Thank you Dennis for that wonderful introduction.
Before I get started, I’d like to thank two special classmates that made it possible for me to speak to you today. The first, graciously volunteered to relinquish his place at this podium during our last class, less than 100 feet from this very spot a couple of weeks ago. Thank you Judd.
The second classmate, from what I understand, received his grades and as is his customary practice immediately contacted his professors to argue that his GPA was too high, just so that I could come out on top. Thank you Jeff.
Seriously though, I’m really undeserving and humbled to be in front of you today, especially considering the outstanding people who make up the Penn State EMBA class of 2007. I can honestly say that I share this podium with each and every one of you today because without your help, I would have never made it. But it is not just this EMBA class that is great and deserving of thanks. We all know who needs to be thanked the most for getting us through this program and supporting us for the last 22 months. I’m talking about our very special spouses, partners, family, and friends. Without their support, I think you’ll agree, none of us would have made it to today’s ceremony. So I’d like the entire EMBA class of 2007 to take a moment right now – look into the eyes of that special person that supported and helped you get through this program – and give them a big thank-you hug and round of applause – they deserve it!
What I’d really like to talk to you about today is something that formed the foundation of this EMBA program. We all came into the program knowing that we should be comfortable with change. At one of our very first communications classes, during the infamous “hell week” that kicks off Penn State’s EMBA program, under the coaching of the amazing Professor Andy Gufstafson, many of us chose the theme of being “comfortable with change” as the topic for our first 2-minute speech assignment.
It turns out that we as humans are already adequately preprogrammed for adapting to change. But as Ralph Oliva would say, if we really dig deep into what we learned, the underlying message goes far beyond comfort with change. Instead of simply being comfortable with change, instead of simply, as some say, “riding the wave of change”, instead of being open to change and adapting to it, we must take charge of change and actually create and control it! This is what separates MBA’s who become great leaders, from MBA’s who just get their diplomas. This is what makes people such as John Bogle and Bob Lane, two of the speakers we heard from in the past months, the great leaders they are. They’ve learned to envision the world as a better place, then create the change needed to get there.
With the tools we’ve learned here, all we need to add is our own initiative and we will be able to do the same. We must envision change, create it, manipulate it and mold it to suit our own needs, to bring the most benefit to us, our companies, and in deed all of humanity. If you’re looking for the Residual Message in my words, here it is: Don’t just be comfortable with change – CREATE IT AND MOLD IT TO BENEFIT YOU.
Let me illustrate why I believe that most humans are already preprogrammed to be comfortable with change.
Think about what happened in the past 22 months when 25 random people were grouped together to form the team that became the PSU EMBA class of 2007. After our very first class weekend, Chris, the youngest member of our class, lost his job. That didn’t stop young Chris. He continued with the program, found 2 new jobs since then, bought a new house with Jenn, his wife, and they are now expecting their first child. Think of how drastically life has changed for them. If they weren’t preprogrammed to be comfortable and accepting of change, they’d be needing Dr. Jeff Kaplan’s psychotherapy services right now.
But Chris was not the only one who went through major change with hardly a hic-cup. Corey, Brad, Steve, Hanan, and Wayne all celebrated fatherhood in these two years. Kids were not the only new family additions. Ellen and Jeff both expanded their families with new puppies. Six new lives were brought into the world from our group of 25 EMBA students. Not one missed a class or an assignment.
Some of the other changes that happened within our group were new jobs. When you look at the Job changes our class went through, we lost Ken to a Director’s job at Schwepp, Brian became the number two man at Edward Jones in Europe, Alex lost a good job but found a better one, Christine was promoted to Director of Sales and Marketing at Restek, Andy became Global Financial Manager at Borg Warner, Elpi and Corey both went through job changes as well. But the real prize of job changes goes to Hanan, who went through no less than four jobs in 22 months and in fact could only join us here today because of quitting his latest job less than 1 month after starting it. During these job changes and births, not a single person missed a class weekend or did not complete their assignments. Everyone accepted these major changes in their lives as easy as if they were part of life itself.
In addition to job changes, we had some deep personal changes. About 3/4ths of the way through this program, our self proclaimed “flaming liberal” Deepak had an epiphany. He realized he had many conservative beliefs. A survey in Dr. Viceri’s class revealed he was one of only two “conserves” in the entire class, sharing that distinction with John. For John it was not a surprise, for Deepak it was. Deepak was well on his way to becoming an honorary conservative. To celebrate this revelation, for the first time in his life, Deepak went target shooting and to his surprise, really enjoyed himself. The video immortalizing this event is called “Deepak gone wild” and is available for purchase.
