because I can
Speaker 1: do it, should stop for a moment and say should
Speaker 1: I do it? Should I do it? And in corporations
Speaker 1: that's of course the role of boards and leaders, But
Speaker 1: it's also about engineering itself. I think, you know, in
Speaker 1: my area energy, I don't believe anyone purposefully decided to
Speaker 1: create an unstable climate by pumping c O two into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere through burning hydrocarbons. What they wanted to do
Speaker 1: was to give people light, heat, and mobility better than
Speaker 1: burning well oil as you or wood or cutting down forests,
Speaker 1: but also giving people a very different modern way. So,
Speaker 1: but we've created a problem, and I've been on this
Speaker 1: point for almost a quarter century now saying you know,
Speaker 1: it's the oil and gas industries that's created this problem,
Speaker 1: and we need to fix it. And the way to
Speaker 1: fix it is not to stop in engineering, is to
Speaker 1: apply more engineering to solving the problem. And actually in
Speaker 1: this area, I would say that we have already all
Speaker 1: the engineering processes to stop pumping as much as the
Speaker 1: CEO two into the atmosphere, and actually even to clean
Speaker 1: up some of the CEO two. The problem is that
Speaker 1: the processes, the engineering products are too expensive until they
Speaker 1: are rolled out in massive scale, because isn't that a
Speaker 1: chicken and egg problem? Meaning this is where policy comes in.
Speaker 1: So in other words, policy has to push these these
Speaker 1: new engineered products to the point where they become more
Speaker 1: economical exactly. So you can't say, oh, well, we have
Speaker 1: to invent all that. You don't have to invent. We
Speaker 1: need to apply. And this is where engineering is very
Speaker 1: good because as you apply more and more, so the
Speaker 1: unit cost comes down. We know that for sure. So
Speaker 1: but you need a policy lever my my. When I
Speaker 1: look at all the policy dvas, I say, the biggest
Speaker 1: policy of you need is a price on carbon carbon taxes.
Speaker 1: You probably need other things as well, but it's going
Speaker 1: to be priced high enough so that people can actually
Speaker 1: do something to get it out of the system. Quite interesting.
Speaker 1: I very much like the way you structured the book
Speaker 1: via the chapters. The titles are progress, make, think, Connect, Build, Energize,
Speaker 1: which we were just discussing, move, defense, Survive, Imagine that
Speaker 1: that was really um quite interesting. One of the things
Speaker 1: that really didn't get a lot of UM pages was
Speaker 1: modern food and agriculture, which is really how we're going
Speaker 1: to support eight billion people and keep them fed. What
Speaker 1: is it about agriculture that seems to be so different
Speaker 1: from the other technologies you discussed, because clearly there's been
Speaker 1: men this progress in terms of yield per acre and
Speaker 1: how much a single farmer can produce, so in choosing
Speaker 1: what to write about, I only wrote about things that
Speaker 1: I've been involved in, and because otherwise I can't actually write.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not someone writing a survey. So I'm
Speaker 1: writing about things I've been involved in one way or another.
Speaker 1: You know, whether it's being on the board of Intel
Speaker 1: or Damond Diamond Bentz, or whether it's being on the
Speaker 1: board of the Creek Institute, the biomedical Research facility. It's
Speaker 1: all these sorts of things. So I said, I've actually
Speaker 1: got to have some connectivity here. I used to be
Speaker 1: Norman Foster, the Great Architect's chairman at one stage when
Speaker 1: he was thinking of taking his company public. So I've
Speaker 1: been involved in and out with all the things that
Speaker 1: I've been talking about, and I've never actually done anything
Speaker 1: in food production or agriculture. And so I said, there
Speaker 1: are plenty of people who will talk about that. Let
Speaker 1: me talk rather selectively because I get as the author,
Speaker 1: I get to choose, and I chose the things that
Speaker 1: I felt comfortable to talk about because I've had some
Speaker 1: hands on experience. I had actually met the people I've
Speaker 1: been involved and so it allowed me to speak from
Speaker 1: the first person quite quite interesting. I want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about a book you wrote in the
Speaker 1: Glass Closet, and that's only five years ago, but it
Speaker 1: seems like so much has changed in in half half
Speaker 1: a decade. In the book, you point out coming out
Speaker 1: of the closet is good business. Explain what you meant
Speaker 1: by that. What I meant was that when people can
Speaker 1: be themselves in the place of work, they bring their
Speaker 1: whole selves to the work and they can feel included
Speaker 1: rather than separate and apart. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I think every CEO knows in their heart and
Speaker 1: they statistically is that if you can build teams where
Speaker 1: people really feel included, the actually go and work to
Speaker 1: the purpose of the firm. When people see people being excluded,
Speaker 1: it creates a lot of grits in the system. People
Speaker 1: don't actually give their whole cells. They say, well, I
Speaker 1: could be excluded too. So inclusion is really and part
Speaker 1: of inclusion is being yourself and coming out. I would
Speaker 1: say that that's not a piece of advice for everybody
Speaker 1: because you have to be a situation sensitive. So coming
Speaker 1: out in Uganda not I think be a good idea
Speaker 1: or Saudi Arabia, you know, because it's against the law
Speaker 1: or it's against norms with tremendous punishments, sometimes death, so
Speaker 1: you have to be sensible about this. But in in
Speaker 1: the society of the United States, the United Kingdom, most
Speaker 1: of Europe, then it's something that absolutely people can choose
Speaker 1: to do, and when they do it almost certainly it
Speaker 1: produces a better result than staying in the closet. So is,
Speaker 1: when the book came out in the United States, this
Speaker 1: was not the top of the agenda for then President
Speaker 1: Barack Obama. In fact, he was not the most progressive
Speaker 1: person in terms of his views on marriage equality. And
Speaker 1: I think it was then Vice President Joe Biden who
Speaker 1: sort of accidentally forced the issue, and Obama stepped up
Speaker 1: and the forecasts of uh royling society turned out to
Speaker 1: be completely wrong. It was very quickly accepted and wreck
Speaker 1: It's only five years ago, but it just seems like
Speaker 1: a given. What was the experience like in the UK.
