We brought Safeco back from the brink of failure.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
While Safeco's turnaround is one of the greatest things I have ever participated in, the heart-wrenching decisions to let people go will stay with me forever.
From the very first time I talked to Safeco employees, I said the reality was expenses were too high and the reality is two-thirds of our expenses are people, so the reality is there will be effects on people.
For too long people have backed companies on hope value rather than solid products coming out. Now we are coming out the other side.
Safeco Field is a lot like a National League park. Because of that, we're more of a pitching-defensive type club. Anaheim and Oakland - and even Texas - are more offensive oriented. We're a club that doesn't blow anybody out, but at the same time we don't get blown out much. We're in most of the games.
We need to kind of refresh our fear in order to refresh our understanding of how a safe place works.
Through danger safety comes - through trouble rest.
If there had been a Financial Product Safety Commission in place 10 years ago, the current financial crisis would have been averted.
If everyone played it safe, we wouldn't get anywhere.
It's interesting - in 'Fail Safe,' as well, they didn't back off. We were raised with kind of this spectrum of that Armageddon and lived under it, so those were probably the films. 'Fail Safe' sort of haunted me.
Valdez was a devastating experience for our corporation. What emerged from that was a commitment to develop a systematic approach to managing risk in advance.