Deepak was not alone in his epiphany. On December 12th, 2005, team ET comprising Brian, Christine, and Chris learned that my life was severely deprived. On that night they conspired to change that. They took me to the strangest place I’ve ever been to. A place that was completely foreign to this engineer and had the same attraction to me as the shrill of a dentist’s drill. What was this miserable place? Someplace that’s called a shopping mall! The only way I managed to survive the ordeal was to fix the miss-tied square knots in the fish bowls at a place called Banana Republic. Clearly, the employees there never had Boy Scout training. To my astonishment, it turns out the knots weren’t what that store sold. Sport shopper Christine brought me there not to buy knots, something I can at least use, but she brought me there to change my image by finding me stylish new clothes for my wardrobe. Unfortunately none of the shirts had pockets for my ever-present pen and pencil collection. I made it out of that terrible place with no new wardrobe and only a couple of emotional scars. But considering engineers have few emotions, those scares are deep.
Other major changes in our class were two engagements. Congratulations Sue and Judd! I also want to start a rumor that Bill will shortly join this list, so congratulations to Bill as well.
Some of the changes of the past 22 months were clearly devastating. Kevin and Steve both lost their dads. Our fearless leader Dennis Sheehan lost his mother. Last August at the young age of 43, seven year old Sofia lost her dad, my brother, to a heart attack. No assignments or morning runs were missed.
Perhaps the biggest, life-changing event affecting our class occurred during the early morning hours of last October 14th. With Linda and John Fitzgerald away for the weekend, in a couple of seconds of imprudence, their young son’s 16 year old life changed forever. The result, the family home destroyed and young Patrick with 3rd degree burns over 60% of his body. During the ensuing 60 days of medically induced coma, John began his daily journal which now chronicles more than 140 days of Patrick’s Journey with the words, “Pat is alive today and we are confident he will make it to tomorrow.” During these early days, those optimistic words betrayed the reality of the near fatal condition Patrick was in. As devastating as this story is, as much of a life-changing event it continues to be for the Fitzgeralds, the net result for Linda was that she missed a total of one class weekend. Life went on, even when life itself was uncertain.
I can go on for hours about the major changes that occurred during this program, but I think you get the point. Major changes occur continuously around us, and we in return, adapt and continue with our lives. And this class is not unique. Find any 25 random people on this planet and put them together into a group. The only certain thing about their future is that they will experience tremendous changes, which they will undoubtedly get through and be OK.
I hope you now understand why I believe we, as humans, are already pre-wired to adapt to change. Since we already know how to “ride the crest of change”, we have to remember that what separates the great leaders of the world from the less effective ones is not how they react to change or how they accept it, but how they actually envision change, create it, and manipulate it to their own advantage. Envisioning and Creating change is not a passive activity, but an active one. That is what this EMBA program taught us how to do.
From creating and implementing strategy with the Star and Prompt models, to learning how to market and communicate our visions with Ralph Oliva’s tool box, to creating aligned incentive programs and implementing the proper equity versus debt ratios within our companies. The essence of our classes focused on giving us the tools to take control and lead change efforts. The only element missing is the initiative, which is now up to each one of us individually to provide. It is now your turn to use your own initiative combined with the tools we learned here to make the world a better place and become great leaders.
During these two years our class has demonstrated all four of the team processes taught to us by Barbara Gray. We’ve gone through Forming, Storming, Norming, and especially, as Dean Sheehan will attest to: Performing. Now, we are on the verge of facing the final, and perhaps most difficult team process of all, one that Professor Gray ironically did not talk about – Adjourning. Just as surely as every team is formed, when the job gets done, every team must be adjourned. In less than 10 minutes, our job here as the EMBA class of 2007 will be done. Before adjourning our team, on behalf of this class, I want to thank all of the staff here at Penn State that challenged us every step of the way. I want to thank Dean Sheehan, Jake, Tim, and Sherry for their outstanding support. Finally I want to thank all of you, the EMBA class of 2007, for being – YOU. Remember this final message:
Don’t just be comfortable with change – CREATE IT AND MOLD IT TO BENEFIT YOU. Now go out there and make the world a better place!
Thank you.
Next, I’d like to introduce Dr. Jeff Kaplan. Jeff operates his own psychotherapy and executive coaching practice, teaches psychology at Temple, and has co-authored the book: “Finding a Path: A Novel for Parents and Teenagers. We all leaned on Jeff for some free advice these last two years, including me. Jeff taught me that in addition to being carbon based units, humans have a more important aspect to them called “feelings”. However, I believe Jeff is wrong on this subject. Being a good engineer I carefully created a controlled test to track what stimuli my wife responded to the most. My conclusion is that I can get significantly further with what I want out of Jocelyn by appealing not to her feelings, but by appealing to her carbon base and supplying it with ample quantities of margaritas and wine.
