Thirty-one years ago, and only nine years into his career, Pat Mullin decided to switch accounting firms from Arthur Andersen — then No. 1 — to Deloitte LLP — then No. 8 — and to this day, he’s thankful for that move.
“I wake up most mornings saying, ‘Thank you, Lord — I don’t know why you made me change firms in 1980 … but you did it, and why you did it, I don’t know, but it sure has worked well, because Andersen’s long gone and Deloitte is the No. 1 professional services firm in the world,’” Mullin says.
Now, after a successful career with Deloitte, including serving as managing partner until last June, Mullin will retire next month.
Smart Business spoke with Mullin about some of the leadership lessons he’s learned throughout his career.
Turn failure into success. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen in your life can be the best, because you can really learn from your mistakes. You can really capitalize.
I started my college education at Temple University in Philadelphia, which is where we were from. One day, I got this letter that said for the mutual benefit of the individual and the institution, we suggest you pursue your education elsewhere. I had to read it a couple times to realize they were saying nicely that I was flunking out. My mother and dad — the first question out of their mouth, after being mad at me, was, ‘Where are you going to go to college?’ Failure was not an option. Not going to school was not part of it. That’s what brought me to Cleveland. My brother had moved out here, and that led me to Kent State.
There are some things that I’m really bad at, like languages. When I took French in high school, the priest said to me on the last day, ‘Monsieur Mullin, I have a deal for you. If you agree to never speak my beautiful language again, I will pass you.’ On the other side, I discovered quickly at Kent that I found accounting to be extraordinarily easy. Most of my friends thought it was impossible. I went from flunking out to straight A’s — I think I got one B.
Crisis is a terrible thing to waste, they say, and my life proved true to flunking out at Temple and finding what I was good at. That correspondingly allowed me to focus my strengths and minimize my weaknesses, which is something, over the course of my career, I’ve really tried to do, and I really try to encourage the people I mentor to do the same thing.
