Leading Legacy: What You'll Be Remembered For

A former student emailed me last month.

Not to say thank you. Not to share good news.

To tell me something I hadn’t expected.

“You changed how I think about leadership,” she wrote. “Not because of what you taught. Because of how you showed up.”

I sat with that for a while.

Years of closing deals. Building tools. Delivering results. I thought that was the work.

But legacy? That’s not what you build. It’s what you change in other people.

She wasn’t talking about a framework or a case study. She was talking about something harder to define. How I approached problems. How I treated uncertainty. How I made her feel capable of figuring things out herself.

That’s legacy.

And here’s the part that stopped me cold: I wasn’t trying to build it.

I was just doing the work. Developing people. Making decisions. Trying to get things right.

Legacy showed up as a side effect.

That’s how it always works.

But here’s what I’ve learned since: you can shape it intentionally without making it forced. You can understand what actually builds legacy and act on that understanding.

Not to leave a monument. To leave something useful.

Something that makes the next generation of leaders better than the last.

That’s what this is about.

You’re Already Building One

Whether you know it or not.

Every decision you make. Every person you develop. Every system you build or break. Every behavior you model.

It’s all compounding. Right now. Today.

Most people think legacy is something for later. After the big career. After the corner office. Something you worry about at 55.

Wrong.

Legacy isn’t built at the end. It’s built every single day. Compounding like interest in a bank account you forgot about.

The leader who develops one great leader, who develops one great leader, who develops one great leader… that’s exponential impact. It starts with you. Today. Not someday.

Think about the leaders who shaped you. The ones who changed how you think. Where are they now? Have they retired? Left the company years ago?

Doesn’t matter. Their impact is still running. Through you. Through everyone they ever touched.

That’s legacy. Not a trophy. A chain of influence that outlasts you.

But here’s what most people get wrong:

Legacy isn’t what you achieve. It’s what others carry forward.

The biggest deal you ever closed? Nobody remembers it in five years. The person you developed who went on to build an extraordinary career? They remember you forever.

Legacy lives in people. Not achievements.

And that changes everything about how you should lead.

Four Dimensions

Legacy isn’t one thing. It’s four things happening simultaneously.

Some leaders build one dimension brilliantly and ignore the rest. The best ones build all four.

Here’s what actually lasts.

1. The Leaders You Build

This is the biggest one.

Not because it sounds impressive. Because it actually multiplies your impact beyond anything you could achieve alone.

Every leader you develop becomes a force multiplier. They make decisions. Develop their own people. Shape their own culture. Build their own systems.

Your impact branches out like a tree.

I experienced this teaching MBA courses at ESB Business School while working full-time in industry. Students didn’t just learn marketing frameworks or digital strategy. They absorbed how to think about problems. How to question assumptions. How to connect theory to real decisions.

Years later, I hear from them. Not about specific lessons. About how their thinking shifted.

That’s the tree growing.

Now, I work with procurement professionals earlier in their careers. Not just managing their work. Developing their capability. Teaching them to see procurement as strategy. Helping them build skills that matter in five years, not just today.

Some will become procurement directors. Some will become CPOs. Each one carries forward something that started in a conversation we had.

That’s the tree.

Map your influence tree:

Not your org chart. Your actual influence tree. Who have you developed? Where are they now? Who have they developed?

Person	When	What You Helped Build	Where They Are Now	Who They’ve Developed
[Name]	[Year]	[Capability]	[Current role]	[Their influence]

Most people have never done this exercise.

Do it. It’s humbling. And clarifying.

You’ll see your legacy already exists. You just haven’t been tracking it.

Intentional vs. accidental mentoring:

Accidental: Someone asks for advice. You give it. They leave. Maybe it helps. Maybe it doesn’t.

Intentional: You identify someone with potential. You invest in their development deliberately. You track their growth. You adjust your approach.

Accidental mentoring happens to you. Intentional mentoring is something you build.

Pick two or three people. Invest real time. Watch the tree grow.

2. The Systems You Leave Behind

I built a tool called Headwinds at Thyssenkrupp.

Supplier risk forecasting. Financial health. Capacity constraints. Geopolitical exposure. Updated monthly.

Adopted group-wide.

