Convocation 2025: ‘Your impact is what you’ll be most proud of.’

Convocation is a celebration of perseverance, growth and bold ambitions that define the Kellogg MBA experience. This year, graduates from the Two-Year, One-Year, Evening & Weekend, MMM, MBAi, MiM, JD-MBA, MD-MBA and PhD programs gathered with family, friends and faculty to mark the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. 

Kellogg alumnus and former CEO and chairman of Northwestern Mutual (NM) John Schlifske ’83 MBA addressed this year’s MBA graduates, delivering a message rooted in purpose, resilience and visionary thinking — values deeply embedded in the school’s legacy. 

Below is his convocation address shared with the newest class of Kellogg Leaders. 

Congratulations, Class of 2025!  And, also, congratulations to your family and friends who supported you and helped make today possible. 

I’d like to start by thanking Dean Cornelli for inviting me to speak to you today.  It is quite an honor for me, and I’m filled with gratitude both for the invitation and for the education Kellogg gave me so many years ago.   

When I think about where I was in the fall of 1981, my first year at KGSM (that’s what we called it then), and now culminating with being your commencement speaker today, I’m very humbled.  The gratitude I have for this institution is immense, and I hope you all appreciate the platform and the education this institution has given you.  

I have so many great memories about my time at Kellogg.  Leverone Hall was new and was our base and the site of Friday keggers, which were a must.  The Kellogg apartments were new, too, and where every study group met.  We thought we had it pretty good, but when I look at what Kellogg is now, it’s simply amazing.   

One memory that always sticks out occurred during my first week here. I went straight from college to Kellogg.  No work experience, just a 22-year-old kid.  I remember realizing how inexperienced and immature I was compared to everyone in my section.  I thought I was way out of my league and quite scared about it. My goal was to prove to myself and to Kellogg that they didn’t make a mistake when they admitted me. To this day, I’ve never forgotten the bet Kellogg made on me.     

Being so inexperienced also had a huge impact on my career and chosen profession. As I interviewed for jobs, I realized that my lack of real work experience was a huge drawback for the kind of jobs I wanted. I wanted to be a money manager, but most traditional firms were looking for relevant work experience. Then one day I was fortunate enough to hear Warren Buffett speak — even 40-plus years ago, he was considered the “Oracle of Omaha.”  

He was talking about investment careers, and his main point was that the best training ground for investment analysts is in the insurance industry:  long-term focus, a large variety of asset classes and rigorous security selection. So, I re-directed my interviews to insurance companies and ended up taking an analyst position with MetLife. After about five years there, I moved to Northwestern Mutual, where I spent 38 years in various positions of increasing responsibility, managing both investment assets and then later, different business units.   

Redefining success by starting at the end 

So, it was my Kellogg education that gave me the opportunity to become CEO of Northwestern Mutual, a Fortune 100 company with close to $40 billion in revenue and over $600 billion of assets under management.  I recently retired after almost 15 years as CEO, and as I thought about what to speak to you about, it occurred to me that we are in completely opposite positions — you’re starting and I’m finishing up.   

Now I’m guessing that graduation is a time when you are getting lots of questions: Where are you going to work?  What’s your position?  What will you be doing?  Those kinds of things.  But I’d like to pose a different question to you, one that I think about a lot now that I’m retired.  And it’s this: What’s the impact that you want to make when your business career is over? Start at the end and define now what you want the end to look like.  

If I may, I’d like to suggest that your impact is what you’ll be most proud of — not your income, not your titles, not the boards you’re on.  I’m sure that you’re all hard-wired for success.  However, I suggest that more than success, what you’ll be most proud of is your impact.  And further, I’d like to suggest that there are four elements that will define this impact.   

Four pillars of meaningful impact 

First: Be the best at what you do.   

Many people enter a race, but not everyone enters a race to win it. Some people feel good about just being in the race.  But the person who enters a race to win is competitive; puts in the extra hours; does the additional training and work and has the stamina, perseverance, and resilience necessary for success.   

You know, in many ways outside of sports, corporate America is one of the last true meritocracies left. Not always, but most of the time, the best makes it to the top.  Kellogg has given you an inside track, but it’s not enough. To win, you must understand how to compete and then build your strengths so that you can win.   

When I was an analyst starting out, I watched all the other analysts and made sure I was the best.  Same as when I became a portfolio manager.  Same as when I was an asset class leader.  Here’s the key, though: You can do this without undermining others. Work on your game by observing what it takes to be the best, not by making others less effective.  

Never stop competing because competition makes everyone better. Be the best at what you do. Do you ever see the 12th man or woman on a basketball team become the captain?  Of course not, the leaders on the team are also the best players.  Always remember: the reason the NFL has a draft every year is to find players to replace the ones that aren’t the best.  Make sure that you’re the best.  

Second: Have a vision of where you want to lead your organization.   

I want to stress that leadership in corporate America is an action, not a position.  Too often, people claim that they want to be a leader, but when pressed for a vision of where they want to go, they give a blank stare. To make an impact, you must have a vision, you must know where you want to go, where you want to take the organization and why.   