Speaker 1: I know you worked on some legislation similar to the
Speaker 1: US Marriage Equality Act, it was the same. I remember
Speaker 1: this book was published in was actually written in so
Speaker 1: that was quite a bit of time ago. But I
Speaker 1: think things have changed dramatically. So in the UK I
Speaker 1: sat through big debates in the House of Lords about
Speaker 1: marriage equality. I heard bigotry coming out loud and clear.
Speaker 1: You know that gay people really make great decorators and entertainers,
Speaker 1: and my best friends are gay person but I have
Speaker 1: them as a token pet, you know. I mean, the
Speaker 1: list went on and on and on. But actually when
Speaker 1: it came to the vote, I think at that time
Speaker 1: it was the single largest turnout of lords in the
Speaker 1: House to vote and it was overwhelmingly supported. I remember
Speaker 1: going through the lobby with some of the most important
Speaker 1: Catholics in England and someone said to me. One of
Speaker 1: them said, look to me. A friend of mine said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to burn in hell for this, but we're
Speaker 1: going to get this done. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: a wonderful statement, to say, this is the right thing
Speaker 1: for the nation. And it really was. And I think
Speaker 1: it was a tremendous achievement that changed attitudes a long way.
Speaker 1: It loosened people up a bit, and and the Brits
Speaker 1: do need loosening avocationally, just to touch So so here's
Speaker 1: the interesting thing. In the United States, despite the legislation
Speaker 1: and despite a somewhat accepting society, not a lot of
Speaker 1: chief executives are either gay or if they are gay,
Speaker 1: out of the closet. Probably the best known CEO is
Speaker 1: going to be Tim Cook of of Apple, a giant company.
Speaker 1: Venture capitalist Peter Thial came out, Um, sort of dragged
Speaker 1: out of the closet. I don't think he was treated
Speaker 1: fairly by some of the media. The CEO of Lloyds
Speaker 1: of London in the UK not too long ago, she
Speaker 1: she stepped down. Um, what does it mean that there
Speaker 1: are some high profile people who are LGBT as leaders
Speaker 1: of company? How how significant is this? Well, look, I
Speaker 1: think I want to go back to what happened when
Speaker 1: I was a student. When I was a student, it
Speaker 1: was if you were gay and you actually had a
Speaker 1: sexual encounter with a man, you'd get a prison. Really,
Speaker 1: in sixty seven it was illegal in the UK. Changed,
Speaker 1: I mean it was by the way, lots of laws
Speaker 1: like that on the books in the United States. So
Speaker 1: the law changed. And when seven, it was ten years
Speaker 1: after the so called Wolfton report was put before the House.
Speaker 1: It took ten years to persuade people to change the law.
Speaker 1: And when the law changed, nothing happened. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Because behavior lags the law hugely hugely, and I think
Speaker 1: is that backwards behavior legs the law, the law legs
Speaker 1: actual behavior were both. So you change the law, the
Speaker 1: behavior that was established with the law still stays in place,
Speaker 1: and it takes ages for it to change. In my view,
Speaker 1: I think law is important and necessary, not sufficient obviously,
Speaker 1: so I think people still there's a generation GAMP. I
Speaker 1: think there's also some other issues to do with boards
Speaker 1: of directors, probably quite conservative. Don't want to have too
Speaker 1: many what you might call floating variables around. You know,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to reduce your problem, as
Speaker 1: it were, to have a CEO that you know is
Speaker 1: just has no peripheral activity that might possibly get in
Speaker 1: the way of the company. Does that help explain while
Speaker 1: why today there's still a very short list of CEO
Speaker 1: or I think it's a It could be one reason.
Speaker 1: We don't know what the real reasons are. I think
Speaker 1: that might be one reason. Another one might be people
Speaker 1: self selecting out, possibly saying actually I just don't want
Speaker 1: the profile. Uh. Some there may be some basic hidden discrimination,
Speaker 1: very possible, but you're right, I mean, that's a handful
Speaker 1: of CEOs who are openly gay in the SMP invariably
Speaker 1: I think about maybe four or so, but you know,
Speaker 1: statistically we should have five to fifty. So something's wrong here.
Speaker 1: Either twenty twenty one to forty six CEOs are in
Speaker 1: the closet or something else is happening. So and and
Speaker 1: and that's worrying for the simple reason that it's so
Speaker 1: important to have role models out there. Otherwise you don't
Speaker 1: encourage people. You can't say to people, well, you know,
Speaker 1: just come out, it'll be great, it'll be good for
Speaker 1: your career. And they say, well, that's very interesting, John,
Speaker 1: But show me where the c ears are. Show me
Speaker 1: where they are. And so that's why this is a
Speaker 1: very important point. So the question I have to ask
Speaker 1: you is, while you were CEO of BP, not being
Speaker 1: public about your sexuality, how did that affect the way
Speaker 1: you want about your job? Not? It certainly affected it.
