This is my dad, Nana Nyantakyi Amponsem II. His legacy type is The Pathfinder.
He is 84 and a very successful retired Ghanaian lawyer, politician, philanthropist,
entrepreneur, chief, and banker. As we are now in October, (traditionally Black History
Month here in the UK) and as we mourn our beloved Queen Elizabeth II, it set me thinking
on one issue that we as leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners often relegate to the
back of our mental queue.
Legacy.
Legacy is a strange word. It’s had so many definitions and has been used in so many
contexts, that it’s almost lost its original meaning.
We often think of legacy solely in terms of someone who’s passed or died and left some
money, business or property in a will.
But the truth is legacy goes way beyond that. We are leaving a legacy every day, every
moment with any decision and contact that we make.
This thought struck me hard in the last three months or so.
Working as a freelance pharmacist with a medium pharmacy group, we took on a contract
with the NHS to join the national vaccination effort in the UK against flu and the
coronavirus.
Over the past year, I have personally vaccinated, or directly supervised the vaccination of
tens of thousands of people who have bravely and stoically travelled sometimes hundreds
of miles to have the jab.
And my contact with every one of them has been literally one minute or less. But that one
minute had the potential to completely change or save their lives.
Isn’t that what legacy is about?
Leaving something from you that can potentially change somebody else’s life?
For every customer that buys your product, uses your service, hears your podcast, reads
your story on social media, listens to you speak, or meets you at a gig, you are leaving a little
bit of your legacy.
Life is full of little legacies.
In my #1 bestselling book, Pay The Price: Creating Ethical Entrepreneurial Success Through
Passion, Pain, and Purpose
, I argue that there are two categories of legacy an entrepreneur
can leave – A Power Legacy OR a Place Legacy.
The Power Legacy describes a situation in which the CEO or entrepreneur’s legacy rests
solely on his achievements apart from the company.
The Place Legacy describes a situation in which the CEO or entrepreneur is remembered
primarily for what the company has achieved. In other words, she is remembered for what
brought her fame in the first place.
Within these two legacy types, the entrepreneur or leader can leave a good or bad legacy.
So from these fundamental categories, we can discern four legacy types as summarised in
the Legacy Grid 2 below: