Dame Marjorie Scardino is the CEO of Pearson PLC, an international publishing firm.
The following is a transcript of the address that she delivered to the Graduation Ceremony for the Faculty of Humanities on Saturday 2 April 2005. Although Dame Marjorie was not talking to a congregation of scientists, what she had to say is pertinent to all graduates (and undergraduates).
You can listen to a recording of this address (assuming you have Windows Media Player installed).
You can also read the citation delivered by Professor Paul Walters, Public Orator on that occasion, when he presented her for the degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa.
Thank you Vice Chancellor, Chancellor, Deans, Faculty professors, Graduates, all of your supporters. I thank you all very much for letting me share your graduation today. I know that I am part of it only because of what people around me have done for a long time, and I realize that I did not have to work as hard for this degree that I am about to get as you did for yours - so humble congratulations to all of you.
I have had the privilege of speaking to other gatherings like this in the past, but this one is special to me for several reasons. We are very lucky in my company, Pearson, to work with a number of outstanding graduates of this University. I've been in South Africa for the week, and as I've looked around at our business here, I realize that without Rhodes University we might not have a business at all. The people who edit our newspapers, the people who produce our textbooks for schools and colleges around the country, the people who publish our books with new exciting African authors - all of them are Rhodes University graduates. So I thank you very much for giving me a business in South Africa.
Secondly, some of you are graduating today in Journalism. I'm a former - or some people say, I should be a reformed - journalist. That's sort of a disease you never quite get over in your life. Add to it the fact that Pearson is the owner of a great many newspapers, and you realize that anything to do with the teaching or learning or pursuit of Journalism is something that is pretty dear to my heart, so I'm delighted to be part of that. I believe that Journalism has the power to bring fairness and freedom, and that a free press is at the heart of a democracy and a market economy, and I believe that you believe that too.
I'm very pleased that here at Rhodes the Journalism programme is raising the standards of newspapers and magazines all around the country, and we are very proud to be a tiny part of that in our sponsorship of the Economic Journalism Chair, now well occupied by Robert Brand, and I am sure that we have learned more than anybody else from this partnership.
Finally, it's important to me today to be here, because Rhodes and Pearson share a bit of history. Your University was founded in 1904, which is about the time our company Longman started to distribute school books around this country, and today we both still have that passion to carry on in education, but I think also we both share the passion to open the possibility of education - effective education - for all those who have been excluded for a very long time from it. So that means that our partnership with Rhodes is ever more important.
But this day isn't about Pearson, and it isn't about Rhodes - it is about the graduates. You graduates have now made it through another experience in your life which takes you towards what you want to be (at least I hope that's true). If your undergraduate college experience is anything like mine, though, you learned a lot you didn't intend to, and a lot you are never, ever, going to use again, and a great deal you can't tell your parents about. All three of these categories are, I am sure, an enriching experience, and I know it's traditional at this time for a speaker to give inspirational advice to the graduates, but I am assuming that since you graduates have chosen this very high quality University and you've succeeded in it, you've got the ambition and drive to reach for the stars as I'm supposed to tell you to do. What I'm hoping you may make some use of are a few suggestions about how to apply your ambition and drive, so here I offer you today in a short space of time my simple rules for getting on in life.
These rules aren't very deep, they aren't very mystical, I can't guarantee results with them - in fact, I urge you to apply them with extreme caution, but here they are:
The first rule is: "Be yourself". That may sound obvious, but it's not really obvious. There's an awful lot of pressure these days to be someone else - to conform to certain textbook ways of acting or saying things or doing things - and as much as I like textbooks on the whole, I hope you won't succumb to that textbook way of doing things. Instead I hope you'll figure out what you believe, and what style suits you best; figure out how you think and communicate. Do it your way. If you try to fake it, if your try to be somebody else, you are just going to get yourself into a whole lot of trouble, so make the most of what's different about you. I've tried to follow this rule in my life, more or less, with mixed success. I'm not really sure whether being myself as a woman has had very much to do with my life. I am sure that, more than once, being myself as a person from a place called Texas has meant a lot. People are never sure I'm not going to act like a crazy cowboy when they cross me. That does remind me also of a corollary of this rule which is: "While being yourself, never, ever, take yourself too seriously". That is as dangerous as not being yourself.
My second rule is the single most important rule I think I've ever figured out in my life, and it took me a long time to figure it out. It is: "Be generous". So many times in business, so many times in life, it's hard to figure out how to act. Should I be stern, should I be lenient, should I be tough? Just apply this rule; just always err on the side of generosity; make the generous interpretation. Believe in somebody, give somebody another chance. You may end up being wrong, but I guarantee you generosity will always cost you much, much less than the alternative.
My third rule - equally banal, equally self-evident - is: "Keep it simple". Be the one to simplify and clarify, not the one to obfuscate and complicate, to add layers and add more problems. This applies especially I think to how you communicate. As technology shrinks the world and brings so many different kinds of people together, we all need to talk and write and share stories and share ideas, and simple is the only way to do that. Simple is the most powerful way. If you get lost, just remember Albert Einstein's Rule: "If you can't explain it simply, you just don't understand it well enough".
The fourth rule I propose for your consideration is the one that is, I find, in business a bit out of fashion right now, but I think it will come back. It is: "Take risks". In your situation you might also call this: "never underestimate how a colossal failure can make your CV more interesting". This is something I am very over-qualified to talk about (and I hope Professor Walters [the Public Orator] is not going to mention this). My husband and I started a little newspaper a long time ago that was a journalistic success (which was his achievement), and a complete commercial failure (which was my achievement). It was our business school and our journalism school - there weren't schools at that point that had their own newspapers to practise on, but in the bargain of trying to do that we learned an important lesson, that failure is not fatal. And once you learn that, absolutely everything else seems possible. The boundaries of Science, and Art - and Business and Economics for that matter - are only explored and enlarged by somebody who's willing to take risks. So I hope you'll take that seriously.
Finally, my last rule, and the one I'm sure has been reminded to you by the people who helped get you here, who helped pay and worry you through this institution is: "Always, always remember how fortunate you are". My mother is fairly old now, but she is a rabid Internet surfer, to my great horror, and she sends me a lot of things, but one of the things she sent me a year or two ago has really helped me. It is an analysis that helps me remember my obligation in the world with pretty great clarity. It's an analysis of the world as if it were 100 people, with all the existing human ratios kept the same. There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 people from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South, 8 would be from Africa, 52 would be female, 48 male, 70 would be non-white, 30 white, 70 would be non-Christian, 30 would be Christian, 89 would be heterosexual, 11 homosexual. 6 people would possess 59% of the world's wealth, and all 6 of those people would be from the United States. 80 would live in sub-standard housing, 70 would not be able to read, 50 would be suffering from malnutrition, 1 would be near death, 1 would be near birth, 1 would own a computer, and 1 - only 1 - would have a University education.
So with those in mind, those are my suggestions to you - be yourself, but don't take yourself too seriously in the process, keep things simple, err on the side of generosity, take risks, and make very good use of your very good fortune.
There is, however, one last rule that I'd like to recommend, one that is perhaps more important than any of the rest, and it is: "Beware of rules". None of these is guaranteed to work, and in fact most rules are in the process of being rewritten by graduates like you. So have a good time rewriting your share of the rules, and remember you are earning your place in history as you do it. However large or however small the scale, it's important, and if you have not yet chosen a profession, think of becoming a teacher.
Thank you very much. [applause]