9. Power of Habit Chapter 4

 - Alcoa was a company that manufactured Aluminum, and was one of the largest companies on earth. However, investors were concerned because the management had made misstep after misstep. In 1987, the new CEO was announced: Paul O'Neill, which caused concern, because no one had ever heard of him. 

- O'Neill talked about worker safety in his speech to the crowd. He told the crowd of investors that he intends to make Alcoa the safest company in America, confusing the crowd because CEOs would normally talk about lowering costs and increasing profits. 

- Investors, concerned, began to pull out their money, which would go on to be the worst thing they ever did, because within a year of the speech Alcoa's profits would hit a record high. 

- O'Neill wasn't sure if he wanted the job when it was offered to him, and made a list of what his biggest priorities would be if he accepted the job. He had made a name for himself throughout his career as someone whose lists "always seemed to include a bullet point that got a problem solved." 

- Companies and governments also have habit loops. O'Neill discovered that bureaucrats and politicians were responding to cues with routines in order to get a reward such as a promotion or reelection, instead of making decisions. He realized that there were programs in towns to build new hospital rooms when there wasn't a need, all so that politicians could easily point at something they were accomplishing. 

- O'Neill wanted a keystone habit at Alcoa, something that could potentially change everything, but something that all the unions and executives could agree on. He ended up choosing safety, and setting the goal of zero injuries. 

- His approach was brilliant because no one wanted to argue with him on worker safety. O'Neill realized what others didn't: In order to protect workers and have zero injuries, Alcoa needed to become the most streamlined, best aluminum company on the planet. 

- He made it a protocol that every time someone was injured, the unit president had to report it to him within twenty four hours and have a plan for making sure the injury never happened again. He also had a reward, which was that only those who embraced the system would get promoted. In order for this to happen, each unit had to build an entire new communications system to make sure that the unit presidents would be informed in time to tell O'Neill. 

- Keystone habits influence other aspects of people's lives. Exercise is a keystone habit for many people. 

- Michael Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman, helped make Phelps the strongest mental swimmer by giving him a set of habits that would influence his mindset. 

- Small wins have enormous power. In the early 1970's, the American Library Association's Task Force on Gay Liberation decided to focus on a small goal: convincing the library of congress to reclassify books about the gay liberation movement. 

-The library of congress agreed to make the shift and within a few years many other rights were won, all thanks to the small win. 

- Phelps race in Beijing was different because his goggles had a leak, and he couldn't see. Where anyone else would have panicked, he stayed calm because he had trained for this before, and had mentally rehearsed how he would react to a goggle failure. 

- After a man died in Alcoa, O'Neill was able to make people see how serious he was, leading to them taking him more seriously, and the new vigilance led to a noticeable decline in injuries (a small win). 

- O'Neill used the small win to show people that they could do what he had envisioned. He encouraged people to reach out to him with safety ideas, and then eventually they began reaching out to him with ideas that had nothing to do with safety but were still streamlining the company's processes. 

- When O'Neill was younger, he had been tasked with figuring out why the U.S was such a rich country, but had such a high infant mortality rate. He realized that it was mothers' nutrition, and it had to be addressed before they got pregnant. However, many high school teachers in rural areas didn't know enough basic biology to teach nutrition. 

- When doctors began giving obese patients advice, they piled on so much that it was impossible for people to stick to it. Then a study gathered obese people and asked them to write down everything they ate at least one day per week. Many participants began keeping a daily food log. They began to notice patterns in their meals and were able to plan around it. 

- A decade after O'Neill's hiring at Alcoa, there was a problem at a plant in Mexico which was causing illnesses. It was a minor event, and Bob Barton, the plant's executive had solved the issue but had never reported the illnesses. Barton was fired, shocking many people outside the company, but no one in Alcoa was surprised due to the culture O'Neill had built.