Sunday, April 20, 2014

Give and Take: A 3-Minute Speech for 2014 Malaysian Graduation Dinner

  • Assalamualaikum and a very good evening to everyone!
  • First, I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate all graduating students.
  • You should be proud of yourself.
  • I know how hard it is to reach this point in your life.
  • It’s a job well done!
  • In previous years, I talked a little bit about the virtues of working hard and dreaming big.
  • This year, I'll briefly discuss the virtue of working together.
  • In a highly competitive world, compounded sometimes by our Asian values, our world is thrived with competitions.
  • We could easily get trapped into the thinking of zero-sum-game; if someone else gets all the pieces of a pie, we'd get nothing.
  • In fact,  if we work together, we could actually expand the size of the pie.
  • We could get a larger amount, even if the percentage might be lower.
  • For example, 1% of 1 million dollars is bigger than 10% of 1 thousand dollars.
  • I'd like to close by sharing some key ideas from a bestselling business book from last year entitled "Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success”:
    1. Helping is not the enemy of productivity or success
    2. Helping others could increase our productivity, creativity and innovation.
    3. Last but not least, nice guys can indeed be number one (I'm putting my bet on Shao Shen)
  • With that, congratulations and all the best!
Sources:
  1. Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?
  2. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success