Okoboji High School National Honor Society Induction Speech
Kevin R. Moore [j5poedr02(at)sneakemail(dot)com]
March 21, 2005

Thank you. Let me start by saying "well done!" You are here tonight because the faculty and administration of this school believe strongly that you embody the four principles of the National Honor Society. Congratulations! I would also like to extend congratulations to your parents. Success is rarely an accident. The love and support these students receive at home is an integral part of why they are being recognized.

Now I have to be honest, this is my first foray into motivational/inspirational speaking. In high school I wrote countless speeches for debate tournaments. At Microsoft, I frequently give presentations on technical topics to co-workers. It's actually a little weird to be speaking in front of an audience without referring to bullet points on a slide deck.

But this speech is different.

It is not my goal to convince you that I can make better arguments than an opponent.

It is also not my goal to have you leave with a better understanding of a new programming language or platform.

My goal is to get you to ask questions, to reflect, to think. Not just tonight, not just while you are in school, but your entire life.

Eight years ago I was sitting where you are now--waiting impatiently for the speaker to finish his speech so that I could get my certificate and go finish my composition video, which was due the next day. After three years of debate, I had learned to avoid, at all costs, the wrath of Mr. Stevens.

Looking back now, I realize that a large portion of my time in high school was spent worrying about certificates and due dates, grades and class rankings, test scores and trophies.

When I was 17, scholarship was defined solely by how impressive my college application was, leadership was defined by how many organizations I was president of, service was something I did to put on a scholarship application, and character was defined by how little I got caught.

I'm saying this because I don't want you to feel bad if this is how you look at the four principals of the National Honor Society. I too am guilty. I do want you to realize you are probably wrong.

Admitting fault, saying "I'm sorry" is tough, but it's an essential character trait.

I know it's a stretch to be telling this to a bunch of high school kids. Believe me; you think you know more now than you ever will. Enjoy it while you can. When I was 17, the thing I was most certain about was how smart I was and how much I knew. Feel free to ask any teacher who had to put up with me when I was 17. I doubt they will disagree. Being in debate, in some ways, made things worse: I got very good at reloading while other people spoke, tearing apart their arguments, no matter how valid, and defending my own position, no matter how ridiculous. By the time I went to college, I thought I had a pretty good idea about how the world works. Admitting I was wrong, or even admitting the possibility that I could be wrong, was painfully hard.

I can see how people get into this mindset of personal certainty. How often do you hear "I'm sorry" on TV? Whether it's a drama, or a sit-com, or a cable news show, there is no incentive to say "I'm sorry". Apologies do not make good entertainment. They aren't exciting. Next time you watch a basketball game, listen for the foul whistle and watch 10 players raise their hands up, subconsciously saying "it wasn't me". Even for political leaders, there is no upside to admitting a mistake, lest you be considered a "flip-flopper".

Over Christmas, I had the chance to sit down with a good friend from high school. He is one of the most intelligent, successful people I know, but even he made the observation that he considers 90% of his life is "in the gray"--he admitted that the vast majority of things he's not sure about. The crazy thing: he likes it this way. Think about it: what do you do when you're not sure? You ask questions. You get a second opinion. You listen to other points of view. You're also much more likely to admit when you are wrong.

This is probably the single most difficult lesson I have ever learned, but it is by far the most important.

Modesty is also essential for being an effective leader. Another is avoiding something I call "either-or" thinking. Let me explain.

Last year, a friend of mine recommended a book about handling difficult, high-risk situations. It was called "Crucial Conversations". One of the most interesting concepts discussed in "Crucial Conversations" is the notion of a "sucker choice". The classic example of a "sucker choice" is someone justifying a rude or offensive statement by saying "I was just being honest". They present a situation as an either-or: "either I can be respectful or I can be honest, I can't be both". This is all too prevalent in the stereotypical high school psyche: Either I dress a certain way, act a certain way, hang out with certain people or I won't be popular.

This "either-or" pathology is also described by Jim Collins in his book "Good to Great". He refers to it as the "tyranny of or"--when a company forces itself into a mindset where it can only take one of two paths: either small improvements or huge innovation, either responsibility or profits, either the environment or efficiency.

In yet another book, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People", Stephen Covey spends an entire chapter discussing the problems of what he calls "win-lose" mentality: the idea that in every situation there is one winner and one loser. High School in many ways encourages this mind-set: there is only one person ranked first in a class. A debate tournament has only one winner. There is only one 2A state basketball champion.

