Pompous And Circumstance

DELIGHTED AS I AM TO BE YOUR COMMENCEment speaker today, MBA graduates, I must confess to being the bearer of bad news: Your education has been sorely lacking. Trust me on this: You think that you're about to deliver grand strategies to your new employers or invent new business models that will make you entrepreneurs of the year. You think that words like execution and lean and regression analysis will determine your success. You are bright and confident and full of pluck, and I both admire and

Which is why it pains me so deeply to inform you that you are all as dumb as stumps, and that a man named Norm Garrity in East Pickersnoot, North Dakota, holds the keys to your future.

Norm isn't a CEO or a venture capitalist or a management guru. He (or someone like him) is one of your new company's biggest customers. He demands that you treat him with the respect his order volume demands. He expects, as well, that you will take him to dinner.

Norm, by the way, is boring as hell.