On behalf of the Board of Directors and all the members of the Pfeiffer Family, I would like to welcome you, the Class of 2013, to Pfeiffer University for what will be one of the most meaningful experiences of your life. I would like to thank Dr Ambrose and Dr Espy for giving me this opportunity to share with you some of my experiences and ideas so that your four years at Pfeiffer might be just a little bit better. I would also like to thank the faculty and staffs for attending and for all their energy and dedication to helping these students have the brightest possible future.
Before I get started I want to tell you a little story:
I was in church last Sunday and the minister put four jars on a table. He filled the first with smoke, the second with chocolate, the third with alcohol and the fourth with earth. He put a worm in each jar. At the end of the sermon he checked in each jar. The worms in the smoke, chocolate and alcohol were all dead. The worm in the earth was thriving. He asked, “Does anyone know what this means?” A woman in the back enthusiastically raised her hand. She said, “If you smoke, drink, and eat chocolate you won’t have worms…. My friend Larry Wilson, noted author, says, “The natural result of communications is misunderstanding.” We in the communications business have a tough job.
I was 17 years old standing on the floor of the Massachusetts State Senate arguing the merits of a bill to overhaul state government. I was the Student Senator for the day and was having a ball. I was spending the full day with my State Senator Bill Weeks, who later became my mentor for much of my life. Previously I had lost the election for Student Council President. My teacher Mrs. Butterworth and the civics department had chosen me to represent the school at the States Student Government Day. I asked “Why was I chosen?” She answered, “Because you are the best candidate, and although you lost, you ran a great campaign for Student Council President.” I was shocked, excited and honored. Like all great teachers, coaches and mentors, she saw more in me than I saw in myself and took that opportunity to turn that defeat into a victory. The door she opened would alter my life forever.
Knapp and Knapp vs. Knapp and? The Charlotte Observer was likening a tennis match between Pfeiffer and Wake Forest to that of the civil war: brother vs. brother. They reported that they had no records in college sports of three brothers pitted against each other in the same venue. My older brother Warren and my younger brother Rick of Pfeiffer were facing off against me and Ed Parker of Wake Forest. It was great fun. None of us would have had that opportunity, had it not been for our coaches, Jim Leighton of Wake and Wallace Martin of Pfeiffer. They were our Dad’s away from home. They went out of their way to schedule those matches. Seeing more in us than we did in ourselves, they monitored our studies, got us jobs and took us into their homes. My parents ended up settling in NC because of their relationship with Pfeiffer and all three of my brothers and my son attended Pfeiffer.
Teachers and coaches have a profound impact on us that we don’t often recognize until years later. Malcolm Gladwell in his new book, “Outliers, the Story of Success”, shares common success traits from the Beatles to Bill Gates. Why them and not others? Is it just talent or is there more. There are several factors according to Gladwell. One is the appearance or intervention of mentors at critical points in our lives.
I received my draft notice not long after graduating from Wake Forest in 1968. I took my physical and was heading to the Army, which meant the jungles of Viet Nam. At the time I was working for the same State Senator Bill Weeks who had mentored me in high school. I had put in my application and passed all the tests to become a Naval Aviator, but hadn’t heard anything. Time was running out. I asked him for help. Thanks to the Senator, I achieved a dream and spent 4 great years serving my country as an officer and aviator. By stepping up and asking for help, I did what Gladwell calls advocating. This is another characteristic of the outliers. They advocate for themselves when they reach a hurdle. Bill Gates was able to convince a company desperate for programmers to hire him and several friends while they were still in high school. This gave them access to the world’s most sophisticated computers, programmers, and thousands hours of experience.
Once I completed my military service, I stopped by the Boston Merrill Lynch office and asked for a job as a Financial Advisor. The Sales manager that interviewed me had worked with my mentor, State Senator Bill Weeks and remembered me from the campaigns. I got the job. I called my Dad and said, “This is my opportunity and I am going to be a success at Merrill Lynch.” I committed.