Do you see how all of these ideas are basically the same? They are all examples of "either-or" thinking. "Either-or" is seductively simple. It usually presents two, well understood options and it says pick, but only one.

"Either-or" is also a powerful way to manipulate people: "Either you're for us or against us." "Either my way or the highway." My advice to you: get good at calling out these situations. Don't let yourself get suckered in. Instead consider "the third way". The third way is imagining something new--thinking deeply about the decision or the situation, understanding the fundamental limitations and goals and being creative to offer an option that isn't obvious. The third way is often difficult because it takes modesty, patience, and a mind open enough to think of something fundamentally different.

Once I was going through the security line at Sea-Tac airport and I came upon two women screaming at each other. One was a mother, who was demanding that she be let through the scanners to get a package to her son. The other was a security guard refusing the mother through because she didn't have a ticket. They stood there the entire time I was in line yelling back and forth.

The "third way" in this situation is obvious: the package could have been given to a security guard or a passenger in line. I could tell, though, that neither person wanted to take the time to step back and think about the situation. They had their position, and they refused to budge. This kind of situation happens everyday. Get good at spotting it. Get good at diffusing it. Every great book about management and leadership brings it up. Every great manager I have ever worked with has mastered it.

But I do want to caution you about taking "the third way" too far. There are some things about life that you cannot have both ways.

More power always comes with more responsibility.

If much has been given to you, then much is expected from you.

And no matter how much Mountain Dew your drink, you cannot make up for a good night's sleep.

Get used to it.

Now service.

I think service is usually very narrowly defined: volunteer at your church, give money to a charity. Tonight I want to challenge you to expand your notion of service: both broadly and deeply.

When I say take service broadly I mean live it every day. Service is not just a few hours on a weekend. When you see people arguing do you take sides? Do you stay silent? Or do you push for calm and clarity? Whether it's in school or at work or in your social life, ask yourself: am I adding value? Am I being cocky or am I being kind? Am I being petty or am I being patient? Am I bringing out the worst in others or the best?

When I say take service deeply, I mean try to understand the underlying cause of problems.

At Microsoft we do something called "root cause analysis". When we find a problem with our software, we fix it, then we go deep to try to understand the cause. Was the programmer not trained well enough? Do we need better "best practices"? Do we need to do better testing?

Do the same thing with service. Continue to give your time and money to help out the poor and the homeless, but also try to understand in a deep way the root cause of poverty and homelessness. This can be challenging. For most social problems, you cannot understand root causes without understanding economics, racism, sexism, and politics. If you want to understand injustice and violence in the world, you have to understand sociology, religion, and history.

When I was in school I couldn't stand history. It was my least favorite subject. What I've realized, though, is a big part of my distaste for the subject was because the only history I was exposed to was from text books

Now that I've started to understand history beyond memorizing names and dates, I've been amazed at how fascinating and disturbing a lot of history is.

President Harry Truman once said: "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."

I encourage you to dig in. You'll be amazed. You'll also have a much better idea of how you can positively affect the world.


Mark Twain once said "I never let school get in the way of my education." When you think about scholarship, don't limit yourself to school; consider life experiences.

Chuck Offenburger gave the address at my high school graduation. In his speech, he presented a list of things for the graduates to consider. One of them was "Think about staying in Iowa." He makes a good point. I still feel amazingly at home in Iowa. It was a great place to grow up. But I want to offer a corollary to Chuck's point: make sure you leave Iowa. Now before all of your mothers kill me, let me clarify. I don't mean leave and don't come back.

What I do mean: take opportunities, while you are young, to live somewhere fundamentally different. When you are in college, get an internship in New York, or Boston, or San Francisco, or Seattle. Do a study abroad in Australia, or Ireland, or the Czech Republic, or Spain. Go somewhere where they have never heard of Okoboji--where they get Iowa confused with Ohio and Idaho--where your parents are much more than 4 hours away. Then stay there for three months.

I received this advice from many different people on many different occasions when I was in college. When I was making plans to spend a semester in Australia, my father told me it was "unnecessary" and my mother told me she didn't like the idea of me being an ocean away. I went anyway. You know what? It was one of the most important things I have ever done.

Living somewhere else forces you to face stereotypes.