But here’s what matters for legacy: it still exists. Still running. Still being used after I left.

I’m not there anymore. The tool is.

That’s a system legacy. Something you build that outlives you.

Not every system needs to save EUR or USD. But every leader should ask: “What am I building that will keep working after I’m gone?”

Systems that create lasting legacy:

Decision frameworks your team internalizes. Tools that make work permanently better. Processes that prevent problems from recurring. Knowledge bases that capture what you know. Training programs that develop capability at scale.

The key: it has to work without you.

If it only works because you’re running it, it’s not a system. It’s a task.

The test:

Six months after you leave, is it still being used?

Yes? You built a system.

No? You built a personal project.

Aim for systems.

How to build them:

Document your thinking. Not just what you decided. Why. What framework you used. What you considered and rejected.

Teach the framework, not just the answer. Anyone can follow a process. Leaders who understand the thinking behind it can adapt when circumstances change.

Build for others to use. Not for yourself to look smart.

3. The Culture You Shape

Culture isn’t a poster on the wall.

It’s what people actually do when nobody’s watching.

Every behavior you model becomes a norm. Every decision you make signals what’s valued. Every conversation you have shapes what’s acceptable.

Culture is repeated behavior. Nothing more. Nothing less.

At Thyssenkrupp, I pushed for data-driven decision-making in procurement. Not as a principle. As daily practice.

Every decision needed data backing. Every recommendation required evidence. Every assumption got questioned.

That wasn’t a policy I wrote. It was behavior I modeled. Repeatedly. Until the team did it without being asked.

Years later, people on that team still make decisions that way. Not because I told them to. Because it became how they think.

That’s culture legacy.

Culture is built through three things:

What you celebrate. If you celebrate speed over accuracy, the team optimizes for speed. If you celebrate learning from mistakes, the team takes smart risks.

What you tolerate. If you tolerate blame culture, people stop being honest. If you tolerate missed commitments without consequence, commitments stop meaning anything.

What you do yourself. This matters most. Your behavior sets the standard. Everything else is noise.

The culture legacy question:

Five years from now, what behaviors will persist because you shaped them?

Not what you wanted. What will actually stick.

If you can’t answer with specifics, you haven’t shaped culture. You’ve wished for it.

Making it intentional:

Pick three behaviors. Not ten. Three.

Model them visibly. Every day.

Recognize them when others demonstrate them.

Address it when they’re absent.

Repeat until automatic.

Culture compounds. Like everything else in legacy.

4. The Problems You Solve

Not every problem you fix creates legacy.

Firefighting creates relief. Not legacy.

Legacy comes from solving problems at the root. Permanently. So they don’t come back.

Headwinds wasn’t built to fix one supplier crisis. It was built to prevent all supplier crises. Systemic solution to a systemic problem.

That’s the difference.

The 10-Year Test:

Before investing heavily in solving a problem, ask: “Will this still be solved in 10 years?”

If you’re firefighting, the answer is no. The fire goes out. Next fire starts.

If you’re building prevention, the answer might be yes. The system keeps working.

Systemic vs. Point Solutions:

Problem	Point Solution (No Legacy)	Systemic Solution (Legacy)
Supplier risk	React to each crisis	Risk forecasting system
Team capability	Train individuals one-off	Development framework
Decision quality	Make better decisions yourself	Build frameworks others use
Knowledge loss	Answer questions when asked	Build knowledge base

Point solutions solve today’s problem. Systemic solutions prevent tomorrow’s.

Legacy comes from systemic solutions.

Finding root causes:

Ask “why” five times.

“Why did the supplier fail?” We didn’t see it coming.

“Why didn’t we see it coming?” No financial health monitoring.

“Why no monitoring?” Nobody owned it.

“Why did nobody own it?” Risk forecasting wasn’t valued.

“Why wasn’t it valued?” No one connected it to business outcomes.

Now you have the root cause. Build your solution there. Not at the symptom.

The Legacy Audit

Here’s where you figure out what you’re actually building.

Not what you want to build. What you’re building right now, today, with your current behavior.

Exercise 1: The “If I Left Tomorrow” Test

Imagine you leave your role tomorrow. No notice. Just gone.

What would people say about you?

