YouSaid · the spoken record

Keith Creel

lines on the record: 111
first: 2022-11-29
most recent: 2022-11-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Again, it's been my honor. It's always a pleasure to talk about our company stores. My journey and my family's journey and the role that God's played in it anytime I get an avenue and an opportunity to do that, it's an honor to be able to share that.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like potash, like rain, the products that our three nations produce exported to the free world in a time that's never been more needed. Being someone that cares about serving a cause greater than myself. And I think working with a team of railroaders that are wired the same way, both KCS and CP, that's going to be a motivation that keeps us going for a long time exceeds the financial benefit of anything we might be doing.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Never could have predicted how much more nearshoring and ally shoring would matter. More so today than I ever would have envisioned in 2020. So so many things have happened since then that say, you know, not only is this a great merger, this is a necessary combination for the good of maybe this is a bit out of the logical, for the good of the free world. I truly think back to my point about serving as something greater than yourself, We're going to be serving a whole lot more than just our shareholders and our employees and the communities. We're going to be serving nations and creating an ability to get the products that we produce.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Certainly didn't underpay, but we've created an opportunity that's going to allow these two companies together to not only create huge value for all stakeholders, for employees and job growth, for shareholders and money they'll make, for the commerce that gets created, and had a never knew then. Much of this transaction would be needed. I never knew and could have predicted the supply chain meltdowns that. The industry is going through.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The SDB by that time had said where they're going to rule by a date. And I said, just wait two weeks. And if I'm wrong, if we're wrong, the deal's still there. Take the deal. But don't let the boat go through. Don't go forward with the boat. And that's what happened. They took a pause. They didn't vote. They put it in abeyance. The SDB came out. They turned down CN's trust five to zero. And the words they used were so undeniably true that KCS board directors I knew would be faced with. You know, there's a lot of money on the table, a lot of value be created. And for this additional money, I'm taking a whole lot of risk that might not never be realized. So they canceled their deal with Canadian National and sign back up with CP. We paid a little more money, yes. It's still a great deal. Still a great value for our shareholders and theirs as well. We didn't overpay.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And figure the best way to do it is following their proxy. So we had our own proxy filing. Met with, and I think I met with 60% of KCS assured orders. I did one on one meetings virtually. I flew to New York City. I sold them our deal. And my sale was number one, you can't replicate our value long-term. CN doesn't have the network to do it or the team to do it. And number two, you're locking yourself into the uncertainty of a trust. And why vote now when you can wait?”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which would have meant that had that shareholder boat gone through, that KCS would have been married to CN, CNS would have taken all the risk of the trust, but they would have gone into that transaction loft up, not knowing if it would or would not be approved. And there were provisions in that contract that said that even if it got turned down, they would have had to stuck with CN for a six-month period where CN could try to get it overturned. It could appeal the trust decision. And then you get to a point where play it all out. At that point, CN's going so far, they still have balance sheet. They might just put more money on the table, make it more even out of reach. So it was so unpredictable. We just said at that point, now if we're going to get back in the freight, now's the time. So that's when we came out.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's where we put our chips on the table. And we got to a point that we were just going to wait on the trust to be ruled on. But CNN and their aggressiveness moved up their date for their shareholders to vote on it in the absence of the trust approval because the trust. Decision and I came out by the SDB. So they sort of put their shareholder boat ahead of the trust decision.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their terms of the deal. They wanted to get their money for their shareholders up front. We took the risk of getting the deal approved, whoever the successful bidder was. And that meant putting the company in trust, which is a model that had been used in the rel industry. So it meant, though, that the trust had to be approved by the regulator. That was sort of the trigger in the whole thing. And I knew in my mind this regulator, I believe, to be true then, which turned out to be absolutely true. If it didn't serve public interest as defined by creating more competition, then the chances of getting approved were slim but none. And I bet on none.