Advocacy as your most enduring legacy

Welcome to Legacy Beyond Profits, where we explore what it really means to build a business that leaves a mark for the right reasons.

Many executives mistakenly view advocacy as peripheral to their core business — a distraction from operational focus or a reputational risk. In reality, strategic advocacy on industry-specific issues can become one of your most enduring contributions.

Today, we examine how business leaders are finding their voice on targeted issues where they hold unique expertise, creating legacies that extend far beyond quarterly earnings or even their company's lifespan.

The strategic advocate's framework

1. Domain-specific advocacy: Champion what you know

Effective business advocacy begins with domain specificity. The most credible voices focus on issues where they possess genuine expertise and authentic experience, not broad social debates where their opinion adds little value.

Select advocacy areas that connect directly to your industry's long-term viability, where your expertise gives you unique insight, and where your business success gives you legitimate standing. This targeted approach builds credibility and impact far beyond what generalized social commentary could achieve.

2. Evidence-based positioning: Move beyond opinion

Advocacy based on personal conviction alone rarely creates lasting change. Effective thought leaders bring meticulous research and data-driven perspectives that transform subjective positions into authoritative insights.

Supplement your experiential knowledge with rigorous analysis, third-party research, and quantifiable impact assessments. This evidence-based approach allows you to transcend personal opinion and become a reference point others cite when discussing your chosen issue.

3. Building advocacy infrastructure: Beyond the individual

The most enduring advocacy legacies transition from personal platforms to institutional structures that outlive individual leadership. This requires creating purpose-built systems within and beyond your organization.

Develop internal knowledge repositories, dedicated advocacy roles, industry coalitions, and possibly standalone foundations focused on your issue area. The goal is establishing self-sustaining entities that will continue advancing your principles long after you've moved on.

4. Forming unlikely alliances: Expanding impact through collaboration

Advocacy that creates lasting change rarely happens in isolation. Strategic advocates identify potential partners across sectors that share a common goal despite differing motivations or backgrounds.

Seek opportunities to build bridges between traditional adversaries around specific, actionable issues where interests align. These unexpected coalitions often produce the most durable solutions precisely because they transcend traditional boundaries.

5. Measuring advocacy impact: Beyond positioning to change

Legacy-focused advocacy requires moving beyond visibility metrics to meaningful impact measurement. Evaluate your efforts not by media mentions or event invitations, but by tangible policy, market, or practice changes that result.

Establish clear success metrics from the outset, focusing on specific, measurable shifts in industry practices, regulatory frameworks, or market behaviors. These concrete outcomes not personal recognition define your advocacy's lasting value.

How Ken Grossman embedded environmental advocacy into craft beer's DNA?

When Ken Grossman founded Sierra Nevada Brewing Company in 1980 with a recycled dairy tank and homemade equipment, environmental advocacy wasn't a marketing strategy—it was an economic necessity born of scarcity. This pragmatic beginning evolved into one of craft brewing's most focused and impactful advocacy legacies.

What distinguishes Grossman's approach is his laser focus on environmental issues specifically relevant to brewing. Rather than speaking broadly on climate change, he has consistently advocated for agricultural biodiversity in hop cultivation, water conservation in brewing regions, and renewable energy solutions tailored to production facilities.

His advocacy methodology demonstrates the power of domain specificity. When Grossman speaks about water quality or agricultural practices, legislators and industry peers listen because his perspectives emerge from four decades of hands-on experience and measurable results, not abstract principles.

Sierra Nevada's North Carolina brewery became the first production brewery in America to achieve LEED Platinum certification, while its Mills River facility diverts 99.8% of solid waste from landfills. These achievements provide credibility when Grossman advocates for policy changes, creating a virtuous cycle where business practices reinforce advocacy positions.

The company's Hop Field program represents the integration of advocacy with business operations. Beyond supporting its supply chain, this initiative actively preserves hop genetic diversity and advances sustainable farming practices, addressing a specific environmental challenge that few outside the industry would recognize but that remains critical to brewing's future.

Perhaps most significantly, Grossman has built advocacy infrastructure that extends beyond his personal influence. The company's sustainability department now employs specialists who engage with policymakers year-round. The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company has also fostered industry coalitions like the Brewers Association Sustainability Committee, which amplifies individual breweries' environmental efforts through collective action.

For business leaders seeking to create advocacy legacies, Grossman demonstrates that effectiveness comes not from weighing in on every issue, but from applying your authentic expertise to specific challenges where your voice carries unique authority and your business provides a living case study.

From strategy to legacy

"Your most enduring legacy may not be what you build, but what you protect, advance, or transform through the credibility you've earned." This perspective from Howard Schultz captures why strategic advocacy matters for long-term impact.

This week, challenge yourself to distinguish between broad societal issues where your opinion adds little unique value and domain-specific challenges where your perspective represents irreplaceable expertise. True thought leadership is not about having a position on everything, but about bringing distinctive insight to targeted issues where you possess genuine authority.