Address by Arun Sarin.. Convo 2009

Dean Rangnekar, Dean Rao, Rajat Gupta, Chairman of the Board, members of the Board, distinguished faculty, parents and families, ladies and gentlemen and the proud members of the graduating Class of 2009, I am delighted to be here amongst you. First heartiest congratulations to all of you on being judged the 15th best Business School in the world. This is a high honour given that you have only been in existence for eight years. Dean, no pressure but I guess the next stop is going to be a single-digit ranking. Second, I would like to congratulate all the graduates today. You have just finished a very important milestone in the journey of your life. This experience at ISB will hold you in good stead and frankly I have travelled all the way from California just to be here with you to celebrate your success. You are graduating at a very interesting and exciting time in the history of the world, where many changes are occurring and you can shape the world. There are three things in particular that I want to talk to you about today. One is the state of the world and the state of the business world. Second, my experiences in leadership because that is what you are aspiring to be, and third, if you allow me, a little personal advice. Let me start with the state of the world. At a macro level the world is changing in a very fundamental way at the core and the changes are here to stay. Economic wealth and political influence are moving east. 80 percent of the world’s incremental GDP is being created in emerging markets today. China and India will emerge into big economies in a short period of time. And the current slowdown is unlikely this trajectory. While the current GDP in India is slower than a couple of years ago it is still better than the rest of the world. And this slowdown will abate soon as well.
The world today is a much more interconnected place than even ten years ago and will become even more interconnected in the future. The current financial crisis is felt around the world today and if you recall the Asian crisis of ten years ago, frankly it did not have a global complexity to it. You will see more meetings of the G-20 rather than the G-7 because new international co-operations and bodies will emerge in the future because we are a more integrated world today and will become even more integrated in the years ahead. The political, social and economic systems of the G-20 countries are very different from the systems in the G-7 countries. Think for a moment about China or Russia or India or countries in Africa and how they compare with the United States or parts of Europe. Every country has a different system and the challenge here is to find the best things in each of the systems so that we can march smartly into the future. These macro changes will be frightening to some and will be exciting for others. My advice to you is 'be front-foot and make most of the changes by leading the change that is coming upon us'. Understand the differences in the various economies, learn about what makes them tick and then share the innovative and best practices around the world.At a micro level or a business level, business models are changing and innovation is going to be the key to establishing leadership in the future. Every industry that I can think of is undergoing change and restructuring and will emerge from the current slowdown a different company, a different industry. Customer needs are changing; customers want more value, more choices. If you just think about just the telecommunication industry that I am familiar with, we have gone from fixed voice to mobile voice to text to Facebook to Twitter all in a matter of a few short years. Technology is changing very rapidly and it is going to be an important ingredient in innovation. Think about the energy industry. What is happening in Photo Voltaics or Wind or Nuclear or Clean coal, these are all an important part of what is going to work to be the supply side in the future. And if you think about hybrids and electrics and Nanos they will all be an important part of the demand side. Competition will intensify because of globalisation and because of the internet enabling competitors from all parts of the globe. Think about companies like Huawei in China that are challenging established players like Ericsson or Indian BPO houses that are challenging and taking on the IBMs and the Hewlett Packards of the world. Regulation will change and also play an increasing role in business. Think about the cries that we can hear today about global regulators in the financial services business. It simply suffices to say that these forces will change all businesses and will change all business models. Be front-foot. Lead the change and shape the world. In the future. Innovation will be key to business leadership. First the application of technology is different in developing countries rather than developed countries. Traditional innovation in developed economies is slower because of legacy issues. Green field innovation in emerging markets is faster because of the possibilities of leap-frogging. India and you have a competitive advantage here. As India builds its infrastructure whether it is in communications or in buildings or in real estate, deploying new technologies to make significant improvements are possible and then exporting these best practices is an important thing that we must do. Second, necessity is the mother of invention. Because scarcity has been the order of the day here in India for decades, India has developed ingenious ways to get more for less whether it is in spectrum availability or in railways or in steel making or in petrochemicals. All these learnings are exportable. Become an expert in one of these areas and then export your ideas and your knowledge and your experience. In summary new business models and ideas will abound and India and you have an advantage in developing and executing on these new ideas, scaling them and then exporting them to the rest of the world. This too will shape the world.
Talking about India let me just say a few words about the state of India from my perspective. India has made good progress in the last fifteen years but needs to go on for the next fifty years because progress needs to be felt by the 1.2 billion citizens. We need to continue to develop economically, politically and socially simultaneously for consistent and equitable progress. And frankly much work needs to be done here today. We will require large amounts of capital, large amounts of skilled labour and large amounts of leadership. And frankly that is where you come in because you can provide the leadership that India needs to display in the coming decades.
Moving on to the second subject that I wanted to talk to you about is leadership itself. I have had the privilege of leading large organisations in my career. And in my experience good leaders do three things well simultaneously. One, they are good strategic leaders. Two, they are good operational leaders, and three, they are good people leaders. Let me just explain. Good strategic leadership is about the ability to be able to see your company, your industry and understand where the basic forces are taking this industry, having a vision for your company and being able to develop values and goals so that you can navigate where you need to go. That is a very important skill in a leader which is being strategic rather than being tactical. The second important thing that leaders do is operational leadership which is about taking the wash out daily and performance: day-after-day performance, and being able to make sure that you are organised in a way that you have got incentives, that you have got things that are going on in the company such that you are delivering the important things every single day, execution/performance on a daily basis. And the third thing that good leaders do is that they are very good with people. They can attract the right people, they can motivate people, they can inspire people, they can get people to do things collectively that they wouldn’t be able to do individually. Now I am sure you have heard and read about these things in your studies here or experience them in the past. The hard thing about leadership is the ability to do those three things well simultaneously. You meet lots of people who are good strategists but can’t perform. You get a lot of people who can perform but aren’t good human leaders. The challenge that you have and the thing that I have noticed is that if you start early in your careers like you are today and start practicing to be good strategic leaders, good operational leaders and people leaders that it will pay you handsome dividends in the years ahead. But let me also remind you that leadership is also hard work. It is not just about big compensation packages, flying around in private jets and hanging around with cool people. It is basic blocking, tackling, making things happen. So shape yourself so that you are able to shape the world.
