Your Legacy is Now
Life is not a search for meaning from others, it’s about the creation of meaning for yourself.
For over 30 years Alan Weiss has consulted, coached, and advised everyone from Fortune 500 executives, state governors, non-profit directors, and entrepreneurs to athletes, entertainers, and beauty pageant contestants. That’s quite an assortment of people, and they run into the thousands. Most of them have had what we euphemistically call “means,” and some of them have had a lot more than that. Others have been aspiring and with more ends in sight than means on hand.
Alan Weiss states:
I’ve dealt with esteem (low), narcissism (high), family problems, leadership dysfunctions, insecurities, addictions, and ethical quandaries. And I’ve talked about them through the coronavirus crisis. But don’t get the wrong idea. About 95% of these people have been well-meaning, honest (to the best of their knowledge), and interested in becoming a better person and better professional. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be talking to me.
I found the equivalent of the “runner’s wall” in their journeys, where they must break through the pain and the obstacles and then can keep going with renewed energy and spirit. But runners know how far they must go after the breakthrough, be it another half lap or another five miles. There is a finish line.
I’ve found that people in all positions, even after the “breakthrough,” don’t know where they are in the race, let alone where the finish line is.
They do not know what meaning is for them. They may have money in the bank, good relationships, the admiration of others, and the love of their dogs. But they have no metrics for “What now?” They believe that at the end of life there is a tallying, some metaphysical accountant who totals up their contributions, deducts their bad acts, and creates the (hopefully positive) difference.
That difference, they believe, is their “legacy.”
But the thought that legacy arrives at the end of life is as ridiculous as someone who decides to sell a business and tries to increase its valuation the day prior. Legacy is now. Legacy is daily. Every day we create the next page in our lives, but the question becomes who is writing it and what’s being written. Is someone else creating our legacy? Or are we, ourselves, simply writing the same page repeatedly?
Or do we leave it blank?
Our organic, living legacy is marred and squeezed by huge normative pressures. There is a “threshold” point, at which one’s beliefs and values are overridden by immense peer pressure. Our metrics are forced to change.
In an age of social media, biased press, and bullying, we’ve come to a point where our legacy, ironically, is almost out of our hands.
Yet our “meaning”—our creation of meaning and not a search for some illusive alchemy—creates worth and impact for us and all those with whom we interact.
Michael
Hi Alan.
FYI: my understanding is that the airline was grounded because of the potential air safety issues.
Where pilots have the potential to be distracted and put passenger safety at risk, then they ought not be flying. As the whole union was involved, then the potential risk across the entire airline was massive.
Check this video out:
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunrise/video/-/watch/27107314/did-qantas-ceo-have-a-choice/
So, I’m with Qantas management on this one. I’ve watched too much of Air Crash Investigations to see that the slightest errors when combined can have devastating outcomes. What the unions are doing is a disgrace.
I think I’d rather be on the ground in 1 piece rather than scattered across a paddock in a thousand.
I’d rather be late to get going than dead on time.
Peter McLean
Speaking as an Aussie and local to the aviation commentator on the segment Michael mentions, I think the CEO was way off the mark on this (I wrote an article to this effect for my newsletter audience). Qantas pilots are highly professional and extremely well trained and the kind of incident that the commentator mentions (where, almost 40 years ago, a pilot had an intense argument/row with his own colleagues prior to takeoff and had medical problems as a result) is an extreme and isolated case. Grounding all flights because of this potential was not on the mind of CEO Alan Joyce. Joyce was trying to make a point, not prevent safety problems – otherwise, why would the Australian government then force both parties to resume flights and cease industrial action? Is the government then endangering people? Because there would certainly be a whole lot of stress immediately following these events.
No, this was an epic management and leadership failure, plain and simple. Joyce ended up treating every employee as a problem to be punished, like the school classroom where everybody has to stay in because a couple of people are acting up – and the customers were punished too. There was no plan to resolve issues, no plan to win people over, no plan to identify those who would work together for the company’s success, no plan to aid customers, no plan to work with unions and employees after the fact other than seeking government assistance to force a resolution, no plan to help recover reputation after such a globally dramatic action, no plan…
Alan Weiss
Yes, well who wouldn’t agree, but that’s an extreme case because you’re taking the side of management. My point is that enlightened management doesn’t let it get to this point. And safety was no more endangered than during the prior month when job actions were going on. Management ruined the plans of people going to funerals, weddings, key job meetings, long-planned vacations, and so on, just to force government intervention. As usual, let’s make the customers the victims, because what choice to they have.
The union may be disgraceful, I don’t know, but the evidence is very clear that Qantas management—as so much of airline management—in inept. They feel they must have an adversarial relationship with labor rather than a collaborative one.
Alan Weiss
I can’t see any justification for a desperate and unprofessional action like this. Nor do I see anyone calling for his removal, at least from this distance. Qantas has an awful public image, going back for years. The fact that they may be profitable is not really the point—the Mafia is profitable.