The Mormon Way of Doing Business - Connect

This is book is a great read about the Latter-day Saint (LDS) presence in corporate America. I even had the opportunity to meet one of the people mentioned in the book, Rod Hawes, at the National Advisory Committee gathering at BYU last week.

Jeff Benedict, the author of The Mormon Way of Doing Business followed around and interviewed eight prominent LDS members to find out what they have in common and how being LDS affects their business lives.

The eight men and their positions the author chose are as follows,

David Neeleman - CEO of JetBlue

Dave Checketts - CEO of Madison Square Garden corp., Owner of Real Salt Lake

Clayton Christensen - Professor at Harvard Business School, consultant at Intel, Kodak, Eli Lilly

Kim Clark - Dean of Harvard Business School (1994-2005)

Jim Quigley - CEO of Deloitte & Touche USA

Rod Hawes - Co-founder of Life Re Corp.

Kevin Rollins - CEO of Dell

Gary Crittenden - CFO American Express

Meeting Rod Hawes was an incredible experience. I didn't even know who he was before I walked into a room with three other students to meet with him for 30 minutes of mentoring, set up by the Marriott School of Management at BYU and the BYU National Advisory Committee.

Rod was very kind to answer all of our questions, and share about his experiences and background. He was the CEO of the largest private reinsurance company, before it went public. He had great advice about marriage and having correct priorities in life.

It is interesting to see how far the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has come. The church was officially recognized when 6 members organized the church in New York on April 6, 1830. The members of the church were so persecuted in Ohio and Illinois that they were forced to leave the United States. They went to what is now Utah, which was outside the defined boarders of the United States at the time.

 Now, there is a very significant presence of Latter-day Saints in every discipline and activity possible. There are LDS actors, business leaders like the ones in this book and in politics. A recent example is Mitt Romney, Governor of Massachusetts and Presidential candidate.

This book gives a glimpse into the lives of these men. In many ways they are like other CEO's of major corporations, they are very busy, very competitive and a strong drive to succeed. In other ways they are quite different, such as daily prayer, abstaining from alcohol, and voluntary service in their church. 

The men share their experiences of serving two year missions for the church in various places around the world. They talk about how their missionary experience has helped them to persevere in times of difficulty as well as have a global mindset. They talked about how a mission from a worldly sense is the toughest sales job ever created.

Other things these men stressed were work life balance, with an emphasis on knowing priorities an putting 'first things first.' I highly suggest this book to anyone wanting to learn more about how to be successful in business.