My legacy is real, but it’s nothing like what I planned

Over the course of my career, I tended to work long, hard, and intensely at my jobs. I was obsessed with making a contribution that would matter greatly to a large number of people. I wanted to leave a mark.

Looking back, I did leave a mark. Just not in the way I had planned.

Looking back

If you’ve been around for a while, you may want to review the impact of what you did, as I am about to. It may depress you. Most of us don’t make as much the difference we thought we would. Looking back on my career:

Nothing became of the mathematical research I did in graduate school at MIT.

I worked long hours contributing to software products called TK!Solver, Javelin, and MathCAD. Very few people use TK!Solver or Javelin any more. MathCAD, used for mathematical and engineering calculations, is part of a suite of products at PTC Software, but competing tools like Wolfram are a lot more popular.

I produced a bunch of textbooks working for a company called Course Technology. College students used them to learn tools like the spreadsheets Lotus 1-2-3 and Wingz (swept away by Excel) and the management tool Lotus Agenda (also obsolete). Thousands of students used these textbooks, but given the pace of technology change, they’re now obsolete. Course Technology was acquired and subsumed into a much larger publisher; the imprint no longer exists.

I wrote dozens of reports and gave hundreds of speeches at Forrester Research, including extensive research on the television industry. My research on digital video recorders and video on-demand may have slightly changed the trajectory of the TV industry; I was right about the TV schedule becoming irrelevant, but I neither caused nor significantly accelerated that change. My research forecasting that HDTV would fail was wrong, and didn’t slow it down in the slightest.

I trained many analysts to think more clearly and write in a more pointed and succinct way. Many of them have told me they think and write differently after working with me.

I helped create a consumer survey research program at Forrester. It was called “Technographics,” a term that I coined. Forrester still markets consumer research under that trademark, and has continuously surveyed consumers on technology topics and sold the resulting research since 1996. So that’s still around, although I doubt that any of the people doing it now think at all about my contribution to its origin.

I wrote reports and coauthored a book on social media, Groundswell. That book sold 150,000 copies. Many people have told me it transformed how they thought about social media. The ideas in that book came from Charlene Li, she deserves the majority of the credit.

Since then I have written and edited many other books. My book on writing clearly, Writing Without Bullshit, created an impact on thousands of people, but failed to start a movement as I had hoped. I also more directly helped change the way hundreds of people at companies wrote through workshops I gave.

I’ve had an impact on a smaller number of people, mostly authors, including through my book Build a Better Business Book. The dozens of authors I’ve worked with definitely think and write differently because of me. I worked with them on what became many books, and those books have collectively reached tens of thousands of people.

What did matter

I made a difference to the people I worked with. I like to think that I bent the course of their careers. That group included colleagues, clients, and authors. What I did for and with them mattered.

I made a difference to the people who read my books, and the books I helped create. Well-written and appropriately targeted books can change people.

I made a difference to my family. We raised children who are now grown and contributing to the world in very creative ways. I helped create the fulfilling life my wife and I had and still have by making a good living and investing wisely, but more importantly, by being supportive and loving.

It’s very striking to me that the of things I worked so hard to create, most made very little difference in the long term. But I did make quite a difference to the people I invested time in.

If that is my legacy, I can feel great about it. It’s just interesting to me how different it is from what I originally set out to do.