Malcolm S. Morris has met every United States president since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
An impressive list for sure, but it wasn’t a commander in chief that most influenced the chairman and co-CEO of Stewart Information Services Corp.
When Morris was a senior in high school, he was responsible for chauffeuring evangelist Billy Graham to the dedication of Houston Baptist University.
The duo arrived late, but as they were walking toward the university, Graham wanted to take a detour.
About 70 or 80 yards away, the workers were finishing the landscaping, and Graham knelt down and thanked them for building the university.
“I said that is a humble person who recognizes the value of what somebody else is doing,” Morris says. “He told them what they are doing would be attracting the students that would one day be leading America.”
To Morris, that is still more impressive than any president he’s met, and it’s an attitude he tries to drive every day at the company, which provides title insurance and related services to the real estate and mortgage industries. He wants to be a trustworthy leader who puts the organization, which posted $1.5 billion in 2008 revenue, ahead of him and lead a company where the customer and employees come first.
“That’s the most important thing you can do,” he says. “I’ve seen too many organizations where the organization was about serving the leader rather than the leader serving the organization.”
An effective way he drives that point home is through the company’s open-door policy.
“What is interesting is to hear people talk about it in the field,” he says. “I may get one call in three years from a person and that same person is saying to their customers, to their team members etc., ‘You know, I have access and I can call the chairman of the board of the company and he knows me, and he’ll pick up my call anytime I call him.’
“But they don’t abuse that. Yet, it is a sense of pride to them that they do have that openness.”
Here’s how Morris uses an open-door philosophy to lead Stewart Information Services Corp. to new heights.
