Kevin Bishop
Milestone Master, Anniversary University^®
Formerly, VP IBM Global Brand System

Anniversaries are wonderful. They provide us all with ready-made moments to reflect on past achievements and celebrate success.

In our personal lives, birthdays and anniversaries mark out the passage of time and a “big birthday” may signal a transition to the new stage in life’s great journey, causing us to think about what the future holds as well as what the past has brought for us. And, the same holds true for organizations. The best anniversary programs have just the right balance between celebrating past successes, whilst anticipating future paths that will ensure the organization continues to thrive.

From crafting the intent to finding the right content and sourcing the funding, to delivery of a multifaceted anniversary program, realizing the full potential of a momentous milestone can be quite the challenge. And it can be made harder considering that most of us will only get to plan and manage a significant anniversary once in our professional lives. It’s your “show” and you have permission to be provocative; and by following a few basic ground rules you can do things so well that your anniversary is not just a time for celebration, but a program that has material impact on your next 10, 25, 50 or 100 years.

Take a moment to think about birthdays and anniversaries you’ve been to and what made them great — a fabulous band, plenty of drink, and speeches that were not too long. Party planning is not so hard! But has anyone you know done something that really stood out and made you think differently? I have friends that have renewed their wedding vows at major anniversaries, sometimes in a very personal setting, essentially just for themselves, and sometimes as a public celebration of all the bonds and friendships that are significant in their lives.

Depending on the people, the same “moment” can be recognized in quite different ways. And I have one friend who took the opportunity for their 50th birthday to spend a year doing fifty new things, some which they had always wanted to do, and others they had never heard of but were suggested by friends. This turned into a year of adventure shared on social media, bringing joy to all that were involved in the project. It’s a wonderful idea, one I wish I had come across before my own
50th birthday, as it’s something I was inspired by and would love to have emulated myself… maybe for my 60th!

So, what does it take to plan a purposeful organizations’ anniversary? Well, for a start, an anniversary for an organization touches everyone that’s been associated with it, past and present, and they all have a point of view. Indeed, not just one point of view, but many overlapping (and sometimes dissenting) opinions and interests. What are we celebrating? How should we celebrate? Who should be there? These are the three questions that come up first and fastest in any conversation and they were a huge challenge to answer as we planned the Centennial for IBM, a company operating in over 170 countries, with multiple product line, each of which felt they had their own anniversaries and milestone to consider!

Answering these questions well requires a forward-looking strategic perspective, not just a look back to the past — something most organizations have not considered when beginning their anniversary planning.

During IBM’s Centennial, we were able to draw upon 100 years of experience to demonstrate why IBM was uniquely qualified to deliver our current and future business agenda: “Smarter Planet”. And I’ve been privileged to bring those same lessons to bear on anniversary programs in banking, insurance, law, and travel, to help others make the most of the strategic opportunity an anniversary brings over and above the opportunity for celebration.

As Milestone Masters with Anniversary University™ we have a wonderful opportunity to provide critical thinking and proven thought processes that can help you and your team develop common perspectives through tried and tested tools. Tools that flush out a deeper understanding of who you are, how the journey of your past has shaped that, where you are going, and who will matter most to take you there. This process provides the bedrock on which anniversary planning can be built by shaping a forward-looking purpose to the celebration, a vital foundation that informs who you should reach and what success will look like, which in turns provides a framework to decide what you should do.

We look forward to welcoming you to this years’ The Anniversary Forum on April 30, 2019 NYC and sharing what we have learned through our collective experiences in ways that are powerful and pragmatic. You too can make your anniversary special for all that it will touch.

10 Key Considerations for a Successful Corporate Anniversary

By, Matt Weismantel
Senior Director, Rutgers 250

Since leading our award-winning 250th anniversary at Rutgers University, I have often been asked: what were my most important responsibilities as the celebration’s executive director? My main role, quite literally, was to become a conductor overseeing and coordinating all of the myriad parts of the anniversary celebration.

Looking back, however, I also know that all this activity grew out of what felt like a very long planning period, when many aspects of the eventual direction were not yet clear; the same was true of funding and support for the anniversary. I sometimes felt like Professor Harold Hill, in the Broadway musical “The Music Man,” who needed to distract everyone while they waited for the music, instruments and uniforms to arrive. If I could just get everyone to hum a similar tune, I thought, we could start to formulate how we would get to the actual anniversary.

In retrospect and surprisingly, this general approach truly worked, as it emphasized some key elements
of my job:

• Stay positive and forward thinking
• Keep our stakeholders and community members energized and enthused about the anniversary
• Point to and utilize our established anniversary guiding principles to make choices about how to proceed, and
• Create an organizational structure and process based on a solid plan, and work to employ a strategic and competent implementation process

Although planning the 250^th wasn’t easy (and I do have the scars to prove this), I and other experts, have been pulling together and synthesizing the details behind all the work that goes into anniversary planning.

We will be discussing some of the most important principles at The Anniversary Forum on April 30, 2019 – New York City.  Join us!  See details anniversary-university.com

If you can’t make this Anniversary Forum, check back because they happen annually.

As a Milestone Master with Anniversary University™, we are also prepared to work hand in hand as consultants to help make the most of your organization’s once-in-a-lifetime anniversary celebration.

See the Rutgers 250^th Anniversary website here https://250.rutgers.edu>.

10 Key Considerations for a Successful Corporate Anniversary

By, Michael Merk
Chief Communications Officer, designvox

As communication professionals, we have learned to handle any critical situation on a 24/7 basis. We’ve trained our teams to listen, respond and monitor the relationship with our stakeholders. We’ve prepared our executives and guided them through mission critical situations and have done the fire drill for any potential incident to protect or build corporate reputation.

We know every business problem can be traced to a communication breakdown and are masters at preventing harm. We do this in our sleep.

But when it comes to the most demanding – and rewarding – moments that are unique for a communication professional, we seem to be wholly unprepared.  We are perplexed sometimes with where to access the specific toolbox to help us navigate and take advantage of unique opportunities. Leading a corporate anniversary is one those time.

Preparing for the 100th Anniversary of Steelcase Inc., a Fortune Most Admired brand, I found myself facing such a situation. Although the opportunity to lead this campaign was the reason why I moved from marketing communications to a corporate communications leadership position, I realized quickly how little information was available to benchmark to help me prepare my organization for what was to come.

Fast forward, the event was very successful on many levels. One way is how it transformed how I view corporate communications.  For two profound reasons, I decided to share my insights, experience, and toolbox with those preparing to lead an anniversary:

1.    Such a significant anniversary is a strategic moment you cannot waste! Every company is on a journey, and this is a moment when everyone listens to you, for a short time, to tell your story and blow the candles –it’s your birthday! You want to be very thoughtful about how you use up this credit. Is the timing lining up with any major transformation project, product launch or merger? Are there any culture activation or change management initiatives requiring the activation and attention of your global or regional workforce? There is always something about to change, and this event is a gift to fix it or set your organization up for the future.
2.    It is also a particularly great opportunity for you to showcase your leadership skills. Activating the stakeholder system of a global corporation in today’s complex communications environment and leveraging such a moment to drive change, requires the participation and support of many people who will work on the anniversary over a long time. It starts by getting your leadership to understand the opportunity and align on direction. Then it is about forming a team and aligning around resources and a powerful plan to action that is embraced around the world.

The Centennial was a privilege to lead and a defining moment for the company. In my interactions with peers over the last seven years, I learned how to effectively align leadership and  cross functional  leaders set up is the single most obstacle. It was the foundation of alignment helping me to rally an organization around an idea shifting the focus form the past to the future and do what I would have never been able to do on my own.

Therefore, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share my planning tools and approach to developing such a plan as a part of supporting Anniversary University™ during The Anniversary Forum on April 30, 2019,  New York City.

My presentation and a set of discussions are targeted to understand the core tools to get your management team on one page as your foundation to activate your organization and network.

Our role as communication professionals is to propel our companies by creating stakeholder belief, trust, and advocacy. This a significant moment to experience the power of one message in a relatively short moment taken to the next level by your stakeholders, and you want to be ready to leverage that moment strategically.

Rutgers 250th Anniversary Planning Insights