Introduction
On Monday, June 12, 2023, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois delivered a commencement speech at Northwestern University’s 165th commencement ceremony. Though this speech had all the classic elements of a commencement speech delivered to new graduates, it also contained many insights directly applicable to leadership – especially for anyone who has recently “graduated” into a new leadership role. This speech resonated with me because of its insights, warmth, humor and ability to engage the audience. As I was not familiar with Governor Pritzker, I learned that as a businessman, philanthropist, attorney, venture capitalist, and politician, he was certainly qualified to speak on the various facets of leadership and good citizenship covered in his speech. Whereas many of us may disagree with the policies of this particular politician, the wisdom of his words in this speech deserve further consideration and reflection.
If you’d like to hear the speech in its entirety, you can do so here.
Alternatively, I have transcribed and cleaned up the speech for you to read below. The emphases in bold within the body text are my own and will eventually be linked to new content on this site.
Opening Remark
Today, graduates, I want to invoke a seminal piece of 21st century culture to help send you forward on the right path in life. I am, of course, talking about the Emmy Award-winning sitcom known as The Office, which in its 200-episode run gave us all the wisdom that you need to make your way in this world. Now, look, the younger members of my staff made it clear to me that your generation might consider The Office to be sort of cheugy, which I learned is a pejorative term, meaning uncool or you’re just trying too hard. Well, that’s fine, I don’t care, I’m a dad. By definition, dads are cheugy. We try too hard every day, mostly to get our kids to turn off the lights when they leave a room. We don’t care if you don’t think that we’re cool. We are determined to plunge ahead anyway. So, give me and The Office a chance to show you that non-trendy things still have a lot of wisdom to offer. You don’t have to be a fan of the show, by the way, to follow along because quotes from The Office stand on their own in their uncommon wisdom and depth. I’ll offer you the first one now.
“PowerPoints are the peacocks of the business world. All show no meat.” Dwight Schrute
Before I was the governor of Illinois, I ran a technology-focused investment firm. And in the early years of the internet, I used to take at least three meetings a day with young entrepreneurs who would present their ideas for online retail businesses. Every young retail entrepreneur in the world wanted to copy Amazon’s success, but frankly, they had to answer the magic question, how are you going to attract millions of customers without spending all your money on advertising? So one guy came to me with what he thought was the perfect answer. He started the Hey Company. Hey, spelled H-E-Y. The guy told me that he had registered hundreds of domain names that all started with the term, the word, “hey” like heybooks.com, heyt-shirts.com, heywaterbottles.com … hundreds of them.
His idea was that people would be browsing online and they would think to themselves, hey, I need some shorts. And that naturally would lead them to type into their browser, heyshorts.com. And bam, you’d find what they needed on his websites. It was brilliant, except for the fact that no one shops by first saying, “hey, shorts”, or “hey, underwear”. But he had a fancy PowerPoint, and one of his slides had financial projections that showed his company was going to be bigger than Amazon. It was not. Here’s the thing that I remember most. The hey-guy handed out his business plan in an expensive mahogany box and gave a great presentation. I give him credit that after a few months in business, he realized he wasn’t going to make it, and he closed up shop. He was at least honest with himself and with his investors. But sometimes when I see a news story about a company like Theranos or WeWork where a charismatic CEO has a clever pitch that fools a lot of intelligent people into investing their money, or when politicians give flashy pitches and catchy slogans, I think about Dwight Schrute’s lesson for life. So ask questions. Demand answers. Do your own research. Trust people with a lot of life experience. Be skeptical.
“Having a baby is exhausting. Having two babies, that’s just mean.” Jim Halpert
I mentioned already that I’m a dad, and I have two wonderful college-age kids. And like most of the parents here, having children turned me from a fun, cool, spontaneous person who could stay out past midnight to a functional madman who answers the phone “yello”, and won’t let anyone in my house touch the thermostat. We dads didn’t start out cheugy. You made us that way. Look, we parents, we love our kids. We want you to grow up to be strong and kind, brave and smart, and we will do just about anything to make sure that that happens. But along the way, you have led a campaign of collective inception to make us question the very fabric of reality at times. If you really want to understand the multiverse of madness, have children.
