Corporate Leadership - Managing Your Legacy

Leadership of a corporation is complex and full of dichotomies. The same is true for life in general on a personal level. In order to facilitate real change towards a sustainable future, we need to start thinking differently.

We need to start managing our legacy while we are activly living our day to day lives. What seems really important for the next quarters results or our next meal perhaps, can in hind-site seem trivial or even self absorbent. We are only here on this earth for a short while with limited opportunity to make a contribution to society and for the benefit of those of our loved ones immediately around us.

So we need to start to manage our legacy in our day to day decision making process. Answering questions like: How will history reflect on our decisions and conduct? With this in mind, perhaps using cheaper pipe on an oil well to save a few bucks, at the risk of putting the environment and the lives of thousands of people at risk might seem fool hearty at best.

So the next time we have to make difficult decisions, be it corporate or personal, perhaps it is best to ask as part of our decision making process:

How will this affect our legacy and how will history judge our actions?

This is after all in the grand scheme of things, what will matter and what we will be remembered for!