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I just attacked it with truth. I remember right before the call, I wrote out the 10 truce, the things that are good about our deal, the things that are bad about their deal. And I went through and wrote all the points of strength and how we could get the deal approved and what were true about our value creation and all the things that were the real truth about theirs. And from that point, that's the strategy we approached it with. It was all about, you know, we're not going to overpay. You get to a point where you destroy your ability, destroy the company. It's not worth that. There's a lot here drawn in the sand. I knew where it was. I knew we never win that fight. So I wasn't going to get into a bidding war with him. I was going to fight their ability to get their bill approved. And it all boiled down to the trust. You know, KCS.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And with the bad, I like to get up early in the morning with a clear head. The bed thinking about it. And I woke up about three o'clock in the morning. And I said, we're going to fight with the truth. And I got my team and I wrote this email and I said, this is what we're going to do. And I said, I'll see you at six o'clock and we're going to put all this together. So we came together that morning. We had our public call that we had to go through how we were going to respond. And I think we might have even been an earnings call too. There have been so many meetings since then. The earnings were sort of a side note. It was all about how we're going to respond to the CN.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We know that the I's cross the T's, formalize our response. I went back into the board meeting and I briefed the board and I said, you know, we're going to address the facts. And I had one particular board member that, again, is a very influential member to me. He's been a great mentor and voice of reason within the board. You know, he said, bottom line, Keith, you've told us all that, but how are you going to do this? And I said, Well, what do you mean? He said, Well, how are you going to approach this on your call tomorrow morning? Because we literally had to do a call the next morning. And I said, you know what? I haven't quite figured it out yet. The strategy. And he said, well, let me say one thing to you. He said, you've got to fight. And I said, okay, I appreciate that. I'm going to think about that. And I went home that night.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Their bit. And Bill said this to me at one point in the process. Any deal, it depends on certainty and value. Those are the two key fundamentals that a board of directors have to take into account. And I said, well, to me, the only way to defeat them is stop with a balance sheet because they have more spending power. It's got to be with the facts. It's got to be with their ability to get the deal approved through the regulator. So I went into the office in Calgary or Board meeting was about to start. They obviously had read all the press releases. I walked in and I said, listen, I need a little bit of time. I've got my team organized next door. Give me till noon. Continue without me and I'll let you know how we're going to respond.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was there with my chair of the board, Isabel Corvell. She had literally flown to Calgary for that meeting. That was her first one since COVID. And we had our AGM. So I went to the office, I went in. And because of what I said earlier, trying to be prepared. That they might be coming. We literally, my team, our financial advisors and the people that negotiated deal with me, a very small group. We spent the weekend prior to that phone call on Monday doing what-if scenarios, what if C inc incomes in, what can they afford to pay, what can we afford to pay. So we modeled a lot of this stuff out and I sort of knew where it doesn't make sense pointless. And I also knew in my mind how I would attack.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I appreciate the phone call. I said, but good luck because we're going to fight. This. And I said, you know, we'll talk soon on the phone. I said immediately I went to the office. And in the meantime, I called Pat. And obviously Pat had a contractual obligation with us because we had a merger agreement at that time. And he said, Keith, I saw the number. I didn't know what it was. It went to voicemail and I said, well, it's JJ. And obviously I know you got to froduce your responsibility to talk to him. And I said, so go ahead and have your discussions. We'll talk later. And I went to the office and his luck had it. And I think his fate had it. And again, I lead to my faith. I think this happened for a reason. That was the very first. Board meeting post COVID, during COVID when”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had this suspicion in the back of my head or this feeling. I knew that if anyone was going to try to come over the top from a competitive response standpoint, it had to be the railroad most threatened. And having worked there, I understood and knew that Canadian national, a more competitive CP was a threat to them because of breach and network, all the things I talked about earlier. So I expected to the back of my head that at some point they would have to likely put a ring in the hat. What I didn't expect was how strong they jumped in the game. So I remember landing in Calgary. I had 514 number come up and given that I worked there for 17 years, I knew it was JJ. I answered the following. It was JJ and he told me what they had just done. And obviously my phone was blowing up. And I heard the number and he told me and I said, well, JJ.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The gray model is a great example. That's something we innovated at CP in Canada. We changed the model from the 112 car grain train to now it's an 8,500 foot train set that was matched by investment at both bookends, ports as well as the grain elevators where you load them. Can you bring that to the US? I said, absolutely. You're willing to invest with your great elevators and we can get a fork to send them to that can offload them. We can replicate that and create tons of efficiency for the railroads and for you as a customer and market advantage because you'll get more freight, more grain to tie water to lower cost. So I was super energized about it. Everyone was energized about it. We had our AGM. Flew to my not my trail, I flew to Calgary and I landed about Four o'clock, five o'clock in the morning.