Speaker 1: I think what it did is it it It allowed
Speaker 1: me to focus only on my job at the exclusion
Speaker 1: of my self, basically my private life and developing who
Speaker 1: I really was. And I did that partly because my
Speaker 1: thought process got stranded. I when I wrote this book,
Speaker 1: I had the story which always sticks with me. As
Speaker 1: I went to the hay Litty Festival to be interviewed
Speaker 1: about the glass closet in the Q and A a
Speaker 1: young man got up in the audience and said, I
Speaker 1: am in the say business as you for your competitor
Speaker 1: read Shell, you know. And he said, here's the thing, John,
Speaker 1: we all knew you were gay before you came out,
Speaker 1: but the only thing was none of us were brave
Speaker 1: enough to come and tell you that. And I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, that explains everything. So I heard because I
Speaker 1: was a child of the sixties, because my mother was
Speaker 1: a survivor of the Holocaust, and she reminded me, never
Speaker 1: tell anyone a secret because they will surely use it
Speaker 1: against you. And never become a member, an identifiable vocal
Speaker 1: member for minority, because when the going gets tough, the
Speaker 1: majority always hurt the minority. So arm with those points,
Speaker 1: I said to myself, I'm going to stay in the
Speaker 1: closet forever. And so that's what I did. I ran
Speaker 1: a double life. Uh. You know, when I was young,
Speaker 1: it was kind of fun, you know, you could, but
Speaker 1: that as as I got more and more well known,
Speaker 1: became more and more dangerous, and I had to go
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper into secrets. So uh, and then eventually
Speaker 1: I got out it but for all the reasons I
Speaker 1: explained in the book, and it caused me. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what it did do is it made me make
Speaker 1: some really bad judgments that I couldn't even believe I
Speaker 1: had done myself about you know, how to keep it
Speaker 1: all secret. I had a relationship with an escort who
Speaker 1: I actually thought was a relationship. He was the guy
Speaker 1: who sold the story to the press, you know, sold
Speaker 1: it for money. I lied in a in a witness statement,
Speaker 1: not in a fortunately, not in court about how I
Speaker 1: had met this guy because I couldn't bring myself to
Speaker 1: explain what it was. These things I don't do. But
Speaker 1: the circumstances were such that they created some really bad
Speaker 1: judgments in my mind. And I think I learned a
Speaker 1: lot about why it's so important therefore to be truthful
Speaker 1: and to be yourself, because the moment you get into
Speaker 1: a situation where you are dissembling, everything starts going wrong,
Speaker 1: and that I think is a very That's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it's so important whenever you possibly can
Speaker 1: to come out, you know, if if you're going to
Speaker 1: be hurt, if it's unsafe, don't do it, but but
Speaker 1: think about it. Hard. The Glass Closet was quite a
Speaker 1: brave book, especially considering that which is only five years ago.
Speaker 1: But it might as well have been It might as
Speaker 1: well have been a lifetime ago. Any regrets about the
Speaker 1: book or you find it's freeing and you were happy
Speaker 1: you not put it out. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people still want the book. They talk to me about
Speaker 1: the book. It's a topic which comes up again and again.
Speaker 1: Actually when I'm signing my other books we had. I
Speaker 1: was signing the last book at Harvard Bookstore that second
Speaker 1: to your school, and a couple of guys came up
Speaker 1: and I signed the books of them, and then they
Speaker 1: rather sheepishly pulled out a very dog eared copy of
Speaker 1: The Glass Closet and said, we've lent this to everyone.
Speaker 1: I said, how dare you, you know, feel loyalties? But
Speaker 1: they said, could you sign it please? Because this is
Speaker 1: why we got married. And you know that's that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: Quite quite, I think, if I may. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things to note why I think this book
Speaker 1: is so important is that things aren't always going forward.
Speaker 1: They also go backwards. And you look at some of
Speaker 1: the regularly the behavior in Europe against gay people. It's
Speaker 1: beginning to switch. With these right wing parties coming in power,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of re enactment of discrimination, and I
Speaker 1: think people need to be reminded that that's the place
Speaker 1: we don't want to go to. So when you were
Speaker 1: a CEO at BP, an aired campaign was launched Beyond Petroleum.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about the thinking there and
Speaker 1: and how it was received. What did beyond Petroleum mean
Speaker 1: for an oil company. So it's worth going back a
Speaker 1: little bit before two thousand. But by the BP, my
Speaker 1: executive team and I we had concluded that climate change
Speaker 1: was a real threat and we had to do something
Speaker 1: about it. So I stood up at Stanford University at
Speaker 1: the Frost Auditorium and gave a speech about climate change,
Speaker 1: and I said, climate change is happening. We are responsible
Speaker 1: for this, and we need to do something about it.
Speaker 1: And I laid out an action plan. Rather than just
Speaker 1: wringing my hands and saying it's a terrible problem, I said,
Speaker 1: we're going to do the following things. In a trade
Speaker 1: carbon internally, invest in renewables, invest in alternative for fuels
Speaker 1: of art and measure what we were doing and seal
Speaker 1: up all the methane. And we weren't leaking it because
Speaker 1: it's a bad greenose gas. So we did all that.
Speaker 1: It didn't go down well with the industry. I would
Speaker 1: say that's an British understatement. They the American Petroleum Institute
Speaker 1: said that I had left the church whatever that meant,
Speaker 1: the church of the Church of the API. I think
Speaker 1: the Church of the petroleum industry. Okay, well, and the
Speaker 1: question is was it the Church of the petroleum industry
Speaker 1: or the Church of global warming denialism? Which I think
Speaker 1: it was that where the oil industry was in large part. So.
Speaker 1: But but then what had happened was we realized that
Speaker 1: we got such a huge support internally. It changed the
Speaker 1: way BP thought about itself, how it recruited, could get
Speaker 1: very different people coming in. And actually we realized that
Speaker 1: we were thinking beyond petroleum, what was going to happen
Speaker 1: beyond petroleum. So we decided that that was going to
Speaker 1: be our strap line, thinking about beyond petroleum. And it
Speaker 1: was kind of neat because BP beyond petroleum a sort
Speaker 1: of worked together. And besides, we had to rebrand. By
Speaker 1: that time, I had undertaken a whole variety of massive deals,
Speaker 1: you know, merging with Amaco, with our co with Castrol,
Speaker 1: with Fabor. These were very big deals and it changed
Speaker 1: dramatically BP and we needed a new identity because everyone
Speaker 1: came from somewhere else. I remember the the Amaco deal
Speaker 1: was just giant. It was the largest I think financial transact,
Speaker 1: industrial financial transaction ever at the time. Nowadays because the
Speaker 1: numbers are telephone directories, it's it's peanuts. But it was
Speaker 1: big and of course very complex because a lot of people,
Speaker 1: a lot of activities and operations and so forth. So
Speaker 1: we concluded that we may as well say what we
Speaker 1: were thinking, which is we were thinking beyond petroleum. Now
Speaker 1: I think that we were. I think the error I
Speaker 1: made is I think it was too early. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we we took one step too far. We couldn't actually
Speaker 1: keep everyone out in the outside world with us. In
Speaker 1: the inside world. We kept everyone together, couldn't quite get
Speaker 1: it to gel with within the company, everybody was on
Speaker 1: the same stage. Well, well mostly when you say everybody
Speaker 1: inside an organization is the rule, Okay, that's everybody. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's that's by far everybody. It's slightly better than politics,
Speaker 1: I think, but it's not a means. It's about and
Speaker 1: what was interesting was the quality of people who joined
Speaker 1: the company suddenly changed. I mean, we've got people coming
Speaker 1: to us rather than going to Palo Alto, so a
Speaker 1: competitive advantage. By embracing, we've got we've got some extraordinary people.
