Let go and evolve


Legacy. What is it? It's subjective that's for sure, but I think we can make some, reasonable and general, observations.
You may perceive legacy as something old and very wealthy men (generally with too much breeding) discuss in dark, dank and smokey oak-cladded private-members clubs. You may also perceive it as the accomplishments Sir Alex Ferguson (for example) inked into the history books when he retired from Manchester United. 

Legacy, simply put, is something that survives your existence and endures the test of time.

Some people will have such a high regard for their legacy that they protect it fiercely - as if it is a static point in time that deserves to endure forever. Others have little or no regard for it. It's an odd and dividing concept.  

In my humble a opinion, a legacy need not be constraining and it doesn't have to be associated with a specific thing or a group of people. For a legacy -a proper one- to endure the test of time, it has to be a dynamic idea capable of evolving with time OR it has to be such a fundamental principle that it keeps evolution honest over time. 



Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Churchill, Tim Berners-Lee... They all left a genuine legacy. They left something that either evolved with time, and changed the way we live our lives  OR they gave us principles that have endured time and shaped our evolution. For instance, Tim Berners-Lee didn't care about his software or his ideas around the specifics of how the World Wide Web is implemented, he just wanted to connect the world... an idea that has fuelled pretty much every innovation since. Time and time again, Tim's idea has been reshaped and repacked as Email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And at the other end of the spectrum we have Newton's principles around gravity -there is no denying or evolving those core principles, they truly have remained constant.

A lot of people I speak to these days seem to be interested in their legacy. They are either thinking about what they will leave behind, benefitting (usually unawares) from someone else's legacy or suffering as the case can -more often than not- be...

There aren't too many fundamentally timeless principles left for the average man in the street to discover. Science no doubt will continue to catalogue these but even the most robust theories become challenged and superseded. 


Therefore, my advise to anyone concerned about their legacy is to try and leave something (an idea, perhaps) that is able to change and evolve with time. For those benefitting from someone else's legacy today, I suggest you challenge it, evolve it and make it your own before someone else does it for you! For those suffering from someone else's legacy, challenge it and evolve it for them :)

Very very few things stay the same forever. This is what I will teach my children. 

But, it is important to note that I do not consider my children to be MY legacy. They are much more significant than that, they are people and unique in their own right. Instead, my legacy will be the ideas I offer up that they choose to embrace, make their own and evolve within the context of the new world they live in.


Thanks for Reading! 
Chancey

P.S. For my technology loving friends - read this again with an Enterprise IT context :)

Comments

Post a Comment

Please feel free to comment, I believe in freedom of thought and freedom of speech. I will, however, only reply to respectful discourse.

Popular posts from this blog

Engineered & Automated Biases

"White House is investigating Google after Donald Trump claims bias" Bias can be a problem in all aspects of society - both in humans (conscious and unconscious) and in algorithms (engineered and learned). Whilst I think this is an area that warrants further research -particularly into algorithms- it concerns me when the state decides it wants to try and police bias. Unconscious Bias in people and learned bias in algorithms is an extremely difficult thing to identify with any certainty due to the number of variables (along with the interpretation of context) that affect decision making.
Read more

Start up life

Working at a high growth startup that is moving at a million miles an hour is a lot of fun. It is also a lot of hard work... For startups, the 'hard work' bit is rarely a problem. Most people join startups because they are passionate about the mission and are often emboldened by the odds that are stacked against them. Startup people are typically very accountable, positive and predisposed to high levels of ownership. This really helps when you need to get a lot of stuff done. As a startup begins to scale though, culture becomes increasingly important. With new people joining all of the time and often the new outnumbering the old, it is important to have a strong understanding of the cultural values you want to persist. This is not a trivial thing to achieve.  How do you establish a benchmark in a sea of rapid change -both in your marketplace and employee base?  Most company cultures are anchored in some thing . Most com...
Read more

Are you able to enjoy the big moments in your life?

Are you able to enjoy the big moments in your life? Or do you stress out, overanalyze, withdraw, or even self-sabotage?  We have all been there to some degree or another. We have these images in our head of where we want to be, either physically or figuratively.  It might be closing the biggest of the contract of the Quarter in your team, region or even company. It could be a massive marketing event you've been driving people toward for the past couple of Quarters or even a new business meeting you secured with an Executive that has been evading you. Outside of your job you could be playing in a cup final or racing for a gold medal at the weekend, you might have plucked up the courage to propose marriage to your partner, having a child with them or simply meeting someone who means a great deal to you that you haven't seen for a while.  All of these are big moments, moments that you are highly invested in - on an emotional and practical level. Youv'e put in a ton of hardwo...
Read more