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Being spot off again 10 years from now, or five years from now, being part of a bigger entity to create long term value. So we had two common visions. The numbers made all the cents in the world. We agreed to combine. We made our announcement. And we got really excited about it. I'm a throttle aid guy. Throttle aid is a railroad term for that's full of throttle locomotives. I like to do things fast. I like to create momentum and hit the ground running. So immediately, you know, I engaged with Pat. I went down to Kansas City. We engaged with the employees. We engaged with the officers. We engaged with customers. And the sense of energy around these opportunities exceeded my expectations even going and interacting with their customers and hearing them ask me in a town hall, Mr. Krill, can we do this? You do this in Canada. The grain.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that sort of triggered a process where, you know, we had to decide if we're going to be in the game or not in the game. So we ultimately engaged after a series of twists and turns and competed against private equity. And ultimately, that's what resulted in our merger agreement or announcement back, I guess it was March of 2021. We had defeated the profit equity investment opportunity. Our value was much superior. Our deal could be done. Pat had a very strong commitment to creating long-term value for his stakeholders, not just in consuming our private equity and perhaps just, you know,”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Friday, I remember it like it was yesterday. I was with my wife and my son. We'd go somewhere for the weekend and we're going to do some hiking. And I got off the plane and my phone blew up. And it was people texting, did you see KCS, the stock price? And here somebody's trying to buy them. And of course, I looked at it and their stock just, I thought it wasn't affordable when I went down there. I was like, holy smoke, it just went to the roof. And what I found out quickly is there was an investor, a fund that was looking to buy them.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“CP's fell to tents with NS and with CSX and my CP history, I knew it was important that we had to have a friendly transaction. And I said, so if we both see the value in this, I really think this could be something special. And Pat said, You know what? That's interesting. Let me think about it. And long story short, he went back and The idea eventually with his board, but right after that meeting, this was the trigger to it all, that was on a Wednesday.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Problematic history of transactions and combinations in the U.S. rail industry. I kind of lived through the last two decades of them. So with that said, I said, you know what? There's nothing wrong with going and talking and having some hypothetical discussions. So I went to Kansas City. I contacted Pat and I said, let's have lunch. And I floated this concept to him. I said, listen, Pat, at some point, you know, you're destination rich in Origin 4. I'm Origin 4 and destination. I'm Origin Rich in destination four. It's an end to end combination, very little complexity. There's no customer that loses competitive alternatives. From a regulatory standpoint, having experienced”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the problem was they kept creating some success, and the price kept going up. We had this board meeting in July of 2020. And myself and a couple board members were talking about it. We came to this point in our mind, it's probably not going to get any cheaper, and that's a whole lot of risk. So, you know, maybe we can't afford it at that multiple. It doesn't make sense. But let's at least go explore and see if they're willing to maybe do a merger of vehicles. You know, again, physically, I knew that we connected in a very unique way. And I also had a very good understanding of the regulatory backdrop in the history of.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pacific, even more so true at CP because of the The unique way the network's created with no overlap. But again, I thought about it and I said, you know what KCS is trading at a multiple. It's really expensive. They're doing a good job. They're creating some momentum here. There's going to be some chapters in their story of PSR that they're going to have to manage it going up and going down. You got to manage the stock would really be effective at it. So there's going to be some what I thought are deemed as execution risk. And if they stumble a little bit, then that multiple is going to come down. And that's probably going to be the right time for us to make a move. So that was in the back of my head.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The pandemic happens. I think our company and our employees allow this to be true. We created success like no other Rail did in a very unique way. And then all of a sudden, I'm looking and I'm thinking about, okay, the timing has got to come when we're going to grow this network. Well, PSR was being implemented across the entire industry. And then having done it, it takes some experience and knowledge to be able to do it the right way. And my mind felt that without the lack of knowledge, there'd be some stumbling because we didn't get it all right in our experience either. There's going to be some growing pains. And there's one railroad that I've known from 20 years previous that if we could combine the two, we could extend our networking in connect markets in Mexico and the Texas markets. That was true with Canadian Nashville. And that was absolutely true in Canadian.