FULL TRANSCRIPT · EPISODE 3
Is zero accidents possible?
The goal of zero accidents ran into two beliefs that locked the market: it would cost too much, and no one would stop doing risky things. How Paul O'Neill confronted both, and what made the journey possible.
How Paul O'Neill became obsessed with safety. He himself answers by saying that in 1987, when he took over as CEO of Alcoa, his desire was to do things differently. Many companies he knew stated that people were their main asset, but there was no practical proof that this was true. And he said: "I want to be the practical proof.
How Paul O'Neill became obsessed with safety. He himself answers by saying that in 1987, when he took over as CEO of Alcoa, his desire was to do things differently. Many companies he knew stated that people were their main asset, but there was no practical proof that this was true. And he said: "I want to be the practical proof."
That year, operating in 46 countries, Alcoa's lost-workday rate was 1.86. In practical terms, this meant that out of every hundred American workers, about five would suffer an accident and lose a day of work. In other words, the rate wasn't bad. In fact, when he said "We are going to zero out accidents, we are going to build an accident-free company," the safety director himself was startled, was surprised. Why? Because they already had pretty solid performance.
Now, how do you bring practical proof that people are our main asset, how do you turn that into reality? And during that transformation, there were encounters with some very limiting beliefs. The first one, and a very strong one, is that an accident-free company, or making the company accident-free, would be extremely expensive.
Because for a person to not get into an accident, you'd have to put them in a cocoon, protect them so there would be no interface with risk. And all that protection would make it very hard for them to move, to do the work. So it would take longer and cost more. So cost was a very limiting belief when it came to building an accident-free environment.
The second great limiting belief was: we won't zero out accidents because no one is going to stop doing stupid things. When he confronted these two limiting thoughts, he made a decision. He met with the supervisors and said, "We can build an accident-free environment, and we are going to do this together." And it was this clear, direct, organized communication with his direct and middle leaders that ensured the journey was possible.