Paul O'Neill

“If you want to understand how a company is doing, you should not be talking to the people in the C-suite. You should be talking to the people on the shop floor.”

“When you are the leader of an organization, you have an absolute obligation to all the people who are in it to create an environment where they can be everything they can be.”

“The people on the front lines have the best information about what's really going on.”

“Institutions are a reflection of the people who are in them. And if you want to change the institution, you’ve got to change the people in it or the people have to change themselves.”

“Safety is not a priority. It's a precondition.”

“Data is the starting point to any good argument.”

“In a truly great organization, the individuals in it are not there to serve the organization. The organization is there to serve the individuals.”

“Habits are the reason that we do things without thinking, and we do them over and over and over again.”

“We don't have a manufacturing problem. We have a leadership problem.”

“Transparency is the only way to build trust.”

“The secret to success is understanding how to make good habits and how to break bad ones.”

“A currency is not a stock. It's not a commodity. It's a unit of account. It's a store of value. It's a medium of exchange. It is an instrument of national economic policy.”

“The minute you understand that you can't have zero injuries and still have near misses, you've made a leap in understanding.”

“It is the job of a leader to create a culture where people feel safe to speak up.”

“Policies are important, but they are not the whole story. The real story is in the details of execution.”