Vital Behaviors That Influence Our Success

In life and business, we often look to find the vital behavior that will influence the change we desire. As many of you know and I have seen as well in my life, this is no easy task; this is because the vital behavior sometimes is far from what anybody thought it would be.

One individual who was former politician and CEO was a man known for his lists. He was known for creating compelling and insightful lists on what goals he needs to achieve. A skill that showed his natural talent for finding and an identify vital behaviors.

Mr. O’Neill talent shone through when he was approached by Alcoa to become their CEO in 1987. When Alcoa made the offer to him, he told them he would have to think about it. He decided to take some time to reflect on the decision and create his infamous list to determine if he was the right person for the job and if he took the job what he would focus on to make it successful.  He studied the company and himself and decided how he would take the position.

After he told him that he would accept the position he had to make an announcement to the board, shareholders, and company about how he planned to make the company successful. Alcoa board of directors could have never predicted what was going to happen next.

Mr. O’Neill did not talk about stocks, productivity, culture, organization or any of the usual things CEO discuss at these meetings. Instead, he came up and spoke on the one item on his list, Safety. He looked at all of them and told them that he was going to have an uncompromising dedication to safety.

Alcoa board of directors had thought they had made the biggest mistake of their lives hiring this man. The question is was it the worst decision. Mr. O’Neill was CEO from 1987 to 1999, and in that time Alcoa market share increased from $3 Billion to $27.53 Billion and Net Income increased from $200 million to $1.484 billion.

To hear more about his amazing story and learn a little about the Power of Vital Behaviors go to our resource page and purchase The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

To learn more about how to discover the behaviors in hands-on training, we invite you to take one of our classes.