Why do Mormons tend to excel in business?
Why do Mormons make great business people? What is it about the Mormon lifestyle that naturally lends itself to a career in business? Generally, Mormons are organized, frugal, humble, kind, service-oriented, and hard-working. Mormon history shows Mormons to be a persevering and strong-willed group of people. Mormons were run out of their settlements in Ohio, Missouri and Nauvoo by angry mobsters who sought to destroy them. Yet, nothing diminished their testimony of Christ and desire to live the Mormon lifestyle in peace. Mormon pioneers inspire us to be strong and faithful people. Under the leadership of Brigham Young, many packed up their belongings and headed westward. When the saints reached Salt Lake City in the mid-1800s, they immediately began founding and operating their own businesses. Historically, t he Mormons are an enterprising people.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, sometimes nicknamed the Mormon Church, has programs that teach business and leadership skills. Youth, as young as 12-years-old, hold positions of leadership within the church. Mormon youth have the unique opportunity of conducting meetings, planning activities, and giving speeches at a relatively young age. The Mormon youth program strives to instill self-esteem and independence in each young person. Although not sponsored by the Church, many Mormon young men are encouraged to participate in the Boy Scouts of America program. Mormon youth participate regularly in service projects. Through these experiences, Mormon youth tend to be a savvy group.
At the age of 19, all worthy Mormon young men can serve a mission for the Church. The missionary experience is demanding and teaches young men to love others and work hard. Missions transform boys into mature men. On a mission, many become better communicators and learn how to serve those around them. The missionary program calls young men to serve throughout the world, giving the opportunity to many to learn a foreign language. Many return and use their language skills in their careers. The mission essentially teaches young men how to live a regimented and organized life. They are already at an advantage. Many returned missionaries find success in sales because for two years, they convinced and persuaded people to believe in Christ, a message they are passionate about. The LDS Church gives its members necessary skills needed to survive in the business world.
Everyone Notices in 2011
In 2011 a musical opened on Broadway and two Mormons decided to run for President of the United States. The Book of Mormon Musical, supposedly a comic satire, was the most obscene ever to be staged on Broadway and lampooned the Mormon Church, and indeed all religion, mercilessly. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, Jr. threw their hats into the election process, and in the process opened a can-of-worms debate on whether a Mormon should ever be president. (The U.S. has a law stating that religion cannot affect one’s ability to run for president.)
Some writers called this “the Mormon Moment,” but while it brought the Church into the news and conversation on the street, the same old misunderstandings were perpetuated, either through the bigotries of journalists, or their failure to do complete research. One of the best articles came from Bloomberg online. The article was written by Caroline Winter, who even quotes from the Book of Mormon to demonstrate the reasons behind Mormons’ success in government and business. The name of the article is “Mission Training Grooms Mormons to Pursue Presidency, CEO Suite.”
Missionary service is at the core of the training LDS young men and women receive that prepares them for responsibility and leadership later on. Speaking of the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, Winter says,
…many of the men who prepared for their missions here, or at the center’s earlier incarnations, have gone on to become among the most distinguished and recognizable faces in American business and civic life.
Winter explains that Mormons represent less than 2% of the American population…
Yet Latter-Day Saints hold, or have held, a seemingly disproportionate number of top jobs at such major corporations as Marriott International Inc., American Express, American Motors Corp., Dell Inc. (DELL), Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Fisher-Price, Life Re, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Madison Square Garden Co., La Quinta Properties, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, and Stanley Black & Decker. The head of human resources at Citigroup is Mormon, and in 2010 the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) hired 31 grads from BYU, the same number it hired from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Winter then goes on to explain the missionary experience and its rigors, including cultural immersion in foreign nations and having doors slammed in one’s face.
Kevin Rollins, the former CEO of Dell Computers and currently a senior adviser to TPG Capital, says the rejections spiked with occasional successes that he experienced during his mission in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada, prepared him for entrepreneurship.
“When you get into the business world, most of what you try doesn’t work either,” he says. “And so the notion of having focus and determination, working hard, and leading others along with you, those principles are all things you would look for in a corporate executive, vs. someone who closes his tent after one little disappointment.”
Winter then goes on to cite the Mormon work ethic, inherited from hardy and dedicated pioneers who made the Utah desert blossom like a rose:
Simply belonging to the highly managerial Mormon Church requires work. Mormons depend upon an unpaid “lay” clergy composed of ordinary congregants tapped to lead sermons each week. Congregants don’t just go to church on Sunday, they run the church, filling all the positions from Sunday school teacher to bishop, serving an estimated five to 25 hours each week.
Kevin Rollins, whose Mormon roots go back to the religion’s founders (and who says he worked 20 hours a week for the church while putting in another 100 hours at Dell), remembers conducting youth group meetings as a child.
When Dell hired him from the consultancy Bain & Co. to head up the company’s Americas division, accounting for 70 percent of the company’s revenue at the time, Rollins had no prior experience as an executive.
“I can still remember, I was at my first meeting at Dell” and “there were, oh, I don’t know, 12 executives, and I think they were stunned at how I came in and ran the meeting, knowing how to run a meeting from all the times I had run one as a church member,” he says. “I really owe most of that natural instinct there to the training I received as a young kid.”
Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business is a long way from Wall Street, says Winter, but BYU students are enthusiastically recruited by big business:
BYU’s undergraduate business program ranked 11th last year, just behind Georgetown University, according to Bloomberg Businessweek’s annual rankings. BYU ranks No. 1 for invention disclosures, new patent applications, and startup companies spun out per every $1 million of research expenditure, according to the Association of University Technology Managers.