Speeches and statementsCommencement RemarksPresident B. Joseph White UIC Pavilion Good morning graduates, faculty, families and friends. Graduates: what a great day this is for you. Congratulations! And I extend best wishes to everyone else here because graduation is an individual achievement with strong team support. I am especially pleased to be here at the first commencement of Dr. Stefanie Lenway as the dean of the UIC College of Business. Please join me in welcoming her to our family. (applause) As a former business school dean and as a member of your faculty, I am honored to participate with you in this ceremony and celebrate your personal and professional success stories in the UIC College of Business Administration. I am thrilled to help launch you, today’s graduates, into good jobs or yet more education. Wherever you are headed, you are ambassadors—living proof—of the value of a great public university. The University of Illinois was conceived and brought forth in one of this nation’s darkest times—the Civil War. It has surely exceeded its founders’ highest aspirations. The University of Illinois at Chicago, first at Navy Pier, then as the Circle Campus, and now as UIC, is a wonderful institution. No university combines excellence and access better than UIC. I know that many of you sitting in this pavilion today are first-generation college graduates. Your presence here today affirms the power of aspiration to drive action. I know. My grandparents were Italian immigrants. They believed completely in the power of education. One result is that their grandson has the privilege of being president of the University of Illinois, speaking to you today. As I have come to understand and, indeed, love the University of Illinois, I promote it everyday as “the state’s most valuable asset in creating a prosperous future for the people of Illinois, for the people of the nation and for the people of the world.” People and knowledge are the wealth of the new economy that you are stepping into. People and knowledge also are the stock in trade of the University of Illinois. I know this college has developed a strategic plan. It begins with a vision to “create new knowledge, new business, new value and new leaders for Chicago and the world beyond.” I hope you see yourself in that statement and are proud. I recently finished writing a book on leadership that draws on my decades of academic work as professor and dean, on years of executive and board experience in the private sector. I want to share with you a central message of my book: leadership matters. You have only to pick up the daily newspaper or click onto streaming newscasts to see what can happen when leaders are driven by greed and self-absorption instead of service and achievement. Whether in government or in corporate America, leadership failures due to ethical misconduct are notorious. But don’t miss the big picture. These lapses are the exception, not the rule. Leadership matters. As I look out into this assembly of over 600 graduates I see the future. We need people like you, our best and brightest, to aspire to great leadership. Leadership is a high calling and it can be very fulfilling. Leadership matters. It involves both the head and the heart. It is both analytical and interpersonal. To be a good leader, you have to be as tough as nails and as warm as toast. But to be a great leader, you have to be an innovative risk-taker and an effective change-maker. That’s a tall order. Not many people achieve it. Only a few of America’s greatest presidents really qualify…Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. And there are only a few in the private sector: Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Jack Welch of GE, an Illinois grad, Steve Jobs of Apple and Pixar fame. I’d add Oprah Winfrey (the business woman, not the entertainer) and Rick Hill, CEO of Novellus Systems, a UIC grad. The great leaders are few and far between. It is the job of commencement speakers to exhort you to be your best and to reach well beyond your grasp. And it surely is my job to encourage our graduates to pursue a lifetime of excellence. So I have to tell you: management is good, but leadership is better. I have learned that good managers have certain talents and perform essential work. Managers administer. They maintain. They control. They take a short-term view. They ask how and when. They make sure the trains run on time. This is commendable. But leaders have other talents and perform other work that separates them from those who are only managers. Leaders innovate. They develop. They inspire. They take a long-term view. They ask what and why. They challenge the status quo and they make consequential change. I hope that many of you see yourself in these terms. No matter what you’ve learned here, you are not yet fully formed leaders— you are developing leaders. Earlier I mentioned two sides of leadership: tough and warm. Tough leaders are disciplined and have a strong economic sense. They are expert at financial management…they verify…and they control and follow up. Tough leaders are cool, detached and analytical. They give great attention to detail. By contrast, warmer leaders are nurturing and developmental. They have a strong people sense and communications ability. They trust and they delegate and empower. But being both tough and warm is not enough. To be a leader, you must have a great desire to be in charge. This is not necessarily ego-driven but instead springs from a personal belief that you could guide…organize…and support others to accomplish a goal. The goal could be to win a ball game…raise money…build a company…win an election. So desire is first. Three other qualities determine your probability of success as a leader. Those qualities are: ability, strength and character. Ability means the leader has the requisite intelligence, experience and personal capacity to succeed on the job. As I like to say, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the world to lead, but you have to be smart enough and you have to have emotional stability and physical stamina, which is not given enough attention. Leadership, as life, is not a sprint, but a marathon and you have to stay in shape. The second quality—strength—captures drive and determination, a sense of urgency, resilience and the ability to command the respect of others to succeed on the job. I learned about strength in leadership when I worked at Cummins Engine Company. We promoted a good salesman to be a sales supervisor. Then everyone was disappointed in his performance in his first leadership role. So we had to let him go. He brought me a big box of papers on his way out the door. He said “These are from my ‘too hard’ drawer.” I asked “Your what?” He said, “My ‘too hard’ drawer. When I became supervisor, people started bringing me problems, gripes, customer complaints, stuff like that. I tried to deal with them, but then they piled up and I just started putting them in a drawer. You know, the drawer with stuff that’s just ‘too hard’.” See what I mean about the need for strength? He didn’t have it. That brings me to the third and final quality of leadership. And that is character. Good character includes: positive values, reliability and above all, integrity. I believe – and I hope you do, too – that high integrity is the cornerstone of excellent leadership. Integrity – like other virtues – demands a commitment, a pledge, a promise to be kept over your lifetime. To make it simple, let me suggest on this, your graduation day, four straightforward rules of the road for your business and personal life: First, you will never knowingly violate laws and regulations in any consequential way. Second, you will be honest, that is, you will tell the truth and not mislead. Third, you will make commitments carefully and keep them faithfully. Fourth, you will avoid conflicts of interest and when they are unavoidable, you will resolve them in favor of your duties and responsibilities, rather than benefiting yourself. Do these rules matter? Well, if the leaders of Tyco, Enron, and Worldcom, not to mention a woman named Martha and a former governor of Illinois had followed them, jail time wouldn’t be part of their resumes. That’s pretty consequential in my book. The news is filled with too many stories of corporate, government and nonprofit leaders gone bad. Scandals unfold and we scratch our heads in wonder that senior executives – with so much on the line – fail to live up to one, two, three or all of the principles I just outlined. Let me put it directly: Over the long haul, your most precious assets are integrity, your independence, your reputation and your peace of mind. A clear conscience is truly priceless. A corollary as you enter the business world is to hitch your star to people of high integrity who will mentor you to the next level. And when you’re at the next level, reach back and give someone else a tug forward. In a few minutes, you will hear from a student speaker, receive your diploma covers and hoods, and listen to a UIC alumnus. So let’s get on with the real business of the day – your commencement. As you leave here today, think about this: you now have equity ownership in a great institution, the University of Illinois. Everything you do as a graduate, how you live your live personally and professionally will reflect on you, on your family, on your friends and on your University. Again, congratulations and best wishes. Go make us proud. ### |