The doors had opened for me due to a combination of luck, timing, mentoring and self advocating. It was now up to me.
This third element of the Outliers, Gladwell calls the 10,000 Hour Rule. A study was done of violinists, at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music to determine if it was talent or practice that made the difference between stars, good players and average players. Their teachers asked them how many hours had they practiced since the age of 5. Those that were considered stars by the teachers consistently had practiced at least 10,000 hours. Those that were considered good had practiced 8,000 hours and the others 4,000 hours. They ran this hypothesis against their pianists and other high achievers and found an amazing consistency. Once they reached a high level of proficiency, it was practice more than talent that determined greatness.
In the early days, the Beatles were a good local Liverpool band. While they were still in high school, a club owner asked them to come to Hamburg, Germany and play for eight hours a day, seven days a week for 109 days straight. After two years, they went back to Liverpool as the world class Beatles. By the time they came to the USA, they had performed1200 times. They had the talent, but without that extraordinary practice, they may never have reached their potential.
Everyone here has their unique role to play in freeing up the human potential of this University. Our roll as teachers, coaches and administrators is to see more in our students and players than they see in themselves, mentor them, identify their true talent, teach them to advocate for themselves and lead them on the path towards those 10,000 hours of practice to stardom. By playing your role, we will create world class servant leaders who will make this The World Class University.
I met Lou Holtz in 1985 and it was a pivotal event. As one of the greatest college coaches of all time, I asked Lou how he was able to consistently build such world class teams. He explained it this way. “As coaches, teachers, parents, bosses, we all have to be able to answer yes to three questions every day. Can they trust me, am I committed to excellence and do I care about them as people. “Trust, Excellence and Caring. I put up those three words up in my office and looked at them every day. Every decision I made had to pass this test. Trust is built by consistently doing what you say you will do. Do what you promise and you build your bank of trust? Show favoritism, show up late, change the rules in mid-stream, you make withdrawals from the bank of trust. Unfortunately withdrawals are much more powerful than deposits. One major trust buster can bankrupt a relationship and ruin a team. Shortly after I was given responsibility for Minnesota, a senior Financial Advisor decided to retire. We have a policy that accounts are distributed fairly among the sales force when an Advisor retires. The office was in an uproar because the Manager had decided to ignore that policy and give the entire practice to one of his favorite Advisors. The sales-force could no longer answer positively, can we trust him. Because of that lapse of judgment he lost the confidence of his team and he was forced to resign. He bankrupted the bank of trust.
Am I committed to excellence? This is the really tough one. Every time I was tempted to compromise my standards I would look at this and know everyone was watching. If I accepted mediocrity once, that became the new standard. My staff and I had interviewed three candidates for the job of Administrative Manager for the Region. I informed my staff that I had made the decision to hire the best of the three candidates. My service manager came to see me and said, “If we are truly committed to excellence, you can’t hire this guy. He is not up to our standards. You are hiring the best of what is available, not the best.” I stopped in my tracks, thanked her and told her how grateful and proud I was of her. It took a lot of guts to confront me. I was never so proud of the team because they were comfortable enough to call me on this and never wavered from the commitment to excellence. We started a new search and found the right guy.
Does he care about me as a person? This is where the great coaches and teachers demonstrate their skill. Each player and student is unique with different strengths and weaknesses. The great coaches leverage his player’s strengths and minimize their weaknesses. I had a tough time learning to read so school was always a challenge. My freshman year of college, Coach Leighton suggested that I get a tutor for biology and that I tutor other students in history, a subject that I loved. By learning history and then teaching it, I really knew the subject. By reaching out for help in biology, I passed. This process of learning, doing and teaching became my way of excelling in both the Navy and Merrill Lynch. This is where Pfeiffer excels. The teachers, coaches and administrators truly care about the welfare of each student here, know their students and leverage their strengths and manage their weaknesses.
There must be more to achieving greatness as a coach than just trust, excellence and caring. Yes, there is talent, experience and hard work. But without the first three it is an uphill battle.
