100 What should you remember from this text, in a decade?

A decade from reading this text, you likely won’t remember the details of the Zadek Civil Learning Model, how fiduciary duties are structured in various business entities, or what the word deontology means. Hopefully, you will remember some of the stories you and others helped generate as you worked through the text and applied its principles to companies and situations you found interesting.  To those stories, we might add one final note, which serves as a summary to everything written so far: (1) remember the stakeholders in your life, (2) think long-term, and (3) never give up.

No business, or life, exists in a vacuum. The economic foundations of business are centered on other people–businesses only exist as they create value for their customers and for their owners and for their employees. Similarly, the common theme throughout all of stakeholder theory, ethics, sustainability, and strategy has been to look outward with serious intent and consider the long-term effects of one’s actions on others. The fulfillment and success you find in your career will follow similar lines. A great deal of happiness at work comes through creating value for, and relationships with, other people. This also takes looking outward with serious intent and considering the long-term effect of your actions on others. Then, if you have career setbacks, which everyone will, you simply keep going. You don’t give up. Many of the companies we have studied faced times of significant crisis but learned from their mistakes and have continued to create value for others. Companies can do this, and individuals can as well. Good luck!