I couldn't believe that most Australians have only seen kangaroos in zoos. I was shocked to learn that Australians find the Crocodile Hunter amazingly obnoxious. Who would have guessed?

Similarly, Australians were amazed that I neither owned a gun nor ate at McDonald's everyday.

I have to admit, it took a long time to get over the fact that I was the one with the accent.

I had a similar educational experience when I was traveling in Germany last month. Twice in one evening, I was asked if I had gone cow tipping. For some reason, Germans think this is what Iowans do for fun. Until tonight, my mother hadn't even heard of it.

It's an interesting experience to be the target of a stereotype. It forces one to reflect: how many opinions do I hold that are the product of stereotype and innuendo instead of first-hand experience?

Living somewhere drastically different also forces you to face yourself. It makes you step out of your comfort zone. It makes your reflect upon what defines you. I can't tell you how valuable this is.

Finally, traveling changes your perspective on life. When I lived in Iowa, my frame of reference was Iowa. Traveling has made me realize that I live in the world. State and national borders are the constructs of governments. They may denote the boundaries of currencies, cultures, and accents, but they are fundamentally artificial. At the end of the day, people are pretty much the same. We may care about different sports and put different toppings on our French fries, but we have strikingly similar hopes and fears.

We all breathe the same air.

We are all in this together.

Not just all Iowans, or Americans, but all of us.

There are over six billion people in this world. Sitting here tonight as high school students you are more educated and more wealthy than over half of them. Don't take it for granted.

Alright, I've done my part. I've talked about the four pillars of NHS.

But before I sit down, though I want to talk to you about success. The fact that you are sitting here tonight tells me that you are already amazingly successful, but I want to share with you some of my personal insights.

Whenever I tell someone I work I Microsoft I get one of two questions:

1) Can you fix my computer?

2 Have you met Bill Gates?

Everyone wants to hear about Bill. I've read physics books that refer to Bill's wealth when they talk about big numbers. For many people, he is the embodiment of success.

So what was Bill Gates doing when he was 17? He was writing very simple, very boring class scheduling software for his high school. Even he will admit that he made modifications so that he would be in classes with cute girls. When Bill founded Microsoft, he started out implementing a programming language called "Basic" for a kit PC. Very humble beginnings.

When Microsoft started growing in dominance, there was a joke among competitors that they wanted Bill to find a woman, get married, and have kids in the hope it would pull him off of his 17-hour work days.

A couple of years ago I read Stephen King's autobiography. He is one of the most successful writers in history--worth a million dollars ten times over. In his autobiography he talks about his beginnings as a sports writer for a local news paper. He would write short stories for magazines in his free time and actually had a nail in his apartment where he put all of the rejection letters. When he was offered hundreds of thousands of dollars for Carrie, he was an English teacher at a small high school. He wrote the novel on nights and weekends.

Why do I share these two stories with you? Because, at least in my opinion, they embody the keys to success.

1) You have to believe.

If you think you won't go far, you won't. I know it's a cliche, but its absolutely true.

2) You have to be willing to start small. Bill Gates did not start out as a millionaire. The first program Microsoft ever shipped was written in a college dorm room. As an aside, Microsoft's president, Steve Ballmer, recently said that the biggest competition we face as a company is an operating system called Linux. Guess what? It was started in a college dorm room Finland, by a second-year student. Don't say it isn't possible.

3) Stick with it. If Stephen King had stopped after his first rejection letter, or his tenth, or his hundredth, none of us would have heard of him. Nothing can replace passion and determination. Don't forget it.

And finally, make sure you define your own success. People often ask if I aspire to be president of Microsoft. They are shocked when I say no. I know what our executives do all day. They don't get to tinker with technology; they don't get to have day-to-day impact with a feature. They are busy worrying about budgets and schedules. That's not what I want to do.

If your idea of success is fame, or money, or power, you will end up disappointed. I didn't go into software because I wanted to get rich. I went in because I care passionately about the power of computing and I worked hard to get good at it. My first job was not working at the biggest software company in the world working on the most popular operating system in the world. It was working in an office in the shadow of a grain elevator writing the guestbook for Okoboji Online.

I would like to point out that it's still running.

I wish you all success and happiness. Thank you for having me. And again, congratulations.

Appendix I: 10 Books to read

Appendix II: 10 Quotes to ponder

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