You remember the playground tease, “when they look up _______ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of you.” What an inspiration for a legacy.
Steve Jobs means many things to the world. Loved and sometimes hated, at the helm of Apple he has innovated, he has shipped on time, and he has brought amazing vision while maintaining focus to a talented company.
Yesterday’s announcement that he will be stepping aside as CEO has been a lingering “when” not “if” announcement, but it still rattled the interwebs.
I wish Steve the best of luck. Having walked the path of liver disease with my father, I know the difficulty of the journey. I deeply understand the disbelief of the helplessness that we have of such a debilitating yet seemingly incurable disease. And, yet I still have a hope that he can bring innovation to healthcare as he has to technology in the next step in his journey.
I am, however, left wondering: what is the psuedo-wiki page that someone might throw up in the wake of my own life? What legacy am I building?
Did Steve Jobs build the legacy as an innovator by answering every “urgent” email about customer complaints? As CEO did he get down into the weeds of personnel issues? Probably not. The danger that we all face is paying the right attention to the wrong problems, and that is not legacy building activity.
So, how do you fill in the blank to the statement: “when they look up _______ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of you”?