If you own a business perhaps you have thought about the legacy you can leave behind and leave forward.
Perhaps you are one of those business owners who is at that point in your career where you begin to wonder about your customers, your employees, your vendors, and the community in which you have your business.
What happens when you leave?
For instance, how many of your customers rely on your goods and services now and the past and hopefully into the future? Will that be important to you when you decide to move on from your business?
Perhaps you have enjoyed the life cycles that many employees can share with you from marriages, the birth of their children, the celebration of the many life events that employees have in their lifetimes in which you have been privileged to participate.
Your vendors have come to work with you over the years to supply you the raw material and labor to provide you the ability to produce and deliver your various goods and services. How much do you and they value that legacy?
Perhaps in your community you and many in your company have served in a variety of volunteer capacities, including service on nonprofit boards, elected offices, participated in a variety of community fundraisers; the list is endless. Importantly you created a family-like environment for your company through its employees, customers, vendors, and your community.
As you consider legacy for your company, do you have someone within your company to succeed you and maintain that legacy, or is it more important for you to eventually depart your company without consideration of that legacy that you have created?
All of these questions and considerations can encompass considerable discussion that move beyond this short post. Considering them for the future of your company whether it is growth, a merger and acquisition, or other options available are important when you consider your company’s true value.
My question is: does your company’s legacy matter as you make future leadership decisions for yourself and those with whom you have built your legacy?
As an executive search consultant, I discuss these and many other considerations with business owners as I assist them in finding a new chief executive to lead their company to maintain and improve their company, and to maintain and improve their company’s legacy especially when legacy matters.
Warren Rutherford is president of The Executive Suite, an executive search firm with offices in Boston and Hyannis. More information at https://www.theexecutivesuite.com/about-us/
