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Because today’s economy is truly global, business management is more important than ever, Brady Dougan, AB ’81, MBA ’82, told the GSB graduating class of 2005 in Hyde Park on June 12. “The cult of the individual is out,” said Dougan, CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston and member of the executive boards of Credit Suisse Group and CSFB. “In its most noble and effective form, good management is about leading groups of people and helping them achieve greater heights than they could on their own.” Somebody had to make a plan to mobilize people to build the Great Pyramids or send a man to the moon, he said.
Because of its intense emphasis on thoughtful analysis and collaborative leadership, the GSB will help create a new generation of effective, ethical leaders who will right many of the wrongs plaguing American business today, Dougan said. “Putting analytical skills in a team-driven approach, combined with some old-fashioned guts, will enable you to drive change in generations to come, putting you at the leading edge of a new and better style of management that will help fix what is wrong with American business,” he said.
Harry Davis, Roger L. and Rachel M. Goetz Distinguished Service Professor of Creative Management, offered graduates tips on “Being Silly, Seriously.” Noting the value of thinking beyond “a technical perspective that values objectivity, neutrality, and impersonal ways of thinking,” he said, “Silliness frees the imagination, allowing us to see possibilities not constrained by the need to please someone or get everything right to pass someone’s standardized test.”
He urged them not to take themselves too seriously and to value their mistakes.
“Finally, and most genuinely, I want to congratulate you,” Davis said. “We hope you will stay in touch and think of us. We will certainly be thinking of you. Believe me when I say, on that note I am being far more serious than silly.”
Phil Rockrohr
