Welcome And Guest Introduction

Tom Mueller 0:06

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. On this podcast, we talk all things crisis management with an emphasis on storytelling from leaders from the front lines of crisis management. I'm Tom Mueller. Thanks for joining us again today. So happy to have you along with us. Hey, if you want to email the show, you can drop me a line at Tom at LeadingInAcrisis.com. Love to hear from you. Love to hear your comments on the show or any suggestions you might have for future guests. So thanks again for being with us. On the show today, we have a very interesting guest, someone I've known for probably 30 years or so, but who has a very storied career in media and public affairs. And my guest today is Ruth Rendone. Now, Ruth has worked her share of crisis incidents during her career, including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She no doubt has some interesting stories to share with us. Ruth, welcome to the podcast.

Ruth Rendon 1:17

Thanks, Tom. Pleasure to be here.

Ruth’s Path From Journalism To Energy

Tom Mueller 1:19

Hey, if you don't mind, just take a moment and give us a quick thumbnail review of your sort of career trajectory from being a crack news reporter all the way up to corporate communications.

Ruth Rendon 1:34

Sure. So I uh started with uh attending the University of Texas and received a journalism degree. And straight from college, I was um with the Associated Press, uh covering state legislature in Austin and then moved to Houston. And I've been in Houston ever since. Um and then after a short time there, I moved to the Houston Chronicle covering all things sports, business, um you name it. And then uh made the jump in 2008, uh, left the the newspaper industry and joined BP in Texas City and had a lot of interaction with our uh North American uh group in Houston. Um and then following Deepwater, uh BP sold the refinery in Texas City. So I then went on to um work with Marathon Petroleum, who bought the refinery. Um, and most recently I was with Sabik, a diversified chemical chemical company based in Saudi Arabia. And but I worked in Houston for that as well.

Tom Mueller 2:43

Okay, so you've uh you've covered a lot of territory and you know moved between companies. It's sort of fascinating when you get sold with an asset that is being divested by a company, and you're you're kind of like, wait a minute.

Ruth Rendon 3:01

Wait a minute.

Tom Mueller 3:03

And uh but it you know uh it ends up being the start of a new adventure.

Ruth Rendon 3:09

Absolutely.

Reporter Skills That Power Corporate Comms

Tom Mueller 3:10

You never know how these things are gonna go. Um it's and I'm I'm sort of fascinated, Ruth. One of the things that um that uh I'm fascinated. Well, let me let me start with this your skills as a reporter. I also started as a reporter working at the Galveston Daily News down in South Texas. Yes, and I think you and I first met. It could have been at incidents where there was common coverage, or it might even have been when I was working down at Texas City at the big refinery and you were covering incidents for the Houston Chronicle. Uh, we'll talk about working in a refinery environment a little bit. But hey, tell talk to me about the skills of a newspaper reporter. And uh, you know, does that help you when you move into a corporate communications role? And how so?

Ruth Rendon 4:04

Oh, absolutely. I think when you're a reporter, you're kind of a landman show, right? I mean, you're a general reporter. Everybody wants to say they're an investigative reporter. Well, you investigate every day. You just don't have the the timeline to spend months on a project. It's a 5 p.m. deadline or whatever your deadline is every day. So it really makes you very resourceful. Um it makes you an ace at networking and finding that subject matter expert that you need that you can talk to and that they trust you to share the information that you need. Um, and so with that, you kind of delve into everything, right? From local school board meetings to city council meetings, the county government, you know, state agencies, NASA, I mean, it's everything. So you're really a jack of all trades and know who who to go to. So when you jump, when I, you know, and so part of my job at the Chronicle was covering part of Galveston County that included Texas City. So when I joined BP, basically supporting the refinery in Texas City, it was for me, it was an easy transition because I already knew all the key stakeholders. Uh, they knew me. Um, and it went from having to sell myself to someone as a, you know, being the reporter to trust me. I then was the representative for the company because I was hired as a community relations um director. And it was in the aftermath of a horrible explosion that I covered for the Chronicle. And then three years later I joined BP. Um, so it was it was, you know, I needed, I had to um same same kind of of um skill set of trust. Um, you know, the um networking, just networking, all of that played played a big role.

Tom Mueller 6:09

Um and we're on the chamber of commerce side at this point, rather.