Speaker 1: And these extraordinary people are now in pretty important positions
Speaker 1: either in BP or elsewhere. So so BP, but I
Speaker 1: think it was a bit too early, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Is it still too early? BP is is selling off
Speaker 1: some of its alternative energy businesses. Well, they're reinvesting, so
Speaker 1: they're changing the portfolio. And I don't know in detail
Speaker 1: what they're doing, but they're one of several oil companies
Speaker 1: that are investing in startups in alternative energy or energy efficiency,
Speaker 1: and they're investing in solar and wind, and they're investing
Speaker 1: in alternative fuels, things made of a biological matter rather
Speaker 1: than mineral oil from the ground. So they're doing that.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are doing this. I think the
Speaker 1: oil industry has to focus on the technologies that really
Speaker 1: move the needle, and they're beginning to think how we
Speaker 1: can how they can do that. One of the big technologies,
Speaker 1: of course, is the removal of carbon. If you think
Speaker 1: about it, if we could make hydro carbons free of
Speaker 1: carbon were left with hydrogen, and it's a tremendous fuel
Speaker 1: only powers the entire universe. Other than that, it's pretty good. Really,
Speaker 1: it's got a proven track record. As they say, so
Speaker 1: we we need to do that. By burning hydrocarbons, you
Speaker 1: release cere too, So can you capture it and do
Speaker 1: something with it. That's called carbon capture and you either
Speaker 1: store it, so carbon capture and storage or carbon capture
Speaker 1: and use. You can use it. Now there needs to
Speaker 1: be a lot more work in this area. We know
Speaker 1: the engineering can work, and we know it can be done,
Speaker 1: but it needs policy instruments to make it worthwhile for
Speaker 1: corporations to do so that if you put a price
Speaker 1: on carbon by taxing it, the more tax you will avoid,
Speaker 1: the better off you are. So if you can store it,
Speaker 1: then all is good and you can then begin to
Speaker 1: make carbon free hydrocarbons. Now one earth, carbon free hydrocarbons
Speaker 1: one on Earth. Would you want to do this? The
Speaker 1: answer is it's very difficult to replace the hydrocarbons. We
Speaker 1: can't do it with renewable energy. We can't do it
Speaker 1: with alternative energy from sugarcane. It would destroy and have
Speaker 1: other unintended consequences. And you know, while renewables and I've
Speaker 1: been a great proponent of renewables. When I left BP,
Speaker 1: I ran private equity fund, the world's largest renewable energy
Speaker 1: private equity fund for enough billion dollars um. Why can't
Speaker 1: we do it with renewables. The answer is because, after
Speaker 1: all this work that's been going on so far, renewables
Speaker 1: at best provides four percent of the energy in the world.
Speaker 1: Four it's going to take a long time for it
Speaker 1: to replace all the hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons are coal, oil, and
Speaker 1: natural gas. Coal will be the first to go, probably
Speaker 1: practically going already not in the world, well in the US,
Speaker 1: in the US, but in India. In India, for example,
Speaker 1: it's expanding, and chin China, China's a bit it's moving
Speaker 1: using a tremendous amounts. I think it's it shrank and
Speaker 1: then grew a bit u But certainly in in Europe
Speaker 1: it's it's going out of the system. Although Poland is
Speaker 1: still providing a lot of coal, and by unintended the
Speaker 1: unintended consequences of the German energy policy called enegy vendor
Speaker 1: actually increased the amount of coal Germany used for what
Speaker 1: was a policy designed to reduce c O two. They
Speaker 1: eliminated too many choices too quickly and relied too heavily
Speaker 1: on renewables. Germany uses a lot of brown winds and
Speaker 1: a lot of solar and brown coal. And and is
Speaker 1: there such a thing as clean coal or is that
Speaker 1: an oxymot Clean coal is coal with carbon capture and storage.
Speaker 1: You can't clean it any other way. Coal burning has
Speaker 1: other problems. It produces a variety of very bad mineral
Speaker 1: solsions as well as of particulate matter soot which can
Speaker 1: if it's which can cause lung disease. So so, so
Speaker 1: it's not it's not very appealing. Really, So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the end nearing um that you referenced earlier. I'm
Speaker 1: under the impression that a lot of these technologies are
Speaker 1: still a major breakthrough away from going from four to
Speaker 1: to But but you also suggested that a lot of
Speaker 1: engineering solutions already exist. Um, So let's talk about that
Speaker 1: what wet engineering solutions exist today to reduce carbon emissions
Speaker 1: and help prevent climate change. So we we know a
Speaker 1: lot about the improvement in renewables. So the cost is
Speaker 1: coming down and the past going up. Now we know
Speaker 1: that for wind, we know that for solar, and actually
Speaker 1: in solar there's probably one more, very big scientific breakthrough
Speaker 1: which could make it even more interesting. It probably won't
Speaker 1: reduce the cost so much, but it will make each
Speaker 1: seller panel three or four times more powerful, So we
Speaker 1: don't more of the space, you know, So if you've
Speaker 1: had a roof of them, you could produce much more electricity.
Speaker 1: You have the same issue with battery storage, also need
Speaker 1: and other batteries. Yes, we could do a lot with
Speaker 1: existing batteries. It's not ideal, but it would give us
Speaker 1: a good start. So lithium ion batteries clearly can be
Speaker 1: used and are used at the moment on industrial scales
Speaker 1: to store electricity. But electricity can be stored in different
Speaker 1: ways as well, through making the energy by using it
Speaker 1: to pump water up a hill and then letting the
Speaker 1: water come down. I've seen the bricks and the kinetic robotics.
Speaker 1: That's it creating towers of large potential energy and then
Speaker 1: make a kinetic energy. So is that a viable storage solution.
