New BHP boss Mike Henry: a perfect fit as CEO

Understated and intelligent, BHP’s new boss fits the profile of an executive groomed for leadership.

Mike Henry is quietly spoken in private, with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of BHP’s internal workings. Picture: Aaron Francis

Quietly spoken, fiercely intelligent and a man who actually appears to think about the answer to a question, rather than reaching immediately for the prepared line – if you were looking for a profile of someone being groomed for the top job at a major company, Mike Henry’s resume would fit the bill to perfection.

While there is still a sense that Andrew Mackenzie had unfinished business at BHP, particularly in terms of fixing its lack of a near-term growth profile, what Mr Henry’s appointment as CEO indicates is that the BHP liked what it had, and wants a bit more of the same.

Mr Henry has been a key driver of the resources giant’s most recent moves to shift BHP’s near-legendary bureaucratic mindset, in an effort to move thinking away from a traditional mining outlook – dig it up, ship it out, with process and strategy founded in geology, engineering and maintenance – to something that looks a little more like a process engineering model, focused on problem-solving and stripping out steps, as well as costs, not caring where the idea came from.

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But he’s been doing IT in an understated fashion. Mr Henry has, for example, championed sweeping changes to the company’s employment approach through the guise of BHP’s new “operational services model”, but without much mention of “industrial relations reform”.

Appointed to the top job in BHP’s all-important Australian operations in 2016, the 15-year BHP veteran has spent the last three years overseeing the company’s biggest cash generators in iron ore and coal as they entered their second post-boom phase – keeping the cost-cutting and productivity measures going, but without putting long-term operational performance at risk.

He’s also been tasked with keeping a close eye on two of BHP’s problem children – the perennially underperforming Olympic Dam mine and Nickel West, only recently returned to the fold as a core asset.

There are few within the company with a more sweeping grasp of BHP’s global operations. After joining BHP from long-time coal joint venture partner Mitsubishi in 2001, the BHP chief executive-elect has run the marketing arm of coal, energy and freight, petroleum, and then the company’s controversial Singapore marketing hub until 2015.

Mr Henry then ran BHP’s coal operations before taking the company’s top Australian job in 2016, as BHP simplified its global management structure and downgraded its asset presidents in favour of a more regional model, becoming one of a triumvirate of potential successors to Andrew Mackenzie, up against Americas boss Danny Malchuck and chief financial and strategy officer Peter Beaven.

Mike Henry, left, with BHP’s Edgar Basto, at the site of the South Flank mine in the Pilbara. Picture: Colin Murty

Quietly spoken in private, compared to some of the more flamboyant mining industry bosses in the sector, Mr Henry has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of BHP’s internal workings.

Most interviews or private conversations with him are rounded out with long pauses as he reaches into his memory for a fact or example to make a point or – and this an even more rare trait – pauses to think about a question rather than run out the prepared lines.

Those who have worked with him talk of similar experiences – any conversation about operational or financial matters is filled with penetrating questions, punctuated by pauses as he matches the answers to what he already knows, before coming back to press for more details.

While Mr Henry has not been publicly caught up in his predecessor’s recent controversy around BHP’s direction on climate change, he’s been a vigorous defender of the company line in private and the chief mover behind two of the biggest internal shifts in BHP’s culture for years.

Mr Henry has overseen the introduction of BHP’s so-called “operating system” – the company’s move to share, improve and standardise not only equipment and maintenance practises, but approaches to learning, training and problem solving across its diverse global operations.

And he has also championed BHP’s operational services internal contracting company model, controversial with unions which see it as an attempt to slide around existing collective bargaining agreements, but which Mr Henry argues is a means for BHP to demonstrate its value to the regional communities in which it works by shedding contract employees in favour of permanent internal jobs.

What remains to be seen is what his approach to future growth looks like – a key issue for BHP now Mr Mackenzie’s time is done.