When O’Neill spoke to Alcoa’s shareholders for the first time, he put everyone in shock and awe.

Alcoa is till date the global leader in light weight metal manufacturing. Back in 1987 however, times were tough. It was time for a new leadership to make the company shine again. They appointed a man with the name of Paul O’Neill as new Chief Executive Officer.

Everyone expected him to introduce plans to cut costs and maximise profitability. But O’Neill knew better. He announced that he will focus on worker safety to to turn Alcoa around. The room was quiet. No one understood. Investors were furious.

Little did the shareholders know, that this was the best decision possible. He argued that worker safety is the keystone habit to Alcoa’s organisational change. Employees at Alcoa handle enormous machines and hot metals. Thus, safety impacts various key metrics. By increasing worker safety, he would foster an environment for creating habits of excellence.

Charles Duhigg discusses the idea of keystone habits in his book “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” further:

O’Neill believed that some habits have the power to start a chain reaction, changing other habits as they move through an organisation. Some habits, in other words, matter more than others in remaking businesses and lives. These are “keystone habits” and they can influence how people work, eat, play, live, spend and communicate. Keystone habits start a process that, over time, transforms everything. Keystone habits say that success doesn’t depend on getting every single thing right, but instead relies on identifying a few key priorities and fashioning them in to powerful levers. (..) The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns.

It is clearly demonstrated how much impact one habit can have. But, it is not always easy to uncover potential keystone habits.