Not what you hope. What they’d actually say.

Be brutal with yourself here.

Write down five things people would actually say. Not aspirational. Real.

Then ask: do those five things represent the legacy I want?

Exercise 2: The “Leadership Eulogy”

Not morbid. Clarifying.

Write the speech someone would give about your leadership impact. Not your achievements. Your impact on people.

What would they say you taught them? How would they say you changed how they think? What would they say you built that outlasts you?

This is what your legacy actually is.

And the gap between Exercise 1 and Exercise 2? That’s your work.

Exercise 3: The Gap and The Plan

Legacy Dimension	Where I Am Now	Where I Want To Be	What Needs To Change
Leaders I’m building	Developing 2 people informally	Intentionally developing 3-4 people	Structured development plans
Systems I’m creating	One tool, not documented	Two tools, fully documented for others	Knowledge transfer sessions
Culture I’m shaping	Modeling data-driven decisions	Three clear behaviors modeled consistently	Identify and reinforce weekly
Problems I’m solving	Mostly firefighting	One systemic solution per quarter	Root cause analysis before fixing

Legacy Statement Template:

Complete this sentence:

“In 10 years, I want to be remembered as the leader who _______________.”

Not what you achieved. What you changed.

“…who built leaders who built leaders.”

“…who created systems that made procurement permanently better.”

“…who shifted how an entire team thinks about risk.”

“…who proved that procurement can be strategic, not just tactical.”

Write yours. Keep it somewhere you see it daily.

Everything you do should connect back to it.

Building It Every Day

Legacy isn’t built in grand moments. It’s built in daily practice.

Teaching, not telling:

Every time you explain your thinking out loud, you’re teaching. Not just giving an answer. Showing how you arrived at it.

“Here’s what I decided. Here’s why. Here’s what I considered and rejected. Here’s what I’d do differently next time.”

That thinking becomes available to everyone around you. They internalize it. Use it in their own decisions.

That’s teaching. And it compounds.

Investing in people over projects:

Projects end. People compound.

Every hour spent developing someone’s capability returns more than every hour spent perfecting a deliverable.

Not because it feels good. Because it multiplies your impact exponentially.

Making your thinking visible:

Write about how you think. Share frameworks. Document decisions and the reasoning behind them.

This blog is an example. Every article makes my thinking available to people I’ll never meet.

That’s legacy at scale.

Creating tools others can use:

Not personal tools. Transferable tools.

Frameworks someone else can pick up and apply. Systems that work without you running them. Playbooks that capture your experience in usable form.

Every tool you build that outlives you is a piece of legacy.

The daily question:

Each morning, ask: “What am I doing today that compounds?”

Not just what needs doing. What builds something lasting.

If the answer is “nothing,” adjust your day.

Legacy is built in the margins of your regular work. Not separate from it. Woven into it.

The Paradox

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about legacy:

The more you focus on building it, the less authentic it becomes.

Leaders who chase legacy become performative. They make decisions based on how they’ll look, not what’s right. They develop people to build their reputation, not because they genuinely care about those people’s growth.

People sense this. They always sense it.

Legacy is a byproduct of service. Not a goal.

The leaders with the deepest legacy aren’t the ones who were trying to build one. They’re the ones who were genuinely focused on making things better. For their teams. For their organizations. For the people they touched.

Legacy showed up because they were doing the work. Not because they were optimizing for legacy.

That student who emailed me? I wasn’t trying to build a legacy when I taught her. I was trying to teach well. To challenge her thinking. To make her better.

The legacy was a side effect of doing the work with genuine care.

So how do you balance intention with authenticity?

Don’t focus on legacy directly. Focus on the behaviors that create it.

Develop people genuinely. Not for your reputation. Because they deserve to grow.

Build systems that solve real problems. Not to leave your name on something. Because the problem deserves solving.

Shape culture because it matters. Not because you want to be remembered as a culture builder.

The “enough” question:

At some point, you’ve done enough.

Not enough to be perfect. Enough to have created something that outlives you.

You’ve developed people who can lead without you. Built systems that work without you. Shaped behaviors that persist without you.

That’s enough.

You don’t need to be remembered by everyone. You need to have changed something that matters.