Your Choices define you

Convocation speech IIM Kozhikode 6 th April 2019

The 21st Graduating class of IIM Kozhikode, The EPGP batch, the Doctoral programs scholars, the popular Director Debashish Chatterjee and Excellent faculty of the Institute, Chairman Mr. Velayan and the board of Governors, super happy and proud parents, relatives and everyone for whom this convocation means a lot, the people who have put it together painstakingly for the people who will be under the spotlight today.

Good Evening. Today many parts of the country celebrated new beginnings, a new start – South India Ugadi, Gudi Padva in Maharashtra, Goa, Sindhi new year, Assam, Manipur and Kashmir. So, I wish all of you a great start to the year ahead.

I love your campus. Your campus is easily the prettiest IIM campus and prettier than most business school campuses I have seen across the world. I came to your campus in 2010 and I am impressed with the way this has become a prettier campus in the last decade.

Thank you for having me as your Convocation Speaker.

The crux of my speech is about ‘CHOICES’. 

I am going to discuss ‘choices’ with you this evening. Life is made up of many choices. Choices define us through our life and all of us want to make the right choices.

Edwin Markham put it well when he said “choices are the hinges of destiny”. I agree with him; our lives hinge on some big choices we make.

The first question on your mind will be did I have a choice?

There are choices where you had a say and there are some where you had no say. You had no say in who your parents were. You had no choice with your name. You had no choice over your mother tongue. But, you made the most of it.

There are some choices which are taken collectively and there are some choices where you are the one taking the call. I am sure the choice of the school you went to was a family decision, the choice to do an MBA would also have been a family decision, and in some cases, the choice of whom you will marry will be a family decision. 

On the other hand, the courses you took at this Institute were by and large a personal choice, the job offer you have picked is a personal choice. Being happy or sad about today is a personal choice. Some will be happy that they are moving onto a bigger stage and some will be sad about leaving this campus, a place called home for the last two years.

Choices involve many dimensions.

Your choices involve time - short term instant gratification or long-term delayed gain, they involve anticipation- proactive or reactive, they involve mistakes – do you repeat a mistake or learn from it and avoid it? - they involve confidence – are you over confident, what people call heuristics or under confident and second guessing yourself all the time?

Discussing mistakes, there is a saying in cricket that you can’t get Sachin Tendulkar out with the same ball that got him out once. The genius made it a point to learn from his mistake and thus ensured that he never repeated the same mistake. Sachin is a great example of making choices, he chose to be a batsman and not a captain, he chose to put country ahead of everything else whenever he played, he chose to be a gentleman in game that not very gentlemanly these days. He made the choices.

Your choices tend to go the right way when you know yourself, i.e. when you are self-aware and you get good at analyzing your environment. Your environment will change significantly in the next few weeks as you leave this Institute. At the Institute, many decisions were made by the Institute, you will now have to get used to a new environment where you will be forced to make many decisions. 

Choices are about options and choices are about sacrifice, especially when faced with seemingly attractive choices, choices are about deciding one way or the other and realizing that you cannot have both decisions.

You do not realize that you make 1000 decisions every day based on the choices placed before you. So, you are making big decisions and small decisions, you are making good decisions and bad decisions, all in one day. 

Good decisions are smart, healthy and positive ones. Bad decisions are stupid, unhealthy, arrogant and negative.

Let’ s look at a combination of the good and bad, small and big decisions.

Let us start with the big bad decisions.

A big bad decision if you are not careful and sensible could be about marriage, the choice of a life partner. This is a big decision and you must think through this carefully. As you go through the ups and downs of life, the only person by your side is your partner and that person has to be the best person that understands you.

Another big bad decision could be taking on too much debt. This is a case of chasing hurried aspiration. Good things will come to you, have a bit of patience, you don’t need to be in debt to your eyebrows. High debt which is a big bad decision leads to other big bad decisions.

