David Cote
Field: business
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David Cote at UNH, 2011
A business-leadership commencement address about knowing yourself, choosing the right work, execution, resilience, and enjoying the life you are building.
Speech arc
- 01UNH return
Opening move
- 02Troublemaker past
Speech beat
- 03Know yourself
Speech beat
- 04Work smart
Speech beat
- 05Choose targets
Speech beat
- 06Deliver results
Speech beat
- 07Enjoy life
Speech beat
- 08Keep learning
Final charge
Return: The alumnus comes back with practical memory
Cote speaks as a UNH graduate whose path included false starts, discipline, and a gradual understanding of how effort becomes results.
Origin
The local biography makes the advice concrete: leadership begins with a person who had to grow into judgment.
Humor
Stories about early trouble keep the speech from sounding like a spotless executive resume.
Credibility
The authority of the address comes from linking mistakes, work habits, and long-term responsibility.
Cote speaks as a UNH graduate whose path included false starts, discipline, and a gradual understanding of how effort becomes results.
Self-knowledge: Smart is not enough without direction
The central lesson is that intelligence and effort need self-awareness: graduates must know their strengths, limits, motives, and the problems worth attacking.
Fit
Self-knowledge helps people choose roles where their abilities can actually create value.
Priority
Working hard on the wrong thing can waste talent; judgment starts with selecting the right target.
Growth
Knowing yourself is not static. It changes as responsibility reveals what pressure exposes.
The central lesson is that intelligence and effort need self-awareness: graduates must know their strengths, limits, motives, and the problems worth attacking.
Execution: Results come from disciplined choices
Cote translates business leadership into habits graduates can use immediately: focus, preparation, follow-through, and the willingness to be measured by outcomes.
Focus
The useful question is not how busy you are, but whether your work moves the important thing forward.
Accountability
Leadership requires owning the gap between intention and result instead of hiding inside effort.
Persistence
Execution compounds when people keep improving the system after the first plan meets reality.
Cote translates business leadership into habits graduates can use immediately: focus, preparation, follow-through, and the willingness to be measured by outcomes.
• Key takeaways •
Know the worker you are
Connects to self-knowledge.
Aim effort at the right thing
Connects to leadership.
Results need discipline
Connects to work ethic.
Leadership owns outcomes
Connects to execution.
Enjoy the life you build
Connects to balance.
Closing charge
The speech closes by refusing a purely mechanical version of achievement, reminding graduates to enjoy life, relationships, and the freedom work is supposed to support.
Build success you can live with
Perspective
Ambition needs proportion so professional wins do not consume the reason they mattered.
Gratitude
A good life notices the inherited work and sacrifices that made opportunity possible.
Learning
Graduation is a beginning of practice, not the end of instruction.
The speech closes by refusing a purely mechanical version of achievement, reminding graduates to enjoy life, relationships, and the freedom work is supposed to support.
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Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording
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