Ruth Rendon 6:13

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, all that just fell into place. And and so for me, it was very easy. Um, a lot of changes in that it wasn't as fast-paced for me of a de daily deadline and not like, oh yeah, we I need to write something for internet space, but it wasn't like I need it by three. It was get it to me when you can.

Tom Mueller 6:40

You know, you know, I had a um um, I did a similar thing, right? I jumped from being a newspaper reporter covering industry to going to work for industry. And I found that uh some of the local mayors in the local communities were a little suspicious of me when I started showing up at different meetings in a corporate communications role rather than being a sort of investigative newspaper guy. And it took a while for them to sort of get over that, and then they sort of took glee in sending reporters to me to ask about difficult questions. So they they got their uh revenge there.

Why Field Experience Beats Headquarters

Ruth Rendon 7:20

Yeah, okay.

Tom Mueller 7:21

Well, that's um that's good. How did you like working um in a in a refinery setting? And I I ask you this because when I talk to younger people in energy companies uh about career path, I always say you should get out to the field and you know, learn the business from the ground up and you know, do some networking there, but get out. And oh, I find there's a real hesitancy to doing that with some of the younger staff today. What's your experience?

Ruth Rendon 7:53

I would agree with you. Um, you know, you're young, you want to go to the clubs on the weekend and meet up with your friends and stuff, and you get out to these smaller communities or in the suburbs, and you know, there's not that much for young people to do. Um so, but on the flip side, the the job career-wise, it's awesome. I mean, I would I totally agree with you. I would totally recommend for somebody to do that. You go into refinery, it forces you to learn the business, right? You as the media rep, community rep, whatever, you can't explain to those stakeholders what's going on unless you know what's going on. And the only way to do that is how does it work? What happens when the crude comes into the refinery? What different processes occur? What are the different units? What do they do? You know, all of that. It's so important. And it's I found it fascinating. Um, and I had to laugh at myself, just a little side note, Dom. Uh, I had to laugh at myself because when I was a reporter and there was a you know some kind of incident at any plant, whether it was BP, Deer Park, the Shell and Deer Park, I would always ask, is the plant shut down? And then when I joined the corporate ranks, I was like, that is the stupidest question you could ask. Because it's not like you just flip a switch, right? Right. Maybe that unit is down, but everything else is running, right? And so I always laugh at myself for that.

Jargon Traps And Clear Messaging

Tom Mueller 9:22

These are very complex um operating facilities. And, you know, until you sort of get in there and work at one, you have no idea. And um uh gosh, and there's so much, you know, when you think about uh crisis management, crisis response. Um, boy, when you've got you know high-temperature hydrocarbons moving through pipelines, moving through processing units, uh, there's always the potential for something to happen, for a small leak to occur, which becomes a fire, which becomes thick clouds of black smoke roiling into the sky, and helicopters overhead, newspaper reporters bugging you. Um, any particular uh stories that come to mind from that, uh from your time working in the in the refining area?

Ruth Rendon 10:16

Well, I will say this. Um, you know, again, coming from the newspaper world, um, early on, like I'm talking maybe a month or two of being at BP, my boss and one of my colleagues were out of town, and I was it when it came to corporate affairs. And sure enough, we had a little hiccup. It wasn't much, but it was still a hiccup. So had to be proactive and write that holding statement in case we had any media calls, and it involved a tank. Um, and um, so you know, again, being the reporter, you you're inquisitive, and so you it's good to ask those questions of those subject matter experts once you get there, right? Uh, how does it work? What does it do? Whatever. So I asked this gentleman, um, so was there a crude in the tank? And he said, No, we just de-inventoried it. And I'm like, what de-inventory? Yeah, we had just you know drained it. It was empty. Okay, well then let's say it's empty, you know, so you really have to watch for those, you know, lingo that's normal within the fence line, but not anywhere outside, you know, and all the acronyms and all the nicknames, and you know, heck, I found that even with people, you know. We could we know, oh, you need to ask Pine Knot, who that was just somebody's nickname, but he was well well known. So you're gonna like, who is he? And then trying to find him in the directory. Well, he's not listed as Pine Knight. So, you know, just things like that. That was um, I was found amusing, but it shows the the camaraderie, that everybody knows each other, they depend on each other. So that was a really cool thing. But back to your original question, it's I I would highly recommend, you know, go out there. Those same people that you meet and and learn from at the refineries, they don't stay there. A lot of them don't stay there their whole career. So if even if you were there for a few years and then moved to the corporate office, those same people are now going to be climbing the ranks elsewhere. And you always have, again, that networking um going throughout your career. And you know, they end up being good friends, people that you can depend on. Hey, I this is going on. Who who can I call? And they're a good resource for you.

