VCU School of Business Commencement

Dean Sesnowitz; distinguished members of the faculty; proud parents and other family members; guests; and, of course most importantly, members of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business Class of 2004: thank you for your welcome and the privilege of sharing a few reflections with you this afternoon on this very special occasion. As accomplished students of business, you know that when a firm determines that a particular approach to some aspect of its business works in practice, it's a good idea to stick with the approach. The same is true in life more broadly. Sometime ago, the newspaper columnist Ann Landers asked her older readers who had enjoyed long and happy marriages to write in and share some of the secrets of their successful relationships. One reader from a small town in North Carolina wrote in and told Ms. Landers that the secret of his 63-year marriage was an agreement with his wife to go out for dinner and dancing twice a week, every week. She went on Tuesday; he went on Thursday. There is a similar key to success in making commencement speeches: keep them short, and I will follow that rule here today. To use a concept from mathematics that is often applied in economics, brevity may not be a sufficient condition for a successful commencement speech, but it is definitely a necessary condition.