4) Personal Legacy

4) Personal Legacy

“For CEOs, they look at ‘someday I’m going to be 75’ I’ve got one shot at this, you don’t get a do-over. How am I going to be remembered? Is it going to be simply for how much money I made or is it that society is better as a consequence?’” – Perrin Beatty, President and CEO of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce

One last and poignant argument as to why a business leader should care about its organization’s purpose and impact on societal matters is their legacy.

Several Survey Participants argue there are two different types of people that want their business to link profit with purpose: people at the start of their careers and those in the latter stages. Lois Nahirney, President and CEO of dnaPower Inc., thinks, “the two things you’ve got, are people who have earned their money and are now ready to make an impact, and second, is millennials who are saying ‘I want a different model.’ Both Brianna Brown and Michael McKnight are of the opinion that the younger entrepreneurs see linking profit with purpose as being good for their business moving forward and want to have their values embedded in their careers while the more seasoned business people are in legacy-building mode and/or are trying to correct a value they may have been missing while they were making their money and building their businesses.

Keith McIntosh, CEO of PQA Testing, admits one can become rich without linking profit with purpose, but implores business leaders to question what legacy they are leaving, “You can get very rich not caring. But people won’t remember how big your T.V. was. They will remember if you made a difference.”

Several Survey Participants note that generally, business leaders want to do work that family members approve of. Michael Denham, the Vice-Chair of Commercial Banking and Financial Markets of National Bank and the former President and CEO of BDC (Michael Denham did the interview while he was the President and CEO of BDC), puts forward the idea that a great number of businesses leaders will look for a job that would make their children or grandchildren proud.

A notable proportion of the Survey Participants voice the idea that the legacy business leaders are individually leaving is a poignant argument to link profit with purpose as a means to help tackle the challenges facing the globe.

From a pure risk-return assessment point of view, it is in the best interest of businesses to contribute to tackling the immense challenges facing the world. If business leaders choose to not contribute more and in different ways to combat global challenges, the relationship between society and business risks deteriorating even further.