Admiral William McRaven had a simple piece of advice for the graduating class at the University of Texas.
“If you want to change the world,” he said…
“Start by making your bed.”
While it might seem like a mundane task, making your bed starts your day with a small victory. According to McRaven, “It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you do to another task…and by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”
If you have a big goal you want to accomplish, the countless things you need to do to achieve it are overwhelming. Just thinking about them all can lead to inaction. Trying to implement them all at once only sets you up for failure. But focusing on just one specific, repeatable action builds a Keystone Habit. Once this habit is in place, you’re encouraged to adopt another one, and another. Suddenly, your goal is much closer and the next steps needed are more clearly defined.
Keystone Habits are invaluable for achieving personal goals and can also be used to transform organizations. Paul O’Neill, the former CEO at aluminum maker Alcoa, provides a prime example. O’Neill knew that drastic changes were needed at Alcoa, which had become one of the most cumbersome and dangerous companies to work for. But he knew that he couldn’t just order his employees to change, he needed a Keystone Habit. According to O’Neill, “I decided I was going to start by focusing on one thing. If I could start disrupting the habits around one thing, it would spread throughout the entire company.”
O’Neill announced his Keystone Habit to a room full of Wall Street’s most preeminent investors and stock analysts. “I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America,” he declared, “I intend to go for zero injuries.” Instead of discussing margins and inventories, as everyone had anticipated, O’Neill talked about workplace safety figures. Little did the wary investors know, O’Neill’s obsessive focus on improving safety would ultimately lead to record profits for Alcoa.
By honing in on a single firm-wide goal, O’Neill’s focus on safety spurred a cultural shift at Alcoa. O’Neill empowered workers and improved communication throughout the ranks. As a concrete example, O’Neill sent a memo to every worker encouraging them to call him directly if their managers weren’t heeding their safety suggestions. Workers started calling O’Neill but not just with safety tips, many had business ideas too. One worker in particular proposed an idea that ended up doubling profits on aluminum siding. He came up with the idea 10 years earlier but had never been encouraged to tell management. As O’Neill had hoped, Alcoa started “by attacking one habit” and then watched as “the changes rippled through the organization.”
So if you need to make a big change in your life or your business, start small and stay consistent. Start by building a Keystone Habit. Start by making your bed.
For more, check out McRaven’s speech below and click here to read about O’Neill and Alcoa. Have any examples of how Keystone Habits affected your life or your company? Let me know in the comments.
Want to read? Click here to buy Admiral McRaven’s book on Amazon. For more on Keystone Habits, click here to buy The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (affiliate links, thanks for your support!).