We meet here today in a celebration of change, a celebration that is traditionally labeled a commencement. What we say here is of small importance for it can add little to what you and this great university have accomplished. The view expressed in the label commencement is that you’re ending your studies and beginning your life's professional work, as if a career runs in a sequential series with education. First you go to school, and then you go to work. I want to suggest to you that it does not work that way. Education and career run parallel with each other.

During the 20th century, humanity reached a critical mass in technology and productivity thus ushering in today’s high-tech, fast-paced world, where lifelong learning is an essential part of both your life and mankind's common well-being.

Next week, I will meet here in California with a talented group of geo-scientists reviewing a three-dimensional computer model of an oil field where we will study formations over two miles below the surface of the ground. These formations have been modeled in exquisite detail, a far cry from the beer bottles of the old days. My college studies certainly did not prepare me for a life of the highly technical work that is now requisite in my industry. Nor will your education completely prepare you for what you will encounter over the next 50 years. Your degree is a great start, but it is only a start.

So the first thing I leave with you is this: Success for our society depends on your generation understanding this simple concept. Education will run parallel with your career for the rest of your life.

Just as the 20th century saw a massive expansion of technology and productivity, the 21st century will see humankind reach critical mass in another area, and that is organizational integration – not just interdependence, but true integration of human organizations around the globe.

Every organization – your business, your place of worship, and your university – is organized around a purpose, which has been developed by the vision of its leaders. The leader’s vision and sense of authority are the guiding hand of the organizational model.

Leaders of my generation have guided these organizations to a high degree of interdependence. What we have not accomplished, and leave to you, is the required integration of governing values needed for globalization to succeed.

Most globalization has been accomplished by business leaders as they pursue their business purpose. Around the world today, the only truly global systems are economic. The economy has brought us together into a globally interdependent system as never before in mankind's history. This global economy will set the stage, will shape the parameters, for all the global institutions that follow. Unfortunately, with the promise of globalization come its perils.

In order to achieve the promise and overcome the perils, we will need lots of effective leaders. These leaders will first come from the business world. Richard Loomis, the editor of World Energy magazine, put it this way: "The next few years will decide which direction this global economy will take, and business leaders from all nations will need to help move a common agenda forward." This common agenda will shape not only the business aspects of the global village, but all other aspects as well – from education to religion to justice.

The greatest challenge of your business career will be the need for you to shape a shared vision and the common values that will bind your organization with others into an integrated global system. The world does not yet have a set of universal common values. You must build them. You must have a vision of global integration.

You will need to not only develop your own leadership skills but also to mentor leaders at every level of your organization. I recently observed an oil well operation in New Zealand where this very thing was happening. The lead engineer was a British chap. The lead operations man was a West Texan who had all the appearances of a cowboy you would not like to cross. Their crew included 16 people from seven nations speaking at least four tongues. Despite his rough exterior, the West Texas foreman handled his crew as carefully as if it was a herd of new yearlings. You would not have believed his care. He knew the needs of each man and knew what social support each one needed to get his job done. Imagine building millions of these organizations around the world, as we must if the global economy is to grow and prosper. Each group will require that we tame the culture of some person like that West Texas cowboy so that he or she can integrate the work and cultures of others vastly different from their own.

The two points that I suggest should be within your vision of your life and purpose then are these:

• Your education and your career run in parallel, not in series.
• Your greatest challenge will be learning and teaching common values, which must ultimately guide the development of a global economy that is integrated, not just interdependent.

I have on my office wall some words of Harry Truman:

"Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs where courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better."

President Truman would have been among the first to say that leadership is not limited to presidents. Remember that West Texas cowboy herding his group faraway in a workplace in New Zealand. He didn't realize he was a leader, never the less, he was a world-class leader. May you be one too and more!

May God bless you and may God bless the global community in which we all live.