Mark Crockett says career path leads to Salt Lake County mayor's office

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HOLLADAY — Friends and colleagues say Mark Crockett would make a great Salt Lake County mayor.

They just aren't sure why he'd want to step away from a successful and lucrative 20-year career as a consultant, helping businesses save billions of dollars by improving management and cutting costs.

"I would love to have him stay in business," said Adam Wayment, who works for Crockett's Vici Capital Partners, "because he's very good at what he does."

Sitting at a patio table in the front yard of his Holladay home, Crockett talks about his past business successes and how he says they've prepared him for the job of Salt Lake County mayor.

Building on experience gained during his time with the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Crockett worked to develop a new approach to fixing companies, one that brings together all stakeholders to find changes that will actually make a difference.

"To date, we've done it with dozens of organizations and saved billions of dollars a year to use for better purposes," he said. "That's my career."

And Crockett said he believes that's what Salt Lake County needs.

Like a large corporation headed in the wrong direction, Salt Lake County is overdue for an overhaul, he said. The county government has been borrowing and spending too much.

It's an organization that needs fixing, Crockett said, starting with its budget.

"We can't just issue edicts or say we're going to do everything differently," he said. "That just doesn't work."

Crockett's method involves bringing together those who run the programs with those who use them and even those who don't like them to analyze every aspect of them and ultimately redesign them.

By doing so, Crockett estimates the county can save between $40 million to $80 million per year — roughly 10 to 15 percent of its budget — and then reinvest that money into the programs to improve them.

"Every place that I've ever gone, that's what happened," he said.

Wayment says Crockett has a way of motivating people to work harder and smarter, teaching them better ways to approach problems and overall making them move valuable to their respective companies.

"He just knows how to get people to do things," said Wayment, who's worked with Crockett for about eight years, most recently at Vici. "They'll go out and do it, come back and report. He's very good at pointing people in the right direction."

Cottonwood Heights Mayor Kelvyn Cullimore said he got to know Crockett while he was running for mayor and Crockett was campaigning for Salt Lake County Council. After both were elected, they worked together on several projects, as part of Cottonwood Heights fell in Crockett's district.

"I was so impressed with his skills that I asked him to serve on the board of directors in my company," Cullimore said.

Today, Crockett is a board adviser for Dynatronics Corp., a Salt Lake City-based manufacturer of medical devices for physical therapy. Cullimore serves as the company's CEO.

"With Mark, his whole business has been working with large corporations," Cullimore said. "He brings to the table experience and knowledge about how to streamline and make large organizations more efficient, and I can't think of any (experience) you'd need more (as Salt Lake County mayor) than that."