Lead like you give a damn

Welcome to Part 1 of Lead Like You Give a Damn, a 4-part series on becoming an effective leader at home, at work, and everywhere in between.

The Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) was in trouble. Profits were tumbling, the workforce was unhappy, and product quality was slipping.

The board fired their CEO, and brought in an outsider named Paul O’Neill to take the helm.

Naturally, investors demanded a meeting.

They packed into a plush Manhattan hotel ballroom, pens ready, waiting to hear the new guy’s master plan for cost-cutting, profit margins, and revenue growth.

O’Neill walked up to the podium, looked at the crowd of hungry investors, and said:

“I want to talk to you about worker safety. Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries.”

The room went dead silent.

One investor raised his hand and asked about inventories. O’Neill shut him down:

“I’m not certain you heard me. If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our workplace safety figures.”

The investors literally ran out of the room to find payphones. They called their clients and shouted, “The board put a crazy person in charge! Sell all your Alcoa stock right now!”

To them, focusing on safety instead of profits meant he didn’t care about the bottom line.

But O’Neill knew his “Why.”

He realized that you cannot transform an organization by yelling about spreadsheets. You transform it by focusing on a habit that brings everyone together. Making aluminum is dangerous.

By making safety his absolute, non-negotiable priority, he was telling the frontline workers: “I give a damn about your life.”

Anyone can say safety is a priority, but O’Neill proved it.

A year later, a plant manager in a highly profitable division failed to report a safety hazard. Even though this manager was bringing in millions of dollars, O’Neill fired him immediately.

He also bypassed his own executives and gave out his direct office number to the floor workers, telling them to call him personally if management ever ignored a safety hazard.

Because the workers finally believed their leadership actually gave a damn about them, the entire culture shifted.

Trust skyrocketed.

And because they were communicating better about safety, they started communicating better about everything else, too: process improvements, quality control, and efficiency.

When Paul O’Neill retired 13 years later, Alcoa’s safety rate was one of the best in the world.

And as for those investors who sold their stock?

They missed out.

During O’Neill’s tenure, Alcoa’s annual net income rose by 500%, and its market capitalization grew by $27 billion.

1. Identify your #1 non-negotiable core value. Paul O’Neill chose safety. Grab a piece of paper and write down one single word that defines your absolute, non-negotiable core value for your family or your team.

   • Examples: Honesty, Growth, Respect, Accountability.

2. Let everyone you lead know about it. Let your team, family, staff, or company know that this is the new standard you will all be living and working by moving forward. Get everyone on the same page. If everyone you lead is in total alignment, everything will rise across the board.

See you in Part 2,
—Dean