Eric Schmidt’s Commencement Speech
Tis’ the season for enlightening talks from our most influential leaders. Who can forget Steve Job’s moving speech at Stanford four years ago? Barack Obama gave a wonderful commencement speech yesterday at Notre Dame. The settings for these speeches create the perfect environment for imparting insightful commentary. With brains in their heads and feet in their shoes, graduates prepare to compete in the marketplace for the first time. The keynote speaker is usually selected because they’ve successfully navigated the rough waters of life and they’ve got a thing or two to share with the young grads.
At the same time during Obama’s commencement speech, Google CEO Eric Schmidt shared some practical tips for the class. But one statement in particular stuck out and represents a huge shift in how we go about our business. He said ““How should you behave? Well, do things in a group. Don’t do things by yourself. Groups are stronger, groups are faster. None of us is as smart as all of us.” He mentioned historically, failure was penalized in favor of a system that rewarded personal achievement. Now the rules have changed, and they’ve changed fast. People, including lawyers, must be willing to take risk, fail, learn, repeat.
Instead of a disease to be avoided, failure now represents a prerequisite on the road to success. In the information age, everyone can be an expert at something. The secret is to identify your passion and to create a product or service around that passion. And since everyone is an expert at something, there are a million opportunities to collaborate with others to make your offering better. “Work in groups.” Sounds simple enough, right?
Start the video at 7:30 and enjoy.
