> This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. Paul O'Neill died recently (not COVID-19 related). I don't have many business heroes. O'Neill was one of t

> This is the cost of a profound lack of leadership. Paul O'Neill died recently (not COVID-19 related). I don't have many business heroes. O'Neill was one of the them. (Andrew Grove is the other.) Here's how O'Neill turned ALCOA around when he took it over in the 80s: A few minutes before noon, O'Neill took the stage. He was fifty-one years old, trim, and dressed in gray pinstripes and a red power tie. His hair was white and his posture military straight. He bounced up the steps and smiled warmly. He looked dignified, solid, confident. Like a chief executive. Then he opened his mouth. "I want to talk to you about worker safety," he said. "Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work. Our safety record is better than the general American workforce, especially considering that our employees work with metals that are 1500 degrees and machines that can rip a man's arm off. But it's not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries." The audience was confused. These meetings usually followed a predictable script: A new CEO would start with an introduction, make a faux self-deprecating joke--something about how he slept his way through Harvard Business School--then promise to boost profits and lower costs. Next would come an excoriation of taxes, business regulations, and sometimes, with a fervor that suggested firsthand experience in divorce court, lawyers. Finally, the speech would end with a blizzard of buzzwords--"synergy," "rightsizing," and "co-opetition"--at which point everyone could return to their offices, reassured that capitalism was safe for another day. O'Neill hadn't said anything about profits. He didn't mention taxes. There was no talk of "using alignment to achieve a win-win synergistic market advantage." For all anyone in the audience knew, given his talk of worker safety, O'Neill might be pro-regulation. Or, worse, a Democrat. It was a terrifying prospect. ... Within a year of O'Neill's speech, Alcoa's profits would hit a record high. Here's an extended excerpt from Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit: http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits http://txti.es/duhigg-keystone-habits Imagine a president who came out in February, even early March, with a message like that. Imagine our response had been organized around that message: "I intend to keep all Americans safe, rich and poor, old and young. I intend to go for zero deaths."