My Graduation Speech as Guest Speaker at Polytechnic University, Florida Campus

Mr. President, Chancellor, Members of the Governing Board, Members of the Faculty, Member of the Administration, Guests, proud parents, if you let me a special  “salutare”  (latin for salutation) for my brothers, father, and above all… Graduates. Is a pleasure and honor to have the opportunity to address all of you today in this historic event for you graduates and for the University.

First:

Graduates: Congratulations for having the courage, perseverance and resolution towards the completion of your university degrees. You have achieved academic success and you have the right, yes, the right to feel proud. Im sure your families do, and definitely the university too. Today is a moment for optimism, excitement,  joy and hope.  And yet, even in our high spirits we must be aware of the stones and shadows in the road ahead. Believe me, it will happen.

Uncertainty awaits all of us immediately after this graduation event. Be prepared  but never afraid. As Perter Drucker taught: "the best- perhaps even the only- way to predict the future is to create it."

Here, a real example from history. I heard  this story first from Jay Forrester himself at MIT. 

Forrester, designed the Intercontinental Ballistic Missile System named Polaris for nuclear submarines in the fifties. 

In October 1911, two teams of seasoned people made their final preparations in their quest to be the first people in modern history to reach the South Pole. For one of them, it would be victory and a safe return home. For members of the second team, it was a spectacular and devastating defeat, reaching the Pole only to find, guess what… their rivals planted their flag 34 days earlier, followed by a race for their lives- a race they lost in the end, as the advancing winter overrun them up. 

It is amazing  because both expedition leaders were a near-perfect matched pair. Roal Amundsen, the winner, and Robert Falcon Scott, the loser, of similar ages and with comparable experience. They started their respective journeys for the Pole within days of each other, both facing an uncertain and unforgiving environment of  a round trip of more than fourteen hundred miles, that is 225 miles more than the distance between San Juan and were we are now. Remember, this was 1911. They had no means of modern communications to call back to base camp -cellphones, e-mails, satellite links- and a rescue would have been highly improbable if they screwed up. One leader led his team to victory and safety. The other led his team to defeat and death.

Here we have two leaders, both on quests for extreme achievement in an extreme environment.  But, why did one achieve spectacular success in such an extreme set of conditions, while the other failed even to survive?  This brings us again to uncertainty, the future and how to cope with it. As Drucker taught,  perhaps the only way is to create or prepare for the future. Graduates,  you and all of us must prepare every single day for our future road. This graduation is part of your preparation, is an essential component of your bag of resources for your road ahead. You, with the advice, teaching and motivation of your faculty created it.

Let’s see what Roal and Robert did for their preparation for their future:

While in his late twenties, Roal traveled from Norway to Spain for a two-month sailing trip to earn a master’s certificate. Same as your diploma, this certification was awarded as a testimony by a competent sailing authority of achievement of skills. It was 1899. He had nearly two- thousand-miles journey ahead of him. Do you know how did he make the journey... No airplane by that time, no car, but could be done by carriage, horse or ship…. None… He bicycle.

Roal then experimented with eating raw dolphin meat to determine its usefulness as an energy supply. After all, he reasoned, someday he might find himself surrounded by dolphins in an expedition, so he might as well know if he could eat one.

It was all part of Roal’s years of building a foundation, creating resources for his quest, training his body and learning as much as possible from practical experience about what actually worked. He even made a trip to learn with Eskimos. What better way to learn what function in polar conditions than to spend time with people who have hundreds of years of accumulated experience in ice and cold and snow and wind? He learned how Eskimos used dogs to pull. He observed how Eskimos always move slowly in a constant way, avoiding excessive sweat that could turn to ice in sub-zero weather. He adopted Eskimo clothing, loose fitting to help sweat evaporate. He systematically practiced Eskimo methods and trained himself for every conceivable situation he might encounter en route to the Pole. 

Roald’s, philosophy:  you don’t wait until you are in an unexpected storm to discover that you need more strength and endurance. You don’t wait until you are in the ocean to figure out if you can eat raw dolphin. You don’t wait until you are on the Antarctic journey to become a superb skier and dog handler. You prepare with intensity, all the time, so that when conditions turn against you, you can draw from your resources. And equally, you prepare so that when conditions turn in your favor, you can strike hard.

Robert presents quite contrast to Roal. In the years leading up to the race for the South Pole, he could have trained like a maniac on cross-country skis and taken a thousand mile bike ride. He did not. He could have gone to live with Eskimos. He did not. He could have practiced more with dogs, making himself comfortable with choosing dogs over ponies. Ponies, unlike dogs, sweat on their hides so they become encased in ice, posthole and struggle in snow, and don’t generally eat meat. Roal planned to kill some of the weaker dogs along the way to fuel the stronger dogs. Robert chose ponies. He also bet on motor sledges that hadn’t been fully tested in the most extreme South Pole conditions. As is turned out, the motor sledge engines cracked within the first few days, the ponies filed early, and his team struggle through most of the journey by man propelled harnessing themselves to sleds, trudging across the snow, and pulling the sleds behind them.

Unlike Robert, Roal systematically built enormous buffers for unforeseen events. When setting supply depots, Roal, not only flagged a primary depot he placed 20 black pennants, easy to see against the white snow. Robert, in contrast put a single flag on his primary depot and left no marking on his path, leaving him exposed to catastrophe if he went even a bit off course. Roal, stored three tons of supplies for five men starting out versus Robert one ton for seventeen men. Quite a difference…

Roal didn’t know precisely what lay ahead. No google maps available. He designed the entire journey to systematically reduce the role of big forces and chance events. He assumed that bad events might strike his team somewhere along the journey and he prepared for them, even developing contingency plants so that the team could go on should something unfortunate happen to him along the way. Robert, left himself unprepared and complained in his journal about his bad luck. Wow, don’t you think, excuses or justification for faulure….

Roal, and his team reached home base in good shape and right on schedule. Running out of supplies, Robert, and members of his team, was found frozen in a little ten, just 10 miles short of his supply depot. 

Roal and Robert, achieved dramatically different outcomes not because they faced dramatically different circumstances. Look, in the first 34 days of their respective expedition, Roal and Robert had exactly the same radio, 56 percent, of good days to bad days of weather. If they faced the same environment in the same year with the same goal, the roots of their respective success and failure simply cannot be the environment. They had divergent outcomes principally because they displayed very different behaviors regarding planning for creating their future. Again, they displayed very different behaviors. This is the critical point. 

 You graduates already are creating your future with this achievement. But please keep your consistency all the way in your road no matter the shadows or stones ahead.

To finish: the lecture was given to us more than 2,000 thousand years ago…

“But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it. Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you.” 

Luke: 14:28 to 29. The master: Jesus Christ. Thank you again for the opportunity!!!!!

Irving A. Jiménez