What will your legacy be?
Hold off on telling us about goals to achieve and tell us instead about the legacy you want to leave.
Drawing a blank on your legacy?
Start by asking how the world will be a better place because of what you’re doing.
How will your family be better off in the future because of what you’re doing today?
How will everyone who works for you be better off because of your leadership?
How are you making a difference for our customers and our community?
And when people sum up your influence and impact, what words and phrases do you hope to hear?
“Time and again, we have seen how the conversation in a room changes when you ask leaders this simple question — legacy is a powerful word,” say John Izzo and Jeff Vanderwielen, authors of The Purpose Revolution. Their consulting firm has helped hundreds of companies and leaders find their purpose by defining their legacy.
“Rarely do their responses focus on profits, revenue or market share. Instead, they tend to talk about the difference they have made in the lives of employees, customers, the community and their industry. When they connect to their legacy, they become aware of their higher and, perhaps, truest aspiration.”
It’s critical that leaders figure out their higher calling if they’re serious about building a purposecentred, high-performing organization.
“We found that a CEO or business owner acting as a champion of purpose makes a huge difference in any organization aspiring to its higher purpose.”
Lacking a higher purpose is a problem in this era of social good. A revolution is underway, say Izzo and Vanderwielen. Yes, it’s important to make money. Yet current and prospective employees, customers and investors expect organizations to also make a difference. We want our work, purchases and investments to help leverage a better world.
Do it right and you earn our loyalty. Ignore the purpose revolution and you risk irrelevance.
According to Izzo and Vanderwielen, a purposeful organization is wholly committed to making life better for customers, employees, society and the environment both now and into the future.
The good news is pretty much every company sells a product or service that makes someone’s life better.
Yet the authors say a majority of organizations get a failing grade when it comes to closing the gap between what companies are doing and what employees, customers and investors expect?
Common pitfalls include:
Believing that making money is a purpose. “Profits do matter, but sustainable profits are almost always an outgrowth of serving a purpose.”
Confusing purpose with a marketing program. Purpose is everyone’s responsibility and must drive day-to-day decisions. “It is more important to have purpose and live it authentically than it is to simply tell people you have purpose.” Making purpose a one-way street. Instead of a top-down edict, you need genuine involvement by employees who are motivated by their own values. If they can live those values by working in your organization, you’ll build a purpose-driven organization that feels authentic to customers and investors.
Purpose is just stuck on a wall, with well-meaning words framed behind glass. “The conversation about purpose is more important than the articulation,” say Izzo and Vanderwielen. “A well-articulated purpose is good, but what determines its effectiveness in a company is how alive the conversation about that purpose is.”
Along with leaders adopting personal purpose statements and then encouraging everyone to do the same, Izzo and Vanderwielen recommend that organizations to replace job functions with job purpose. “When we connect to the true purpose of our work, it is transformed from a mean’s to an end to an end in and of itself.”
The authors highlight a restaurant CEO who noticed a pattern. At some restaurants, employees remembered customers’ names and favourite dishes, treated everyone with respect and got involved in the community. At other restaurants, none of that was happening. The teams at the more successful restaurants believed their purpose was to make people’s lives a little better for the hour they spent having a meal. Staff at the less successful restaurants saw their job as serving food. That insight convinced the CEO to lead with purpose.
“The purpose revolution demands commitment, and that requires discipline. Right now, there are companies and leaders who will one day be known for having won in the age of social good. The question is whether you will be one of them.”
To join those ranks, Izzo and Vanderwielen give practical advice and a game plan for hands-on purpose building across your entire organization.