The Secrets of Your Success
By Gretchen Morgenson '76, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
May 29, 2005

Listen to Gretchen's radio interview!

Many thanks for that kind introduction. I am truly honored to be here on this momentous day when you 700 lucky graduates set sail for parts unknown, the wind at your back and the sun on your face.

There is a pleasing symmetry to my being here, standing almost exactly where I was sitting 29 years ago, as a freshly-minted graduate. I have hazy recollections of that day in 1976. I remember being nervous about my future but anxious to get on with it. I was 20 years old, New York City-bound and ready to begin a career in journalism.

Journalism, I am sad to say, was not exactly ready for me. In fact, my work life began inauspiciously with a whimper, not a bang. Hoping to become a reporter at a big-city newspaper, I had to settle instead for a job as secretary at Vogue Magazine . I found out quickly that if the job description had been completely accurate, my title would have been slave.

My first boss, the magazine's travel editor, was a tyrant. She was a queen bee editor, a fashion magazine imperial female type. She was also nuts.

To be kinder, she was someone who would qualify as a real New York character. As her slave, I ordered the queen bee's lunches, typed her ungrammatical manuscripts, and helped set up fashion photo shoots in glamorous spots like the Seychelle Islands and Machu Picchu. Mostly I tried not to trigger her famous temper. For all this, I earned $8,000 a year.

The only cool aspect to my highly "uncool" start was the fact that interesting people often wandered into the Vogue offices. In fact, the magazine provided a great entree to New York; while I was there I met Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Truman Capote and other A-listers.

I bore you with these stories of my banal beginnings because they are, even now I think, somewhat typical of post-college starts. Of course, the details from 29 years ago are certainly different from those of today - none of you is headed to a job paying $8,000 a year, I'd bet, unless you're going into the Peace Corps.

But the gulf that I faced all those years ago is probably similar to the one that many college graduates face today. Where I wanted to end up seemed so very far from the place where I actually had to begin. And unless the world has really changed, many of you are probably feeling the same way.

This reminds me of a wonderful line from The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, one of the finest novels ever written. Recounting his protagonist's past, which was kept somewhat mysterious throughout the book, Fitzgerald wrote that as a young man, Gatsby had attended St. Olaf College. But he left after a few weeks.

Why such a short stay? Because St. Olaf was "ferociously indifferent to the drums of his destiny."

What a wonderful, evocative phrase - ferociously indifferent to the drums of his destiny. It sings with the ambition and braggadocio of a young man named Jay Gatz who came from nowhere and transformed himself into the Jazz Age tycoon named Gatsby.

It is also a wonderful line because it speaks the truth, not just about St. Olaf, but of the world at large. The world is ferociously indifferent to the drums of almost every young person's destiny when they first set out. It was highly indifferent to mine in 1976 and it is equally indifferent to the drums of your destiny today.

Not that you should take that pronouncement personally or believe that your destiny is not worthy of note. All I mean is that it's up to you to make the world sit up and take notice. It's your job to grab the world's attention, to force it to see you as the contender you are.

I am here as living proof that you can make the world, or some part of it, stop and listen to the drums of your destiny.

Like Jay Gatz, I too was a nobody from the Midwest when I went east. I had neither a rich father nor a rich husband to pay my rent. I didn't have a prep school background, as so many people did at Vogue and I didn't come from a fancy family.

What I did have was a work ethic, an urge to succeed and a belief in that old-fashioned thing called kindness. These were the values instilled in me by my family but also to a degree by St. Olaf and the people I met here. And they helped me achieve something I hadn't the nerve to dream of - a top job at the nation's premier newspaper and a Pulitzer Prize to boot.

It didn't happen overnight, of course. Nothing good ever does. But over almost three decades, I found a way to cross the yawning gulf I faced in 1976. And each one of you will cross it too, no matter how wide or impossible it seems now.

Certainly if I had been told by some clairvoyant 29 years ago that I would win a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times, I would have laughed in disbelief. Such an achievement would have seemed as likely as my becoming an astronaut and landing on the moon.

