RAILROADER: The Unfiltered Genius and Controversy of Four-Time CEO Hunter Harrison

How We Work and Why: Running a Precision Railroad, Volume

Managers, he frequently repeated, do things right—while leaders do the right thing. “My mandate in these jobs has never been to be Mr. Popularity.”

He became a piece of very high-end, pricey human software with the nose of a bloodhound. There’s a now-famous story of him checking into a Vancouver hotel room that happened to be equipped with binoculars and had a view of a CN rail yard. Harrison spied a locomotive—number 5867—sitting idle. A half hour later, it was still there. He made a call and

It’s hard to over-emphasize the impact railroads have had in the United States and Canada. In the US, they opened up the west and connected the huge population centers of the east, providing a transportation network to service the world’s largest economy. Canadian Pacific Railway helped forge a nation, not only tying it together but encouraging set

The question was how to get by with fewer locomotives. As Harrison would say, you don’t build the church for Easter Sunday—you build it for the capacity of the other 364 days of the year. Instead of running three dayshifts, one afternoon shift, and no nightshift—which equaled four eight-hour shifts that added up to thirty-two engine-hours—he sugges

“I modeled myself along a lot of his principles,” Harrison said, but “from a style standpoint, no.”

As Harrison said, his basic view didn’t change during the decades he ran railroads—service customers, control costs, utilize assets, don’t get anybody hurt, and recognize and develop people—and over time, he gained more confidence.

If you measured in hours, everything got more precise. Taking it even further, if you measured car inspections in seconds, they got faster too.

Marquis learned a classic Harrison lesson—don’t spend a dollar of capital when all it takes is improving processes.