Consistency Counts, Persistence Pays

The Mormon Way of Doing Business: Leadership and Success Through Faith and Family
by Jeff Benedict, J.D.

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Missions can also be a powerful training ground to teach budgeting, time management, determination, and how to deal with and overcome adversity, all skills that are invaluable in corporate America. Harvard Business School dean Kim Clark served his mission in Germany in the 1960s. "The mission is so intense," said Clark. "You are on your own. And the stakes are high. You are dealing with life and death. It's serious."

As a young missionary Clark was assigned to be the mission financial secretary. The Mormon Church has over 200 missions around the world. Each of them has up to 200 missionaries. The Church assigns a mission president to preside over those missionaries and run the mission's finances and properties. A mission president and his wife are typically called out of retirement and serve three-year terms.

Kim Clark's mission president was the CEO of a bank. "I got to work with him closely," said Clark, who was assigned to work in the mission president's office after he had been in Germany for about a year. "He had a profound influence on me and my sense of what was possible in positions of responsibility and leadership if people learned to execute them very well."

At age nineteen, Clark was asked to be the financial secretary to the mission president, who had oversight of all the Mormon Church's assets and finances throughout southern Germany. At the time, Clark had completed only one year of college at Harvard before leaving school to serve his mission. He had no experience with finances. Suddenly he found himself serving as a finance secretary to a bank CEO. "By being his financial secretary, I learned a lot having to do with organization, finance, budgeting, and accounting," said Clark.

The experience taught Clark about management. "I saw in my mission what happens when a leader establishes a pattern of consistency and coherence across all aspects of an organization's work," Clark said. "My mission president didn't just care about the quality of the teaching by the missionaries. He cared about the way our finances were handled. He cared about the way we were organized. He cared about training clerks properly and about whether our records-financial and otherwise-were in order, and whether we had control over what was going on."

Clark applied these lessons in his management style at the Harvard Business School. "I try to run HBS as a living model of the very best ideas we have about how organizations should work," Clark said. "I've tried to instill in people this commitment to the fundamental mission and help everybody understand that no matter what their role (alumni relations, teaching executive education, running the MBA program, or providing support or doing research), everybody has an important contribution to make to the mission of the school. If the school is to reach its potential, everybody has to perform at a high level. There's nothing we do that's not important, because we are educating people who are going to be leaders in the world. My mission for the Mormon Church was a very important influence in how I think about organizations."

Persistence Pays

Above all, missions teach persistence. Dave Checketts, the former CEO of Madison Square Garden Corporation, had a persistent nature before he served his mission. When he was sixteen, Checketts went with his family on a vacation. It began in Seattle and was supposed to end at Disneyland in Anaheim. But while driving through Oregon en route to southern California, the family car broke down on a remote stretch of highway. Passengers in another car stopped and helped push the Checketts' car down an exit ramp to a gas station. There a mechanic determined that the Checketts needed a new fuel pump. At this point it was nearly 6:00 P.M. on a Friday leading into the Fourth of July weekend. The local auto parts store had closed, along with most other businesses.

Dave's father had to return to work the following Wednesday. If forced to wait until Monday to have the car repaired, the Checketts would not have sufficient time to complete the trip to Disneyland.

"I'm not going to let this happen," Dave told his father. His father insisted that they appeared to be out of options. Dave disagreed. He asked permission to go to the next town in search of a fuel pump.

The nearest town was twenty miles away. Mr. Checketts asked Dave how he planned to get there.

Hitchhike, Dave told him. Mr. Checketts did not like the idea of Dave hitchhiking alone on a highway.

Dave persisted.

Finally, Mr. Checketts consented but insisted Dave bring his twelve-year-old brother with him.

Dave had never hitchhiked in his life. The first vehicle that approached-a pickup truck-stopped and the driver asked where the boys were headed. Dave explained and the driver told the boys to hop in the back.

Less than a half hour later the driver dropped Dave and his brother off in Medford, Oregon. On foot, the boys walked to four gas stations seeking a fuel pump for a Buick LeSabre. They had no luck. Finally, at the fifth gas station, Dave encountered a mechanic who said he just happened to have one.

Giddy, Checketts bought it. Then he and his brother sprinted back to the freeway to hitchhike back.

Suddenly, a policeman from the other side of the freeway began yelling at them through a bullhorn. He ordered the boys off the freeway, saying it was illegal to hitchhike. Dave told his little brother to stay put and then ran across the freeway to the officer. Checketts explained his predicament to the officer and pleaded for permission to hitchhike back to his parents with the newly acquired fuel pump.

"Hop in," the officer said. He then drove to the other side of the highway, retrieved Dave's younger brother, flipped on his lights, and sped down the highway. As the police car approached the exit where the Checketts' car had broken down, Dave spotted his father.

He pointed his father out to the officer. The officer had already figured it out by the look of worry on Mr. Checketts' face. The officer turned on his siren and drove toward Mr. Checketts. He rolled down his window. "Do you know these guys?" the officer joked. "I caught them shoplifting."

The following morning the new fuel pump was installed and the Checketts made it to Disneyland.

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff Benedict

About the Author

Jeff Benedict is an award-winning investigative journalist, a lawyer, and a best-selling author of six books. He is a contributing writer for the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated and the Hartford Courant. His upcoming book The Mormon Way of Doing Business is based on exclusive interviews with top corporate executives at Dell, JetBlue Airways, Deloitte & Touche USA, American Express, Madison Square Garden Corp., and Harvard Business School, all of whom are Mormons.