Too many times, people attain a position of so-called leadership and then hire someone to come up with a strategic plan.  Don’t be that person.  Do your homework, understand your business model and lead with your vision. Know upfront how you’re going to make your organization better, more relevant and more competitive.  It’s hard, but it’s required to make an impact.  

Third: You need to be self-aware.    

In fact, I think self-awareness is a superpower in corporate America. To really make an impact, you must know what your peers, your subordinates and your bosses think of you.  Do you know and understand what other people see as your strengths and your weaknesses? I’m always blown away by people who wonder why they didn’t get a promotion or leadership role when everyone else is thinking, “There’s no way!” Don’t be that clueless person.   

Being self-aware takes vulnerability and transparency. You must treat your career like a sports contest where you’re going to be watching game film of yourself succeeding and failing in front of others. You must know how people perceive you if you want them to follow you.  We all fail; we all make mistakes; we all have idiosyncrasies. Admitting and discussing these things, rather than avoiding or hiding from them or pretending you’re perfect, is exponentially better for you in the long run.   

Can you objectively see yourself as others see you?  It’s incredibly hard to do this, but it’s essential to being a good leader.    

Most importantly, there is a second aspect to self-awareness that many leaders lack. Do you understand your true motivations? Is your decision-making driven by what’s best for you, for personal gain, or for the good of your organization? When you have a decision where what’s best for you conflicts with what’s best for the organization, do you have the self-awareness to understand your ego versus others?   

I can assure you that the folks around you will figure it out. They’ll know if your decisions rise above your values and reflect those of the organization you’re leading. Your effectiveness as a leader will be undermined if you can’t understand yourself at this level and then make decisions accordingly. It takes courage, and it takes humility to be this self-aware.  

Fourth: Lead with integrity. 

The impact you will make will be judged by others and by you based on how you did it.  Think now, at the beginning of your post-Kellogg career, about the moral and ethical principles that will define the how in your career. Unfortunately, you can be successful in business without integrity. In fact, I’m willing to wager that all of you will be confronted at some point in your career with what I call the “bright line.”  

You’ll be confronted by a very clear choice between doing the right thing and doing something you know is wrong. The choice is rarely between legal and illegal actions. This “bright line” is perplexing because usually it involves something that you can rationalize as acceptable, even though you know it's wrong.   

Typically, what ultimately trips some people up is the little steps over the bright line; little compromises to your integrity that make it easier to cross the bright line later. But integrity isn’t like a bank account where you can occasionally make withdrawals if you previously made deposits. Integrity is an all-or-nothing characteristic.  

Your success and impact will mean so much more to you if you do it with integrity. Keep that in mind so that when you are confronted by your “bright line” — big or small — you’ll have already decided what to do.  

Doing the “hard” things makes us grow

One last thought.  To really make an impact, you’ll have to do something hard.  When I became CEO at NM, we were the best company in our industry, but our relevance to our customers was waning.  Financially, we were successful, but we had stopped growing in real terms. 

I took the job promising our board and myself that we could and would restore NM to a position of customer relevance and growth. I also knew that the culture at NM had to change from one of a large bureaucracy to a nimble and diverse meritocracy. To do this, we had to build a profitable wealth management business and then integrate it with our insurance business at the customer level. 

The integration was contingent on building unique financial planning software that demonstrated the positive benefits of integrated wealth and risk management. This effort required both a transformation of our business model and our culture. The opposition internally to these changes was significant.  

Some executives wouldn’t change; some couldn’t change, and some left. I tried everything I could to make it work. I even bought a start-up company that was into financial planning software because I was frustrated with my own team’s ability to build something customers wanted.   

About five years in, nothing was working. Even with the best players and a bold vision, we were struggling: sales were down, growth stalled and employee engagement hit an all-time low. It was a very dark time for our leadership team.  We even started to doubt ourselves.  

I believe what saved me and allowed me to persevere during this period was my integrity and the fact that everyone understood that our transformation agenda was for the company, not the executives.   

Even though many doubted what we were doing, no one ever questioned the why or my integrity.  And that’s how I got through the dark days. Fortunately, it all came together and today NM’s growth and relevance is unsurpassed both in our industry and in the wealth management space: record growth, record profits and record scale. Integrity made doing something very hard, possible.     

I honestly had no idea back in 1983 at my Kellogg graduation that one day I’d be giving the commencement address. You’re so lucky!  The foundation and platform you’ve built coming from this school with your drive is amazing. Your potential is enormous, and I hope you’ll all capitalize on this beginning now, and one day you’ll be standing here giving the commencement address.  

Run to win, create your own vision, be self-aware and always lead with integrity. If you do, I promise you’ll look back on your impact with nothing but satisfaction for a well-spent career.  That’s what makes it all worthwhile.  

Thanks for having me, and congratulations to all of you for a job well done.   

Scenes from Convocation 2025

Read next: Dean Cornelli’s message to the Class of 2025: “Your ideas will change the world.”