Relevance
Hitting Your Goals by Knowing What Matters
Chapter One
GROWING TO LEARN
As the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon staggered toward
a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, the Iraq war spun into sectarian conflict,
and oil prices floated over seventy-five dollars a barrel, BP
(once British Petroleum) revealed it was shutting down operations
in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska-about 8 percent of U.S. petroleum
production capacity. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries eagerly announced it would make up any shortfall.
BP admitted it had not checked some of its North Slope transit
pipelines since it ran a "smart pig" corrosion-sensing device
through them in 1992. "With hindsight, that's clearly a gap in our
program," acknowledged BP corrosion management and chemicals
program team leader Bill Hedges. Ignoring the reliability
of the pipes carrying 8 percent of U.S. petroleum production is
quite a gap. By the same token, you might say forgetting about the
Russian winter was a gap in Napoleon's program.
Of course, bad things happen to good people. But BP's run of
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