Tom Mueller 12:39

Yeah, I remember that um, you know, the the guys, uh, well, the men and women who were sort of young engineers cutting their teeth in the refinery settings there, you know, 20 years later, they're vice presidents, right? Or general managers. And when something comes up and you suddenly need to talk to the the VP of this area, it's like, oh yeah, I remember you from Texas City or from that field job. You know, it's those kind of things stay with you and uh really valuable for you.

Ruth Rendon 13:10

Yep. Yep.

Culture Shifts: BP To Marathon To SABIC

Tom Mueller 13:11

You brought up an interesting uh issue just around jargon, where your your field engineer there talked about deinventorying the tank. And of course, that's something that communications people around the world sort of have to deal with in their particular industries, right? As we all have this language that we use inside the company or inside the agency, which folks outside really may not understand. And so your communications people have to be translators to make sure that we can explain in you know, in real human terms what's happening out there, and that could be such a challenge, but I think working in a technical facility like that really, you know, it gives you the opportunity to practice that if you have to.

Ruth Rendon 14:02

And and Tom, adding to that, you kind of have to do that too when you do internal messaging, because those folks that work in the offices and don't get out into the field, they don't know either, right? And so I always made it a point like whatever that acronym was, spell it out, you know, do that AP style, spell it out first, first, you know, a pass and then second reference, just do the acronym. But um, and it was difficult many times to even find out what those what that acronym stood for. So yeah.

Tom Mueller 14:39

Well, now you um you went from BP uh after a time and joined SABIC, which is a Saudi uh chemical company. Um, how was your uh you know your transition? And actually, in fact, you transitioned from BP to marathon, then marathon. I'm I'm sorry, from yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Ruth Rendon 15:03

BP to BP to marathon and then ended up at SABIC.

Tom Mueller 15:07

So talk to us a little bit about transitions between those. And did you find particularly like just within the energy field, going from BP to marathon, was that an easy cultural transition or did you find very different between the two companies?

Deepwater Horizon: First Deployments

Ruth Rendon 15:25

Um you know, I guess the easy part was that uh refinery is a refinery, right? You operate it basically the same way. It starts here, it goes through this process, that process, and it ends up being, you know, the the end product. Um, but it was a very different um setting in that I worked for BP, which was a global energy company from you know downstream, upstream, solar, wind, you name it, to marathon and based in London, to Marathon Petroleum, that was a totally downstream business, US based in Finlay, Ohio. So it was very different, right? You know, the the travel, you know, as far as going to London and all these, you know, exotic places to Finley, Ohio, to Garryville, Louisiana, you know, they're they're just more homegrown type thing, right? Been it been in existence forever. Um, and it's a good, really good company, but it was very, very different in how they managed that, even how they managed their incidents, right? Um, whereas BP had a team, they had an instant, what they called the IMT, the incident management team, which was a group of people that if something happened, you got a page or you know, you got called and you know, we did the job, whatever that incident was. And that allowed the leadership team, the plant manager and the other leaders to continue operating the plant. Marathon was uh different in that if there was a hiccup, the leadership team at the plant were your leaders on the incident management team. So it's just a little, a little different. Um, and then the corporate-wise, um, and again, BP, if there was an incident, that local team handled it. And in Marathon, if it was something local that the local team um, you know, was going to be um long term, then they would bring in their corporate uh team from that was established in Finlay, Ohio. Of course, that would take a while for them to get here. Um Finlay is two hours south of Detroit and you know, two hours from Columbus, Ohio. So, you know, transport is a little different unless you took the corporate jet. So it was a lot of a lot of different different things. But in the end, again, the refinery is a refinery. You're gonna have the same byproduct um throughout. Um, and then moving to Sabic, so that was um again more manufacturing in very small towns across the US. Um it was Saudi based. So um it was when I joined, I have to admit, I was a little hesitant just because of all the you know media reports about women in the in KSA and you know, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and all that stuff. But my tenure there was awesome. I have never had as many opportunities. I had more opportunities there than anywhere else in my career. Um, the folks, my colleagues in in Saudi Arabia were wonderful, very respectful, friendly, engaging. I just couldn't say enough good things about that. Um and incidents were a little different in that um luckily that we didn't have that many that were, you know, needed to be elevated. So that was good. Yeah.

