Student Speaker: 'Vision Without Execution Is Just a Hallucination'
This morning, I want to talk about vision, and execution. There鈥檚 a quote I love that says, 鈥淰ision without execution鈥 is just hallucination.鈥 People attribute it to everyone from Edison to Einstein. Someone traced it back to a Japanese proverb. 鈥淰ision without action is a daydream,鈥 the proverb goes. 鈥淎ction without vision is a nightmare.鈥 No matter who said it first, it makes a good point. We need a creative vision to make change in the world鈥攂ut vision alone is not enough; we also need execution to make that change real.
Think for a minute. What were you doing at 5 p.m. on Sunday, March 29th?
You were probably cheering for our men鈥檚 basketball team while they played Gonzaga and earned their spot in the Final Four. And you might have kept watching the same channel after the game, when Duke was featured again鈥攖his time on 鈥淪ixty Minutes,鈥 for a new brain cancer treatment.
Both of these very public victories came after years of hard work, and some brilliant behind-the-scenes innovation. This cancer treatment uses the polio virus to fight brain cancer. A Duke doctor turned a terrible disease into a tool in the fight against another terrible disease, turning a cause for fear into a cause for hope. This is an example of Duke innovation, combining a creative vision with years of painstaking execution.
And, though Cameron Indoor Stadium may seem like an unlikely arena for innovation, hear me out on this. About a year ago, Coach K had a new vision for how the men鈥檚 basketball team would work together. He spotted a talented new recruit, and thought the team would do best with the recruit paying point guard鈥攂ut Quinn Cook, a member of our very own Class of 2015, had always played point guard!
Now, my friends will tell you I know nothing about sports鈥攆reshman year I ran into a basketball player in Kville and asked him what tent number he was鈥攂ut I have to imagine it鈥檚 hard to change the position you鈥檝e always played. But our team worked hard, practiced together, and executed Coach K鈥檚 creative vision鈥攁nd boy, did it pay off, with a National Championship win for Duke!
Now I might not know much about sports, but what I do know about鈥攁nd what you probably know about, too鈥攊s basically just as exciting: reading. We鈥檝e spent the past few years reading鈥攁 lot. Whether it was MATLAB or Melville, case law or church fathers, Friedrich Hayek or Rachel Carson, there鈥檚 been a lot of small print. And all that small print has probably left us more near-sighted than when we first arrived. I鈥檓 just hoping I can still see well enough to read my diploma and check that I have, in fact, graduated鈥攂ecause, well, can Parking and Transportation actually keep us from graduating.
While our time at Duke may have hurt our eyesight, it also taught us to see some things differently. Like shades of blue鈥攐ne is good; the other is鈥 well, you know.
It wasn鈥檛 until 2014, though, that I realized the most powerful way Duke changes our vision. On a service trip in Costa Rica, our group lived alongside students from another university. Over dinner one night, just making conversation, we asked what they liked best about their school, and what they would change about it. Their forks stopped in mid-air and their jaws dropped wide open, as if we had asked them not what they would change about their school but what they would change about their mothers. 鈥淥h, we like our school the way it is,鈥 they said quickly鈥 though they eventually conceded they would add more parking鈥攕omething we could empathize with after long trudges from the far reaches of the Blue Zone. But they didn鈥檛 want to change anything else!
And then they asked us how we would change Duke, and we had no trouble coming up with a long list鈥攆rom student organization funding to social culture to handicapped accessibility to all that construction. And I don鈥檛 think we like Duke any less than they like their school; we would have snarled at any outsider who made those same criticisms. No, I think we were able to come up with that list of changes because Duke has given us what I call 鈥淏lue Devil double 惫颈蝉颈辞苍.鈥
On the one hand, Dukies learn to see the world as it is. We鈥檙e taught to figure out how systems work, whether anatomical, political, economic, or theological. It鈥檚 trite but true that higher education doesn鈥檛 just teach us, but teaches us how to learn; it equips us with the ability to analyze the world around us, wherever we are. And we do that very well鈥攚hich is probably why 98% of my peers are going into consulting. We don鈥檛 hold onto utopian visions that keep us from operating successfully in the world as it is. We are realistic and practical.
But over four years here I鈥檝e learned that, at our best, we are also idealistic. While we鈥檝e been taught to figure out how systems work, we鈥檝e also been taught to creatively re-imagine how they might work better. Think of all the social justice campaigns on campus, from women鈥檚 empowerment to interfaith dialogue, from med school students who host a Black Lives Matter 鈥渄ie-in鈥 to law school students who work tirelessly to free the wrongly convicted.
Now, many of the people graduating here today will probably be successful at execution鈥攊n business, or medicine, or law, or art, or fields that we have not even imagined yet. But we are not just good at execution; we are not just seeking success; we are not just ruthlessly practical profit-seekers鈥擭o, this isn鈥檛 Wolf of Wall Street University.
This is 老牛影视鈥攁nd here, we鈥檝e been pushed to develop a creative vision for how to improve the world around us. We can imagine how our communities, our countries, and our world might be more peaceful, more just, more beautiful, more equitable. Our speaker, Dr. Farmer, has lived this out as he worked to improve medical care in rural Haiti鈥攚here he worked to understand the world as it was so he could execute successfully, while holding tight to his creative vision of how the world might be better.
罢丑补迟鈥檚 the 鈥淏lue Devil double vision鈥: we can simultaneously see the world as it is, and as it might be. We can accept, work with, and even love the way things are鈥攚ithout ever giving up our vision of how they can be made better. We can realistically but lovingly critique the institutions to which we belong, whether they are businesses or hospitals or government agencies. We are reformers who care about results; we are advocates with realistic approaches; we are effective agents of change.
Duke has prepared us to combine vision and execution鈥攖o marry idealism and pragmatism. Duke has challenged us to see the world through two lenses at the same time, seeing the world as it is and as it might be. I hope we hold onto this Blue Devil double vision鈥攂ecause if we do, we might get to not only succeed for ourselves, but to leave the world a little bit better鈥 than we found it.