When my son Donnie was in kindergarten, my wife M.K. and I went to school for a parent-teacher conference. The teacher told us that Donnie was doing well in school, great at reading, great at math, but when she asked Donnie if he was struggling with anything, he said he couldn’t tell time very well. Like all parents whose love of their child has led them to overthink every single decision that they’ve made. M.K. and I were flabbergasted. Did we do something wrong? Had we missed some critical step in our son’s early childhood development? Had our embrace of the digital age led to a child who had some sort of clock face blindness? So, we sprang into action. We bought all kinds of clocks and put them everywhere in our house. We made a big show of telling time at meals and reading clocks everywhere we went. We got Donnie an analog clock that lit up and spoke the time out loud when asked. For an entire year, I walked around like the Mad Hatter, constantly proclaiming the time. Donnie, it’s 7-10. See, it’s 7-10.
After 12 months of this insanity, just when M.K. and I were starting to congratulate ourselves for doing such a good job focusing on the time-telling problem, Donnie decided to let us know that he had never had an issue telling time. It was just that when his teacher asked him to identify something that he needed help with, he couldn’t think of anything to say, so he made up a story about not being able to tell time. And then he didn’t want to admit that he had lied. If you think your parents are crazy, it’s important that you understand that you made us this way. We are experts in worrying about you, and this affliction just gets worse with time and distance.
We want you to go out and have amazing adventures in the world. We want you to love with abandon, and to take calculated risks, and to experience the rich fullness that comes with an imperfect life. We know that we cannot hold your hand through every difficult situation that will happen to you. But there will come a moment, sometime in the future, when something you very much wanted to have work out will not. Maybe it will be a job, or a relationship, or some other passion that you’ve sunk your whole heart into. And you will find yourself teetering on the edge of despair, because every person has teetered on the edge of despair at least once in their lives. That’s when you want to call the person in your life who would have spent a year trying to help you learn how to tell time. Hopefully that’s your parents. And I’m here to tell you on their behalf that we will always take your phone call. We will always be willing to help remind you of the strength that we know you have inside yourselves, because we gave you some of ours.
“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, would an idiot do that? And if they would, I do not do that thing.” Dwight Schrute
The entire efficacy of this incredibly useful piece of information hinges upon your ability to pick the right idiot. I wish there was a foolproof way to spot idiots, but counterintuitively, some idiots are very smart. They can dazzle you with words and misdirection. They can get promoted above you at work. They can even be elected president. If you want to be successful in this world, you have to develop your own idiot detection system.
As part of the responsibilities of being your commencement speaker, I’m going to share mine. Sure, I’m naturally suspicious of people who never saw the original Star Wars movies, and even more cautious of people who loved the prequels and the sequels. But I admit, this is not a reliable idiot indicator. No. The best way to spot an idiot, look for the person who is cruel. Let me explain. When we see someone who doesn’t look like us or sound like us or act like us or love like us or live like us, the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgment or both. That’s evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things that we aren’t familiar with. In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges.
This may be a surprising assessment because somewhere along the way in the last few years, our society has come to believe that weaponized cruelty is part of some well thought out master plan. Cruelty is seen by some as an adroit cudgel to gain power. Empathy and kindness are considered weak. Many important people look at the vulnerable only as rungs on a ladder to the top. I’m here to tell you that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears. And so, their thinking and problem solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades. Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true. The kindest person in the room is often the smartest.
“I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do.” Michael Scott
When I finished college only a few short years ago, I assumed that there would be a moment very soon after graduation when the maturity of adulthood would start to lend sense to the deep mysteries of life. 35 years later, I’m still waiting for that to happen. And I hate to break it to you, but the real wisdom that comes with age is that you gain a greater appreciation for just how much you don’t know. In February of 2020, I had just finished up a successful first year in office. We had passed almost every major initiative that I had campaigned on, and I was beginning to feel that I could overcome any obstacle that might lay ahead. But then came a deadly global pandemic, a crisis that most of us would have said, well, just weeks before it began, that it was inconceivable.
I’ve been asked many times what it was like to be governor during those early days of the pandemic. And all I can tell you is that it felt like waking up every day on a raft in the middle of the ocean, frantically searching the horizon for some land to anchor your feet on. I knew that my job was to minimize the damage this deadly disease was doing, but no one could guide me toward the absolute best way to do that. As Michael Scott said, I knew exactly what to do, but in a much more real sense, I had no idea what to do. I’ve had a few major crises visited upon me in my life, and the way forward each time has always been the same for me.