Standing Up Command Posts Fast

Tom Mueller 19:06

Yeah, that's always helpful, right? When keep the product in the pipeline so that we don't have to deal with an angry public or lawsuits or all the other things that go with that. Well, that's that's a fascinating career history. Uh, and I'm so happy to hear that uh when you're working with SABIC, you had lots of opportunities. Um, I was with you there once or twice doing some training and was always impressed with the caliber of people um that we worked with there. So it was just perfect. Okay. Um boy, you know, I wanted to talk a little bit about um your tenure with BP. And uh we both worked that uh oil spill called the Deepwater Horizon back in in 2010. And um, you know, so many lessons learned and stories that came out of that incident. And uh I just wanted to kind of you know tap your brain a little bit um because as I think back on this, you know, when when I deployed into this spill was like on day, well, it was day one, but day three, I got on a jet and flew to New Orleans and um basically worked there for the next five months. Uh, but working up in the headquarters, uh, the command post there in north of New Orleans, where the cabinet secretaries from the Obama administration were gathered, where the Coast Guards lead response, where the BP senior executives were based who were working the response. And I spent most of my time there working at that level, but you moved around quite a bit out in field locations there and had a kind of a different experience. So tell us a little bit about um kind of where you deployed initially and kind of how that progressed for you.

Ruth Rendon 20:56

Sure. So I vividly remember a picture on the front page of the Houston Chronicle about the rig and went, it's Transocean, you know, not us. And then two days later, I'm in New Orleans. Um, so uh, and I think it's because there were we had so much training in incident management and crisis situations at the refinery that not just myself, but many of my colleagues at the refinery were called up to um head to to New Orleans or to Louisiana right off the bat. So my first uh gig was at the Coast Guard station in New Orleans. Um I got there the day the rig sank. Um you know, I just vividly remember being there, and um it was me and one other person from BP that had the night shift. So we were there, you know, overnight. And already, you know, we knew it was just this was gonna be massive, right? Just how do you trying to wrap our head around that? So Um, once and then once there, I was only there about a day or two, and then we drove to Homa, Louisiana, which is where BP has its uh training uh center for all the offshore folks.

Tom Mueller 22:12

And it's a big emergency response center to deal with offshore oil spills, right? They're set up in Homa to do that. And you dropped into that. What did you see when you landed there?

Building Information Pipelines With Communities

Ruth Rendon 22:23

Uh a lot of moving pieces. And everybody was just like, it it was really truly a sight to see because you had experienced people just hitting the ground running, like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You're gonna do that, you're gonna do that, you know. And so I I I found it fascinating that they could uh set up that quickly. Um, and I was there a few days, which allowed me to kind of meet all the players because being in that PIO uh role at the time, um, you know, again, it's important to know what's going on. So I would visit all the different um teams to know what's going on.

Tom Mueller 23:04

Um the sections within the incident management team, right? The operation section, logistics section. Everybody, if you're not familiar with the incident management um system or the incident command system, uh do a little research on that because it it is a well-oiled machine when you really implement it to do some a major response like this.

Ruth Rendon 23:27

Yeah, and it works. Yeah, and so yeah, so so I was able to gather a lot of information uh there. Then um I came home after being there maybe a week or so, and got home mid-morning, and I think at two o'clock in the afternoon got another call from somebody saying, Can you come to Homa? I'm like, I just left. You know, so from the the BP side, I think we were trying to figure out where is everyone, where can they we deploy them, you know, uh mapping out where the different centers were gonna be throughout the Gulf Coast. And so um I went back the next day, got to sleep in my bed one night, went back the next day, did some additional training, and then drove to Mobile, Alabama on a Thursday. And my uh former boss, Neil Geary, um who has passed away, sadly. Um, but he and I were there, and so we helped set up the incident command at the Mobile Convention Center. And then um again hit the ground running. There was no procrastinating involved, and then that was on a Thursday, Friday afternoon. Vividly remember driving to Baldwin County, like the Orange Beach area, beautiful part of Alabama, um, and meeting with 200, it seemed like 200 people were there, elected officials, key stakeholders in the community, things of that sort. I gave them the update as best I could of what was going on, and then they just peppered me with questions. And I didn't know three-quarters of the of answers, didn't have them.

