382 Global Ethics for Leadership
which later morphed into more conventionally named Public Affairs.
The Principles were originally in the form of a letter from Geoffrey to
the operating units of the Group around the world. Clearly they had the
support of the senior leadership of the time, the Committee of Managing
Directors, but I am sure that they emerged as a result of Geoffrey’s
commitment and persistence. An individual can have a great influence in
a corporation even if they are not at the very top.
In fact influence is often at much lower levels in major corporations.
I recall an occasion when some extremely aggressive speed bumps had
been installed at the entrance to the car park of the Shell exploration and
production offices in The Hague, so that any moderately low slung vehi-
cle tended to scrape on them. I had suggested several times that these be
lowered to a more reasonable height, to no effect. Then one day I was
being driven in from the airport by my regular driver when I noticed that
the bumps had at last been lowered. “Oh, Piet”, I said “they have low-
ered the bumps”. He replied “yes, I had a word with them a couple of
days ago”. I then knew where real power lay. Not so long after that I
was visiting the President Director General of Elf, Loïk Le Floch-
Prigent in his office in La Defence, Paris. When we left his office to go
to the airport he kindly suggested that his driver could take us. The car
was a standard black French government type Peugeot and the driver
clearly doubled as a bodyguard. All was fairly normal until we hit a traf-
fic jam and the driver reached into a glove pocket, produced a magnetic
stick-on blue light for the roof which plugged into the cigarette lighter
and turned on the siren. My colleague and I discussed whether we
should try and look sick, important or like police officers. When I got
back to Holland I told Piet that I now knew what to get him for Christ-
mas. He was horrified and pointed out that even the Queen could not do
that in Holland.
Another example of the power of individuals within large organisa-
tions was my last assistant in Shell, Barbara Baylis. We retired at the