When the world seems to be spinning and out of your control, inertia can set in. So, the absolute best thing that you can do is start to make decisions, even small ones. Just get yourself moving. Pick something you can tackle and do it. Let your small decisions beget medium decisions, which will beget big decisions. Some of your decisions will be brilliant in retrospect. Others will be less so. If you make a mistake, apologize and move on. Talk to people you trust and more importantly, listen to them. Be willing to change your mind when someone makes a good argument, but avoid that paralyzing inertia at all costs, because not making a decision is making a decision. And you won’t like how that turns out. Most importantly, when facing a crisis, pick one value that you’re going to hold yourself accountable to. And then every time you face a new choice about what direction you should take, ask yourself which of the options in front of you is most consistent with that core guiding value.
For me as governor during the pandemic, I decided I was going to do everything I could to save as many lives as possible. That was the most important thing. Everything else had to come second. And that gave me clarity amid an absolute maelstrom. Now, I know that for this class, especially COVID loomed very large. You were robbed of a chunk of a college experience you very much deserved. I’m sure then and now that it feels very unfair. We don’t get a say in what part of history our lives drop in on [like] the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the COVID pandemic. Every generation grows up scared or scarred by something. You are not unique in that regard. Here’s the upside. Although you will face a great many challenges in life, most of them will pale in comparison to the challenge of facing a deadly global pandemic. COVID has made you stronger and gave you a unique set of armor. Use it well.
“I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.” Andy Bernard
Most of us old guys dispensing advice as commencement speakers mistakenly will lead you to believe that everything good that happens, every day you will ever have for as long as you live happens in college or your 20s or in your early career. But don’t get me wrong, these are great days. But I think a lot of the parents and grandparents who are here, traveling back half a century of life, looking at their lives would tell you that there are plenty of things about being young that we don’t miss at all. The path of your life will have peaks and valleys and the good times are defined less by how old you are and more by the people you have around you.
During the very first worst days of the pandemic, there was a group of about 20 people who were part of our governor’s office quarantine bubble. While most people stayed at home, my staff came into the state of Illinois building in person every day to keep the levers of government moving. We worked together for 14 hours a day tracking down masks and gloves and testing supplies, debating mitigations, tracking data, preparing for daily press conferences. Sometimes we stared into the abyss together. Anyone who’s been part of a group like that, good people working closely together in a crisis, will tell you that the bonds that you develop with the people in the foxhole with you are some of the strongest you will ever form in your life.
One day in April of 2020, after weeks of punishing work, I decided to gather the small quarantine team together at the end of a long day for a much needed morale boost. The Governor’s Office of the State of Illinois building that were on the 16th floor overlook[ing] an interior atrium. If you dropped something from the top floor where the governor’s office was, it would land 16 floors down. So, we ordered some food and we gathered everyone and we were the only people in the building. Someone put on some music and for a little bit of time, we shared some gallows humor. At some time, at some point in it, a staffer suggested that we all make paper airplanes out of copier paper and see who could successfully launch their plane off the 16th floor balcony and into the atrium and land it in the middle of the first floor lobby below. I remember how hard I laughed watching all these serious people, press secretaries and deputy governors and policy advisors, try and construct the perfect paper airplane and get frustrated at their many failed launches. A lot of the worst days of COVID are still a blur to me.
The stress and the worry that seemed to consume my life have just blended together. But I can remember with unusual clarity and warmth that hour or so on the balcony of the 16th floor, flying paper airplanes with my battle-worn compatriots. So, I assure you that your nostalgia for certain times in your life won’t be defined by when the thing happened, but by who you were in it with. If there are people around you who love you, who can make you smile when times are hard and make you laugh when the world seems lost, then you are in the good old days.
Closing
Now, ultimately, The Office was a show about a bunch of imperfect people trying to find their way together. And if that’s not a metaphor for life, then I don’t know what is. You will find your way, Class of 2023. I beseech you to remember the lessons of The Office. Be more substance than show. Set aside cruelty for kindness. Put one foot in front of the other, even when you don’t know your way. And always, always try and appreciate the good old days when you’re actually in them. And remember what Dwight Schrute said, “you only live once? False. You live every day. You only die once.” Thank you all very much.