One Leader's Approach to Communications

In January 2001, as President-elect George W. Bush began forming his cabinet, he selected Paul H. O’Neill, then CEO of Alcoa, to become Treasury Secretary. As is its habit, The New York Times featured a lengthy profile in its January 16, 2001 edition that, as it turned out, intrigued me not so much for its political theater but rather for the lesson it held in leadership communications.

It was a compelling story that I’ve kept all these years. On occasion, I share it with clients and colleagues as an example of effective executive communications that broke the mold of what people usually think of as “communications.”

As the article noted, O’Neill was known for his business acumen. He came to Alcoa from International Paper where he had been president. Alcoa then was on the ropes, losing money, closing plants and laying off workers. What struck me was the way O’Neill turned around Alcoa and the role that his unique approach to communications played in that reversal – communications that consisted of conscious actions and a sincere concern for employees.

In 1987, at the time of O’Neill’s assumption of the role of CEO, the global aluminum business was struggling in the midst of a commodity glut and price war. O’Neill directed Alcoa to reduce production rather than the route his predecessor had taken, which was to cut prices.

But he had a longer-term vision that he began to execute in the context of the downturn. O’Neill articulated shared corporate values and the importance of building internal consensus. And he leveraged the issue of worker safety to do it.

As the Times article noted, “O’Neill engineered a financial turnaround… [by] promoting worker safety as a way of improving productivity…” An Alcoa director observed that the approach served to inspire employees, “build coherence, and enlist the passions of his staff.”

When he took over, his predecessor had been initiating a plan to diversify the company. O’Neill deep-sixed the plan, and instead broke up the company’s command and control structure, substituting 20 autonomous units to better respond to customers, each reporting directly to him.

He also dialed down the corporate excesses that had long before taken root in the company’s culture, selling corporate limousines and jets, and cancelling executives’ country club memberships. He also moved his office out of the executive suite and into a cubicle among staff. But his major focus was on improving productivity, and that’s where his focus on worker safety came into play.

Certainly worker safety is a critical issue in any industry, particularly one like aluminum production. But O’Neill saw the benefits of safety beyond its obvious altruism: its potential impact on the company’s bottom line. As he explained it, a production process that resulted in worker injuries was a flawed process, incapable of making high quality products efficiently and cost-effectively.

So he instilled safety into the company culture and made it the recurring theme of all of his communications. Most important, because he was the CEO and because he made worker safety important, it also became important to all his managers, and therefore important across the entire organization – a central feature of truly effective employee communications.

Regardless of the audience, including meetings with non-Alcoa people, he opened his speeches with a discussion of safety, not only about how he was improving it at Alcoa’s plants, but also personalizing it to the audience members. Before launching into his speech, he would point out the emergency exits from the meeting rooms and why it was important to be aware of that.

He would also talk at length about the importance of safety in the workplace, even if the audience were Wall Street analysts whose primary interest lay in revenue and profit forecasts. His larger goal was creating a cultural change. “If I can unify employees on the obvious issue of safety,” he told one audience, “then I can unify them behind return on investment and assets.”

He certainly got the attention of the unions. He was focusing on an issue – workplace safety – that’s always important to any union’s leadership. Once he had their attention, he promised job security if the workers worked smarter and more efficiently. That led to revisions in rigid union contract language to enable greater on-the-job empowerment for the workers and, ultimately, increased productivity.

The effort paid off. When he started in 1987, Alcoa’s work force numbered 59,000 while the company’s annual revenues were $1.5 billion. By 2000, it employed 140,000 and posted revenues of $23 billion.

The then-head of the United Steelworkers of America, George Becker, said that O’Neill’s emphasis on worker safety was “very sincere” and “one of his strong points.” Becker’s observation underlines the effectiveness of O’Neill’s communications. It was the sincerity and the single-minded focus that got people’s attention. Through that avenue, he was able to achieve the cultural shift necessary to remake Alcoa into a world power aluminum producer.

As this tale illustrates, there is no limit to the means of communications available to senior executives, only one’s imagination. The key is not so much the means or the subject matter as it is its relevance to the audience – in this case, personalizing the value of a safe working environment to the people most affected by it.

Fill in the blank. Pick a different audience. What issue will get their attention, especially if your communications on the subject are sincere and passionate like O’Neill’s were about worker safety? I guarantee that you will connect with your audience and fully engage them in the business’ vision. And, you will likely see positive results on your bottom line.