Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • What's interesting is that it is now 25 years since you got your MBA and as part of your MBA experience, you were asked to write a 25-year plan.

  • - I was. - How did that work out for you?

  • There was a professor, I think his name was Dr. Nailor.

  • - Does that sound right? - Tom Nailor.

  • Yeah, Tom Nailor.

  • And, he was a great professor and one of the things that he'd ask us to do was to write a 25-year plan.

  • Maybe some of you have had to do this.

  • And, it was more of a you know more of a personal plan.

  • And normally, I would never remember this, but I was doing a commencement address a few years ago and I was scrambling for some old things, and I found, in a box, this plan.

  • And, this plan had turned yellow because of age, but I looked at it and I would say it was reasonably accurate for all of 18 to 24 months, after it was written.

  • And, it was nothing, there was nothing, a single thing on it that was accurate post that, not a single thing.

  • Zero!

  • And, I think that the lesson there is, at least for me, maybe you guys will be different, maybe you have much more insight into what you may be doing.

  • But for me the journey was not predictable at all.

  • And, it goes sort of back to the Lincoln quote, is "the only thing I believe you can do is prepare."

  • And, the world is gonna change many times.

  • The environment is gonna change many times.

  • The companies that you work for are going to ebb and flow, you may wind up in the same company, you may not.

  • You may wind up in the same career, you may not.

  • You may wind up with the spouse you're married to now, you may not.

  • There are lots of things in your life.

  • I hope that one doesn't change.

  • But, there's lots of things that change, and I think that you sort of have to have a north star.

  • And, stay with the north star and let those things go on about you, and sort of find your, find your journey.

What's interesting is that it is now 25 years since you got your MBA and as part of your MBA experience, you were asked to write a 25-year plan.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it