Deepak Jain's address at ISB convo 2009.. I will remember it for life!!

Address by Dean Dipak Jain, Kellogg School of Management
Let me start by sharing how creative one can be when introducing a speaker. Philip Kotler, a colleague of mine, was once invited to give a keynote address at a major conference but could not attend it. He requested me to go instead. I reminded him that he was getting very product-centric – “you need to be audience-centric; the audience is coming to listen to Philip Kotler, not to anyone else”, I told him. However, the conference could not be cancelled or postponed and so I attended the conference instead. The talk was at 9 am and at 8 am I was supposed to have breakfast with this person, for whom I was an unexpected shock. He asked me what I did. Obviously Professor Kotler had not given him any brief. I said that in some sense I was like the CEO of a company and he understood that language. He said, “Oh so you are the CEO of Kellogg. Now I know how to introduce you”. He later went to the podium, said a good morning and asked the audience – “how many of you have heard the name Philip Kotler”? All the hands went up. He then told the audience, "Today I present to you the boss of Philip Kotler!”In the year 1983, I went to the US to do a PhD in Applied Mathematics. While I was completing my PhD, I got a really useful insight. The insight was that Mathematics was going nowhere. I went to see my advisor .He said, “Dipak you should move to Marketing”. Now unlike him I had never been to Business School, nor had I worked for a business, so I asked him where should I go and learn this subject. He said something very meaningful. He said, “The best way to learn something is to teach because when you teach you have to anticipate what questions you will get and you build this culture of digging deeper.” It was he who suggested to me to get a job at the Kellogg School of Management. “Have some aspirations in life. It never hurts to apply. You miss 100 percent of the shots that you don’t take,” he had told me then. Another incident I recall is when in 1985 I came to give a talk in North Western. I was nervous because I didn’t know what I was going to speak, and in those days we did not have any Power Point presentation. I went to the classroom and wrote a bunch of equations on the black board, the only thing I knew. For the first half an hour there was pin drop silence. Nobody understood what I was saying and neither did they have any interest. I knew the seminar was going nowhere. Then suddenly Professor Kotler raised his hand and asked me, “Dipak is this marketing or am I in the wrong seminar?” I did not know what to tell Professor Kotler. I looked at the board and said, “This is the future of Marketing. And they gave me the job right there!”
You will remember that when we went to kindergarten or first grade, our parents used to tell us about three ‘R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic. Today you have three Rs before you. The first is Reflection. Graduation is the day of reflection. You have to reflect and think about what you want to do ahead of you. The second is Renewal. You have to renew your spirits. You have achieved something that very few people in the world would have. And the third is Responsibility. We all have a responsibility and the responsibility goes beyond personal success. After becoming Dean of Kellogg, the vision I have set for the school is a very simple word – ‘from success to significance’. That is the theme of the school. What we want to do is to produce leaders who are going to make an impact of lasting significance. Don’t stop your journey at your personal success. Mr Rajat Gupta articulated that if you just optimise your personal success, life would be incomplete. We need to have responsibilities for the communities we come from, the societies we represent, we have to do something beyond personal success.
One point that I want to make to all of you is the biggest strength we have is called our ‘Sanskar’. The word ‘Sanskar’ is basically nothing but core values. ISB or Kellogg is a place where you come with a passion and a purpose, and we help you with tools to combine your passion and purpose to renew your responsibility. And that is what you must think for moving forward and that is very precious. And the thing that differentiates all the Indians is the dedication of our parents towards our education. This is our unique differentiation and I want to congratulate all the parents here. Nowhere in the world have I seen parents taking so much care about the children’s education. They sacrifice their lives, and every opportunity that I get to speak, I always like to mention something about India. When I am in the company of people, any opportunity I get, I share with them some core values of our Indian culture. There is India, there is Indian and there is Indianness within us. I will tell you how these things play out. I was once invited to a very big seminar and there were three keynote speakers. Author Jim Collins who wrote the book ‘Built to Last’ was one of them. Then second speaker was from the treasury department of US, and he was to speak on finance. I was the keynote speaker from the marketing side. Just before the speech there was a dinner. To my side was the Chairman of Coca Cola. On the other side was the Chairman of Wal-Mart and ahead of me was the Chairman of P&G. Before I joined them they were talking about mergers and acquisitions – the common vocabulary of the CEOs. When I joined them the conversation shifted to my experience of Tsunami, while I was holidaying with my family in Phuket, to what makes arranged marriages work in India, etc.? I told them that an arranged marriage in India is like a merger and acquisition activity. And that rather than comparing the balance sheets, we compare family values and that a wedding in India is between two families rather than two individuals. I also recounted my own experience of an arranged marriage and how I had no doubt about the decision of my father. I met my wife for twenty minutes and got married. We have been happily married for twenty years!
The point I want to make is about the core values we have, the respect for our elders, and the sense of humility in us which will take us a long way. Today the times are very difficult. Even at Kellogg a large fraction of students are still looking for jobs. But difficulties come in our way to make us stronger and better, not bitter. I always tell my students uncertainty is inevitable, worrying is optional. My only advice to you is - things could get better, don’t worry. Both Arun Sarin and Rajat Gupta, in their addresses, mentioned about the word ‘luck’. I remembered a question that was asked to Pandit RadhaKrishnan – ‘How do you differentiate between luck and effort?’ He gave a beautiful analogy. He said when you play cards, what you get from the deck of cards is your luck, what you make of those cards is your effort. People with ordinary cards can win the game and people with good cards can lose the game. We often tend to blame it on the cards. And my advice to you is don’t take the current condition as an excuse, keep continuing to work. As the Dean of the school, whenever I market Kellogg and talk about the School, there is always somebody will would raise his hand and ask, ‘Dean Jain what are you going to do about the Chicago weather’. You know Chicago is a very cold place. Nine months of the year we have an extremely cold weather. One day I was making a presentation and a student asked me the same in a very negative way. I am the Dean of the school and I can control many things but I have no control over the weather. I had to say something so I said, ‘I have one piece of advice for you in life. You should believe in the principle of a refrigerator. Things kept in a cooler environment stay fresh for a long time’. I hope he will never ask me that question again. Times come and go, we remain, you all remain. You are the brand, not only of ISB, you are the brand of India, a lot depends on you. There is a saying that the challenge ahead of you is never greater than the force behind you. This evening I want to tell all of you that ISB is behind you, the Board is behind you, the faculty is behind you, Dipak Jain is behind you, go out and do something meaningful and we will all be proud of being a part of ISB. Congratulations and all the best to all of you.