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convinced that the company had to lower its impact on the environment and began positioning the group to succeed in the posthydrocarbon world. Seven years later, BP is the world’s largest producer of solar panels. It has also invested heavily in alternative and renewable energy projects and has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions while raising its energy output every year for the past decade. Management style Browne’s management style is characterized by attention to problem solving, recruiting and managing the best talent of his generation to work for him, and wielding the power that he possessed as chief executive with a comparatively light touch. His friend Peter Hennessy argued that Browne ran BP “like a research scientist” and Browne himself admitted as much. “I have great satisfaction in solving problems,” he once said. “I have great satisfaction in exciting, different and new things. And that’s why, at the beginning, I tried to find exciting things to do, challenging problems, things which were a bit more difficult to solve. If driving for that sort of thing is ambition, then that’s a definition of ambition.”7 One of Browne’s most impressive characteristics as a leader, and one that was evident when we interviewed him, is his tremendous clarity of thought. He is able crisply and persuasively to frame complex geopolitical and business issues at will. His success at recruiting and managing talent, moreover, is evidenced by the fact that his succession was always an internal issue, despite the troubles that BP encountered after the Texas refinery explosion toward the end of his tenure as chief executive. It was also probably not a coincidence that his successor, Tony Hayward, came from the same exploration and production path that Browne had himself taken at BP. Browne maintains the intense interest in developing the next generation of talent that he exhibited at BP; he continues to be active in addressing people early in their careers. His clarity of thought is matched by an impressive ability to inspire people at these events.