An Introduction to Legacy Leadership

Legacy Cultures and Legacy Leadership:
Dr. Jay B. Newman
Founding Partner Culture By Choice™

In talking to many of our clients, especially those who have either built their own companies from the ground up or who have taken over companies and created a huge values laden footprint within the company, we have discovered that most of those leaders have a very common desire. That desire is to make certain that what they have built persists well into the future without being destroyed by others who just don’t get what they have built.
What these leaders have described to us is a very strong desire to sustain their creation through what we refer to as a Legacy Culture fueled by Legacy Leadership. So, what is a Legacy Culture? A Legacy Culture is an organizational culture that has been very carefully crafted so that there is full alignment between the hopes, dreams, and values of the Legacy Leader and all of the strategies and tactics used by all of those who are tasked with delivering on those hopes, dreams, and values. Our first President, George Washington, was just such a leader. There have been failures at the helm of our nation, but none has been able to destroy the Legacy that Washington and our other founding fathers established. This Legacy is resilient because it is founded upon a set of core values and foundational principles. No matter what happens, we always return to these values and principles.
What is a Legacy Leader? In every organization, leaders truly need to be three types of leaders; Tactical Leaders, Strategic Leaders, and Legacy Leaders. Tactical leaders pay very close attention to the moment-by-moment actions of every person within their leadership sphere. Every action must be focused on producing the outcomes that help the organization achieve its goals. The Strategic Leader pays very close attention to all the strategies that have been created to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of every level of operations. Every tactic deployed must be aligned with a specific strategy which have each been designed to help the organization succeed. Most businesses stop here. They believe if they have the right tactics associated with the best strategies, they will create an organization that will be second to none. However, that is not the whole picture. These organizations have a weak spot. That weak spot is that leadership doesn’t understand the 2 critical whys for the organization. President Washington understood these two whys for the United States. The first why is why doing all of this makes us better people and the best possible people for this organization. The second why is why all of this makes our organization the best possible thing for the world around us.
Legacy Leaders totally understand the 2 whys and they spend a good portion of their daily efforts driving these inspirational concepts home to everyone they touch. In the mind of the Legacy Leader it’s not enough to be the best in the world, they also want to be the best for the world. The Legacy Leader knows the organization’s core principles and values and lives them and speaks them every minute of every day. Every strategy developed must align with those core values and principles. Every tactic designed to achieve all those strategies must also be aligned with those core values and principles. Every employee and everyone hired must be the type of people who can also live and breathe these same core values and principles. When this is accomplished (and very few companies have arrived at this level) leaders know that when they must walk away from the reins of their company, the company will not skip a beat because everyone coming up through the ranks is aligned with this Legacy Culture.
How do you create a Legacy Culture? First everyone must understand that Tactical Leadership and Strategic Leadership are important, otherwise how will the business get conducted. But it cannot stop there. Every C-Level Leader must also adopt the belief and place the highest value on, only doing business with the company’s core values and principles in mind. Rather than just being warm fuzzy ideas that are on the poster on the wall, they must be the underlying framework upon which all business activities are measured. It’s more than did you get it done, it’s also did you get it done in a way that is consistent with what we say we stand on as a company?
The second step in achieving a Legacy Culture is to make sure that every position in the company clearly states that all actions are to be taken with the core values and principles in mind. When a job description says that a position must conduct a certain action, that job description should also state; and this is the way we expect those actions to be taken. If the values of the company are a poster on the wall and not explicitly stated within the job expectations, many employees will believe that these ideas are nice but, as long as I get the job done, who cares! This is how cultures get poisoned, because people think it’s all about strategies and tactics, not the underlying values that gave purpose to the whole process. Therefore, if I’m not a nice, principled person and others get offended by the way I do things, that’s their problem. Furthermore, if that person ever achieves a high enough level of authority in the company, all bets are off!
The third step in achieving a Legacy Culture is to realize that the work is never done. There is never a point where we can say, OK, now we have the culture we want. Now we can just do our strategies and tactics. The continuous improvement of every aspect of the culture is the work of every person in the organization. From the CEO on down, everyone, everyday must make certain that there is alignment between every action and the core values and principles of the organization. Of course, this all depends on people truly knowing what the core values and principles are. We have seen many companies that haven’t really thought about it. If your core values and principles are your rudder and you don’t truly know what they are, you run the risk of continuously going in circles.
The Great American Experiment is still in progress. But it persists because the early Legacy Leaders of our Nation understood that there was much more at stake than just the creation of a new nation. If we operated this experiment based on a set of undeniably common values that could be shared by every person, no matter what their status, the Nation would have a greater chance for long-range success. These principles are ensconced in our Constitution and are initially summarized in our original 10 amendments, our Bill of Rights. Presidents have tried to circumvent the constitution, but the shared powers of our Nation create the checks and balances that prevent a President or a Congress from high jacking our Country.
Our great companies need to learn this lesson as well. Companies built upon sound values and principles have a much greater chance of surviving the changes of leadership that might come along. This is so because any new leader will be vetted based on his or her personal alignment to the stated principles and values. Creating a Legacy Culture supported by Legacy Leaders is the best we know of for ensuring that companies will experience the long-range success that our Nation has experienced.

© 2019 Culture By Choice, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin: All rights reserved distribution of this information outside of an academic setting not permitted without express written permission from Culture By Choice.