To the other 50 percent who didn’t raise your hands, I can just hear you now, saying to yourself, “Who me? I don’t talk to myself!”
Well, I think all of you will be talking to yourself about the day’s events on your way home this evening. This is an unforgettable moment among many fine hours you will have in your career and life.
I promise to be brief.
I’ve always heard that being brief is the soul of being witty. But there is another way to describe being brief.
Example: A third-grader had to do a book report, and he chose Socrates.
His report consisted of three short sentences:
Number 1. Socrates was a philosopher.
Number 2. He talked a lot.
Number 3. They killed him.
I will keep that in mind as I share some thoughts on seven important topics:
• Education,
• Networking,
• Adversity,
• Change,
• Communication,
• Ethics, and, finally,
• Success.
Let’s start with
EDUCATION
.
As you leave the halls of this great institution, keep one idea firmly in mind: Learning is a lifetime occupation. It ain’t over till it’s over.
I’m sorry . . . It isn’t over until it’s over. Where is my education?
I am delighted to share the stage tonight with my longtime friend Warren Bennis, who has provided me with continuing education. Warren said, “Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life.”
Consider the story of the mother in the kitchen who hollers up to her son, “You get down here this very minute because you are late for school.”
The son hollers back,
“I don’t want to go to school, and I’m not going to school.
• The kids don’t like me.
• The teachers don’t like me.
• And everyone is talking behind my back.”
The mother rushes upstairs and pushes the bedroom door open, points to her son, and says, “You get out of bed this very minute because you are going to school for two reasons:
1. You are forty-one years old.
2. And you’re the principal of the school.”
My father was head of the Associated Press in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul for thirty-five years. He was fond of aphorisms and was constantly posting them on our refrigerator.
I grew up on a diet of aphorisms. Here are several of my dad’s favorite wisdom statements about education:
• There are really no mistakes in life—there are only lessons.
• “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.” That’s from former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
• Experience is a good teacher, but a hard one. She gives the test first and the lesson afterward.
• Information does not become power until it is used.
• And lastly: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
As you continue your education outside the classroom, your first assignment from Professor Mackay is to learn how to
NETWORK
effectively.
If I had to name the single characteristic shared by all the truly successful people I’ve met over a lifetime, I’d say it is the ability to create and nurture a network of contacts.
A couple of years ago in my syndicated column, I wrote about the best alumni networks in the country.
I said USC tops my list. I went on to write:
“I don’t know if they take a blood oath to help, hire, mentor, and generally take care of each other, but they act as if they do.
“From the day you graduate, the USC network is there for you. And, in turn, you, as a graduate, are expected to be there for other USC alumni.”
These are the people you can depend on for:
• Advice,
• Introductions,
• Information, and
• Support.
But your network only works if you listen to the people in it.
Did you know that 70 percent of all jobs are found through networking?
It’s nice to go to events like this and hear speakers. However, never forget that the person in front of you, behind you, to your right, and to your left can be more important than any speaker. In fact, I strongly suggest you take a moment to make those introductions before you leave here tonight.
Your network will be there for you, and you will be wise to pay attention to them.
My belief has always been . . . You can take:
• My money from me,
• My home from me, and
• My factories . . . whatever . . .
But leave me:
• My good name,
• My reputation, and
• My network.
And I’ll be back to where I was in two years, because one thing a great network helps you overcome is
ADVERSITY
.
I’ve never yet met a successful person who hasn’t had to overcome either a little or a lot of adversity in his or her life.
Why do some of us have what it takes to pick ourselves up off the canvas when others are ready to throw in the towel?
I don’t know the answer, but if I did, I’d bottle it.
I do know this: It isn’t all that rare.
The human species comes equipped with built-in mental toughness.
Some of us just don’t know it’s there.
Take it from an old peddler: The hardest sale you’ll ever make is to yourself. But once you’re convinced you can do it, you can.
Adversity is the grindstone of life. Intended to polish you up, adversity also has the ability to grind you down. The impact and ultimate result depend on what you do with the difficulties that come your way.
American business hasn’t had such a huge dose of adversity since the Great Depression. When I was growing up as a kid, the GDP was in the hundreds of millions, then it went to billions. And today we have a 13.8-trillion-dollar economy.
The media is constantly confusing billions for trillions and vice versa.
We have been so desensitized with these numbers, it’s hard to comprehend them.
So let’s put it in its proper perspective.
A quick little drill: All of us are going to count from one to a trillion right now and we are not going to sleep. I want each of you to make a prediction to yourself, how long this will take? You have your answer . . .
It takes 31,658
years
to count to a trillion.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time.
Recently,
Fortune
magazine did a telling rundown on the “Lessons of Adversity.”
“What has corporate America learned from the economic crisis?” the magazine asked.
“The Fortune 500 is having its worst slump ever, but the survivors have been taught a few things about thinking long term and sticking to principles. Let’s think of 2008 as one hell of a school year. What have we learned?”