In order to ritualized this process of customized learning I encourage the coaches, and professors to take the bold step and identify fifteen students each; mentor them by helping them put together a plan to develop their talent, monitor their progress with monthly meetings, stay on a timeline and open doors to their future. Both you and your fifteen students should hold yourselves accountable for their success. Treat your students as though they are your best friend’s children. By accepting this challenge each student would have a mentor and an equal opportunity to achieve. I encourage the students to meet with your mentor advisor, put together a plan to develop your talent, stick to your timeline, practice your skills and become an advocate for yourself. I encourage the administration to demonstrate strong leadership by organizing this program, establishing monthly meetings with each professor and coach and reviewing the progress of each student and hold them accountable. By monitoring that progress, the administration demonstrates to all their commitment to excellence towards both the professors and the students. If you don’t monitor it, you can’t manage it.
What would be the result? All of us would speak of Pfeiffer with even more conviction. Today, we say that Pfeiffer is different because you get special attention. Classes are small and professors teach. You can play a sport and still have a life. If you choose, you will become a true servant leader. With this mentor/advisor model, you could demonstrate servant leadership at work by adding that you will be assigned to a mentor/advisor who will coach you through your entire four years at Pfeiffer. Your mentor will help you develop a life plan to develop your unique talent, meet with you monthly, hold you to your timeline and rapidly respond to your problems. Everyone involved would be putting others before self, right from the start, in a most meaningful way.
How many schools can say that? None. The results would be: reduced stress, higher standards and higher achievement. The resulting world class organization would attract even better students looking for a world class environment. I shared this servant leadership mentor/advisor idea with my life coach who just sent her daughter off to college. She said, “What a wonderful idea. I sure wish that were available for my daughter. That would make me feel so much better if I knew someone was looking out for her.
What an advantage Pfeiffer would have.
We did this at Merrill Lynch. We called it Supernova, a star that is reduced down to its core and then burns ten times brighter. At Merrill Lynch we had a problem. Here at Pfeiffer, it would be as if all of a sudden instead of 800 students, you had 5000. You couldn’t possibly serve them. Business had been good at Merrill Lynch and our average Financial Advisor had 600 clients but could only properly serve 100. Chaos ensued, with high client turnover, poor customer satisfaction and low morale. We created Supernova to focus the Advisor’s energy on only 100 clients. Now, the Advisor had time to meet with clients monthly, fully implement their multi-generational plans and rapidly respond to their problems. They were putting clients before themselves. Client satisfaction improved to the point that turnover was no longer an issue. Portfolio performance improved as did employee productivity and satisfaction. A recent study showed that in 2008, those Advisors that spent 60% of their time or more with clients had less than 1% client turnover. Those that didn’t had 21% turnover. The productivity of the first group was eight times greater than the second group.
At Pfeiffer, student centered mentoring with the entire faculty involved, has the potential to dramatically improve performance, reduce stress and turnover. As a financial guy anytime there is the potential for increased revenues and reduced cost, you have my attention. In a servant focused environment, morale improves because the work is more satisfying and the University thrives. Everyone likes playing on a winning team. The outliers become the norm as better and better students are attracted to this environment. This brings the focus of the University squarely to where it belongs; the Student.
Alumni and friends love Pfeiffer because of relationships forged over four years of growth and development. Students come because of the idea of Pfeiffer; they stay because of the people, not a climbing wall or a new building.
My brother Rick and I attended summer school at Wake Forest because we both had been such good students. We drove our Model A Ford roadster from Winston Salem to Pfeiffer on many weekends to meet Rick’s friends. On the drive back on Sunday nights we would often both fall asleep and awaken when the car would drift off onto the gravel on the side of the road. As the passenger, I would wake up and slap Rick, saying, “Rick, wake up”. We got pretty good at this with practice. Years later I was asleep in the passenger’s seat with my wife Marcia driving. She inadvertently, drove onto the gravel at the side of the road and I awoke slapping her and saying, “Rick, wake up!!” Those skills and friendships you develop in college will stay with you for a lifetime.