Speaker 1: People are experimenting with it, and some sensible people have
Speaker 1: invested in them, and so I think it might you know,
Speaker 1: let's see if it works. There are plenty of these technologies,
Speaker 1: so but the main point I think is if we
Speaker 1: really push them out today, we're not dealing in most
Speaker 1: cases with breakthrough discoveries. We are looking at engineering improvements,
Speaker 1: incremental incremental engineering improvements, which usually come only with application.
Speaker 1: So the more you do, the better you become at something,
Speaker 1: and the cost comes down both on the manufactured base
Speaker 1: and on the implementation. So that But that's a rule
Speaker 1: of that sort a rule of engineering. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it applies to actually everything, except for custom built
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants, which somehow seem to get more expensive
Speaker 1: the more you do rather than less. Although small scale
Speaker 1: nuclear probably is the breakthrough that we all are looking for.
Speaker 1: Small scale and I keep reading about thorium reactors, which
Speaker 1: the science isn't quite there, but but you don't end
Speaker 1: up with all of that highly radioactive waste, which certainly
Speaker 1: seems attractive. It it does, I think I would not
Speaker 1: put all my bets there. I what I would what
Speaker 1: I what I do think is important is you know,
Speaker 1: what's good for the Navy is probably good for all
Speaker 1: of us. So small scale reactors built in a factory
Speaker 1: as opposed to built on site and come on the
Speaker 1: back of a truck and bolted together in a place
Speaker 1: where an old nuclear power plant was is probably a
Speaker 1: much cheaper way of going than building one from scratch.
Speaker 1: So like aircraft carriers and submarines, that size we're talking
Speaker 1: probably a bit bigger, but you know, not not I'm
Speaker 1: in there're quite a whole some of those, but but
Speaker 1: that the idea is roughly the same. So a hundred
Speaker 1: megawatts probably is the size. And one of the things
Speaker 1: you mentioned, um when both in the book and when
Speaker 1: you discuss climate changes, you said you would love to
Speaker 1: be known as an engineer and a scientist. Explain of
Speaker 1: thinking there, Well, I would still really love to be
Speaker 1: known as an engineer, period. I mean, I do think
Speaker 1: engineers are the people who look both ways in life.
Speaker 1: They look to the fruits of discovery from what happens
Speaker 1: in the lab and they look at it and say, yes,
Speaker 1: we need to do something with it. And they look
Speaker 1: to the market on the other hand, and to commerce
Speaker 1: and say, this is how we make it work for humanity. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, I don't want to use one of
Speaker 1: the myriad apparent quotes from Edison, but I think he
Speaker 1: said something similar about discoveries with no market and not
Speaker 1: worth having. But or he may not have said it,
Speaker 1: but but but I do think that's why engineering is
Speaker 1: so important. It's Jane's face. It looks two ways, and
Speaker 1: it looks two ways in one person and create something
Speaker 1: great for humanity. And I think that's a really good
Speaker 1: thing to do. We have been speaking with John Brown,
Speaker 1: former CEO of British Petroleum and author of the new
Speaker 1: book Make Think, Imagine Engineering the Future of Civilization. I
Speaker 1: feel odd calling you John, because you are a member
Speaker 1: of the House of Lords and and you've been knighted,
Speaker 1: and you have all of these British titles. I'm just
Speaker 1: a commoner here in the States, so I guess I'll
Speaker 1: have to get used to calling you John. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of questions I didn't get tole me, just
Speaker 1: if I may go. My dear late father always said
Speaker 1: to me said, you know, whatever happens to you in
Speaker 1: the future, you were born John, and you will always
Speaker 1: be John. And he reminded me that, you know, he
Speaker 1: was a military man and worked for the government. He said,
Speaker 1: people have very complicated titles, but actually they're exactly the
Speaker 1: same as anybody else. And never forget it. Uh. He
Speaker 1: also told me, he said, when you go to a party,
Speaker 1: he said, you know in Britain they will dress up
Speaker 1: with decorations, medals and things like that. He said, go
Speaker 1: find the person who's wearing none of that. Chances are
Speaker 1: he's probably the Prime Minister. I's remember that very well.
Speaker 1: So we didn't get to talk about a book of
Speaker 1: yours that I thought was interesting. Seven Elements that change
Speaker 1: the world, and you discuss iron and carbon and gold, silver, uranium, titanium,
Speaker 1: and silicon. I shared with you earlier this week's Business
Speaker 1: Week about what they called the greatest organizational chart ever,
Speaker 1: the Periodical Table, and it's really quite a work. Every
Speaker 1: element in the Table of Elements has has a story
Speaker 1: about that. But I have to ask about seven Elements
Speaker 1: that that is a very science e material science sort
Speaker 1: of book. Tell us about what motivated that. I wanted
Speaker 1: to write a book about the elements that I've been
Speaker 1: involved in and make it as interesting as I could,
Speaker 1: almost adventures in Elements, if you will, and talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, how they appear for the good and for
Speaker 1: the bad in the world, and tell stories about them.
Speaker 1: But I've been involved with the Kennicott Copper Corporation, which
Speaker 1: was a big golden silver mining operation. Obviously with carbon,
Speaker 1: was silicon with intel. So again it was very much
Speaker 1: hands on experience and I just wanted to make it exciting.
Speaker 1: And I was writing, I think for a general audience
Speaker 1: who who never really thought about these things and thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, what are elements. I was I'd read a
Speaker 1: wonderful book which which is very different and I would
Speaker 1: never dream of aspire getting anywhere close to it. Primo
Speaker 1: Levies book on the Periodic Table. What was that was
Speaker 1: the title? It was called the Periodic Table, and it's
Speaker 1: a Primo Levies ruminations on life generally. So some of
Speaker 1: these are pretty obvious. Iron had a huge impact on
Speaker 1: on warfare a few thousand years ago. Carbon obviously, anything
Speaker 1: with energy, gold, uranium, silicon. I have to ask about titanium.
Speaker 1: Why did you focus on titanium. It was the wild card.
