From a poster who has requested anonymity (for background about this topic, see the 2 preceding posts):
There has been a lot of hard work done to update Mike and bring him into the modern world. I too have had experiences with “Mike” and at a minimum they are distracting and most cases unsafe. Mike and those like him are bullies, plain and simple. They may have technical skills, however their people skills are lacking. Mike doesn’t only work for Operators. I don’t think there is an appreciation of the complex people relationships that are laid over the technical issues and inevitably there are culture clashes. It appears that regardless of Transocean and the Deepwater Horizon having worked for BP, the relationships between senior BP and TO personnel was extremely disfunctional. As someone with multiple decades of experience, I was amazed that what I believed were top flight organizations appear to have not progressed out of the stone age. I’m not sure what the solution is here. The competance of all individuals expecially those in senior positions is very important, however the skill set must include more than technical competance alone. Significant time and money are spent in well control schools, but when the people involved can’t communicate, all such training doesn’t realize much benefit. It may be trite, but there needs to be a TEAM. I thought the major players had that concept in their management schemes but the recent history, at least for this incident, does not appear to indicate this. It appears there is another big task to add to the long list of items needing attention to prevent another such occurance like Macando … and Montara.
Bud's Offshore Energy (BOE) 
We use risk analysis for many procedures in designing, and constructing. One of the risk analysis methods is gathering the experts together in a documented HAZID where decisions are made – this is used for fire risk assessments, essential system survivability, etc. It is also used (or was intended to be used) to identify issues with mooring systems for deepwater units in evaluating the risk of failure of the mooring systems and thier consequences. It is amazing to me the same systems is not used for oil well drilling.
The idea would be that instead of an oil company sending info to the rig for them to carry out – that a formal documented HAZID take place (can be done electronically) where all the parties are in one space (webinar), and discuss the risks prior to proceeding. The testimony seems to indicate that Company Man typically knows only part of the story and information that was not shared with the driller; experts in areas like cementing on board may not have been able to give input to the decision process. The regulator can never have enough people to second-guess every action but could regulate the process by review of documentation both ahead of time, by auditing regularly.
Shell has a formal safety program to do this, that I am aware of, and I understand some others do, but how well that is put into place may vary from project to project, as it is not mandated by regulation.