John Ryan
The College at Brockport
Undergraduate Student Commencement
Prepared Remarks*
May 17, 2008

(* Due to inclement weather the speech was not delivered)

Thank you for that kind introduction. We're fortunate to have a number of distinguished leaders here today, including the Honorable Charles Schumer of the U.S. Senate. It's a pleasure to see Thomas Egan of the SUNY Board of Trustees and of course President Halstead. Also joining us today are Scott Turner, chair of the Brockport College Council; Mary Worboys-Turner, chair of the Brockport Foundation; Brenda Beal, president of the Brockport Alumni Association; Darnell Pierce, president of the Brockport Student Government; and Michael Fickess, recipient of the President's Citation Award for outstanding achievement in academics and service to the College and community.

It's a privilege to join all of these fine individuals today. It is also certainly a privilege to be here at Brockport, which is blessed with many talented men and women as faculty, staff, alumni, students and friends.

My parents always stressed the importance of living with what my pastor down in North Carolina calls an "attitude of gratitude." Please know how grateful I am to receive this honorary degree. Thank you.

To all of you who are graduating today – congratulations. The last thing you want on this special day is an old, bald guy up here lecturing you. Unfortunately for you, this honorary degree gives me the right to do that anyway. So sit tight. I promise to keep this under two hours. When it's over, you will also have an attitude of gratitude.

Before I begin, I'd like to ask the graduating class to join me in thanking the people in your lives who have made your success today possible.  I understand that Joe Doody, a Brockport alum and current president of Staples North American Delivery, recently gave a lecture to Brockport supporters. As those memorable Staples commercials remind us, there's no "Easy Button" – especially when it comes to education. Your family knows that better than anyone.

I'd like to ask all of the parents, grandparents, spouses and other relatives who are in the audience to please stand. Graduates – let's give them a round of applause for the support they have given you throughout your time here at Brockport. This day is as much theirs as it is yours.

I'm going to talk briefly about four actions you can take to succeed personally and professionally. They're based on more decades of personal experience than I'd like to admit – and on the research and classroom work of my current employer, a global nonprofit called the Center for Creative Leadership. If you walk out of here remembering one or two of these tips, I'll consider my mission accomplished. 

So without further elaboration, here are those four actions: 1) Collaborate; 2) Be authentic; 3) Keep learning and;  4) Take care of yourself. This might sound like advice your parents already gave you. I'm here to tell you they were right.

Let's start with collaboration. We're living in a globalized world that's awash in information. And that makes it absolutely essential to work in teams and across boundaries. It doesn't matter if you are a CEO or an entry-level employee. It is impossible for you alone to know everything you need to know to make good decisions. How do you get the information you need to be effective? By working closely with other people. You have a head start on this because your generation is used to making connections and breaking down boundaries. Before this day is over, for example, more than 230,000 new people will have joined My Space – a tremendous tool for collaboration.

Before we leave this topic, let's consider Nelson Mandela for a minute. After enduring years of imprisonment and brutality, he could have come of out prison looking to even some scores. But if he had merely been vindictive, would we be talking about him now? Instead, Mandela reached out to the very people who had oppressed him. He needed them to achieve his ultimate goal: building a prosperous, integrated South Africa. Mandela got beyond boundaries of race, class and power and helped transform his nation. That is collaboration – and creative leadership – at its best.

The transformative role collaboration can play in our lives was documented wonderfully in a favorite book of mine – Confidence, by Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School. She analyzes Mandela's collaborative skills and teaches us a great deal in the process. Now that you're out of school and have lots of free time, I recommend you put it on your summer reading list.

Let's move on to action No. 2: be authentic. Here's what that means: doing your job and living your life without compromising your values or beliefs. This isn't easy to do. It's tempting at any age and in any job to keep up an image of being decisive and all-knowing – and that can compromise your authenticity. Many times we don't want to hear the truth about ourselves and our actions from people around us. But we need to listen to them.

Authenticity can help set you apart – because, unfortunately, your new degree alone won't differentiate you quite as much as it used to in the work world. You are among about 1.3 million people who will receive college degrees this year in the United States. And you are to be congratulated. But guess how many people will receive one in India this year – 3.1 million. And in China – 3.3 million.

In an increasingly well-educated world, how you act will be as important as what you know.

In striving for authenticity, I often look to the example of Abraham Lincoln. He led the U.S. through the most tumultuous period in its history. He did it by subverting his ego to do what was necessary to complete his mission. He was a man of great humility, someone capable of bringing into his presidential cabinet rivals who had insulted him on the campaign trail. But he reached out to them because he believed they were still talented leaders whose expertise could benefit the country. Lincoln did his homework, he led by example and he had great character. That is what authenticity is all about. Pick up a copy of a fantastic book on Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It's called Team of Rivals. It's great reading and it's several hundred pages long. It'll make you feel like you're back in college.

Now, let's go to action No. 3: keep learning. At the Center for Creative Leadership, we use some fancy jargon I've been straining to avoid today. But permit me this phrase: learning agility. Studies from the U.S. Department of Labor tell us young people today can expect to have five or six different careers in their lifetimes – and 10 to 14 different jobs by age 38! Good luck with that. I've had three careers – in the military, higher education and nonprofit sectors – and that's kept me plenty busy.

To succeed in an environment where our work is always changing, we need to adapt. In a world where 3,000 new books are published each day, we need to be agile learners. All the technical knowledge we accrue won't be a substitute for learning on the fly and adapting to situations as they arise. Simply put, you'll need to know how to learn – all the time.

Here's an example from my own life. Back when I was in my early twenties, around the time Lincoln took office, the Navy taught me how to fly airplanes. Then they taught me how to land them on aircraft carriers. We practiced by bringing down planes on a long runway with four wires around it to mark a landing place. If we made mistakes and missed those wires, it was ok. We still had lots of runway left. After a couple weeks, they told us it was time to actually land on an aircraft carrier. If you've never tried to do this, I'll tell you what an aircraft carrier looks like from 20,000 feet: pretty damn small.

Certainly we trained hard for that moment. But in all honesty, no amount of practice on land can prepare for landing on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean. You have to account for shifting winds, for the fact the ship is rocking in the water and so forth. If you are planning to pull this off, you need to learn new things. You need to adapt. And you need to do that very, very quickly. The world today, the environment you are entering as professionals is quite similar. Never, ever stop learning. Never stop challenging yourself.

That brings us to action No. 4: take care of yourself. For those of you keeping score, I'm almost done here.

At the Center for Creative Leadership, our research shows a striking correlation between physical fitness and leadership ability. In other words, executives and managers who exercise regularly are consistently perceived as being better leaders. This is powerful knowledge – and we can all act on it.

If this is an area you can improve in, look to the people in your life who know how to take care of themselves for inspiration. It could be a friend who is training for her first marathon. It could be an uncle who gets up early each morning to go swimming. It could be a sibling who loves to go rock climbing. These folks probably aren't professional athletes. They're just ordinary people who like to challenge themselves physically. And my guess is they're probably also quite focused, energetic and optimistic as a result.

So follow their example. Go for a hike. Play some tennis. Get out on the basketball court. And in a moment, I'm going to follow my own advice on exercise and walk back to my chair. This speech is just about over.

There's no way to guarantee success, however you define it. But we can stack the deck in our favor. And these four tips will help you get where you want to go: 1) collaborate; 2) be authentic; 3) keep learning; and 4) exercise. And right after this ceremony ends, go have some fun. You've worked hard and you deserve it. My sincerest congratulations to you and your families on your wonderful accomplishments.