Driving Results

7Culture: Lesson #3

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

– Peter Drucker

“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.” This is what Paul O'Neill, the new CEO of Alcoa who was brought in to turn around the old‐line manufacturing company in 1987, said to a team of Wall Street investors in a press conference. One attendee pressed him, asking what was his business strategy to improve the company's financials? O'Neill retorted, “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.”

Investors had expected O'Neill to announce some concrete business strategies that would turn around the company, such as reducing inventories to improve cash flow or the like. Rather, the new CEO focused on safety. One attendee called back to his office and advised investors to sell their stock, saying the board had hired a hippie who would kill the company.¹

Paul O'Neill did not kill the company. He put in place an extensive series of processes to focus on and improve worker safety. These processes enabled and even forced discussions throughout the ranks, in many cases up to him personally, on how safety could be improved. It worked. Over time, employees at every level started speaking up and talking about how they could improve workplace safety. But then, ...