O’Neal Steel’s long-term goal is to be the leader in the service center industry, no small aspiration for a family-owned company. One of the tools it will use to achieve that goal is integrity, says Bill Jones, O’Neal president and recipient of this year’s Executive of the Year Award.

As I interviewed Bill for this month’s cover story, he made reference to the honor code at his alma mater, the University of Virginia, which dates all the way back to Thomas Jefferson. There is only one appropriate sanction of the university’s code, Jones says firmly: expulsion. “With integrity, you either have it or you don’t. There aren’t levels of integrity.”

Regardless of whether a company is large or small, public or private, integrity must be the foundation, he maintains. “When the people you work for, the people you work with, and the people who work for you, have complete trust stemming from unquestioned integrity and character, that is extremely powerful.”

Indeed, a reputation for such uncompromising integrity among customers, suppliers and employees translates into tangible advantages in the marketplace.
One O’Neal customer, Gregg Goodner of Hytrol Conveyor Co., lauded O’Neal’s unwavering customer-focus. “During the critical situations when steel was tight, we never saw a break in service,” he says. “They always made sure we got the steel we needed when we wanted it, and they fought very hard for competitive pricing throughout the marketplace.”

Supplier Parry Katsafanas of Leavitt Tube Co. was equally complimentary about O’Neal as a trading partner. “There is a high degree of integrity at their company, and I think that is why they are so successful. Their word is their bond.”

Given the string of acquisitions that have grown O’Neal into a $2 billion enterprise, the company has considerable leverage with suppliers, but it opts not to throw its weight around. “Right or wrong, we have tried to work very collaboratively with suppliers. We don’t try to pit one supplier against another,” Jones says. “We think in the end we are much better off working toward a shared destiny.”

O’Neal Steel is the largest family-owned service center based in the United States (Toronto-based Samuel is larger). O’Neal’s family orientation translates into a corporate culture that is very employee-friendly, even paternalistic. O’Neal supports its employees’ efforts both on and off the job, and in turn benefits from healthy morale, low turnover, recruitment and retention of top talent and the resulting boosts to productivity. “We want our people to enjoy what they do, but also to be active in their communities. We want our people to have healthy family and spiritual lives. If you support that, you get that back. It permeates and perpetuates,” Jones says.

True of most effective executives, Jones leads by example, considering personal integrity to be the bedrock of his team-based approach to management. Thus he has complete trust in his colleagues and can delegate to their strengths without reservation. “Integrity and character are just expected. With that comes a lot of trust. If that is lost, you really don’t have a place here,” he adds.

In an American corporate culture characterized by the likes of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, it’s refreshing to hear a business man talk unashamedly and inspirationally about such a simple virtue. Integrity is not a quaint notion; it’s a strategy with substantial returns.