Earlier this week, Pittsburgh lost one its true giants — former Treasury Secretary and Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill.
As a native Pittsburgher who had the privilege of working for him at the Treasury Department, I saw him exhibit the qualities that Pittsburghers are known for — hard work, straight talk, empathy — at the highest levels of government. As our nation faces the coronavirus crisis, the principles that he stood for, which would be important at any time, are now even more essential.
Today, we have all realized that essential workers are the people on the front lines, the ones who make and deliver products, the people who make an organization work effectively. These are exactly the individuals who Mr. O’Neill cared about the most. Even as he spent time in the c-suite or the secretary’s office, he understood the importance of focusing on these employees, on making sure that they received the recognition that they deserved.
At Alcoa, he immediately focused on worker safety, declaring that the number one priority was to make sure that no one got hurt, that everyone went home as safe and healthy as when they came to work. And at Treasury, even though there wasn’t the same set of safety risks, he continued that focus, walking the halls to make sure that there were no hazards and introducing a new term — lost workday incident rate — into the Treasury lexicon. He also emphasized the importance of creating a culture of meaning and high performance. He had us print and distribute to every employee a card with three questions:
• Am I treated with dignity and respect?
• Do I have the tools I need to do my job?
• And did anyone notice?
Mr. O’Neill made it clear that his goal — and therefore the goal of all leaders in the organization — should be to make sure that each one of those questions would be answered with a “yes.”
Watching our leaders deal with the today’s pandemic brings a renewed appreciation for the ones who have the ability to stay calm, deal with imperfect information, and build a well-functioning team that delivers results. Mr. O’Neill was such a leader. As the senior economic official dealing with the September 11 terrorist attacks, he played a key role in leading an effective government response. At his first Treasury senior staff meeting, Mr. O’Neill had drilled in the values of sharing information and working together — and that paid off eight months later as his Treasury team dealt with the crisis. The financial markets reopened within a few days, and Treasury launched its unprecedented attack on terrorist financing.
The pandemic also has reinforced the need to take the long view and to be prepared. It’s natural to push problems off, but we should want our leaders to be looking around the corner and assessing what may happen two or three steps down the road. While he wasn’t always successful, Mr. O’Neill certainly used his position to highlight long term problems on which he thought the country should be more focused.
At an early White House meeting, he shook things up by talking about the challenge of climate change and the need to reinvent the health care system. He was not a fan of additional tax cuts (after a significant early round of tax cuts) because he thought it was more appropriate to use the fiscal surplus to attack the long term solvency of social security (which still hasn’t been addressed) or to keep it available for an inevitable downturn. He wanted to make sure that the country had the resources to keep it in the strongest possible position.
Each day of this crisis, we are reminded of the need for comprehensive data and of the role of experts. Mr. O’Neill consistently emphasized the importance of making decisions based on data, rather than on conjecture or assumptions. He installed a Bloomberg terminal in his office so that he could follow the market himself — and didn’t need to rely on any after-the-fact summaries. When deciding whether to fund a particular program, he insisted on metrics — and if they didn’t exist, he made sure that they were developed.
One of my responsibilities was to manage his paper flow. No matter how much material we gave him to review each night, he always showed up the next morning — usually before dawn — with everything read and comments or requests for follow up. He wanted to hear directly from the professionals, from the people who knew the most.
Straight talk
Like many other Pittsburghers who value straight talk, Mr. O’Neill said what he thought, even if it was not popular or politically correct. As you would expect, that caused some complications in Washington and certainly for the public affairs staff who needed to deal with fallout. But it also was refreshing — and a good lesson for all of us.
A few days after President George W. Bush decided to change Treasury secretaries, Mr. O’Neill addressed the staff. He noted that he could have papered over his disagreements with the president and issued a letter saying that he had decided to return to the private sector.
But as he told the assembled crowd, his friends would have known it was a lie and others would have thought he was deserting his job when things got tough. So, he declared, “frankly, I’d rather go out on principle than as a liar or a coward.”
Even with all of his professional accomplishments, Mr. O’Neill never considered himself more important than anyone else. At Treasury, to the chagrin of his Secret Service protective detail, he insisted on driving himself to work. Back in Pittsburgh, I often used to meet him for breakfast at Ritters, a Greek diner that has been owned by the same family since 1966.
While Mr. O’Neill stood out in his tailored suit and tie, he still seemed to fit right in. Always early, he would sit at the same table, happily talking to the owners and staff about their families or about Pittsburgh sports.
As we continue to confront this crisis, it’s especially important to remember the qualities and principles that Pittsburghers are known for — and that Paul O’Neill embodied.
Jeffrey Kupfer served as Paul O’Neill’s deputy chief of staff at Treasury. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College and the president of ConservAmerica, an environmental and energy nonprofit.
First Published: April 27, 2020, 2:12 p.m.