Speaker 1: I've been involved in the mining of titanium, not least
Speaker 1: in Richardson's Bay in South Africa, and it's one of
Speaker 1: these things which is everywhere and nobody realizes it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: Cell phones, titanium, toothpaste, white shirts, paint, it's everywhere because
Speaker 1: it's highly reflective and it creates that whiteness that we
Speaker 1: all like love having white rooms and white floors and
Speaker 1: white clothes. It's it's strange. It's very much a twenty
Speaker 1: one century thing. And and why silver? Since you have gold?
Speaker 1: What what made you include silver as well? Because silver
Speaker 1: has a gold actually you know, in the end, is
Speaker 1: something you mine and then you put it back into
Speaker 1: a vault. A little a little bit of it is
Speaker 1: used for teeth and for jewelry, or at least it
Speaker 1: used to be used for teeth, and enough they're still
Speaker 1: doing that, not a lot, I guess it's now ceramics
Speaker 1: and things like that. But silver, of course was used
Speaker 1: for many other things because it's a reactive element, and
Speaker 1: it was used for photography. And I used a silver
Speaker 1: and photography as the point of connection there and the image,
Speaker 1: and how we are so used to that now. Of
Speaker 1: course silver silver halide is no longer used in photography.
Speaker 1: Well it is by very few people producing beautiful results,
Speaker 1: let me say, But it's now all digital. But silver
Speaker 1: has different rules quite quite fascinating. Um, there are two
Speaker 1: other things I have to get to, which which are fascinating.
Speaker 1: So you were a CEO. Well, let me say it
Speaker 1: this way. You weren't were not CEO when the deep
Speaker 1: Water Horizon explosion took place in the Gulf of Mexico,
Speaker 1: but you were CEO during the Texas City refinery explosion.
Speaker 1: That had to be a very trying experience. What what
Speaker 1: was that period was trying as an understatement. This was
Speaker 1: a terrible industrial accident, a tragedy where fifteen people lost
Speaker 1: their lives and many hundreds were injured in different degrees,
Speaker 1: some small, some bigger. And I remember so well what
Speaker 1: what happened? And I was called and someone said, as
Speaker 1: they always do with an emergency, we think something's happening.
Speaker 1: It's not quite right, you know. And actually that's when
Speaker 1: people observed nine eleven. They weren't quite sure what was
Speaker 1: going on. You're never quite sure at the beginning. And
Speaker 1: I they rang me and said there's been an explosion,
Speaker 1: and I st I'm coming down. They said, hold on.
Speaker 1: So I got down to Texas City to find and
Speaker 1: I went round and there were fourteen bodies recovered at
Speaker 1: the time, and I've never seen people so stunned. The workforce.
Speaker 1: I went around, spoke to the whole workforce and as
Speaker 1: we were doing that, we recovered the fifteenth body um
Speaker 1: and that that I think demonstrated that whatever this was,
Speaker 1: this was a human tragedy and those are the people
Speaker 1: we needed to worry about, their friends, their relatives. And
Speaker 1: then what happened. So at the press conference, I remember
Speaker 1: being advised by everybody to say nothing, and I said,
Speaker 1: how can you possibly do that? And so I said,
Speaker 1: we're responsible and we'll take care of this, but right
Speaker 1: now we need to worry about the people who have
Speaker 1: been killed and the people who have been hurt. And
Speaker 1: so we worked diligently through this and we solved it.
Speaker 1: And what where money could make a difference, we did.
Speaker 1: We solved it very quickly. We paid people appropriately. I
Speaker 1: believe the terrible tragedy they were involved in and it
Speaker 1: was our fault, you know, and so we um we
Speaker 1: learned a lesson, And I think the lesson I learned was,
Speaker 1: you know, however you look at a company, you should
Speaker 1: always look at its weakest link. You can't say it's
Speaker 1: about right. It's not about right when it comes to safety.
Speaker 1: And it was very clear that we hadn't integrated this
Speaker 1: part of the company properly. Was this refinery and it
Speaker 1: was acquisition is part of an amacho, but it could
Speaker 1: have been anywhere, um and it wasn't integrated, and it
Speaker 1: actually had equipment in it that took too much skill
Speaker 1: to operate. You know, we should have had and that
Speaker 1: was the problem, too much skill and the person operating
Speaker 1: it probably didn't have enough skill. But that was probably
Speaker 1: an unrealistic standard to apply that they need to be
Speaker 1: more modern equipment and we should have known better. So
Speaker 1: I think that was the point, uh, And it changed
Speaker 1: dramatically the way we thought about safety. It really did.
Speaker 1: We we prided ourselves with about safety keeping people safe,
Speaker 1: but what we hadn't really deeply got was the fact
Speaker 1: that all equipment becomes unsafe and must be looked at
Speaker 1: at all times to make sure it gets stay safe.
Speaker 1: And that's what we learned, and I think it's what
Speaker 1: everybody now learns. It's it's the big lesson of how
Speaker 1: you keep processes safe as well as people safe. Quite interesting.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask one last question before I
Speaker 1: get to my favorite questions, which is, you're an engineer.
Speaker 1: You're a large embracer of science and scientific methods. Today
Speaker 1: there seems to be a deep distrust of science, whether
Speaker 1: it's anti vax ER's or climate change denihilis. There are
Speaker 1: even some flat earthers out there, which I'm astonished at.
Speaker 1: What are we to make of this rejection of science
Speaker 1: which has given us all the benefits of of the
Speaker 1: modern world. People don't trust experts. They trust people like themselves.
Speaker 1: If there are people around who have a big, loud voice,
Speaker 1: then trust goes in the wrong direction. We need to
Speaker 1: do more. It's a it's a banal statement, but it's true.
Speaker 1: We need to do more in education. We've got to
Speaker 1: get people always thinking that they need to test the facts.
Speaker 1: They need to test and go and search for the
Speaker 1: best answer, and then I think we'll get some better
Speaker 1: appreciation of why science and engineering is so important. So
Speaker 1: education is very important. I think we should publicize more,
Speaker 1: much more about how how does engineering actually work? How
Speaker 1: does science actually create something? How do we know something safe? Why?
