The following is an excerpt from my book Mighty: 7 Skills You Need to Move from Pandemic to Progress. To purchase copies for your entire team, click HERE or on the image provided.
Many business leaders have discovered the impact of physical health on their company’s bottom line and overall culture. One such leader is Paul O’Neill, former CEO of Alcoa. When O’Neill became CEO of Alcoa in 1987, the company was facing significant challenges. Wall Street had serious concerns about the company’s revenue projections and profit margins. In his first address to shareholders, O’Neill did little to install confidence a turnaround was possible. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
In what would become a legendary speech in business circles, O’Neill said, “I want to talk to you about worker safety.” Worker safety? Of all the issues he could talk about, worker safety? Investors immediately began selling off their shares.
O’Neill attempted to ease their concerns by reasoning, “If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our workplace safety figures. If we bring our injury rates down, it won’t be because of cheerleading or the nonsense you sometimes hear from other CEOs. It will be because the individuals at this company have agreed to become part of something important: They’ve devoted themselves to creating a habit of excellence.”
Organizational leaders can learn the following from O’Neill’s “how you do anything is how you do everything” approach:
- Successful leaders are laser-focused on the key success links of the organization.
- Smart leaders are data driven.
- Even smarter leaders know which data is most important and how to leverage that information.
- Cheerleading moves emotions but rarely the bottom line. Standards move the bottom line.
- There is a lot of nonsense being done by leaders.
- One of the goals of leadership is to create something “bigger than myself” which people can buy into.
- Successful organizations have created a culture of excellence.
- Successful organizations know worker safety and other health items are reflective of your culture of excellence.
What were the results of O’Neill’s efforts? When he retired after thirteen years as Alcoa’s CEO and chairman, the company’s net income increased 500 percent! If you are looking to become a successful leader, the lessons learned from O’Neill’s time at Alcoa provide you a quality template.
