Chu's Crisis Leadership

Great piece in the New York Times today about Energy Secretary Steven Chu's role in the effort to cap the BP oil well in the Gulf. It provides more evidence that in times of crisis, chain of command doesn't matter nearly as much as having smart, effective leaders in place who can react to events and push key players to take appropriate actions.

Chu doesn't have a formal role in the disaster response. Nor does he have training in oil well technology. (He's a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.) But he got involved in the response effort as a "kibitzer," and his role has gradually grown to the point where he is challenging BP engineers, floating new approaches to problems, and ultimately stepping in and making key decisions. For example, in May, he overrode BP officials and ordered a stop to the "top kill" effort to stem the leak, citing "grave concerns" that it wouldn't work. And last month, he insisted that the company make the effort to put a tighter cap on the well.

Chu has assembled an ad hoc team of scientists and engineers from the Energy Department's laboratories, other federal agencies and various universities that he consults for advice. Then, when it's time for action, he steps up.

"He is confident, he is inquisitive and he seeks views from a variety of people," Robert Dudley, the top BP official handling the response, told the Times. "He can speak with senior executives and then with subsea engineers, and ask probing questions about pressure variants and burst steel casing. He can actually interpret the data and have a very sharp engineering discussion with an expert from BP."