How can we get billions of workers to their jobs each day without exhausting the world’s fuel supplies? How can livestock be raised in a way that actually leaves the land better off than it was before? How can we educate our children in a way that doesn’t just pack their brains with information but fuels their imaginations and encourages them to bring their own mind-blowing innovations into the world?
Across all industries, creative solutions are in high demand. Moreover, those individuals, teams, and organizations that can come up with creative and innovative solutions will be celebrated by others and reap huge financial rewards.
When it comes to legacy, there are two types, external and internal.
External legacy describes all the products and services an organization offer outwards to the world.
Internal legacy legacy describes the positive impact an organization has on the lives of the people who work there.
Both are important. However, I do believe that the most important aspect of legacy is creating a healthy, enlivening, growth-oriented work environment that allows the people within the organization to thrive.
Why? Because when people are thriving, that intention gets infused into the creations and innovation that organization.
Not only that, a satisfied workforce means more healthy families and communities. In other words, a vibrant work experience has a ripple effect: fulfilled workers have a positive impact on the people around them outside the work environment, which leads to healthier families, healthier friendships, and healthier communities.
Internal legacy may begin inside the company, but through infusing the products and services with goodwill and positively touching the lives of those who interact with people who work for those companies, internal legacy has irrefutably positive effect on those outside the company, too.
In essence, when organizations are committed to creating healthy working environments, when they are committed to building a strong internal legacy, they offer an incredibly important opportunity to all those who work there.
What is this opportunity? In essence, it’s the ability to heal, to bring all of themselves to work and experience their whole selves being honored. In this way, creativity, the fostering of connection, making a difference, and meaning as company values, helps each and every valued member get their distinctly human needs met.
And when these needs are met, when we feel that connected, when we feel we are making a difference, and we feel our lives our meaningful, we feel whole, we feel alive, we feel that we are being truly human.
In other words, the choice to create internal legacy is also by its nature, the highest expression of creativity, which is healing. And when we actively work to love and heal other around us, the world truly becomes a more tolerant, a more safe, more creative and innovative place.
Austin Hill Shaw is a creativity expert who works with individuals who want to unlock their full creative potential and organizations that want to build cultures of innovation. He is the founder of Creativity Matters, author of The Shoreline of Wonder: On Being Creative, and inventor of The Creativity Quiz.
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