Performance Management Blog

Will we be remembered in 50 years? Is that important?

I’m not looking forward to a tombstone with some chiseled words. It is not at all important that I wind up somewhere in the dirt under a tombstone where people once knew who I was. I’d rather my ashes were spread on one of the rivers I have boated or at the top of a mountain or something like that.

As I wandered in the cemetery where my father and other relatives were buried, I understood that I knew nothing about them or what they did during their lives. Each led a life, interacted with others, contributed to their communities, etc. My step-grandfather was mayor of my home town, but his stone is really hard to find out there among the others…

At lunch yesterday, I was speaking with another training business owner and we hit on the legacy thing kind of discussion. The fact that some of our old friends had died and were not remembered (he did not know Gene Calvert who wrote a great book called High Wire Management) nor was he aware that my friend, Mel Silberman, had died (see my comments on Mel on my blog here).

He and I were discussing my intellectual property (aka my business, Performance Management Company), and what kinds of things had that staying power. I have high hopes that some of my team building games, such as, The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine will “stay in play” but my biggest hope was that the Square Wheels metaphor would continue to be known and used long after I’m gone.

I’ll never have a park or a bridge named after me and those would probably be gone after a while, too. But wouldn’t it be nice to leave something behind that others saw as valuable and useful? Wouldn’t it be neat to know that you somehow helped to positively change someone’s life in some way through something you did?

I think a lot of us live through our children, which is certainly an interesting process at times! And most of us are quite proud of our grandchildren or, in my Mom’s case, her great-grandson. I hope she is around long enough so that he will remember her in his future.

My goal is to have some impact and leave some footprint – some would say, “Yeah, like those dinosaur prints in Texas,” thereby inferring that I am a dinosaur and maybe stuck in the mud a little. (True)

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It is about leaving a footprint, in so many ways. It is about making the world a slightly better place and doing some good.

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So, I guess I am asking for your help in that regard.

What should I be doing with my Square Wheels themes so as to maximize their impact? Do I engage some sculptor to do a massive Square Wheel Wagon in granite kinda like Mount Rushmore? But really? A 60 foot head?

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How do I get there from here? What are some of your ideas?

SWs One - How Things Work

Scott

Dr. Scott Simmerman

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of the amazing Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine team building game and the Square Wheels facilitation and engagement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced global presenter. -- You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com and a detailed profile is here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottsimmerman/ -- Scott is the original designer of The Search for The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine teambuilding game and the Square Wheels® images for organizational development.

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