Now moving to the third subject which is a little bit around personal advice or reflections on my part for you. First of all do, whatever you do, do what you love to do. And be really good at it. Follow your passion. Life is too short to kind of waste on things that you actually do not enjoy doing. Being excellent at whatever you choose to do is a very important thing. You have to have in your head that you want to be in the top deciles of whatever your chosen profession is. Be curious, learn constantly. I know many of you, especially at the Dean’s behest here have worked really hard over the last fifty-two weeks and you are graduating and you are saying my god! No more books for awhile. Believe me that it is going to last for about a week or a month or two. You are going to be on some learning journey very soon again. And my view is 'have a great time. Keep learning, keep enjoying because quite frankly life is about continuous life-long learning.' And let me say this again that leadership and doing well in life is about hard work. I don’t know very many leaders who haven’t worked very hard. I have had a thirty-year career and on average I worked between 60 and 70 hours every week for thirty years. So when people ask me Arun what are you doing next? I always say listen I am enjoying the sabbatical that I have earned after thirty years of work. For me, the first 23 years of my life, I did what others wanted me to do. I was a good student, didn’t particularly want to go to an IIT but if you are a good student, everybody went to an IIT, I applied, I got in. I did not want to continue engineering but I got into UC Berkley in the engineering programs so I went to Berkley. And I did a lot of things in my career that others wanted me to do so I did them. And right around when I was 23-24 I decided to go to business school because that was really what I wanted to do. And that changed my life, I was able to apply myself fully and I would humbly say to you, I have done alright. Second thing I would say to you is think big, have big aspirations, don’t think small. You are living in a world where anything is possible. Because of all the things I recited to you earlier in my remarks, but you have to believe in yourself and you have to prepare and improve yourself constantly. There is no rest here. You are going to be coming out, you are going to be going into important jobs, you will find what it is you want to do, you will work hard, you will prepare, you will learn, you will do well, you will get feedback, you will do even better and your responsibility will keep increasing. But the main thing here is don’t be afraid of failure, don’t not do a thing because you are afraid that you might fail and if you fail, what your friends will think of you or what your parents will think of you, don’t worry about failure. If you haven’t failed somewhere along the line, you haven’t tried hard enough, you have got to press the envelope. In my own career after I was President of AirTouch one of the largest companies back in 1999 and we sold the business to Vodafone I was very interested and attracted by the internet. And I had the chance to go become the Chief Executive of a relatively small internet company in Seattle called InfoSpace. And all my friends said ‘Arun what is wrong with you? You have been the Chief Executive of one of the largest companies in the world and you are going to go and become the Chief Executive of a much smaller internet company’, and I said 'yes!' And I did it. Actually it didn’t quite work out but I learnt a lot from it. I learnt about the internet, I learnt about people, I learnt about an industry that I was not completely familiar with. And then when I went back to Vodafone two of three years later and became the Chief Executive of Vodafone, my experiences at InfoSpace were critical in my ability to navigate where Vodafone needed to be. So don’t worry about temporary setbacks in life. Whether the temporary setback is that you haven’t landed your dream job today or you don’t have your dream job tomorrow work at it, it will come. The third thing I would like to say to you is leave the world a better place which is fundamentally about one, being a good human being, whether it is being a good son or a good daughter, or whether it is being a good father or a good mother or being a good family member or a good friend. And use the power, the power that I am sure that you will have in time as you live life. Use that power for a constructive and common good. Integrity and ethics is absolutely core for good leadership and frankly this is not just some idol saying that people have said again and again for a long time. Who you work for matters, what company you work for matters, the products and services that they provide matters.I have always been very excited about working in the mobile industry because it changes peoples’ lives, it connects people. I can tell you, I personally wouldn’t work for a tobacco company. So you have to make choices about ethics and integrity. And frankly when you make it big which I am sure you will, be generous, volunteer, give back, be philanthropic, be a well-rounded human being, be more than just book-smart. Get involved in sports, get involved in music, develop yourself in a completely well-rounded way and have a passion for the world around you. Frankly I am very passionate about this subject and one of the core values at Vodafone was that we would have passion for the world around us. And we would dedicate time and work in under-developed poor parts of the world to make sure that everybody had a chance to succeed in life. My final bit of personal advice to you is that be prepared for luck to play a role in your life. For me luck is not about fate but luck is about preparing to meet the opportunity head-on. You are graduating at a time when there is an economic slowdown around the world. Your opportunities are different from the opportunities that existed a year or two ago. Make the best of the circumstances, find the spirit within you, the entrepreneurial spirit within you, and be positive. Frankly I feel that luck has been very important in my life. I have been at the right place at the right time with the right people and frankly luck manifests itself in many different ways in terms of having mentors, friends, and supportive family. For me I was very lucky. I met my wife at Berkley and she has been a fantastic friend, a fantastic companion and a fantastic partner for me and I couldn’t have done what I did without her. So win or lose, stay grounded and be a good sport.
In closing you are graduating at an important juncture in history. The tectonic changes are happening all around you in every way. Embrace this change and shape the world through your leadership. And develop your leadership skills early in your career and enjoy the journey of life. I sat in your chair, thirty-one years ago at Berkley in California and frankly if I could do it you can too! So go for it, good luck, congratulations and cheers! Thank you very much.