Speaker 1: Why is there the f d A there? You know,
Speaker 1: it was a great invention, right, the poison squad and
Speaker 1: all that sort of thing in the olden days tremendous
Speaker 1: to create trust. So we need to reinstill with people
Speaker 1: the purpose of these organizations, the purpose of standards. I
Speaker 1: think it's requires a very big effort to do that.
Speaker 1: We've taken it for granted and as a result people
Speaker 1: have ignored it. So the profits of the book go
Speaker 1: to the John Brown Charitable Trust. Tell us what the
Speaker 1: trust focuses on and the areas you're emphasizing. So the
Speaker 1: trust started its life a long time ago in honor
Speaker 1: of my mother to educate women at Cambridge who had
Speaker 1: come from a broken human rights background, displace people from
Speaker 1: former Yugoslavia, for example, um Hungarians who were not settled properly.
Speaker 1: The list went on, but now it does education broadly.
Speaker 1: It tries to do the things nobody else will do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not going to compete with governments and
Speaker 1: with MacArthur Foundation and with you know, the Gates and
Speaker 1: people like that. But I can do things. I can
Speaker 1: fill gaps, which we do and then it supports the
Speaker 1: arts as well. So that's what it's doing. It's building
Speaker 1: up its strength. I wanted to be around for a
Speaker 1: long time. It'll probably it's got a outlived me. Of
Speaker 1: course it does. And as a result I've got some
Speaker 1: quite young trustees which I'm much approof of. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's doing things that other people don't do, and
Speaker 1: that's I think very important, quite quite interesting. So I
Speaker 1: know I only have you for a few minutes before
Speaker 1: you have to move on to your next event. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you some of our favorite questions we ask
Speaker 1: all our guests. We'll start with an easy one. Tell
Speaker 1: us the first car you owned? Year, make and model.
Speaker 1: So the first car I owned was a Feat six hundred.
Speaker 1: It was I bought it in nineteen sixty six, when
Speaker 1: I was eighteen. I think by that time it was
Speaker 1: already six years old, and it kind of blew up
Speaker 1: when on a trip to London the engine block crashed.
Speaker 1: So it was a great car. It was very cheap
Speaker 1: and it was great thrill a D eighteen to have
Speaker 1: your own car. Tell Us, uh, who your early mentors are?
Speaker 1: Who helped shape your career? So in BP it was
Speaker 1: the latent great Dr Frank rick Would, a Australian geologist.
Speaker 1: He joined BP having been the head of the Dean
Speaker 1: of Geological Sciences at the University of New South Wales.
Speaker 1: He's Australian and he clearly was a great influence in
Speaker 1: you know, vigor, how do you do things rigorously? How
Speaker 1: do you actually understand to apply what you the science
Speaker 1: and engineering to actual business problems. He was a great mentor.
Speaker 1: I think Andy Grove, who was active on the board
Speaker 1: of Intel when I was there, also a great mentor.
Speaker 1: I learned a lot from him on how do you
Speaker 1: actually really do strategy? How do you think about competitors
Speaker 1: and what you do to survive? You know only the
Speaker 1: paranoids of Ie and Andy taught me absolutely that that
Speaker 1: was true. So let's since you mentioned Groves book, let's
Speaker 1: talk about books. What are What are some of your
Speaker 1: favorite books? What books had a big influence on you?
Speaker 1: So I have so many I think i've but by
Speaker 1: the way, this is the question people tell me. Keep
Speaker 1: asking people about books. I get great recommendations from your guests.
Speaker 1: So I m so Over the summer I read a
Speaker 1: lot of books and to really stand out. The first
Speaker 1: is an English translation of a French book by Eric
Speaker 1: Rihard called The Orders of the Day. It's a short
Speaker 1: book and it starts on the twentieth of February thirty three,
Speaker 1: when national Socialism invited in the heads of all the
Speaker 1: German big companies to offer them assistance in return for support,
Speaker 1: and the story develops from there. It's air raising and
Speaker 1: it's very short and brilliantly read written. Brilliantly written. I
Speaker 1: can't recommend it highly enough mm hmm Orders of the
Speaker 1: Day or by Eric van v v u I double
Speaker 1: L A r D. It won the pre Gone Corps
Speaker 1: in French and in France has recently been translated. I
Speaker 1: would expect it's a very well written book. I would
Speaker 1: expect the French to be quite impenetrable, and as you're
Speaker 1: a very good French reader. The other book. I've have
Speaker 1: a friend of mine in Venice, where I live part time, Italy,
Speaker 1: called Donna Leon. She she's a mystery writer, a detective
Speaker 1: story writer, and she's written the same as she's written
Speaker 1: about the same detective Commissario Bernetti and his family. I
Speaker 1: think for twenty five or thirty years, one book a year. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: they never age, but everybody else starts around them. She
Speaker 1: recently wrote a book which became in my Moon not
Speaker 1: no longer a detective story, but a novel um called
Speaker 1: unto Our The Sun is given remarkable book, remarkable worth
Speaker 1: I think reading for the simple reason that it's about
Speaker 1: human frailty and about why loneliness really does get to
Speaker 1: people who cannot have a family and the consequences of that.
Speaker 1: It's an extraordinary book, actually quite extraordinary, and this is
Speaker 1: a big issue both in the UK and the US,
Speaker 1: the rise of loneliness, which some studies have found to
Speaker 1: be the equivalent of smoking it back a cigarette a
Speaker 1: day exactly, and it also leads to very bad judgments
Speaker 1: because there's nobody to bounce it off, and you can
Speaker 1: always hire people to give you advice, but the moment
Speaker 1: you hire someone, you've hired them, and the advice is
Speaker 1: not necessarily what you want tell us about a time
Speaker 1: you've failed and what you learned from the experience. So
Speaker 1: certainly the biggest failure in my professional life would BP
Speaker 1: was the Texas City tragedy, and I think it taught
Speaker 1: me a lot about making sure that you you don't
Speaker 1: take things for granted and you don't get carried away
Speaker 1: with necessarily what people are saying. You check, you double
Speaker 1: check when it comes to things which are existential, and
Speaker 1: I think that was, in my mind, a very big failure,
Speaker 1: very big failure. I think the second big failure was
Speaker 1: the areas of judgment I made with before I was outed,
Speaker 1: both in the way in which I told a lie
Speaker 1: in a in a witness statement. And the mere fact
Speaker 1: that I I, in order to hide away um fell
Speaker 1: hard and escort and thought it was a relationship could
Speaker 1: possibly be. So I think those things were very big
Speaker 1: failures of judgment error, and I've learned a lot from them.
