Putting down below my valedictorian address at the INSEAD Executive MBA graduation – Dec 21, 2007 – late in the day to be doing it:
EMBA 2007 GRADUATION – VALEDICTORY SPEECH – WAQAS HUSSAIN
Introduction
I feel honored and humbled to be representing such an exceptional group of people today – a group so talented, and so outstanding in so many spheres of life that I feel truly fortunate to belong to it.
As I thought about the messages I wanted to convey today on behalf of our class, I found it hard to do justice to all the emotions and learnings we’ve been through in our time together. So I tried to cast my mind back to identify a particular experience that best epitomized for me the course and character of our journey these last 14 months.
I was struck by how much of what we’ve experienced as a class was prefigured in that cold November day that we spent in the Fontainebleau forest at the start of the program.
The team exercises that day were like the weeks we would later spend on campus – challenging, engaging, intense, and fun.
I guess the fact that we had to bend out of shape to pass through hoops in one of the exercises was a good preview of the rigors to expect in the program.
But the help we gave each other to make it through the hoops, or climb higher than we had ever thought possible was also a preview of how we would function as a class during the course of the year.
Between our team exercises that day, we walked leisurely through the forest talking to each other about our lives and our dreams, and feeling surprisingly close. Those walks remind me of the gaps we later had between our weeks on campus, when we had time to catch our breath, gear up for the next challenge, and strengthen our friendships.
Like that day in the forest, our experience at INSEAD has been a wonderful combination of stimulating intensity, opportunities to find balance, build relationships, and have fun.
Evolution & Academics
When we started the EMBA we already had successful careers behind us, and came to INSEAD looking for something beyond success. Though we had such diverse backgrounds, we all shared one motivation: to forge a passage into a more meaningful sense of achievement.
We were in mobilizing mode, consciously or unconsciously nurturing an impulse for change, looking for an intellectual platform, and an emotional stimulus.
And change has been the hallmark for all of us this year, whether in terms of actual directional shifts, resolve for action, clarity of perception, or depth of perspective.
While the journey of change has not always been easy, we have felt fortified by the companionship of our colleagues, and inspired by our professors. They have helped us through the difficult waters of uncertainty like consort battleships.
The day-to-day experience of the EMBA has often been dominated by the outer game of performance and grades, and the happy smiley faces tonight testify that we’re all relieved that that game is over.
But we’ve also been silently engaged in a far more rewarding inner game of growth and evolution – an evolution that was facilitated by the way the program blended hard knowledge with the lambent leadership skills we need to succeed at the highest levels.
In this inner game of growth, we all feel like we’ve made it to the Dean’s List – a point I intend to be emphatic about with my dad, when he asks me next week whether I’m on the real Dean’s list.
Through the Leadership Development Process, our team mates helped us reflect on and sharpen our leadership fingerprint, while our coaches provided imaginative ideas and encouragement. We have eagerly sucked the marrow from these and many other leadership experiences that were explicitly or implicitly designed into the program, and the results have been beyond our most sanguine expectations.
INSEAD has not only caused our growth this year, it has also given us the seed corn for future renewal.
Faculty
And we owe so much of our development to the sheer caliber of the INSEAD faculty. They have taught us to be reflective, and to let wisdom prevail over knowledge.
What would start as awe at reading through their stellar credentials ahead of the course would turn into admiration as we witnessed how they combined intellectual virtuosity with theatrical flair to keep us at the edge of our seats.
At the end of the course, this admiration had very often turned into a sense of affection, because we liked them as people, as much as we admired them as towering academics.
Their flashes of brilliance and endearing mannerisms have become part of the folklore of our class, and our learning is anchored through the many memorable cachets of their teaching style.
We can never forget Nial’s maxim in Financial Accounting: “profit is vanity, cash is reality” or Igor making Management Accounting sound like Miami Vice with his exuberance and fetching image of “beautiful, liquid cash”, or Enrico teaching statistics with the hypnotic intensity of a maestro conducting an orchestra, or Nicos throwing chalks instead of using a laser pointer in Prices and Markets, or Kevin Kaiser’s refreshing realism in the now immortal phrase that has almost become our class motto – a phrase that is dangerously close to claiming its first casualty, as one of us gives in to the temptation of using it with our boss on a bad day.
