How Jeanne Johns Keeps Calm in a Crisis

One of only a handful of women running an ASX 100 company, CEO of Incitec Pivot Jeanne Johns says the bigger the crisis, the calmer she is.

Current role: CEO, Incitec Pivot
Tenure: Five years
Age: 58
Previous roles: Head of OMS and Operations Excellence, BP; head of Safety and Occupational Risk, BP Downstream; president, Asian Olefins and Derivatives, BP.

How do you define good leadership?

Nothing really important in this world ever happens alone so leadership is all about finding how to get people galvanised about a common purpose to achieve something significant.

And what do you think your greatest strength as a leader is?

I’m very strategic so that helps in the long term but I also think it’s important to be able to express where you want to go and the steps to get there.

What would you say is your biggest gap?

The challenge is always balancing doing versus inspiring. Most of us who succeed are great doers – we have been rewarded for getting things done. But at some point, it’s not about you getting things done; it’s about helping other people get things done. We just had a board meeting and somebody junior nailed it. He showed that right balance of push back and reverence. A couple of years ago, I don’t know if he could have pulled that off. He really did a great job.

You’ve said before that you can’t run the trains – you have to show the trains where to go.

That’s right and you have to be comfortable with seeing the gap and not having to fill it. Let the organisation find that gap and fix it for themselves.

You’ve been described as a mix of serenity and steel. Do you think that’s an accurate description?

I think so. Through my long career there have been plenty of things that needed to be responded to. I’ve learnt to fight the resistance to emotionally react to them and to keep level-headed and clear headed – to absolutely not just accept things but to persevere through them all.

Do you ever get emotional at work?

Everybody does and I think it would be a shame not to get emotional at work because that’s what taps into the connection you have with other people. But it’s about channelling emotion into positive energy, showing the possibilities and not reacting to the setbacks.

You moved to Australia from the United States to take up the Incitec Pivot role in 2017. Do you feel like you’ve had to adapt your leadership style here in Australia?

I think I have. I worked for BP for many years so I was in a very British environment there but I also lived in China. In some ways it was almost easier in China because the culture was so different that you knew you had to always be aware of the cultural overlay. When you’re Anglo Saxon in an Anglo Saxon-based culture, you underestimate the differences. Americans tend to be a bit more reverenced to hierarchy and they can come off as stronger personalities. You have to scale that back a bit to be as effective in Australia.

But you were also surprised by how open and assertive people are here, weren’t you?

Everybody knows everything sometimes. I find that I just have to assume that everybody knows everything and it’s just going to happen.

You’ve been wanting to spin off the company’s fertiliser business for some time but you’ve just delayed it again. What have you learnt about patience and are you any good at it?

It depends on what it is. When it’s strategic and long-term, I’m very patient. Some of the smaller stuff can annoy me at times. I remember in the BP world, we had a stranded asset we were trying to sell but nobody wanted it at the time and my boss was just like, ‘Give it away.’ But I thought there was value there so I hung onto it and about two or three years later, the perfect opportunity came up. We walked through that window and we sold it for over $300 million instead of getting $50 million. So it pays to stick with something and make sure you get the timing right.

Let’s talk about BP. You began your career there as a chemical engineer and you’ve told me before that one of the most difficult jobs you ever had was as a refinery manager. What happened?

Well, first of all I was really young. And I was in a very male-dominated environment and a very industrial environment. Leadership when you’re across all kinds of different people in a refinery is very different. You do have to span a broader range of motivations of people and what’s important to them in that kind of setting. An hourly worker may not be as concerned about career advancement but they’re very concerned about security and that their job is there for the long haul.

You were the only female refinery manager then and you felt at times that you had to prove yourself above what a man would have to do. Do you think that’s still common now?

Yes, I still think there’s an underlying bias. I once followed a man in a job that had a lot of operational aspects to it. He was an accountant and really had no background in operations compared to me. People accepted him as being competent, whereas I had to go out there and show the people in the field that I knew what I was talking about. I had to talk about pumps and compressors and pressure readings and sampling.

You’ve also said that being six feet tall and being direct has helped you in your career. Do you think women have to overcompensate in that way sometimes?

With anything, you have to take the good with the bad. Early on at the refinery, we were trying to get the ops people to change some of their pressure readings – they just saw risk all over the place – and the boss said, “Why don’t you go in because they might have a hard time yelling at a woman?” And indeed that worked. So sometimes it can play to your advantage. While I never thought of myself as a woman – I thought of myself as an engineer who happens to be a woman – people often see the woman first and that surprises them. Understanding how you’re coming across to them is part of what you need to learn and navigate.

It’s crazy we’re still having these conversations, though, isn’t it?