Tom Mueller 25:08

So what I think things were developing rapidly here, right? We had oil spilling into the goal from a blown-out well, and the fact that you went from HOMA to uh mobile just showed the response was growing over time, right? We were opening new command posts out along the coast, and you were sort of the tip of the spear then getting into mobile and getting that started up, but the information flow wasn't quite a well-oiled machine yet.

Health Concerns, Uncertainty, And Trust

Ruth Rendon 25:39

Right. And and at that point, you know, we we didn't have WhatsApp, we didn't have uh Teams, things of that sort. So I gathered the names, you know, everybody that was there and their contact information. And um the next day we started twice a day uh phone updates, set up an 800 number. Um, and so they would call in and we'd give an update, and then they would bombard us with questions. Again, if we knew the answers, great. If we didn't, you know, um met again at five o'clock that afternoon, same process. Update, ask questions. And this went on for like maybe four days where um we gave an update and they asked questions. After about four days, there were no questions being asked because we were being we were providing them with the information that they needed. Things like, you know, what's the plan? Where um where's the boom gonna be laid or where has it been laid? Um, what are you gonna do to help us with tourism? What are you gonna do? You know, anything that came up. And you know, we had questions like what I tell my constituents who are asthmatic when the oil comes in, you know, is the are the fumes of this oil, you know, gonna affect them. We didn't know.

Tom Mueller 26:58

Right. I didn't know. Well, there were lots of potential health effects or at least concerns about it, right? But you see that echoed in any major incident. Um, you think about the train derailment up in East Palestine a couple of years ago where you had just overturned tank cars burning, black smoke. The communities are concerned about health impacts. Yeah, and that's something we really weren't prepared to talk to, as you've said, but it is something from a broader perspective that you know, if you work in an extractive industry, uh, oil and gas mining or even transportations, railroads, these are issues that you're likely going to face from a communications perspective if you have an incident.

Ruth Rendon 27:43

Yeah, very much so. I I know that I always carried, and I again, this so long ago, but there was a little orange book that I used to carry that had the names of all the chemicals and like what the side effects were if you came in contact with it and things of that sort. So that was like my little my little Bible for things like that. Um, and so you know, again, I was able, we were able to give them as much information as we could. And I remember that initial meeting, um, I think I was able to share a lot more than usual because I had been in HOMA and because I had visited with the ops team and the this team and that team to know what the plans were, right? They want to know, well, where are you gonna be based? Well, we're gonna be at this beach uh in Mobile, we're gonna be at this beach here, you know. So I kind of just had all those locations. And if I had a question about said location, well, guess what? I need to call Kenny, who was my buddy from Texas City, who now was over that. You know, that again, networking goes a long way. Um, so yeah, so that was that was um it was it was interesting.

Vetting Grants And Responsible Giving

Tom Mueller 28:56

It was interesting now, Ruth. We had uh gosh, we had just been through major staff cuts in the year prior to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill coming in. And we had, as I recall, cut about 40% of the communications staff um in the US. And so we went into this kind of shorthanded. Um, so that's just a highlight for uh you executives out there who question the value of your communications teams. Um, you know, we ended up hiring back uh on a temporary basis a lot of the people we had laid off, yeah, and then reaching out and grabbing consultants from all over the place to help staff up for this ever-growing response. But you know what, Ruth, one of the things it's interesting is we train people to be in situations like this, it's very difficult to sort of identify personalities and to know who is going to do well in crisis situations. And I'm wondering, you know, uh, did you have different experiences with that people you were working with who just weren't cut out to deal with the chaos and the you know the absolute wall-to-wall energy that's required in a big crisis?

