What's important is what you do and how you do it, not where you come from or what you look like. That's going to be very important for your future. So, let me put this to you in a different way. In nature, you get penalised for not being diverse enough. Being a panda and having bamboo as your only food source quite dramatically increases your chances of becoming extinct. You get penalised for this in the business world, too. IBM nearly went under in the early 1990s because it missed the entire PC revolution. Kodak missed the digital revolution. Diversity is what drives better insights, better decisions, and better products. It's the backbone of innovation. It's what defines a great leadership culture. And there are four attributes of that kind of culture which stand out for me.
Diversity and four attributes that define a great leadership culture
The first is a sense of urgency.
Our world today, with its amazing technological advances and the fact that this innovation cycle is ever-shortening, has no space for those who procrastinate. It's that urgency that makes me say to colleagues of mine in the company that "if you have good news for me, take the stairs... if you have bad news, take the elevator." I need to know that quickly, so I can do something about it.
The second is a sense of balance. A lot of people think that urgency and patience are contradictory. And they could not be more wrong. You need to be patient enough to listen to everybody, but yet, you must have a sense of urgency to take a decision and to execute.
The third is to be courageous enough to take what I call thoughtful risks. Rarely are you going to have perfect information in the careers that you're going to have. The willingness to take a decision at that time will depend greatly on your ability to take a thoughtful risk, which ultimately depends on your courage. As Winston Churchill said, "success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
And the fourth is to be competitively paranoid. And by that I don't mean be fearful. What I mean is constantly ask yourself if you're missing something. Is there more to the problem? Is there a better solution? If you don't question everything, if you're not competitively paranoid, you will not have the sense of self-introspection that you so sorely will need to be a real leader.
So,a sense of urgency, a sense of balance, deep courage,and competitive paranoia - all of these are tremendously facilitated if you surround yourself with people who don't look like you, don't walk like you, don't talk like you, and don't have the same experiences as you.
And why is that so important?
Because a group of similar people tends to think in similar ways, reach similar conclusions, and have similar blind spots.
You need to harness the collective uniqueness of your people to widen your field of vision - to see things differently, to fail harder, to innovate, to question everything. As Stern graduates, you are fully equipped to do that - in a way that helps to drive diversity but also helps make business a force for good in the world... which brings me to my second point.
Business as a force for good in the world
We are seeing a great rebalancing of the planet from North to South...West to East. There's a growing - increasingly global - middle class estimated to climb as high as five billion by 2030 -more than double the size today. More importantly, for the first time, projections are that in less than two decades a majority of the world's population won't be impoverished. Yet, today, half the planet's adult population remains excluded from the financial mainstream. They don't have an identity. They don't have a basic way to participate in what we take for granted: pay a bill, save money for a rainy day, borrow on reasonable terms. In many countries, youth unemployment is reaching record highs. Environmental issues are increasing. The competition for resources has never been as fierce as it is today. There's never been a greater opportunity for business to be a force for good in the world. And I don't mean providing jobs, paying taxes, and meeting needs. Of course, we do all of that. But I'm talking about much more than that. Global companies like Unilever are working with the United Nations on issues like sustainability. The World Bank has set an ambitious goal of ending financial exclusion by the year 2020.
The private sector role here is vital. And at MasterCard, where I'm privileged to work, we're collaborating with organisations like the UN World Food Programme. It's leveraging our technology to provide aid to hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan in ways that reduce corruption and help the local economy. Remember cash is the friend of corruption. Cash is not the friend of the person who's trying to be straight with what they're trying to do.
We're working with African governments to channel social benefits directly to recipients, cutting out the greedy middle man, and providing a sense of identity, security, and empowerment, most importantly, to those most in need. I believe that working together, we can do well and do good at the same time.
Edited excerpts from a speech by Ajay Banga, President and CEO, MasterCard, at NYU Stern School of Business Commencement Address "Lighting theWay to a Better, More Equal World", May 22, 2014, New York.