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in 19 and 20, again, it was kind of a warm-up for what was going to evolve and to happen. We saw the power of that additional reach. I was blown away by what was a $40 million railroad and all the customers out there that needed solutions. And it was like the doors opened. And as soon as we got out there and we sold our product and we matched it with investment to make sure that infrastructure could safely and efficiently move it, it's like these opportunities just kept coming. You know, we had invested in the Port of St. John. You know, we grew from 40 million this year. We're on the track record of 200 million of revenue and much more attractive margins. that allow you to invest in the physical plan. So it was just a smaller scale, an amazing success story. So that gets you into a place where financially we're doing well.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then we can take advantage of it. So that's what we focused on. And we grew for several years. We got to a point, though, the CNQ transaction, that happened in 2019. I think we closed over it in 2020. You know, we didn't go east to Montreal and I was disadvantaged that a lot of contract discussions because if I can't serve all markets, I might be able to help you in one, but if the competitive option hurts you in the other and it offsets the gain you get by the one I could help you and you don't get to play in the game. So in the CMQ transaction, which CP used to own, they sold out a financial weakness because they couldn't make money on it. It gave us an opportunity to go to St. John.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the mandate was grow. So we protect the engine, we grow with our customers, but you get to a point where without reach or limited. So all we sat in the back of my head at some point where we're going to have to expand the reach of this company somehow, some way. So I've got to make sure that I keep the company financially stable so that when that opportunity comes, we can afford to invest.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had a very origin rich network, but it was destination poor. It was destination poor. I was disadvantaged in Canada because I didn't reach as far east as my competitor did. And I was disadvantaged in the U.S. And when I say I'm disadvantaged, that means my customers are disadvantaged too because I didn't reach markets south of Kansas City or south of Chicago. So I knew in time as we grew the company, we pivoted to growth in 2017 when I took over as the CEO. The first four or five years of my experience at CP was get the engine fixed, implement PSR, fine-tune the assets, make sure we've got the right culture, make sure our terminals, processes, all those things that allow us produce a great service product at a low cost. We're created. We did that. But then because of that, we had a lot of capacity in the network.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it goes back to sort of my history. I've said this, a man's heart pursues. Path, but the Lord determines his steps. And I went through 20 years before CP, that gave me an experience set where I kind of understood wins and losses and what reach means in service offerings. I worked at Canadian National where we had a lot of reach and we benefited from that and we expanded and grew the network to create more reach through the transactions and the integrations that we successfully achieved in my experience there. And then I came to Canadian Pacific.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your ability to successfully and safely operate the railroad for a short term gain. You just can't sustain this business that way. So you can't be so consumed in the short term that you forget the long game because this, especially in the railroad business, with the backbone of being the economy's backbone of commerce, it's a long game. So you've got to understand that and protect that.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is. The challenge is a publicly traded company, you've got to do both. So you've got to show momentum and success quarter to quarter. And listen, our businesses have ebbs and flows. We had, I would suggest the worst quarter financially that I've ever had any railroad experience with the first quarter of this year at CV for a lot of reasons. We were able to explain those reasons And duplicate, you know, we came out and said the second quarter matters. We got to do better and we will do better. And we've created the credibility and the results to do that. But I'll tell you market short-term and long-term. You've got to mix the long-term investors and short-term investors. You got to figure out how to maintain a balance to satisfy both voices. But again, back to your trade-off point. You can never trade off.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From Bill, and just in that one example, but so much more that the mentorship and the respect that I have for him and the way he has taught me fundamentally how to be a better business person combined with my real knowledge has enabled me to effectively be setting where I'm sitting today and it helped me even navigate in large part the way I thought about it and approached our transaction.