Shortly after the announcement that the Olympics would be coming to Salt Lake, the newspapers were filled with headlines about the Olympic scandal: “Biggest Scandal Ever to Hit the Olympics,” “Oly Scandal Leads to Resignation,” “Olympic Shame,” and many others.* The current Olympic committee at the time had accumulated a 4 million dollar deficit. Sponsors were quickly withdrawing their sponsorship. The international view of Utah was at an all time low. In short, the outlook for 2002 was bleak!
This was the situation in February 1999 when Mitt Romney (who is now the governor of Massachusetts) became CEO of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. Under his leadership, everything changed. Internal politics ended. Talks of scandal and bribery ended. Relationships with sponsor were not only fixed, but loads of new sponsors were acquired. In fact, the 1996 games in Atlanta had previously held the record for the most sponsorship ever–the SLC games almost doubled the sponsorship of Atlanta. The $4 million deficit became a $100 million profit. Headlines were drastically different from before: “The Little City that Could, Did.” and “Salt Lake, We Will Always Remember You. These Were Perfect Games.”
Yesterday, Mitt’s right-hand-man, Fraser Bullock, spoke at BYU. Fraser signed on with Mitt in 1999 as CFO and COO. He came to BYU to tell us how we can apply lessons from the 2002 games to organizational and individual success. Here are my notes:
Organizational Success Fundamentals
- Great People: Every organization depends on honest, ethical, talented people with amazing skill sets. Mitt surrounded himself with amazing people, Fraser Bullock being one of them.
- Compelling Strategy and Plan: Everyone works toward common, focused, and achievable milestones. Over their 3 year journey, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee set and reached over 42,000 traceable and measurable milestones. Most of those were obviously on more localized levels for the organizations within the committee.
- Positive Culture:
- Teamwork: Cooperation is critical. Internal politics will destroy an organization.
- Discipline
- Continual Improvement
Individual Success Fundamentals
- Get all the education you can:
- Start networking while you are in school.
- Learn all you can about your company/industry. Become an expert.
- Education doesn’t end with school. Read!
- Be an exemplary team player:
- No hidden agendas.
- Facilitate communication.
- Become Indispensable:
- Be Productive. Anticipate needs.
- Be reliable. Do what you say will.
- Build Your Network:
- Your own exemplary living will be the key.
- Do The Right Thing:
- Live by the highest ethical standards.
- Use the Washington Post test: “How will you feel if your words today become tomorrow’s headlines?
Fraser explained that when it’s all said and done, and we look back over our life and accomplishments, some will be more important than others:
- Financial Achievements.
- Developing/Serving others.
- Legacy (have I made organizations better?)
- Developing and Serving Family.
- Who Have I Become?
He concluded with a couple of questions: Do I have a plan? Am I driving, or being driven?
*I haven’t verified the headlines and numbers in the post. They are all taken from my notes on Fraser’s speech.
