What BP Can Learn From LeBron

1. Don't over-communicate. Just because people want to know what you're up to doesn't mean you have to satisfy them. Keep them guessing. They won't go away in the meantime.

2. Extend the time period when all you're doing is seriously analyzing the situation. It's a "process." Did anybody count the number of times LeBron used the phrase, "the process," or "this process," as in, "This process has been everything I thought it would be," or "I took this process very seriously." Aside from building suspense, which is just good strategy for any product, it also made his eventual action seem well-considered, thoughtful, responsible, and certainly not all about the money. BP(BP) bumbled immediately into first under-estimating and then simply mangling its analysis of the situation. They would have been better served by engaging in a LeBronian "process." Tony Hayward could have said, "There are a number of solutions to this thing, but I'll be honest with you, we've never encountered this kind of crisis before, it's very complicated, and we're not going to jump to conclusions before we go through the right process."

3. Which brings us to another important thing that LeBron got right and Hayward did not. For the most part, I believe that LeBron, like all world-class athletes, defaulted to the first person plural, utilizing "we" instead of "I" when discussing his decision. "We" had engaged in the process. There was a lot of "we" throughout the staged event. Contrast this to Tony Hayward, who was all about HIS life, often abandoning his proper role as a faceless bureaucrat and investing his appearances with way too much individuality. LeBron never departed from his anointed role as a professional athlete behaving pretty much as required and expected.

4. Never communicate through unstructured channels. LeBron certainly realized that a real group of sports reporters and cold, critical bloggers and journalists would eat him for lunch as soon as he announced his decision. So he gave the exclusive interview to ESPN, which managed it like a video event -- part national election, complete with colored map, and part marketing circus, with snazzy graphics, logos, sound packages, and a long run-up to the event itself, which didn't even come on until 9:22.