Now that we've looked at Mitt Romney's early experiences of being a leader while serving in various positions in his faith to his business career and his record as govenor of Massachusetts, we can learn a lot about his leadership style. Its not enough to look at a candidate's record. Its also important to inquire about a candidate make his decisions? How does he react in a crisis? How well does he work with others?
Mitt Romney's Love Of Facts And Data
Mitt Romney is a pragmatic yet creative leader. He is not an idealouge like
George W. Bush or Barak Obama have been accused of being. Mitt Romney
loves looking at data, statistics, trends and other items of information to come up with a creative solution to a problem:
Of
Mitt, says Fraser Bullock, a former Bain partner who worked with
Romney on the Olympics: “He’s not an ideologue. He makes decisions based
on researching data more deeply than anyone I know. As people get to
know him better, they’ll see an extremely competent, strong leader.”
It’s true. Mitt is known for his fixation with data, disparagement
of waste, and diligent digging until he finds a working solution to a
vexing problem.
Indeed, Mitt Romney himself
confesses that he has a love for scrutinizing data:
My
ten years in consulting and my sixteen years in venture capital and
private equity taught me that there are answers in numbers. Pile the
budgets on my desk and let me wallow. Numbers can help solve a mystery. I
discover trends, form hypotheses, most of which fail but lead to
others that are more fruitful. Almost without exception, I learn
something that is key to the success of the enterprise (Turnaround,
Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington DC).
Here's another
article that provides more insight about Romney's love of diving into the facts:
“My favorite thing to do is to bathe in data,” he says now, “do
analysis, reach conclusions, and then find a breakthrough. There is
nothing as exciting as that ‘aha!’ moment—seeing something that looks
insoluble and finding a way to make it work.”
The
episode highlights what would become the defining characteristic of
Romney’s career as a venture capitalist—and later as a government
executive. He was willing to pursue—and analyze—data that others
wouldn’t bother to chase down. His dogged persistence paid off. During
the 14 years Romney headed Bain Capital, the firm’s average annual
internal rate of return on realized investments was a staggering 113
percent. At that growth rate, a hypothetical $1,000 investment would
grow to $39.6 million before fees. Few, if any, VC firms have ever
matched Bain Capital’s performance under Mitt Romney.
You
can see the influence of his Bain background in how he approached
government. He explained in an interview with Fast Company magazine:
“The business world is very unforgiving if your numbers don’t add up.
In the public sector, there is a potential for a great deal more
sloppiness…. My experience in the investment and consulting worlds
helped me develop an approach to turnaround situations….
“Number
one: Stanch the bleeding…. Then you do a strategic assessment of how
bad things are. When I became governor, we immediately found that we
were in financial distress. We carried out an audit of where we were
and developed a pared-down budget that didn’t force us to raise taxes
or eliminate essential services. You have to build the right team. I
look for bright people with strong personalities who will argue with
me…. Finally, you have to focus. In business, you realize that unless
you improve the way you’re doing things, you’ll be left behind.
Government tends to add programs but doesn’t think in terms of
eliminating inefficiency, much less constant improvement. I look at
every program and think, How can we make this better? In the private
sector, change is a part of everyday life.”
It was inevitable that, as governor, Romney would go after the
thorniest public-policy problem of all: health care. Tom Stemberg
convinced him to take it on. In April, with a good deal of national
attention, Romney signed a measure to provide universal coverage for the
uninsured in Massachusetts without raising taxes or resorting to
employer mandates. The conservative Heritage Foundation played an
advisory role; the measure won grudging support from Ted Kennedy (who
had beaten Romney, 58 percent to 41 percent, in a Senate race in 1994)
and even The New York Times editorial board, which called it “a
carefully crafted plan with elements that could serve as a model for
elsewhere.”
Romney
had started, naturally, with a Bain-style strategic audit, pulling
together experts from business, academia, and government, and posing a
few basic—though frequently overlooked—questions: Who exactly was
uninsured? Why were they uninsured? What could be done to enable people
to keep their health coverage even if they switched jobs or worked as
independent contractors?
A survey of 5,000 state households turned up some surprises.
Twenty percent of the uninsured were eligible for Medicaid but had not
enrolled. Another 40 percent had annual earnings high enough to afford
health care but had decided to forgo it. The remaining 40 percent were
earning too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford health
insurance.
Romney focused on the fact that so many people who could afford
health care had decided to go without it. He asked for data on the
bundled price of health care to be unpacked and looked for ways to
change the market conditions that had driven up the cost of care. He
ultimately settled on a measure, known as the Connector, which created
an entirely new market for health care—enabling individuals and families
to purchase private health insurance, with pre-tax dollars, at a
savings of 20 percent to 40 percent. (Romney also pressed for
eliminating a number of state-imposed mandates on health insurers, as
these mandates had the perverse effect of driving up premiums and
leading some companies to drop health insurance as a benefit. The
legislature refused to go along, but did agree to a moratorium.)
Because, under the Connector system, health coverage was not
tied to an employer, residents had a property right to the insurance and
would not lose it if they switched jobs. “This is something
conservatives have been trying to achieve for 50 years,” says Robert
Moffit, a former Reagan administration official who, as director of
Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, regularly consulted
with Romney.
Romney created an Internet portal for hospitals and clinics to
enroll eligible residents in Medicaid automatically when they sought
treatment. For uninsured residents whose income was too high to qualify
for Medicaid, Romney offered a subsidy funded from the state’s uninsured
care fund, which totaled about $1 billion. Romney asked an MIT
economist, Jonathan Gruber, to develop an econometric profile of this
segment of uninsured residents. Gruber discovered that they were
disproportionately young single males who were both educated and
healthy, so the subsidies were unlikely to be greater than the $1
billion in the pool.
