Be a Creator, not a Consumer

Commencement Speech at Modul University Vienna, July 2017

Dear President Wöber, dear Dean Aubke, dear families and friends of our graduating students, and above all, dear Class of 2017! It is an honour for me to have been invited speak to you today, and I am delighted to be the first to congratulate you on your graduation. You made it, well done!!

With any Commencement Speech, you walk in the big shoes of the likes of Sheryl Sandberg or Steve Jobs. My performance will probably not become as large a youtube hit as theirs, but there is one thing that Steve, Sheryl and myself will have in common at the end: We all will have spoken without a hat. And that’s why I hope you forgive me if I take this off now :-).

Dear Class of 2017, last week, I was on holiday on the island of Krk in Croatia. Looking at the sea, sipping on my Gin&Tonic, I was pondering what I could tell you on this important day … You have for sure learned a lot in the last three or four years at this prestigious university, especially on International Management and on Hotel Management & Tourism. But there is one thing which I guess no university covers in their curriculums, and that is: How to lead a happy and successful life.

Well, so I thought further, what is success anyway? For my 8 year old daughter, it´s to jump from the first floor of our rented holiday house into the pool — I did it too, and it was great fun J. For her little cousin, it´s climbing on a rock behind our house, for my mother, it´s reaching my parents´ apartment on the top floor despite her impeding hip surgery, and for my husband, it´s going all the way to Krk by bike in three days. Also in business, when working with my team and my clients, I see that success means so many different things to different people. So, and I hope not to disappoint you now, there is no way that I can tell you how to pursue a successful life — because only you yourself can tell what that means to you. What I can do, is to share with you some learnings from the story of my personal life and my career in business, and, at the end, to suggest one question to ask to help you find your answer.

Looking back, I see three principles which have knowingly or unknowingly forged my career and my life.

1. Give Luck a Chance and Grab It

There is no such thing as a career ladder. Many times, a career, even more so in the 21st century, is more a zig-zag than a straight line. And let me tell you something: This is a good thing, it´s something which should not scare you but, quite the contrary, can inspire you.

I am sure you are filled with all kinds of feelings today — excitement and joy (you really have something to celebrate as I am sure you will tonight ;-), but maybe also a kind of anxiety. Maybe you are uncertain of the many decisions you can and will have to take in the future, maybe you are afraid of making mistakes and taking the wrong track. But let me tell you something: Don´t be. You have a world of opportunities in front of you — that’s actually something marvellous and motivational.

Let me tell you my zig-zag: I went to Law School — basically because I did not want to become a doctor or a teacher, and I wanted to avoid Maths and Accounting. Actually, I had also considered the Modul, but there was no university yet ;-). After my Magister, I went to Vorarlberg for my practice at court, and then I ended up at the Austrian Constitutional Court, since — by pure chance — I had made two exams with its President Adamovich and wanted to ask him for a letter of recommendation for my post graduate studies. That´s when he offered me a job as scientific assistant … and I felt like saying “Yes!”.

So I did that for two years, I learned a lot, was challenged every day intellectually, liked my judge and my colleagues — but it did not genuinely make me happy, it did not make my heart sing. I always felt a bit like an alien, or a stranger, in that turf. But this job was of course a strong reference for my application at the Johns Hopkins University in Bologna where later I spent a fantastic year studying Economics, International Relations and European Studies. Just last night, we had our annual Sommer-Heuriger and I can´t imagine it´s been more than 20 years.

From there, I went to Brussels for an Internship at the European Commission — again, 1994, the year that Austria joined the European Union, to “check that out” and to realize that EU-politics neither were going to be my passion.

And here is another stroke of luck that made me meet Gustav Dressler, a banker from Chase Manhattan Bank and Johns Hopkins Alumnus who spotted me at the Sommer Heuriger and insisted I could not possibly join the Foreign Service, or the Chamber of Commerce (which was a totally different organization then than it is today) or some Ministry … Instead I should do some interviews and jump into the real business world, and that´s what I did: It turned out that he hired me for the Austrian PSK Bank, part of the Postsparkasse, and I worked with him for three happy years.

And then, yet another stroke of luck brought a headhunter my way. He offered me a job in an advertising agency and that, again by chance and via a friend, quickly led to Austria´s leading PR agency Publico where I started as an Account Executive 19 years ago and which I have the privilege to be leading since 2010.

My point with these biographical anecdotes is that you need luck, yes, but that you also need to be bold enough to seize the opportunities it brings your way. Nobody understood and put this better than the French father of microbiology Louis Pasteur: Le hazard ne favorise que les ésprits préparés — Luck favors only the prepared mind.

So be prepared for occasionally raised eyebrows and incomprehension in your surrounding — be it your parents, your friends, colleagues, or, like in my case, my grandmother J. When I announced that I now had a job in the Sales Function (Vertrieb) at the PSK that was rather shocking news for her — just as for many other wellmeaning people around me. For them, it was like a “fall from grace”, that — after Paris (where I had studied), San Francisco, Bologna, Brussels etc. and speaking four languages — that I would now work in the “Vertrieb” at the “Post-Office-Bank” which sounded like I would shift boxes around and basically become something of a Postbeamtin, a post-clerk. And you know what? I loved it! We were managing and motivating 27 branches across Austria, every day, I learned about banking, about people, about marketing, about management and leadership, it was great.