Another big bad decision could be to have a child when you are not ready to be a parent. A child needs a lot from his parents. There is a maturity needed to be a parent, you have to give your child quality time, please ask your parents, they will tell you.

So, a bad decision is one where the returns are way below the risks involved and sometimes, a seemingly good decision becomes a bad one due to timing.

Let us look at the next box now, the small bad decisions.

The first small bad decision you can make involves money. Spending more than you earn is a small bad decision, it will not impact you immediately but it will set a pattern that will be difficult to get out of. Remember, neither life, nor a career is a credit card.

The second small bad decision you can make is about food. It is binging on fast food. Before you realize it, you are a calorie addict and you will be many kilograms overweight and buying the next size of clothes every year.

The third small bad decision is the choice on learning, when you prioritize movies and television over learning. This one is difficult since you have to make a big shift from being taught by someone to learning by teaching yourself. 

The last small bad decision is hanging around in a job that you don’t like but are too lazy to make a change. You develop a lethargy and continue to coast day to day. This situation is a career derailer and you will lose your edge very quickly when you are in such a situation.

Let’s look at the good side of decisions, the good small decisions now. 

The first good small decision is something that you have seen your parents and grandparents do very well – save some money every month. If you look at India, we save a lot. The question is if this saving habit will sustain with the millennial generation. Every career has a rainy day, so, please save for it.

A good small decision is exercising regularly and managing your diet well. This combination will keep your energy level up through your working day. A fit person is fit for success.

The last small good decision is to say thank you to people who help you through the day. This at one level is courtesy, but we rarely see that in an aggressive, me, myself world today. 

I think it is time we all thanked two sets of people now- can I have a round of gratitude applause for all the faculty of the Institute who have made diamonds out of you in these two years.

Next, can I please ask all the parents to stand up. Can we all thank them for their undying faith and investment in you please.

Thank You.

Small good decisions have a long-term impact.

The small good decisions become habits and before long habits become second nature to you and your personality. Small, good habits will make you predictable and dependable. Being predictable and dependable are great values in an uncertain world.

The small good decisions give you momentum every day and all successful people need momentum.

Now let’s look at the big good decisions. 

Getting to IIM Kozhikode was possibly the best decision you have made so far. This institute was India’s 5th IIM and started in 1996. 

The first big good decision for the future has to be marriage. A lot of you will marry a working spouse and managing two careers is not as easy as it looks from the outside. It will require the two of you to have a clear choice in terms of whose career and options look better in what context. This is very subjective and getting this choice right is possible the most difficult choice of the marriage. Trust me, this is not a rational decision but an emotional one.

The second good big decision will have to be about your choice of friends. You will need a lot of friends right through your life. You will carry some of your classmates as friends. As you go through the ups and downs of life, you will need your family, your spouse and your friends by your side. Friends will open many doors for you, so please do nurture friendships.

The third big good decision will be about what you invest in. Investment is not just about money, but your time. Sound investments assure you a secure future, think these through regularly.

I have made many choices in my life, some good, some not so good. I chose IIM Calcutta because many classmates from engineering were going there, I chose to be a business practitioner and not an academic, I chose to work in India and not outside, I chose to be a leader and not a bystander, I chose to be a giver and not a taker.

You will make choices.

I am sure you will choose listening over talking

 I am sure you will speak the truth over being silent

I am sure you will choose good over bad

I am sure you will choose gratitude over attitude

I am sure you will choose generosity over greed

I am sure you will choose loyalty over backstabbing a friend or colleague

I am sure you will choose discipline over lethargy

I am sure you will choose humility over arrogance.

My young graduating friends, when you choose listening, good, generosity, loyalty, discipline, humility, gratitude and telling the truth you will make every one assembled here very proud and more important you will make a name  in society. People will say “we always knew this person was special”.

So, my dear special one, go make the right choice, and be happy.

Thank you once again for having me here on the prettiest IIM campus.

Shiv

06.04.2019