If you are getting ready to purchase a book anytime soon that will help you improve your perspective on business in these challenging economic times, you may want to consider, “The Pursuit of Something Better: How an Underdog Company Defied the Odds, Won Customers’ Hearts, and Grew its Employees into Better People.” Read it, and you’ll be inspired to take a hard look at all aspects of your life.

John Rooney

While Pursuit focuses on the story of how U.S. Cellular rose from a minor player in the telecommunications industry to a force to be reckoned with, it also does an outstanding job of portraying the thinking of the company’s CEO and President, John “Jack” Rooney. And Rooney is certainly a “force to be reckoned with” in his own right. His “trade secrets” are not at all secret thanks to the publishing of Pursuit. Anyone could copy his unique style in their own company and personal life if they were so inclined. Perhaps that’s why Rooney has been so successful at helping U.S. Cellular become No. 1 in customer loyalty. Few people are willing to admit to themselves that their current way of approaching the way they handle their business and personal lives is not working out so well.

The man has vision. He throws out conventional business attitudes with aplomb. Yes, he has all the good stuff like values, ethics and integrity. Best of all, he has courage and a heart for people.

Rooney is not afraid to recognize and eliminate people who are arrogant, lazy, disruptive, sexist, unwilling to achieve or who in general refuse to be a part of his goal of a “Dynamic Organization.”

“The best way to get through to a customer is, first of all, through talented, well-equipped motivated associates,” Rooney said. “The product must live up to or exceed the promises you make relative to the product. We did that, and we did it well, so the company has prospered because of it.”

There were many challenges along the way that Rooney and U.S. Cellular faced 10 years ago when he first joined the company.

“We were just midgets compared to others in this industry,” he said. “Some people would say it was a pretty good sized company, but we had to turn it into the Little Engine That Could. We had to work harder than anybody else so that we could be successful.

“I’ve never gone to bed at night worried about what we were doing,” he continued. “I’ve always had a clean conscience and could always face the customer with the idea that we were doing the best we knew how to do.”

Rooney stressed that it is imperative to deal with customers in an ethical and fair way. “Looking back, I have no regrets,” he said. “I can’t look back on anything I did in the last 10 years and say I wish I had done things differently or that I violated my ethics or principles. The company has been run on the straight and narrow — and I’m very proud of that. We’ve been very successful, which shows that you don’t have to be a crook to be a good businessman.”

Rooney pointed out that the whole concept of honesty and integrity in business is something any and all industries can and should embrace.

“People bring things on themselves,” he said. “They think that the end justifies the means. Some people have got to get the win, and they don’t care how they get the win. At U.S. Cellular, we want to win, and we work hard to win, but we get our jollies out of the fact that we win the right way.”

He also said that it’s important to be very conscious of the quality of what is being offered to customers, and that striving to improve is part of being successful for the sake of customers.

“As far as I’m concerned, U.S. Cellular did a great job of being the Little Engine That Could and refusing to die,” Rooney said. “Not only did we keep up with the technology our competition was using, there were times that we led that technology.”

In the early years of his tenure, there were some tough times, and people would ask Rooney why U.S. Cellular didn’t just sell out.

“First of all, it’s not my job to sell the company, that’s somebody else’s job” he said. “Second, my job is to run the company successfully, and I think we did that.”

Rooney, 67, has announced that he will be retiring from Chicago-based U.S. Cellular sometime this year. He plans to remain active in the community, serving on the board of directors for First Midwest Bancorp and Loyola University. He joined the company in 2000, after serving as an executive at Ameritech.

About U.S. Cellular

U.S. Cellular employs 8,700 associates, and is owned by parent company Telephone & Data Systems Inc. (TDS). It is the 5th-largest wireless telecommunications company in the U.S., behind AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel, with over six million customers in 126 markets and 26 states. Under Rooney’s leadership, the company has more than doubled its revenues, which were $3.93 billion in 2009.