Ruth Rendon 30:17

Yeah, unfortunately, yes. Um, and and it's just different personalities, right? I mean, again, I go back to being a reporter, you you know, you're thrown to the wolves. Go do, right? And that's kind of how this is, right? It's there a lot of ambiguity. It's not black and white. I woke up every day and there was, you know, 15 fires to put out of this person needing that, or this, you know, meeting this person, that person, whatever. Um, so yeah, it takes it takes, um, I don't know how to describe the type of person, but it's you've got to have stamina, you've got to just have that get it done mentality, the figure it out, common sense, um, connect the dots.

Tom Mueller 31:02

Making sense out of chaos, right?

Ruth Rendon 31:04

Uh-huh.

Tom Mueller 31:05

Comes back to your reporter days, I think, too, where you've, you know, you've got to, you know, sort of assess what's happening in in a particular meeting, what's the news here? What should I focus on? I think that's also um good training for that. And but I I have I saw that a couple times where you know I've had people who were bringing me problems. And instead of figuring out solutions, they would just come with a new problem every day, like, don't know how to do this, this isn't working. And what you need is people who can find solutions, right? Who see a problem, you know, identify it, crystallize it, figure out how do we deal with this. Now let's move on to the next one, right? And not get hung up in that. So I'm sorry, you you were saying.

Who Thrives In Crisis Environments

Ruth Rendon 31:50

Oh no, just the same. Um, you know, after after being in Mobile, I then transferred to Mississippi. So there were three coastal counties in Mississippi, and I oversaw the like the community relations um aspect of it, um, backup media person. Um, but again, it was do everything. A lot of uh CSR work um were there's that jargon thing coming in. Yeah, so and it's different for different companies. So Sabic is CSR, corporate social responsibility. It's basically the your foundation or how you're gonna dole out money into the community and for what causes and things of that sort. And it's usually pretty um iron cut as far as you know, the company supports ABC. And so we're gonna give to organizations that support ABC, right? It's a two-way street, but um there's that. This all of that kind of went out the window um with Deep Water Horizon because we were dealing with so many different um um nonprofits that were being impacted or that were helpful um in our case and things of that sort. And you kind of you have to be a doubles advocate as well, Tom. Just like question people like you want what, you know, or what that you know, somebody that just doesn't make sense.

Tom Mueller 33:14

You got to use your gut instincts to you're in a difficult situation there, right? Because you're representing the company that's responsible for this oil spill. People are angry at you, and yet you're still pushing back, asking questions about what they want to do with a $10 million grant for.

Training That Actually Works

Ruth Rendon 33:33

Yes, yes. So I did have that with a national organization. I had was introduced to them one day, and then a few days later I got a packet from them asking for several million dollars for case management. That was like the buzzwords, case management at the time. And it was to focus on the Vietnamese uh shrimpers um because they obviously were impacted, not being able to shrimp um because of the impending oil reaching the coastline. And so it was a well thought out um plan, and we're like, okay. And then I just asked, okay, and they were gonna bring in people from across the country to support this. So I'm like, okay, of all these people that you're bringing in, how many speak Vietnamese? None of them. Well, oops, yeah. So it was those kind of questions. So you have to kind of treat it with kid glove, because like you said, you are representing the company that is causing this problem, but on the flip side, you've got to be responsible for your you've got to be the best steward of the money that your company is is putting you responsible for. And that's and I tried to do that.

Tom Mueller 34:54

Yeah, I'm really happy to hear that story, Ruth, because there was, I mean, there was a lot of good being done by local organizations, but there was also a lot of corruption. Yes. A lot of money being siphoned away by people who didn't necessarily have the best interests of the community at heart. And it's very difficult in a crisis setting like that, when things are moving fast, you're trying to help people to really be able to parse through some of those things. So I'm really glad to hear you were able to hold the line a little bit and at least ask tough questions, get people to go back, rethink their approach, maybe come back with a stronger proposal on that.

Ruth Rendon 35:35

Right.

Tom Mueller 35:37

Hey, I want to talk to you just uh briefly, Ruth, about uh crisis training. Uh, because you had talked about when you landed in Homa, Louisiana for that first deployment, that boy, the team there was just up and running. People knew their roles, uh, they knew what they were doing. Uh, but that doesn't happen automatically, right? That requires a lot of training. Uh, tell us a little bit about the training that you received or went through in your time there. This would have been, you know, with with BP.

