Peggy Noonan’s column this morning struck me. She writes about “The Sentence.” Noonan writes,
“The Sentence comes from a story Clare Booth Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that “a great man is one sentence.” His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don’t have to hear his name to know who’s being talked about. “He preserved the union and freed the slaves,” or, “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War.” You didn’t have to be told “Lincoln” or “FDR.” She wondered what Kennedy’s sentence would be. She was telling him to concentrate, to know the great themes and demands of his time and focus on them.” (Peggy Noonan, WSJ, June 27, 2009)
We all leave a legacy. For many, legacies are created by default. They happen without much attention or intention over time as we go through work and life on autopilot. We can be very tactical in how we move through our days. There are some who build their legacy by design. The words and actions of their lives flow from a higher purpose, a mission to build something lasting, to have an impact that outlasts them. There is a sense of vision and strategy about what they do and why they do it. I would venture a guess that these people could sum up their work and their legacy in one sentence, even before the work is finished and the legacy complete. They know what they want to do and they set out to make it a reality.
As our economy is in flux and our businesses are recalibrating to survive and thrive in a new reality, great leaders will ‘know the great themes and demands of our time and focus on them.’ I believe that great leaders know their ‘one sentence’ and work to make it real. I believe that knowing our ‘one sentence’ is empowering. It brings clarity to decision making and focus to our actions. It motivates us to grow our capacity to realize the vision our ‘one sentence’ calls us to and leads us to engage others in our important work.
I’m working on my one sentence. I encourage you to work on yours.
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