Also, when the Publico opportunity came my way, I did not know what exactly PR was, but I jumped in and seized the opportunity .

These are some examples for the first principle: Give Luck a Chance and Grab It.

The second principle I want to share with you is very simple …

2. Work Hard

My patchwork son Robert who is now 22 and a jazz-musician, years ago asked me: “Saskia, Wie wird man Chef?” How does one become a boss? And I said, usually, it starts with doing great work and doing for a while.

This might not be what you have expected, because it sounds trivial and not very inspiring. But, I assure you, in most cases, it is a prerequisite to succeed in business. Don´t get me wrong — it does not suffice to work hard, because … what else does one need in my view? Now I can see whether you have listened to me so far … yes, Luck and Confidence. But without work it usually does not work.

Do well what you do and take responsibility for what you do.

Worry less about what or where you will be in five years (a question that also headhunters ask less and less, I think), but ask yourself how well you do your current job and how well you contribute to the success of the organization you work for.

Remember the concept of agility, which is currently all the rage in the business literature and the business world: To be agile means to get things done (“Better done than perfect”), to think in solutions and not challenges, and to be results driven … first for the customer, then for the company, then for you. I couldn´t agree more.

Also, I think that career starters have got things the wrong way around when they worry about their leadership skills, when actually their job is, first and foremost, to be led, to work in a team, to contribute, and to grow. There is a great African saying: Grass will not grow quicker if you pull on it.

As for me, I did just that: I worked very hard for many years. Fullstop. And it felt right, I had success, I had money, my clients, my colleagues and my bosses had a super collaboration and achieved a lot, we had a great and intensive time, I contributed substantially to the success of our business, and so I became a partner and eventually CEO of the agency, leading its transformation to Ketchum.

When I read Sheryl Sandbergs famous book, I understood that I had done many things right intuitively. Yes, I definitely leaned in, and it worked out. I worked hard, but I also searched the challenges, the difficult and important projects and clients, I was confident and eager to learn and grow with new assignments. And this meant that I sometimes worked Sundays and many evenings, but it did not matter since I loved what I did, it was my life, and this time, the job really made my heart sing. And it does until today — but I work fewer hours now :-). And by the way, never, ever have I felt minor to any of my male colleagues … why would I?

Concluding the second principle, Work Hard, I move on to the third one:

3. Be Generous and Positive

The third principle is about the energy that you give and take. In the Beatles´ famous last album Abbey Road, the very last phrase goes “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”, and this is nothing less than a more beautiful and poetic version of “We reap what we sow” or “Wie man in den Wald ruft …”.

In any of the jobs I had, I wanted to be more of a radiator, rather than a drainage. Common sense tells us, and it is established by all sorts of studies and research, that generosity makes for a happy life — just as gratitude does. Sheryl Sandberg says she is writing down every evening three moments of the day which she is grateful for, and I must admit that I like the idea. But I would have to write down so many more things that I won´t start that habit. However, I sure believe that focusing on the positives makes you a stronger and also more attractive person than thinking every night on all the things that apparently went wrong or that you could have done better.

My personal story in this respect is that we went through a very hard time when I had taken over the agency and started to transform it into the wonderful organization it is today. Many colleagues left, and therefore many clients left, and very few on the market believed that I would succeed in making the big necessary change happen. So I hired new people, many of them very young, and today, six years later, this very group of people have become Seniors who are the pillars of what we are today, the most creative and remarkable communication consultancy in Austria.

What I can describe today in a couple of sentences was really a two-year-long journey of frustration, fear and fighting. What helped me succeed were my husband and my then 2 year old daughter, and my positive attitude that in the end it would all be good and that nothing in business can ever be so important as to really drag me down. I often had to force myself to stay optimistic and positive, cheerful and friendly, and it helped! It became a habit and I was indeed rather happy and cool with the situation, which again enabled me to move on, fight on, and in the end turn the business around.

So, these are the three learnings from my life that I thought I could share with you — 1. Give Luck a Chance & Grab it, 2. Work Hard, and 3. Be Generous and Positive. To conclude, I shall come back to the question of what a happy and successful life might mean for you. I have been searching for a criteria, for something real and tangible for the many decisions you will have to take in your life starting today.

Should I work for Kempinski in Berlin or an NGO in a developing country, for a Start Up in Amsterdam (like my smart Mentee Valerie) or for P&G in Tokio? Should I work abroad or stay in Vienna with my loved ones and make a Master? And tonight … should I have a Gin&Tonic or a Margerita :-)? Just joking.

Anyway, I found a question which, if you ask yourself candidly in all kind of situations, might lead you to your answer on what it means to lead a happy and successful life:

Are you a Creator, or are you a Consumer?

Do you fill the precious time you have with meaning and with joy, or do you live somebody else´s life? Are you contributing and growing, or are you sitting around and watching other people´s lives on Facebook and Instagram? Are you the audience for other people´s dreams or do you live your own dream?

You can guess what my advice is: Be a Creator, not a Consumer. Do something meaningful with all the gifts and talents you have been given — make yours a good life for yourself, but also for those around you and possibly for the world where you can influence it.

Be happy and grateful. And thank your parents and your loved ones, and kiss them and hug them!

Again, Congratulations to you all. You have done a terrific job and I am sure you will do great in the future.