Most people have good, but simple, goals in high school — graduate, land a job, maybe go to college.
Not Rodney H. Brady.
As a senior at Jordan High, Brady was encouraged by his debate coach, Phil Goldbransen, to take some time and develop more specific goals for his life.
"I'm convinced he said the same thing to many others. But I took him quite seriously," Brady said.
So he set goals. About 200 of them, actually. And he carefully listed all of the steps needed to achieve them.
Get the best education possible. Check.
Run a major corporation. Check.
Serve in a high-level government post. Check.
Be a college president. Check.
In fact, five decades after graduating, Brady says he has been able to check off about 175 of those original 200 goals.
As for the other 25 — and numerous goals he has added since — well, he's not done yet.
Brady is president and chief executive officer of Deseret Management Corp., which owns 100 percent of the stock of several for-profit companies that are owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As such, he is the man behind the businesses of the church.
"When I took this assignment, (LDS Church) President (Gordon B.) Hinckley made it clear that general authorities (of the church) would not serve on corporate boards, whether they be the boards of church-owned companies or the boards of outside companies," Brady said from his ultra-orderly, neat-as-a-pin office on the fifth floor of downtown Salt Lake's Eagle Gate Tower, overlooking a block full of LDS Church buildings.
"His objective was to enable the general authorities of the church to spend all of their time on ecclesiastical matters. . . . So I'm successful to the degree that I can keep the general authorities of the church from having to spend a lot of their time involved in business activities."
Since his appointment as DMC president in March 1996, Brady said he thinks he has met that measure of success. And considering everything else he's accomplished in life, that comes as no surprise to those who have known and worked with him.
Brady, who was born and grew up in the Sandy area, received his bachelor's degree in accounting and master's of business administration from the University of Utah. He took some time off from school to serve as an LDS Church missionary in Great Britain from 1953-55.
He also earned a doctorate in business administration from Harvard University, and he served in the U.S. Air Force from 1959-62. Following his military service, he started a management consulting business with one of his Harvard professors.
After he spent four years consulting for the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, they sold their company, and Brady landed a job as vice president for administration for the aircraft division of Hughes Tool Co. in Los Angeles.
In 1970, Brady was appointed assistant secretary for administration and management of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in Washington, D.C. He still has, hanging on his office wall, a framed letter from President Richard Nixon, along with a pen Nixon used to sign some legislation Brady helped push through Congress.
In 1972, Brady headed back to Los Angeles, this time as executive vice president of pharmaceuticals company Bergen Brunswig Corp. After six more years in the corporate jungle, he was ready to move on.
"I finally got to the point where I could do whatever I wanted to in life, and I always wanted to run a fine undergraduate college," said the soft-spoken Brady. "So I ended up as the president of Weber State in Ogden."
Brady ran Weber from 1978 to 1985. While there, he hired Allen Simkins as dean of the business college. Simkins is the school's vice president of administrative services now, and he said he remembers Brady for his principles, organization and, of course, goal-oriented leadership.
"Rod was the kind of person who kind of always had a road map for life of what he intended to achieve and accomplish, and just very vigorously and enthusiastically and with a great work ethic went after it," Simkins said.
"I always remember every time he gave a speech or met with faculty and staff, he always said, 'Here's the five issues we need to address,' or 'Here's our eight objectives.' He just always had things laid out, and that's a great trait, I think, of a leader, to get everybody to share in the vision and work toward the same kind of goals and objectives."
After eight years at Weber State and another check on his goal list, it was time for Brady's next challenge. He took over as president and CEO of Bonneville International Corp., a broadcasting company that falls under the management of DMC and is best known locally for its KSL radio and television stations.
Bruce T. Reese, Bonneville's president and CEO since shortly after Brady left for DMC in 1996, also points to Brady's values, decisionmaking abilities and — again — goal-setting as the keys of his leadership style.
"He is a remarkable leader and decisionmaker and manager, if you will, in terms of traditional business thinking, but the unique thing about Rod is that he brings just a rock-solid set of values behind all of those skills," Reese said.
"Those things become extremely important. You need to have a set of values behind your decisions, maybe particularly when you're doing business."
And despite all of his accomplishments, Reese said, Brady keeps life in perspective. For example, Reese said, Brady rarely wears anything other than a navy blue suit with a shirt and tie.
"He'll say, 'There are other important decisions to make in life, so you don't want to horse around spending energy deciding what to wear today,' " Reese said.
"He's done a little bit of everything. He's moved from one industry to another industry to another industry, and now he's in charge of a company that has a very diverse set of subsidiaries. I think he's got a wide range of interests, and that serves him very well here."
In addition to Bonneville, the diverse businesses that employ more than 2,000 people for DMC include: AgReserves Inc., an agriculture and farm management company; Beneficial Life Insurance Co.; Deseret Book Co., which publishes and sells books; newspaper publisher Deseret News Publishing Co.; hotel and restaurant management company Hotel Temple Square Corp.; Hawaii Reserves Inc., which manages DMC's property in Hawaii; and property management company Zions Securities Corp.
But it took more than just the prospect of mastering another challenge to convince Brady to take on the DMC job, which he sees as part executive position and part church "calling."
"I would probably be retired at this stage of my life if this were strictly a business appointment," said Brady, 68. "I serve here because President Hinckley wants me to serve here."
Brady said running DMC is not the same as running a corporation that must answer to shareholders who care only about the bottom line. Although he will not release financial details for DMC, he said its companies are "doing well."
"Actually, what we concentrate on doing is we want to do well while we're doing good," he said. "The big advantage (to working for the LDS Church) is that one can concentrate on doing good. You're not trying to squeeze the last dollar out of a business."
He said he does not see any disadvantages to working for a religious organization.
"This is really a wonderful group of businesses to relate to," he said. "Heading each of the companies is a chairman, a board of directors and a president and chief executive officer. My philosophy is to let them run themselves and just make sure we have the right people in the right assignments.
"I don't try to run those companies. Deseret Management is a holding company. It's not an operating company."
Brady said he does not expect the LDS Church to move into any new business ventures in the near future, "though from time to time it may make sense."
In the meantime, Brady said he will stay in his current position "as long as the church leadership wishes me to serve."
After all, it's not easy for a man of goals to stop setting — and achieving — them. Brady still has loose-leaf binders at home that include all of his goal lists, with checkmarks beside those he has accomplished. He still starts his annual goal-setting process early each December. And he keeps a further record of his experiences in the form of a series of bound volumes lined up on a table in his office, books he has written about each stage of his life.
The book on his missionary years includes the story of his meeting to discuss the LDS scriptures with the British prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill. Brady still has one of Churchill's trademark cigars — unsmoked — and other mementoes from that visit. When asked how he managed to get an audience with the great man, Brady has a standard answer. "You set yourself a goal, you lay out the steps, and then you do it."
It's all part of the philosophy Brady learned from his debate coach half a century ago.
"What I have learned about professional and personal life during four decades of leadership in business, government, education and community service . . . is a goal-oriented life is more likely to lead to success than is a life left to chance," Brady said. "If you don't know where you're going, you'll probably end up someplace else."
E-mail: gkratz@desnews.com