Investors were skeptical when former government bureaucrat Paul O'Neill became the CEO of the ailing aluminum company Alcoa in 1987. And O'Neill did not improve matters when, during an investor meeting in a swanky luxury hotel in Manhattan, he declared that he intended to make workplace safety his number-one priority rather than focusing on profits and revenues. One investor immediately called his clients and said, "The board put a crazy hippie in charge, and he's going to kill the company."
O'Neill tried to explain his reasoning to the lukewarm investors. No amount of talk would reduce injury rates at Alcoa, he argued. Sure, most CEOs claimed to care about workplace safety. But empty words would never lead to the formation of a company-wide habit, which would be necessary for real change.
O'Neill knew that habits exist in organizations. And he knew that changing an organization's direction is a matter of changing its habits. However, he was also aware that not all habits are equal. Some habits, known as keystone habits, are more important than others because adhering to them creates positive effects that spill over into other areas.
By insisting that worker safety comes first, managers and employees would have to think about how the manufacturing process could be safer and how safety suggestions could best be communicated to everyone. The result would be a highly streamlined, profitable production organization.
Despite the investors' initial doubts, O'Neill's approach proved a huge success. By the time O'Neill retired in 2000, Alcoa's annual net income had increased fivefold.
Keystone habits can help individuals change, too. For instance, research indicates that doctors have a hard time getting obese people to make a broad change in their lifestyle. However, when patients focus on developing one keystone habit, such as keeping a meticulous food journal, other positive habits start to take root.
Keystone habits work by providing small wins – that is, early successes that are fairly easy to attain. Developing a keystone habit helps you believe that improvement is possible in other spheres of life, too, which can trigger a cascade of positive change.
