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

Other people, he observed, would rather dig than accept the responsibility of telling others to dig. It was an epiphany for the young Harrison.

He’d come to the conclusion that if you said yes to everything the customer wanted, you wouldn’t make any money. That approach would help him make enormous profits in later years, but it would also eventually result in criticism that would hound him.

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

As if the list of medical issues wasn’t enough, since 2015 he’d been hospitalized approximately a dozen times, the last instance in December 2016 when his temperature spiked and left him hallucinating. He’d also had his gallbladder removed during the battle for Norfolk Southern, endured a bout of shingles in late 2016 and early 2017, and had two “s

Nobody can bullshit him,” said Hargrove in 2017. “Not the management, not the union, not the workers.” Harrison knew their jobs. That gave him credibility in the field, but it also created angst among employees.

Like he had done at CN, Harrison also visited the mail room, a place he believed sent profound signals about a company.

“This is what you’re really trying to do as a railroad, run cars. You’re not trying to move trains.” A train simply being on time didn’t necessarily mean the individual cars were where they needed to be.

Thompson got on the phone to Springfield and got the data. He then laid it out for Harrison, who was under the impression that if the yard was full, business was good. Thompson, meanwhile, saw a yard full of cars and immediately concluded there were delays. It was an object lesson for Harrison. “If you want to be successful in the yard or the railr

“All you have to do is smell. Things just start jumping out at you.”