Graduation speeches are a wonderful opportunity to celebrate and reflect, to acknowledge and inspire. Beyond the Instagram-friendly images of mortarboards being collectively thrown into the air, the Commencement Day ceremony is a symbol of hard work paying off, a job well done, and a new chapter about to begin.
From growth and shared experience to gratitude and a step into the future, thoughtful words of advice and encouragement from the stage bring together a community of new graduates and the staff and faculty that have shared their journey.
The President of Hult International Business School, Matt Lilley gives more graduation speeches than other business school leaders. With US campuses in Boston and San Francisco, and international campuses in London and Dubai he addressed four graduation ceremonies this summer. And he makes sure to deliver a different speech each time, encouraging the graduating Hult students to embrace and enjoy all that the world has to offer, and to thank his colleagues for all their work.
This drive towards an engaging life has pushed Matt Lilley throughout his career. He strives to find the most interesting path in every situation, and in doing so, puts the maximum effort into everything he tries.
“I’ve always been more driven by curiosity than by any outcome,” he says.
His speech for graduates this year was about planning for the future, although Matt Lilley never had a set plan for his own career. Few of the career steps he took were anticipated in advance.
“Sometimes when you’re doing a job, opportunities come up from time to time. If a job felt more exciting and more interesting than the one I was doing, and I could learn something new, then I made the move,” he said. “And I’ve always been more driven by the need to enjoy the process than purely what the destination is.
“That’s what has always kept me stimulated, excited. I’ve met great people and had amazing experiences.”
Advice for graduates
Matt Lilley understands however that not everyone will structure their career in this way. His advice for the graduates of 2023? “Give yourself the maximum exposure to new opportunities,” he says. “Particularly as many opportunities in life can’t be planned for.”
To gain this exposure he encourages Hult students to be proactive: network, ask questions. Read fiction as well as non-fiction. Read history books, business books; read anything and everything. But then also to make sure that whatever you’re doing today, you’re doing it well and that you have a good reputation. It’s about being curious, and putting yourself in the best position so that you’re around when new ideas happen and opportunities come up and that you’re the one chosen for them.
Dr Lilley practices what he preaches, always aiming to be the best at any job he does. He describes his career as “a series of accidents in a sense” – opportunities offered to him as a direct result of his hard work. While working at Lehman Brothers at the time of the financial crash in 2008, he was able to secure a new opportunity by ensuring that he consistently worked hard.
His work caught the eye of the CEO of Prudential plc, who offered him a job. He worked there for 14 years, as the Director of Strategy, Director of Investor Relations and for 7 years CEO of Africa, responsible for building and managing Prudential’s insurance operations across 8 countries.
“Opportunities come for people who are exceeding expectations and have a good reputation,” says Dr Lilley. “Whether you’re doing your dream job or not, don’t get so focused on your goal that you forget to do the job well today. Just doing your job well, every single day, creates more opportunities than anything else.”
If you have a good reputation, new opportunities, new chances, new projects will follow you, he says. “To build your reputation you need to be self-aware enough to do something you’re good at.”
“At 25 I thought I wanted a career in physics. It was fascinating being a research scientist, but I wasn’t that good at it. I realised staying in this career path would make for a hard life, and I’d be better off switching to something I could be really good at. My advice would be to put yourself in a pool where you can be in the top quarter,” said Dr Lilley.
Focus on skills that enable you to apply your knowledge
Matt Lilley has a PhD in particle physics and cosmology from the University of Cambridge, but says he would struggle to pass a physics exam today. “Although I could probably pass one in a week,” he says with a smile. “Knowledge decays quickly if you don’t apply it, he explains, but the skills you learn stay with you.”
When you’re working, you very rarely get tested on what you know. It’s about what you’re able to do, says Dr Lilley. “You need knowledge in order to apply it, but in most industries you don’t get promoted by sitting an exam, you get promoted through being effective at work, and being able to achieve things.”
He gives the example of communication. If you tell somebody something in story form, they’re more likely to remember it and recall it later, but this type of communication is a skill you have to practice to perfect.
This is why Hult International Business School places a large emphasis on challenge-based learning. Programmes are designed to be intensive and interactive which helps students practice these sorts of skills while they learn. Students will get better at these, playing to their strengths, and learning how to work their weaknesses.
As part of their programme, students at Hult were tasked with preparing a presentation about whether the lift-hailing service Lyft would ever be profitable. They had to analyse the business strategically, competitively and financially, in order to make forecasts, and then give this as a presentation. By the end of the project, each group had managed to figure out how to condense six weeks of work into six minutes of pitch.
The skill of compiling and communicating the overall message is more important than what the students were actually presenting, Dr Lilley explained. To communicate effectively, it showed that the students understood the information and how it all fits together.
“It’s the people who can turn figures into a narrative, a story, who are going to get the management positions. It’s about being able to tie things together and see the big picture. That’s the skill that moves organizations,” says Dr Lilley.
While there will be opportunities to develop this skill in the workplace, it’s easier at business school because you will have more opportunities to experiment and take risks.
At work you are very focused on the outcome, whereas at business school the outcome is less important than the process and the learning. So while Hult simulates the business environment, it also encourages students to take risks and get feedback.
Incorporating new perspectives and new technology
With the help of its global network of campuses, Hult International Business School champions new perspectives. The student body is made up of individuals of 140 nationalities, and students work in small teams to solve real business challenges. In these teams, they learn how to manage different approaches to problem solving.
The students’ assignments, which are more project-based than essay based, play into the strengths of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, which both students and faculty are encouraged to use in their work. “We’re being open minded,” says Dr Lilley. “We’re trying to be as agile as possible, embracing these technologies and trying to learn as quickly as possible.”
Business school prepares students for the future of work, teaching them to think strategically. The risk of AI is that it becomes a substitute for thinking, says Dr Lilley. “But we’re not teaching people how to pass exams; we’re teaching them to think. If Chat GPT can help them be more productive in the way that Excel did 25 years ago, then that’s great. It’s certainly an exciting time for education.”
The enthusiasm and optimism of the Hult Business School President for the future of business education is contagious, and much like his approach to his own career, the school prepares its students to be reactive to change and make the most of opportunities.
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