True to form, Romney became deeply immersed in crafting the
health-care proposal. Moffit recalls that when he was asked to brief
Romney, he found the tables turned. Romney was the one who gave Moffit
the comprehensive PowerPoint presentation. “In 25 years of briefing
elected officials and senior government executives, this was the first
time I was the one who got briefed,” Moffit says. “It was like being in a
private class with a very high-energy professor, and Romney was the
professor and I was the student.”
Finding Creative Solutions To Problems
Another important leadership skill that Mitt Romney has is the ability to be creative in finding solutions to the problems. A good example of this is during the 2002 Winter Olympics when Mitt Romney was confronted with the problem that the Olympic games in Utah would most likely be a financial disaster. However, Mitt Romney found a way to
raise revenue by adding additional sponsors to the Games:
Previous Olympic Games had a set number of sponsorship categories, for example, and when Mr. Romney and his team began work, they were told the list was full. So they invented new categories, said Fraser Bullock, who had worked with Mr. Romney at Bain and followed him to Utah to be chief operating officer for the Games. Mr. Bullock is not related to Kenneth Bullock.
That is how the Olympics got its first cake-mix sponsor (General Mills), first official Olympic meat (certified Angus beef) and first official job-search Web site (Monster.com).
“There was $500 million in sponsorship when we arrived, and by the time we were done there was $860 million, so over $300 million came from these additional categories,” Mr. Bullock said.
Working Well With Others
Mr. Romney, the persuasive businessman, also defanged some critics. Stephen Pace knows about that. He was a business consultant who believed the Games would spell ruin for Utah and had made great sport of eviscerating Mr. Romney’s predecessors.
After the scandal broke in 1998, Mr. Pace and his friends paraded in front of news cameras with T-shirts that read, “Slalom and Gomorrah.” Organizing Committee leaders barred Mr. Pace from meetings, which of course only gave him even more ammunition.
Mr. Romney, however, was a different kind of foe. Instead of shunning Mr. Pace, he invited him to come to a committee meeting, and about the same time announced that all meetings would be open to the public. And when Mr. Pace arrived, with the cameras rolling, Mr. Romney proposed a trade — he wanted a “Slalom and Gomorrah” shirt and would give Mr. Pace a regular Olympics booster shirt. Mr. Pace took the deal, or some might say, the bait.
“Romney was levels of sophistication above the people who were here before,” Mr. Pace said in an interview in his home near the State Capitol. He said he could not help liking Mr. Romney.
Mr. Dryer, the lawyer and board member, recalled that day. “He invited the enemy,” Mr. Dryer said. “He sort of made fun of it, but in a lighthearted way, and diffused the situation — it cut the legs out from under Stephen Pace and his criticism.”
The 2002 Winter Olympics also shows that Romney is
flexible in working with others and he picks his battles carefully so that he can achieve his ultimate goal of making the event a success:
“He always has an objective in mind and a goal that he works toward,”
said Randy L. Dryer, a lawyer and a former member of the Salt Lake
Organizing Committee who worked closely with Mr. Romney and described
himself as a Democrat, but also an admirer of Mr. Romney’s. “But he’s
not unwilling to modify that objective if it’s an uphill battle and not
worth the fight to get there — he is not bullheaded.”
Mitt Romney's ability to work well with others would come into play as governor as he worked with a state Congress dominated by Democrats to get Massachusetts out of debt, lowering taxes, creating jobs and providing health care for those who didn't have it.
Efficient Time Manager
Mitt Romney doesn't like to waste time. Its not a part of his leadership style. Once again, this can be seen in that he used
every minute of his time to find ways to keep the 2002 Winter Olympics from being a financial failure:
Mark Lewis, who led a fund-raising venture between the
United States Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake Committee, remembered a trip to New York to woo corporate sponsors.
“We had 10 meetings, breakfast to dinner, but then suddenly we had an extra hour because of a cancellation,” Mr. Lewis said. “We were on some block in Midtown, and I remember Mitt saying, ‘What can we do for an hour?’ ”
Kicking back with a beer, or even a latte, was not an option — Mr. Romney, a Mormon, does not drink alcohol or coffee. So Mr. Lewis said he scratched his head and thought of a friend whose advertising agency represented Gateway Computers. Landing a last-minute appointment, they raced over. Four weeks later, Gateway was in the Olympics for the first time as a $20 million sponsor.
Courage In The Face Of Crisis
Finally, an important aspect of Mitt Romney's leadership style is remaining strong in difficult times. He demonstrated that
courage during the 2002 Winter Olympics:
On Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists brutally attacked the United States, questions abounded about the safety of the 2002 Winter Games. Many wondered aloud if the Olympics should be held at all. Romney responded respectfully and intrepidly. "Tears and prayers flood our hearts. But not fear. As a testament to the courage of the human spirit, and as a world symbol of peace, the Olympic Games are needed even more today than the day before," he said in a prepared statement two days after the attacks.
"The Olympics are about courage," he stated. "The Games represent the greatest qualities of the human spirit, including world peace. The message of the Olympics is even more important today than before."
As our nation faces many daunting challenges, Mitt Romney is a confident leader the American people can look up to. People can place their trust in him to confront the biggest issues of our time such as terrorism, unemployment and debt.
Based on Mitt Romney's leadership style, he is without a doubt, the most qualified person to be in the White House in 2012.
Next, I will provide some concluding thoughts about the results of my comprehensive review of Mitt Romney's economic record and summarize what I have learned about him.