When I started my career, the US had just passed an equal opportunity law and my first boss said something like, “You’re smart, you’re a woman, this is going to be a piece of cake.” I think it’s taken everybody by surprise that it’s tougher than it seems.

You’ve had a lot of operational roles throughout your career. Was that a strategic choice?

Part of it was strategic and part of it was interest. I love the operational roles because you get to see the results of your work and there’s a real satisfaction in that but then I also like the more functional and advising roles because they give you time to think and be a bit more cerebral. I try to go back and forth between the two but I do think that having those line roles are incredibly important because it’s those roles where you have the accountability and the responsibility to actually deliver something. Nothing easy is ever done on your own and those are great training grounds for the bigger jobs. Advising is good but actually being able to be on the spot and deliver helps you learn a lot.

Let’s talk about one of those learnings. In 2010 you had to deal with a significant crisis when the biggest oil spill in the world happened in Mexico. What did you learn about your capacity for crisis?

That I’m amazingly calm. The bigger the crisis, the calmer I am. I think it’s all about perspective. I learnt that early in my career when I did my first operational jobs – those roles were about safe and reliable operations day in, day out. When I got promoted into office work and economically optimising the refinery – buying the crew, selling the products – I recognised that was a lot less stressful. If I made a mistake in the office by making the wrong call, it could cost BP a million dollars. But in the BP world, a million dollars didn’t really move the dial and I could make another decision two days later and make two million back. The cost of a mistake was relatively minor. Whereas when I was in operations, the stakes were much higher. Somebody could get hurt, have a life-altering injury or worse – and that’s not reversible.

What are the biggest mistakes people make in crisis management?

In very stressful times your weaknesses always come to light so if you’re short-tempered, you’re likely to have a short temper in a crisis. The other thing people do sometimes is close down and that’s when you really have to open up. You feel vulnerable because you’re in the hot seat but you need to make sure that you bring in who you need to advise you and to help carry the load.

When you left BP after more than 25 years, you deliberately took some time out for yourself. What was the benefit of that?

Somebody told me not to jump into anything too quickly. He said, “I’ve seen so many people jump and then they pick the wrong thing.” It was the best advice I ever had. So it was really about distancing myself a bit and thinking about what I wanted in the next role and making sure I was picky. I’d been on a treadmill for a long time so my husband and I got in our car and drove across the eastern half of the United States for two months. We went anywhere we wanted to and we did hikes and historical sites and visited friends. Not having that responsibility for a while was a great refresher.

But you missed work, didn’t you?

Indeed, yes. I should have been ecstatic but I realised that I did miss work and the collective goal-setting and trying to do something together that’s pretty outstanding. So when this job came up, I thought, “Yep, I’m ready to go back in.”

I know you’re a great believer in making sure that you take jobs that make you feel a bit uncomfortable. After five years as CEO do you ever still feel uncomfortable in the role?

You’re never comfortable in this type of role – the CEO role is among the most challenging but there’s no doubt that you learn and gain perspective and you consider how you would do things over again. I still feel very challenged because the range of things that I deal with in this job is quite unique.

If you feel a little bit out of your depth, how do you cope?

My husband always says that I get very relaxed once I have a plan of action. So I try and think through how I’m going to get into action on something. And depending on how big an issue it is, there’s nothing like a good run to clear my mind of other things and to get it back to what’s essential.

Some leaders find it easier to say no than yes and others are the opposite. How do you know when to really run at opportunities and when to give them a miss?

There are always easy ones and there are always easy misses but as you’re implying, there are ones in between where you take on too much or not enough. One of the leader’s jobs is to understand how much the organisation can take on and regulate that. When you think about the opportunities, the key is, Does it actually move the dial? There’s no shortage of good things to do but how do you help focus the organisation on things that move the dial?

Is that something you’ve always naturally been good at?

I’m pretty good at it. The most challenging piece is when excited people want to do things that don’t move the dial.

But that’s the role of the CEO, isn’t it? Often you disappoint people.

Yes. I always say it’s the wrong job if you want to please everybody all the time.

What do you think are the most pressing issues for CEOs at the moment?

Post-COVID, we’re all dealing with supply chains but some of that is behind us now. As we look around the corner, everybody is asking what will happen with the economy and if the world goes into recession, are we recession-proof?

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give a brand-new CEO?

It would be something about understanding the scope of the CEO job. You’ve got a lot of stakeholders – a board, the workforce, your investors, the communities – so you need to think about the job as broadly as possible. We all come into it with a bent – some have a marketing bent, some have an operational bent, some have an M&A bent – but the job is really broad and you need to appreciate that breadth and get a great team around you.

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