Leaders As Spokespeople And Drills

Ruth Rendon 36:11

Sure. Um, I would say, first off, um, you know, when I joined BP, it was after the the incident where, you know, 15 contractors died in Texas City, right? So they brought in a lot, you know, they were rebuilding the plant, and it was an eye-opener of like, we've got to get our act together and we've got to get um be ready, you know, if something never, hopefully nothing like that would happen again, right? Tragically at the site. And so there was a lot of training when it came to the incident command system, that IMT setting, the different uh operations and you know, the logistics and all that. Um and that was great because that's again, that networking, you met different people from throughout the refinery who had different skill sets, things of that sort. That also would help me down the line if I ever had a media call about a particular thing. I knew who those subject matter experts were. So that that helped. That was a little side note on that. From a media PIO perspective, um, BP had a great um training called Super Voice. I remember doing it. It was like a week long, and it was a little bit of everything where one day you were um setting up a press conference and you were the spokesperson. The next day you were in the audience asking questions of that spokesperson. We got trained for TV interviews, we got trained for radio interviews, we got trained for media and print interviews, all of them, all of a media, but different. Um, so it was, I think they did a great job of preparing us um as best we could. And and it it helped because then that way, like at Deepwater, I could fill in when my colleague that was overseeing media, you know, went home for a few days, I stepped in and did that. Um and I again, like we were talking earlier about uh working at a smaller site, you know, at a at a at a site versus a corporate office. That training, working at that site also makes you kind of be more of a jack of all trades. So when I hit the ground running for deep water, I could easily do the media, I could handle the community aspect of it, I could handle visiting with the governor, I you know, because I had already done that.

Tom Mueller 38:37

Right. Or writing, writing after the press release.

Ruth Rendon 38:41

Yeah, it was it was everything. You kind of got a little bit of everything. So um, yeah, it was it was good.

Tom Mueller 38:49

Yeah, so that's a good nod to just the training aspects of this, and particularly uh extractive industry, certainly oil and gas, spend a lot of money on training people. And then it's just a matter of you. You came up kind of in the refinery setting, you had to translate over to the exploration and production setting, yeah, which has its own set of jargon in that, which you know, we'll save that conversation for another episode. Uh, because boy, there's some funny things that happened with some of our uh, you know, the words and jargon that we used during that. Yes. Um that got a lot of uh pokes from Saturday Night Live and others, and rightfully so.

Ruth Rendon 39:32

Yeah, and Tom, let me add to that aside from my training, um, there was a lot of training for our leaders, for those subject matter experts, um, so they too could be prepared when dealing with not only media, but with the community, you know, because we set I set up I don't know how many town halls and community meetings, and our leaders stepped up and did a fabulous job because they had been trained. So um that's always very important. As a reporter, you know, you always, you know, want the information and initially it will come from your PIO, right? The company PIO. Well, if it's ongoing, after a couple of days, um, I don't want to hear from you, the PIO. I want to hear from the CEO, I want to hear from the plant manager, I want to hear from the whoever's in charge of whatever happened. Um, so it's very important that not just you individually, as the media spokesperson, be trained, but those leaders within your company as well.

Tom Mueller 40:38

Yeah, excellent point there, Ruth. Excellent point. And um yeah, it's okay, you executives out there and subject matter experts, talk to your public information people and get yourself some media training because it could be you soon. And well go ahead, Ruth.

Ruth Rendon 40:57

The other thing, uh, you and I both at BP, how many drills did we do, right? And when you talk about spending money and training, we did so many drills that were company wide that were, you know, so valuable. Um, again, not just for the drill itself, but to meet new people, you know, make those connections from other locations, um, subject matter experts, things of that sort. And that helps in the long run. You know, if you work at plant A and something happens at a plant, another plant, you could easily be called up to help, right? And so you kind of know those folks.

Closing And Listener Contact

Tom Mueller 41:36

All right, Ruth. Well, I feel like we could talk for two more hours on this, but uh our listeners are wondering how long is this gonna go today, Tom? So we'll we'll stop here for now. We'll have you back to have some more fun conversations.

Ruth Rendon 41:50

Thanks so much for thank you so much for having me.

Tom Mueller 41:54

And that's gonna do it for this episode of the Leading in a Crisis Podcast. Thanks again for being with us this time. Again, if you want to reach out to me, uh, you can drop an email to Tom at Leadinginacrisis.com. And we'll see you again soon for another episode. Take care.