“Legacy” is a weighty word, connoting the passage of time as well as the transference of wealth and wisdom. In our industry, it’s a word that comes up a lot, but typically in the context of hard-working-though-antiquated systems, where it’s generally wrought with some combination of resignation, frustration, or fear about how to maintain, kludge, or “rip-and-replace” those systems.
But there’s another sort of legacy that you should be considering as an IT leader: your professional legacy.
At this point in your career, you’ve both won and lost battles, seen projects succeed and fail, and watched technical architectures, design philosophies, standards, and user interfaces of all sorts rise in prominence and then fall into disuse. And you’ve seen the fortunes and reputations of those who came before you both made and lost based on their decisions to adopt new technologies, fast-follow, or wait-and-see, and then their execution on those decisions. And then you’ve had to live with the results.
What you’ve inherited is beyond your control, but what you do with it is your responsibility. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, but with a large percentage of the insurance industry workforce in their mid-to-late 50s, it’s time to start thinking about how your decisions will impact those you leave behind.
- Will your house be in order?
- Have you planned for your company’s digital transformation?
- Are you mapping your future, steering the ship and hitting the throttle?
- Will your legacy be one of vision and forward thinking based on an understanding and appreciation of where consumers, digital technology, and the insurance industry are going?”
History sits in judgment of us all. What sort of legacy will you leave? Legacy is not a bad word if that legacy is about setting a foundation that’s future-proof.