Can you achieve something that seems as daunting to you? Certainly the answer is yes. Though I don't know each of you, I don't really have to. What I do know is you all have the ingredients for greatness. You have the brains for it. You have the necessary drive. Your St. Olaf degree is proof of that.

But perhaps even more important, you also have the values required for accomplishment - what I might call St. Olaf values. And they should not be left behind when you set sail on your new course.

Many of you may be apprehensive of what lies ahead for you, outside of the St. Olaf cocoon. But I have a surprise for you. Achieving success is, in my view, not that hard. For me, it has not been anywhere near as daunting as I expected when I first traded Northfield in for New York.

Looking back on my life, I tend to agree with that old Woody Allen line - that 80 percent of success is about showing up. But there are a couple of other elements involved too. And contrary to popular belief, in the dog-eat-dog business world anyway, one of those key elements is kindness.

If you really want to succeed, show up and treat those around you well.

This is not new advice, I know. Do unto others, as a concept, dates back, a few millennia. But it is my experience that being kind in the workplace is seen as almost a negative - niceness is for sissies, not for achievers. To get to the top you have to be tough as nails, a self-promoter, ready to steamroll anyone who gets in your way.

There is some truth to this. But from my perch at the New York Times I have seen many people get to the tippy-top of the corporate ladder by sheer dint of toughness and scorched-earth policies with their rivals. But I have also seen many of these same people tumble down again in ignominy. So I have concluded that in order to become a success and to stay one, kindness is key.

As everyone knows, it's not hard to be kind, to smile, to lend a hand, to show concern for people. But this kind of grace in the business world anyway, is surprisingly rare. And because of this, being kind is a way that you can separate yourselves from the masses.

Sadly, many in the business world seem to think that being nice is necessary only with superiors or those in a position to help you advance. This is called managing up and it is a deplorable and deplorably common practice.

While they are busy managing up, ambitious people often think nothing of ignoring subordinates as irrelevant and unimportant. Because they are not perceived as players, they are invisible.

But they are people. And in my opinion they are every bit as important as your superiors, if not more so. After all, these are the people who will support you in your work. As such, the clerks, the receptionists, the assistants, those who are often sneered at as 'the little people,' can have enormous influence on your success. By treating them like they deserve to be treated, you win their loyalty and respect - two things that you will not necessarily earn by kissing up to your superiors.

When you make a mistake, which we all do, kindness that you have shown to subordinates is often repaid in spades. Malice that you have shown to subordinates also comes back at you big time.

I saw this first hand two years ago when the Jayson Blair nightmare rocked the New York Times. It was a huge story in journalism circles and it ultimately claimed the jobs of the top two editors at the paper. To many on the outside, it was a shocking downfall for both men, but to me, it was a perfect example of how years of arrogance and scorn for others can stop a career trajectory on a dime.

The story of Jayson Blair is finally recessing into the mists of time, thank heavens. But to recount the tale, he was a young and aggressive reporter who made up facts in many of his stories, plagiarized from other reporters and claimed to be reporting from places he never set foot in. He was writing fiction, not fact, and his unmasking shook the New York Times to its very core.

The editor of the paper then was Howell Raines, a hard-driving, arrogant Alabaman who was known for playing favorites at the paper, creating stars out of reporters he liked and disdaining those he did not. Raines was a highly intelligent man and a fine editor but he was a polarizing force and egomaniacal.

When the Blair affair exploded, Raines was still riding high from the paper's remarkable win of 7 Pulitzer prizes in 2002. No newspaper had ever won more than 3 Pulitzers in a single year before. Raines was at the top of his game. He could do no wrong.

After Blair was discovered to be a plagiarist and fired, many people at the top of the paper thought the unfortunate affair was over. In fact, it had just begun. When a group of reporters did a huge takeout on all the stories Blair falsified, none of the Times' executives took responsibility for the mess. Raines, who had been quick to take credit for all 7 Pulitzers one year earlier, felt no need to take responsibility for the Blair disaster.