And we can’t forget Pascal’s magical feat of accurately predicting the very minute he would talk about a particular point, and showing us that Finance can be as cool as Clint Eastwood, with the striking bravado of the expression: “real men don’t diversify”.
Our teachers presented every topic with such a blend of scholarship and panache that it could stir even the most languid pulse. They made us feel like we were not just learning, but looking beyond the frontiers of knowledge. They made us marvel at the seemingly mundane, by giving us new lenses through which to look at the world.
As we say goodbye and thank you to our teachers today, we feel indebted to them, emboldened that they are part of our network, and maybe just a little relieved that they can’t affect our GPAs any more.
Admin
We are also thankful to the tireless team in the EMBA Admin department who have run the program with such amazing skill and given it such a human face. Just like that day in the Fontainebleau forest when on turning a bend in the trail, or removing our blindfolds, we would see their reassuring, smiling faces, throughout the year we have felt their presence, their accessibility, and their responsiveness.
Mark, Janine, Nathalie, Hilde, Anne, Stephanie and JoAnne, we have appreciated the labors and the cares you have so generously and often anonymously invested in making the program such a delight for us from start to finish.
Sven, you deserve a special salute from all of us. We have added our frequent delinquency, and special needs to the already mind-boggling complexity which you so cheerfully deal with. We are in awe of your wizardry, whether you were managing 58 itineraries, chasing-up projects, or passing off as a blond Chinese priest in Singapore.
And finally…Charlie, you have been such a wonderful teacher, administrator, cheerleader, and friend. We thank you for your leadership of a program that has changed 58 lives this last year. You exemplify what you taught us on the first day of the program – that it is the emotional content of leadership which matters most.
Fellowship
One of the biggest treasures we take away from our time here together is that of the relationships we have forged with each other.
Through the many meaningful opportunities that INSEAD has provided us to commune amongst ourselves, we feel like our destinies have become forever interwoven.
With the way our working groups were mixed all year long, the cubicle and breakout rooms became places where we loved to go. Whether in Fontainebleau or Singapore, it was in the cubicle that the two registers of learning and bonding blended so effectively.
It was there that we looked for elusive answers by asking deep questions: questions that often started with “who read the case?” It was in the cubicle that we experienced excitement, stress, conflict, laughs, group therapy, and so many breakthroughs.
Both in and out of class, our fellowship and camaraderie has re-enchanted our lives, and we are committed to deepening and extending the many beautiful friendships that have started this year.
Families
Our gratitude today goes out especially to our families and partners, many of whom are here in Fontainebleau for the first time.
Throughout the year, while we felt so richly compensated for our efforts in the form of the learning, the communion and the sense of progress we experienced, our families dealt with our frequent absences, indulged us as we felt the pressure of deadlines, and accepted our sheepish explanations about why our grades in school were sometimes not quite what we expected.
Whether they are here now or waiting for us back home, our message to them is that without your patience, encouragement and love we would not be here today. This evening is as much a tribute to your support and partnership as it is an accolade for our effort.
We dedicate our achievement to you, and resolve to pay off our debts to you starting now, with the wonderful dinner at the Chateau this evening.
Future
At one level, our journey ends here. The rigors are removed; the class is dismissed. It feels like we’re out of the woods.
My mind goes back again to the end of that day in November last year when we stepped out of the Fontainebleau forest, exhausted with the exertions, yet feeling fulfilled at what we had accomplished, and excited about what lay ahead of us.
And that is how we feel today.
But what lies ahead now is not a year of the EMBA, but a lifetime of having INSEAD emblazoned in our hearts and minds; a lifetime in which our relationships with each other will assume even richer configurations, and continue to deepen our days.
What we have acquired here is so precious, so powerful, and so permanent, that it feels like tonight we’re at a minor ending and a major beginning.
We thank INSEAD for this wonderful event, which so meaningfully consecrates what is ending, and so fittingly celebrates what is beginning.
Thank you.
Notes to Self 
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