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Three months on the property, so I hadn't had time to get out on the railroad yet. I said, that's not safe to operate on. No way in the world we're going to send another potash train that way. But we're going to have to get it fixed. So I went into the board meeting and I said, we have an issue to optimize my service. I've got to run west out of Saskatoon, not east, but I need $100 million to spend on rail and ties and ballast. And that was not planned for at all. And Bill was the first one to say, do you need $200 million? Whatever you need to make sure the railroad safe to operate and operate efficiently, you're going to get it, Keith. Well, I would say by definition, most activists, investors would never be defined by that act. But he demonstrated that then and continued until the time he left. He was always focused on the long term, never on the short term. So I learned a tremendous amount about business.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I never that equation never entered my head. Well, I immediately said semi pictures of the tie condition. I want to see the railroad. So I had sent my chief engineer out. He sent me pictures and I saw track additions. And this was in my first.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Several hundred miles each way. And I said, well, if you do that, you're going to have more locomotives, more Cruise more cars. And it takes longer. That's not what good looks like. So why do we not go west out of Saskatoon, go over to where we connect to south of Ebmonton down the Calgary, then to Vancouver? That's a quicker route. It's a shorter route. Well, we just don't do it that way. And I said, well, we're going to do it that way. That's the quickest way. So we started to do it. I'm not proud of saying this, but we derailed two trains. I in my mind coming from where I came from, if the track is there, it better be safe to operate on or it shouldn't be in service.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To help them get product to tab water because CP couldn't get it there. So when we did it, I measured. Back to my point about measurement. I said, well, okay, let's measure the asset turns. We're coming from the same locations, going to the same location. How fast can we do it versus how fast CP is doing it? Well, at CN then, we did it about a week quicker. And I'm like, how does that make any sense? We're started at the same place to end at the same place. Well, one of my first exercises at CP, I said, okay, let's go through the potash supply chain. I don't understand how CN's that much better than CPNs. Well, what I found is that at those lines that are in northern Saskatchewan up around Saskatoon that have all these potash lines, CP was running the traffic east to go down the Ladigan sub down to Regina across the May line back to Vancouver. So we were taking it out of route.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Optimizing the railroad, I tripped into this from experience. I had a whiteboarding session on potash, potash. Back to my point earlier, we moved more than any country in the world. So effective supply chain for potash matters. Well, I got to get any Pacific. And in Canada, the potash mines are dual served. So Canadian National serves them, CP serves them, and often, you know, we come in one side of the terminal. They come in another side, or we share the same access in and out. But when you get to your rail line, you go your own way to Vancouver, which is where most of this potash is exported from. Well, I learned at CN when CP got into some trouble before Dill came along as part of what drove to that opportunity. They weren't meeting Campa Texas expectations and they were committed to 100% of the business. So at seeing we were asked by Campus.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Paul and the CP board has it evolved, all the decisions that we made, it required, again, back to what I said earlier, you have to invest in the infrastructure to really create a true PSR railroad. We've never spent more in the company's history. So you think about an act as investor, if he's really there to make a quick buck, he wants you to make things efficiently, spend the least amount money as possible, show some success, and then they take their profit and they leave. And what you're left with perhaps is not an ideal physical plan and infrastructure to sustain long-term success. Well, Bill was the exact opposite of that. Every issue we came to with Bill, we said, okay, what I'll give you a case in point. Part of our”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know what? I've learned so much about business, good business from Beal. You know, not knowing what I was getting into, you hear all these things about active investors and all they care about is making a profit, turning a buck and, you know, short money versus long money, all those things. And Bill, obviously had a reputation. And I'm not going to suggest any of that was true, but certainly he was an activist investor. He drove change at Canadian Pacific. Going into it, you know, I had my own preconceived notions about what might be true, but what I learned is Bill takes a long view, not a short view. And I don't care how you define his fund, he cares about sustainability and the long-term success and profitability of a company. So, you know, that's what he said, but more importantly, what he did is we navigated, and I had an opportunity to interact with Bill.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had to step, you had to get uncomfortable in a lot of ways. I had to admit that I was wrong. I had to admit that what happened had to be addressed and then we had to take the time to go address it. So to me, you know, it would have been easily just to roll away from it, but doing the right thing meant going back and dealing with it.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What good looks like and what I expect in the future so this behavior can change because if I don't is behavior is not going to change I've told the other crew members that he worked with that you know you can pick and choose what rules you comply with I've said I don't respect their health and welfare because I'm allowing somebody to smoke on a locomotive and I've told every one of you that I don't expect you to enforce and require employees to work safely and efficiently and none of that's true So that to me.