Speaker 1: I can think of plenty of others, but they're smaller.
Speaker 1: What do you do for fun when you're not reading
Speaker 1: or writing books? So I still have traveled for the
Speaker 1: whole of my life. You know, I was born outside
Speaker 1: the UK. I've spent my teenage years traveling. I think
Speaker 1: I was one of the first jets set kids because
Speaker 1: I was transported back to the UK from iran uh
Speaker 1: and Singapore to go to school. So I still like
Speaker 1: going to places I haven't been to. I've been that
Speaker 1: they're diminishing number. But I also live in Venice, Italy,
Speaker 1: where I adore it. I find it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: such an unlikely place. It's a floating city, very sensitive,
Speaker 1: very extraordinary. People say killed by tourists. I don't agree.
Speaker 1: The tourists. They come in and they leave, and in
Speaker 1: the morning and the evening vene see is yours? And
Speaker 1: and who who are we to say that? People can't
Speaker 1: see what we enjoy. We can't do that very much
Speaker 1: threats by climate change, very much critain by climate change.
Speaker 1: There's a big barrage being built, a very complex piece
Speaker 1: of engineering should hopefully be ready next year or the
Speaker 1: year after. So I enjoy those sorts of things. I
Speaker 1: enjoy making sure my keeping fit and I enjoy but
Speaker 1: most of all, I enjoyed the arts. So I've been
Speaker 1: you know, I've been a deputy chairman of the British Museum,
Speaker 1: chairman of the Tate Galleries, and I am chairman of
Speaker 1: the court Old Institute of Art. I adore those activities.
Speaker 1: I adore the theater. I'm chairman of the theater group
Speaker 1: called the don Mar Warehouse Theater. And I endored the opera.
Speaker 1: I always go to festivals like the Salzburg Festival and
Speaker 1: set up by you know, I'm not set up, but
Speaker 1: made of course the headlines. When carry On was alive,
Speaker 1: I saw some fantastic productions over my life, and this
Speaker 1: particularly this summer. So and I enjoy people. I I
Speaker 1: always think my late mother always said to me it's
Speaker 1: very important to talk to people, and the best way
Speaker 1: to talk to people is invite them. For dinner, and
Speaker 1: she said, and here's what you do. Number one, it's
Speaker 1: most important to have the right people, interesting people, and
Speaker 1: a mix. Number two have a great table and by
Speaker 1: that make it look beautiful. Number three have great wine,
Speaker 1: and number four maybe have some food. She said, In
Speaker 1: that order you can have a great time. That that
Speaker 1: sounds like some some good advice. Um. Speaking of advice,
Speaker 1: if a recent college grad came to you and said
Speaker 1: they were considering a career in the energy industry, what
Speaker 1: sort of advice might you give them, I would say,
Speaker 1: go into the energy industry because there are so many challenges,
Speaker 1: so still to be solved. We have to replace energy.
Speaker 1: Over the life I'm of a new graduate. You know,
Speaker 1: the energy mix will change dramatically. So it's a an
Speaker 1: and it is, of course the most important motor of civilization.
Speaker 1: Without energy, nothing can be done. I know people look
Speaker 1: at their iPhone and say, gosh, that's working in here.
Speaker 1: Actually it's working in the cloud. And the cloud is
Speaker 1: tons and tons of hardware using a vast amount of electricity.
Speaker 1: And so remember that's what we need, and that's a
Speaker 1: very important part of civilization. And in our final question,
Speaker 1: what is it that you know about the world of
Speaker 1: energy today that you wish you knew fifty years ago
Speaker 1: when you were first starting out the environmental impact. I
Speaker 1: wish I knew more about the environmental impact when I started.
Speaker 1: I could see a bit of it. I kept wondering why,
Speaker 1: you know, when I when I was working in Alaska,
Speaker 1: you could you flew in by helicopter and or plane
Speaker 1: and you could see tracing of the on the perma
Speaker 1: frost when it melted in the summer. And that was
Speaker 1: because people had just dragged equipment across the perma frost
Speaker 1: without protecting it and in some cases actually dynamited uh
Speaker 1: you know, bits of it, and so they've made big ponds.
Speaker 1: I was one of why people did that. And I
Speaker 1: remember also learning a lot when you know, the Translaska
Speaker 1: pipeline system was not built for both environmental and native rights,
Speaker 1: and it was only past eventually with a lot of
Speaker 1: compromise in these areas, correct compromise with Spiro t Agnew
Speaker 1: casting the vote in the Senate. I remember that very
Speaker 1: well because we were waiting around in Anchoring, Alaska the
Speaker 1: North Slope and in New York waiting UH for approval
Speaker 1: to get to our business, and at one point there
Speaker 1: was almost no money to pass. Wow, it was quite interesting,
Speaker 1: quite quite fascinating. Thank you so much, John for being
Speaker 1: so generous with your time. We have been speaking with
Speaker 1: Sir John Brown, former CEO of British Petroleum and author
Speaker 1: most recently of Make Think, Imagine Engineering the Future of Civilization.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this conversation, well be sure and look
Speaker 1: up an Inch or down an Inch on Apple iTunes
Speaker 1: and you can see any of the previous let's call
Speaker 1: it two hundred and sixty or so such conversations we've
Speaker 1: had over the past five years. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Go to Apple iTunes and give
Speaker 1: us a lovely review. I would be remiss if I
Speaker 1: did not thank the crack staff who helps put together
Speaker 1: this podcast tasket each week. My audio engineer this week
Speaker 1: is Nicholas Falco. My producer is Michael Boyle. Our project
Speaker 1: manager is Zatika val Brun. My head of research is
Speaker 1: Michael bat Nick. I'm Barry Retults. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio