Written by Dave Rothacker on November 17, 2020
I believe every company should dedicate one person to capture stories involving people, places and things from the company’s past. Stories can be in the form of audio, video and or text.
Celebrate your past with an annual event.
Provide good food and breakout pictures, stories and film from the past. Highlight coworkers who have made a difference in the lives of others. Showcase meaningful and funny experiences.
Put thought and effort into this event. Bring in a speaker for a brief talk that reinforces what’s important to your people and culture. Invite customers that have been positively affected by coworkers. Consider asking a local leader to attend, one who will speak to what your company has meant to the community.
Connections to company roots and cultures help to strengthen new ones.
The Starship came into existence in 1999. We called her the Starship Cruiser. This four part series of brief posts, explains.
I docked the Starship near the end of 2004 and pulled her out of the hangar in 2006. Back then my Universe consisted mostly of leadership, management and marketing authors and leaders outside of the skilled trades.
At the time I was infatuated with the concept of six degrees of separation (I’ve never lost interest). So I created a writing exercise and called it Six Degrees of Blogging.
It took me a couple of months to realize that I was doing exactly what the Starship was originally designed for. So I fired her back up to run these missions. This is the first mission we ran (many of the old links here are no longer active). Although I didn’t refer to her as such, Emma was our AI at the time. I am planning to bring her back.
The Starship explored the Universe in 2006 and then, following a change in my day job, I placed her back in the hangar.
The Starship made very few public appearances between 2007 and mid 2020. Hardly a couple of days went by however, when I didn’t think about her. Why? Because in all of the time I spent writing during those years, I was doing exactly what the Starship was originally designed to do. Go out into the Universe to explore, connect, learn, delineate knowledge, share (RadioBack) and connect like minded people.
The project to write the book It’s Go-Time with Ben Stark and Chris Hunter was pure Starship. In fact, Go Time is an acronym that’s a near identical manifestation of Starship activities.
Chris explains in this nine-minute video.
I changed our imaginary spacecraft’s name in 2020 to the Starship Freedom. In essence, the Freedom is a symbol that represents authenticity and true self.
Those are a few historical artifacts from the Freedom. But this is about you.
Imagine traveling four generations into the future. Your company is either run by family or leaders whose lineage can be traced back to your involvement. You happen to land on the very day the company is holding its annual culture appreciation event.
What is that company celebrating? What is energizing the people? Is it something related to your vision, purpose and values? Is there anything there on that day that traces back to you?
To arrive at a desired brand, a company and its people must behave accordingly.
To arrive at a desired culture, a company and its people must behave accordingly.
To arrive at a moment you’d be proud of four generations into the future, you must behave accordingly, now.
Start, and or continue today. Have fun. Create memories and be sure to document the journey!
Please be sure to pay your coworker for time spent chonicling your company’s history. As incomprehensible as it sounds, some owners would not pay their people for this precious activity. If by chance this is you, ignore all of the above. Your company will not be around in 80 years.
Want to be profitable on that journey four generations into the future? Buy a copy of our book, “It’s Go-Time: Ben Stark and Chris Hunter Share Insights & Strategies to Help Your Home-Service Company Succeed! Want to create lineage now that will be around in four generations? Buy a case of books for your managers (and take advantage of quantity discounts)! Click here to purchase.