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I saw it as I stepped off the locomotive. There were several people following me. We got on the high rail, we started to pull down the track. And just in my head, I said, I saw that. I can't not deal with that. So I asked the team that I was with stopped the truck. And they said, what's wrong? And I said, well, I don't know if any of you saw that gentleman smoking, but I did. So back the truck up. I got to engage it. I've got to let him know that what he's did, what he's done is not.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Outside of Hamilton, the crew was switching local industries. And we pulled up and we wanted to stop and talk with them, engage with them. We got up on the locomotive. You know, we checked the rule books. We talked to them about safety. We talked to them about the work they were doing, gave them some positive feedback. Very, very engaging crew, very respectful. We had a good karma between everyone talking about the business. And then as I started getting down out of the locomotive, there have been one of the crew members. I called it out of my right eye. He was smoking a cigarette. Well, we can't smoke cigarettes on locomotives. You got to respect other people. It's not a safe environment to do that. And it's not allowed by rules. But some people would say that's trivial. You know, I'm not going to ruin a good conversation because a guy was out there smoking a cigarette.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because if you see something and you don't know what you've seen and somebody's violated a rule, especially as a senior officer, not only does that employee think that what they've done is okay, you validate the bad behavior, all of the officers that work for you think the same thing. So I remember like it was yesterday, I took this trip in preparation for my new CEO. This is after Hunter retired and cloved took over as the CEO. He wanted to come out in high rail. And we were high rail in between. Hamilton Ontario and our terminal in Toronto. And we were inspecting the railroad in a high rail truck. And that's literally, you know, it's a put an SUB with some rail wheels on it and you go down the track inspecting the track. And we came upon a crew.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I've always said, I'm not going to apologize for running a safe railway. So we have to follow the rules. You can't pick and choose which ones you comply with. And again, I liken this to an analogy. And I used to speak to people this way when I was driving this change in the culture at a field level. I'm like, all the rules matter. Which one did you follow leads to you taking your life or somebody else's? When I get on an airplane, for example, and I see the pilot going through his checklist and I've got my family with me, I want him to make sure he checks every box before he takes me up in the air because I want to come back down safely. So every box matters. So with that said, when you go out in the field, especially as a senior officer, you've got to know the rules.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They don't want to deal with that conflict. They walk the other way, they turn the other way Leader does the right thing, they step into it I'll give you one other case in point. This one resonates with me. I've always preached that. I believe the leader sets the example. You don't ask your people to do anything, you're not willing to do yourselves.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then not saying something says a lot, you're the officer. It's like you're the police officer. If I speed by an RCMP or a state trooper every day and they never throw the lights on, I'm going to do what I think is safe for me and I might end up killing myself or killing somebody else. Well, in our positions, it says that you got to do the right thing. So if you see somebody violate, you got to go have that uncomfortable conversation. You can't look the other way. And that's a very simple example, but some people, if you're not a right fit, that intestinal, I guess that churn it creates this stress it creates inside of you is not meant for everyone. So a manager might go the other way. They might want to have a safe work environment. They might want to run an efficient terminal. But if they see an employee engaging in an unsafe act that could derail a car or kill themselves.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if you have officers that don't understand how to be fair and impartial, then you can get it wrong. So oftentimes what happens in our industry, people just look the other way because they don't want to get into that tough discussion or that conflict. And that's what I define as permissive management. So they look the other way. Well, when you look the other way, if someone's violating a rule,”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Execute work practices day in and day out, especially moving freight cars and locomotives. There's not a lot of room for error. These cars weigh hundreds of tons. These locomotives, you know, your life. Can be taken in a matter of inches. You know, you can be one inch in the foul of a locomotive and it hits you and grabs your sleeve and drags you down the track and you die. You know, the consequences are severe. So I've always understood that and prided myself in creating a safe work environment to protect people. But to do that, you have to go through this discipline process.”
2022-11-29 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · Keith Creel: Lessons from Life on the Railroad · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT