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This article explores the importance of leaving a lasting legacy, both personally and professionally. It delves into the dangers of setting low goals and showcases examples of failed legacies. The text also highlights the power of individualism and self-reliance in creating a meaningful legacy.
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Legacy!(Or: Why Else Get Up in the Morning?)Tom Peters/10.15.2003
No Small Thing!“Hey, I know I’ll have something to tell my Grandkids about.”—dot.com refugee
The greatest dangerfor most of usis not that our aim istoo highand we miss it,but that it istoo lowand we reach it.Michelangelo
Characteristics of the “Also rans”*“Minimize risk”“Respect the chain of command”“Support the boss”“Make budget”*Fortune, article on “Most Admired Global Corporations”
Joe J. Jones1942-2003HE WOULDA DONE SOME REALLY COOL STUFF BUT … HIS BOSS WOULDN’T LET HIM!
Joe J. Jones 1942 – 2003HE HIT QUARTERLY EARNINGS TARGETS 44 TIMES IN A ROW.
CEO Assignment2002 (Bermuda): “Please leap forward to 2007, 2012, or 2022, and write a business history of Bermuda.What will have been said about your company during your tenure?”
Herman Edwards: “I picked up one of those Jets books and I told them, ‘What you do as a football team is your legacy. When you’re 80 years old, what you’ve done will be in this book and no one can take that away from you. Your grandkids, your kids after that, they will know what you did. It’s about leaving your name in stone.”Source: The New York Times (12.31.02)
“For Marx, the path to social betterment was through collective resistance of the proletariat to the economic injustices of the capitalist system that produced such misshapenness and fragmentation.For Emerson, the key was to jolt individuals into realizing the untapped power of energy, knowledge and creativity of which all people, at least in principle, are capable. He too hated all systems of human oppression; but his central project, and the basis of his legacy, was to unchain individual minds.”—Lawrence Buell, Emerson
“Though everyone falls short of self-realization much of the time, everyone has self-transformative capacity.”—Lawrence Buell, Emerson
“Emerson presupposes a state of of timid, unhappy conformity. By adulthood, people are conditioned to look through other people’s eyes. … So the first move is to disengage yourself fom the influence of others’ opinions. Emerson biographer Robert Richardson calls this ‘ground won back from dependency.’ … The second step involves trusting instinct more and reasoned judgment less, because at the level of laborious formal argument you’re liable to become mastered by forces alien to yourself.”—Lawrence Buell, Emerson
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”— J.F.K.
“Self-reliance never comes ‘naturally’ to adults because they have been so conditioned to think non-authentically that it feels wrenching to do otherwise. … Self Reliance is a last resort to which a person is driven in desperation only when he or she realizes ‘that imitationissuicide, that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion.’ ”—Lawrence Buell, Emerson
“You are the storyteller of your own life, and you can create your own legend or not.”Isabel Allende
“Carpenters bend wood; fletchers bend arrows; wise men fashion themselves.”— Buddha
Leaders-Teachers Do Not “Transform People”!Instead leaders-mentors-teachers (1) provide a contextwhich is marked by (2)access to a luxuriant portfolio of meaningful opportunities(projects) which (3) allow people to fully(and safely, mostly—caveat: “they” don’t engage unless they’re “mad about something”)express their innate curiosity and (4) engage in a vigorous discovery voyage(alone and in small teams, assisted by an extensive self-constructed network) by which those people (5) go to-create places they(and their mentors-teachers-leaders)had never dreamed existed—and then the leaders-mentors-teachers (6)applaud like hell, stage “photo-ops,” and ring the church bells 100 times to commemorate the bravery of their “followers’ ” explorations!
The Re-imagineer’s Credo … or, Pity the Poor Brown*Technicolor Times demand …Technicolor Leaders and Boards who recruit …Technicolor People who are sent on …Technicolor Quests to execute …Technicolor (WOW!) Projects in partnership with …Technicolor Customers and …Technicolor Suppliers all of whom are in pursuit of …Technicolor Goals and Aspirations fit for …Technicolor Times.*WSC
“Vision is a love affair with an idea.”—Boyd Clarke & Ron Crossland, The Leader’s Voice
“I never, ever thought of myself as a businessman.Iwas interested in creating things I would be proud of.”—Richard Branson
“In 1933, Thomas J. Watson Sr. gave a speech at the World’s Fair, ‘World Peace through World Trade.’ We stood for something, right?”—Sam Palmisiano
“Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: ‘Who do we intend to be?’ Not ‘What are we going to do?’ but ‘Who do we intend to be?’”—Max De Pree, Herman Miller
“The material of a strong, ethical base includes honoring the people who do the work, respecting the letter and the spirit of the law, and believing that a company’s responsibility does not stop at the community’s edge. Such a base has been my moral compass. It guides me away from the sleek, the cut corner, and the easy path. The foment about corporate conduct has often come close to arguing that it is wrong because it has been discovered. In truth, it is wrong because it violates the most critical fundamental of business. One behaves honestly because it is right, because you ‘do unto others’—because you are responsible for your life and, in your business, for the lives of others. There is no option—no alternative.”—Sidney Harman/Harman International
“Coca-Cola was Roberto Goizueta’s painting. It was never finished, and he was never totally satisfied with it. But he had the Sistine Chapel in his head, and he was always working on it.”— Warren Buffett
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”Gandhi
It is the foremost task—and responsibility—of our generation to re-imagine our enterprises, private and public—from the Foreword,Re-imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age
“To Be somebody or to Do something”BOYD: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War (Robert Coram)
Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier in WW2. He won every medal we had to offer, plus 5 presented by Belgium and France. There was one common medal he never won …
Herman Melville on JPJ: “intrepid, unprincipled, reckless, predatory, with boundless ambition, civilized in externals but a savage at heart.”—from Evan Thomas, John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy
“Whenever anything is being done, I have learned, it is being done by a monomaniac with a mission.”— Peter Drucker“What set Edison apart was that, with all his boundless exaggeration, he conveyed the feeling that he would succeed. No matter what the obstacles, he would pound away until they were demolished.” — Robert Conot, biographer
“A really new idea at first has only one believer.”— John Masters, wildcatter, Canadian Hunter“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw
“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”— George Bernard Shaw
“Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre successes.”Phil Daniels, Sydney exec
“In Tom’s world, it’s always better to try a swan dive and deliver a colossal belly flop than to step timidly off the board while holding your nose.”—Fast Company /October2003
“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”—James Dean
“If you ask me what I have come to do in this world, I who am an artist, I will reply: I am here to live my life out loud.”— Émile Zola
