Building A Legacy

In terms of being remembered, I think I want to make the world a better place… One is through Google, the company, in terms of giving people access to information… The second is just through philanthropy. – Sergey Brin, co-founder, Google.

Building a legacy is probably the last thing that you are thinking off when you are running the day-to-day activities of your company; when all that matters each day is trying to keep the business alive and successful.

But in an article stressing the importance of a legacy, Tim Maurer, a Forbes' contributor argues that we are building a legacy, whether deliberately or not through our actions, and they have a cause and effect reaction, no matter who we are. He states, "You’re building a legacy—like it or not—regardless of your age, sphere of influence or net worth. Every personal interaction, every email, every tweet, like or post adds to your body of work that will reverberate generationally through friends, family, co-workers and associates."

You may be wondering, isn’t it too soon to talk about leaving a legacy, when your business is young or still growing? May be not. It’s easy not to see the end from the beginning when we are knee deep managing businesses that give us both pleasure and pain. In those cases, you are not thinking how to create a legacy for yourself, but how to succeed. But it's worth thinking about. Our leadership will not be weighed and measured when we finally step away, it will happen every day as we lead, and it requires consistency to achieve.

 I will state what I believe could be our foundation to build that legacy:

 Think principles: A legacy is built with deliberate intention that will define the impact of our leadership. We go into business for a reason: to improve things? change the world? These reasons arise from our innate principles, which will define us, and drive our actions. Jack Welch was renowned for demanding excellence, especially when picking talent: “My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people.” And that is how he is remembered. So are your principles shaping you actions?

Think personal leadership vision: Steve Jobs' vision for the personal computer was to change lives and the world. That was his personal leadership vision that spoke to his goals and niche of his business. We must ask ourselves if our personal leadership vision is reflecting in our goals and business niche. Will it be a point of reference to guide those we work with now?

 Think inclusion: Empowering people is another factor that is important to build a legacy. This can be accomplished through the process of inclusion. According to Mary Frances Winters, an authority on the subject, “We may have good intentions, but without the knowledge and skills to navigate across differences, our intentions cannot turn into inclusive behaviours and we will remain incompetent.” She proposed a process through exposure, which entails creating awareness; experience, by fostering meaningful relationships, respect and trust; education, that is structured learning opportunities or activities that increase knowledge and skills, and lastly is effectiveness, which is successfully implementing exposure, experience and education to deliver the outcome of inclusion.

 Lastly, to build a legacy, our agenda and message(s) must be clear and consistent. In the process, we must provide direction so people believe in us, and take something away. We can begin to lay the foundation if we haven’t started.

What do you want your legacy to be?