We learned that “Gorging on easy profits can be fatal.” AIG lost an unbelievable $99.3 billion and Fannie Mae burned through $58.7 billion.
But look at the companies that are weathering the storm. Some of the showcased firms are no surprises. They include:
• Apple,
• IBM, and
• Johnson & Johnson.
As
Fortune
points out, “Highly disciplined companies can thrive in all seasons.” The same can be said about people.
And hiring is coming back. Some “Fortune 100 employers have at least 150 openings as of mid-April.” They include:
• Walmart,
• Hewlett-Packard, and
• State Farm Insurance.
Adversity teaches us the importance of facing and embracing
CHANGE
.
Here’s a little lesson in change:
When I graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1954:
• A gallon of milk cost ninety-two cents.
• The average for the Dow Jones was 338.
• And I drove a fire-engine red Pontiac Star Chief with a sticker price of $2,500.
In 1981-1982, many of you were born. That’s about twenty-seven years later:
• Milk had risen to $2.23 a gallon.
• The Dow was at about 900.
• And a Pontiac Firebird went for around $8,000.
Today in 2009, that’s another twenty-seven years further on the timeline:
• A gallon of milk is $2.69.
• The Dow has bounced back above 9,000.
• And the Pontiac? That model won’t even be around by next year.
Clearly, times change. And so must you, if you are to survive and thrive.
Consider the three Generals:
• General Electric,
• General Motors, and
• General Mills.
In 1981, General Electric was celebrated as one of the world’s truly great companies.
Recently, some General Electric lightbulbs were selling for more than the price of General Electric stock. (It’s curtains for Pontiac and much more at General Motors, as GM teeters on the brink of bankruptcy.)
But General Mills has been holding its own. Wheaties remains the breakfast of champions, as it was when I was a kid snipping off box tops and idolizing Yankee slugger Lou Gehrig, the first sports poster boy on a Wheaties box.
Recently I saw a video on YouTube that Sony played at an executive conference this year. It points out how dramatically the world has changed and is changing:
• Soon China will become the #1 English-speaking country in the world.
• I also heard this statistic when I was at the Olympic Games in China last summer: Three hundred million people play basketball in China. Their basketball court must be enormous! Seriously, those three hundred million people playing basketball in China is equal to the total number of people in the United States.
• The 25 percent of India’s population with the highest IQs is greater than the total population of the United States. Translation: India has more honors kids than America has kids.
• We are living in times of exponential change. There are thirty-one billion searches on Google every month. In 2006, this number was less than a billion.
For students starting a four-year technical degree, half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.
Change certainly includes changes in jobs. And this is even truer in careers.
We now know that today’s grads will have many job changes in his or her career. And in the near future, three to five career changes.
And the Labor Department has updated that job-change projection: Today’s student can expect to have “10 to 14 jobs by the age of 38.”
Yes, you heard that right—ten to fourteen jobs.
The Sony study I mentioned earlier elaborates more remarkable statistics on jobs:
The top ten jobs in demand in 2009, experts contend did not exist in 2004.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that:
• One in four workers has been with their current employer for less than one year.
• One in two has been there less than five years.
Firms are choosier because they can afford to be. If you want to get picked these days, be prepared to satisfy very picky people.
The amount of change is overwhelming—in demographics, technology, standards, and the employment market. But every time I reflect on change, I always think about how certain principles endure.
No person “will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or get all the credit for doing it.” That wasn’t said by Dr. Phil, but by Andrew Carnegie.
One factor that will never change is the importance of good
COMMUNICATION
.
The key to good communication is knowing your audience. A classic example is the following letter to the parents of a daughter away from home for the first time at college.
She writes:
Dear Mom and Dad:
I am sorry to be so long in writing lately, but all my writing paper was destroyed the night the demonstrators burned down the dormitory.
I am out of the hospital now and the doctor says my eyesight should be back to normal sooner or later.
That wonderful boy, Bill, who saved me from the fire, kindly offered to share his little apartment with me until the dorm is rebuilt. He comes from a good family, Mom and Dad, so you won’t be too surprised to learn when I tell you we are going to get married. In fact, Mom and Dad, you always wanted to have grandchildren so you should really be happy to know that you will be grandparents next month.
Please disregard the above practice in English Composition. There was no fire, I haven’t been in the hospital, I am not pregnant, and I don’t even have a boyfriend.
But . . . I did get a “D” in chemistry and an “F” in French. And I wanted to be sure you received this news in the proper perspective.
Love,
Mary
Mary got an A for Audience Anticipation.
Getting your message across is critical, whether you’re selling, managing, developing products and services, or chatting with your neighbor in the next cubicle.
And remember, good communication is a two-way street. We have two eyes and two ears but only one mouth, which shows us we should watch and listen twice as much as we speak.
You’ve been writing papers and making presentations to your classes with plenty of feedback, even grades, up to now.
But what will happen once the audience has real money to spend and your company’s future depends on your communication skills?
Your communication has to be clear, meaningful, and, above all, truthful. You must present your company or product in a way for which you would never need to apologize.