Convocation Address at IIM Kolkata on 1st April 2006

Mr. Yogi Deveshwar, Chairman, Board of Governors and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, Prof. Sekhar Chowdhury, Director, Members of the Board of Governors, Faculty members, Students, their proud parents and I see Mr. Russy Mody here, it is such a pleasure to see him.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me first congratulate all of you graduating students and wish you grand success.

On 1st April every year, I am always in Jamshedpur. I gave up part of that and came here because I believe that corporate leader of India have a responsibility beyond their work and beyond their organization. It is a pleasure to be here and would like to thank the Board of Governors for inviting me here.

I am conscious of the fact that after years of college education, lectures after lectures, exam after exam, you are all ready to get out of this place as fast as you can like a 100m runner, fly off to the wonderful world of high salary, cushy perquisites and a comfortable life. The last thing you want to hear is another lecture in the form of a Convocation address. I want to assure you that I am not going to inflict a formal and serious sounding convocation address on you.

I said you will all start off like a 100m runner. I want to tell you that life is a marathon race and I am sure you know what will happen to a 100m runner who tries to run a marathon race. He will not make it to the finish line let alone winning the race. I am seeing too many youngsters getting burnt out simply because they want to run a marathon race like a 100m runner.

I want to tell a story- the story of Alice in wonderland. …………..
Everyone needs to know what he or she wants to achieve - everyone must have a vision for himself or herself. I know all of you have got jobs already. What is called “Placement” in the IIM parlance. I know the success of placement depends on the level of salary one gets. So telling you how to choose your job is not useful to you. I don’t know how you choose the companies that you want to work in. When we go to a shop and want to buy a shoe or a dress or a toothpaste, we look at the price, perhaps at the brand and take a decision. We don’t ask the question whether the company that produced the product is a socially responsible corporation, whether it has good corporate governance practices. There is more and more realisation coming into the world that corporate social responsibility is a fundamental purpose of an organization - something that we in the Tata Group and in Tata Steel have practised for hundred years. We often use metrics such as market cap, profits and monetary terms to measure or judge individual corporations. The real metric is Total Returns to the Society and if we use this metric, you will, perhaps, use a different yardstick to choose your jobs.

As you go through your life, you will have some success and many disappointments and failures.

Failure and disappointments teach us much more than successes. In fact when I sit down to select a person for a key job I give preference to the ways a person has handled failures than merely go by how one handles successes.

Micheal Jordan said “I have missed over a thousands shots in my life. On 26 occasions when I was asked to take the match winning shot, I shot. I have failed over and over again. This is precisely the reason why I succeeded”.