This was a crucial error and it created the opening for all of the anger and resentment that had built up in the newsroom over years of being mistreated by Raines. All the "little people" that Raines had stepped on during his rise to the top of the paper were now able to return the favor.

Suddenly on shaky ground, Raines began trying to shore up support in the newsroom. It was chilling to watch: here was a man who had rarely walked the newsroom now strolling around trying to converse easily with colleagues he had days earlier dismissed out of hand.

It was too little too late. In less than a month the publisher replaced him.

Call it karma. Call it what goes around comes around or rough justice. But what happened to Howell Raines is exhibit A for why you should take care as you rise in your careers, to act humanely to those around you and especially to those below you.

Put another way, if you think you're better than your peers, your peers will get the better of you.

This golden rule becomes more important the higher you rise in an organization. And for some people, that makes it all the more difficult to achieve. After all, showing respect for everyone you encounter is easy if you are humble. But remaining humble in the face of immense success is extremely difficult. Staying grounded as you climb the ladder is hard to do.

That's because as people succeed in their careers, they become more and more isolated. The higher you rise in a corporation, the more cushioned from reality you are. The more elevated your status, the more surrounded you are by factotums, yes men and women whose livelihoods depend on the largesse of their superiors. With no "naysayers" in the vicinity, executives begin to believe their own spin; they begin to think they are truly special, that they can do no wrong. Their feet are no longer planted on the ground - now they are in the stratosphere.

It's fun, even exhilarating, to scale these heights. But being isolated from reality is a pretty perilous place to be. The higher you fly, the more likely it is that you won't be able to tell when the ground below you has shifted.

Sometimes these shifts are imperceptible when they are occurring, even to those who are very grounded. But such shifts can torpedo even the loftiest chiefs who fail to recognize that times have changed.

The landscape is truly littered with formerly powerful people who did not recognize that the ground beneath them had shifted, that the rules of engagement had changed. The most recent example of this is Maurice Greenberg, the former chief executive of American International Group, a global insurance giant. Mr. Greenberg was an exceptionally talented executive who turned AIG from a small insurer to a $100 billion company.

But he was also an irascible and imperial CEO who ruled with an iron hand, often browbeating subordinates in public. He seemed to believe that he and his company did not have to abide by the rules and regulations that others in business world do. As a result, the company's accounting was improper and it recently had to reduce its net worth by $2.7 billion. AIG was so arrogant under Mr. Greenberg, that the company even hired private detectives to dig up dirt on state insurance regulators charged with monitoring the safety and soundness of the company.

All of this questionable behavior finally caught up with Mr. Greenberg this year and in March he was dumped by the company he built. He is living in exile, disgraced and now all of his accomplishments from almost 40 years at AIG are overshadowed by his failure to see that the world had changed. The ground had shifted and behavior that might have been acceptable years ago, was no longer ok in the post-Enron world. Mr. Greenberg, an undeniable genius, had not seen the shift.

Mr. Greenberg had been at the top for so long he could not see changes on the ground. His hubris, which is far too common in business, contributed mightily to his colossal failure. And I have seen this series of events unfold numerous times.

This is not to say that arrogance isn't rewarded in business. It is, unfortunately, at least for a time. But an attitude of superiority almost always gets punished sooner or later, at least in my experience, because it is usually accompanied by a delusional belief that rules are for other folks.

So there we have it. Show up. Be nice. Stay humble.

Right about now you may be saying to yourself this woman is nuts. Success has got to require more than that.

But seriously, these attributes, along with your talent and drive, do make a potent combination. They helped me to achieve something I never had the courage to dream of. And they can help you do it too.

Put another way, success is not just about brains, which you all obviously have. It is also about heart and soul.

Centuries ago, Lao-Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, wrote: "I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men."

It is your turn to take on the world. You hear the drums of your destiny and I hear them. Now, let the world hear them too.