Business, Church or Organizational Histories

The traditional view of history, whether it is about an individual, a nation, a company, or an institution is to begin with a founding date and then work methodically and predictably to the present. Such an approach, while logical, loses most of us because we cannot see or imagine today's highly evolved organization from the vantage point of the organization's founding.

Change is constant, and nowhere is it more evident than in celebrating the past. Age alone is no indicator or determinant of an organization's success. In every area of endeavor, new kids on the block are leaving older, established businesses in the dust. It isn't the number of years you have been around, but rather the accomplishment those years represent.

It makes sense, then, to start by first understanding what our clients are doing to ensure their future Why not systematically work back into the inventory of experience to draw a continuous thread from yesterday to tomorrow? Today, people, organizations, and businesses are becoming more interested in their past, not only to preserve past memories and records, but to utilize history - the stories of successes, victories, and initiatives that accomplished success - as a means of creating a culture that builds winners.

More and more organizations are beginning to see their history as a means to cultivate the present and create the future. Your organization's heritage can be a powerful tool, but only if historical images, artifacts and stories are freed to speak for themselves. While records in most enterprises and organizations collect dust, they could be assembled with elements from your organization's history displayed in arrangements that range from large-scale museums open to the public, to small, highly focused exhibits in employee-only areas. Displays can be permanent or they can be designed to travel from worksite to worksite, sharing the pride and inspiration of your organization's heritage at every stop along the way. The entire project - from conceptualization and design to the creation of supporting text and collateral materials - flows effortlessly and leads your viewers to the conclusions you desire.

Our goal is to help organizations create a living organizational memory bank that can and will be used, not just shoved into a storage room. We want to help organizations evaluate historical materials within the context of issues important to their success now. We want to help them consider emerging trends and anticipate the types of information that will be valuable in the future.

We want to help you create an accessible information resource, reflecting your particular set of objectives. Publications become treasured keepsakes long after their creation. While they celebrate the past and chronicle the present, they must also herald the future. We research, write and edit histories and photographic essays. We use history by creatively integrating it into magazine articles, speeches, news releases, event promotions materials, anniversaries, annual reports, web sites and calendars.

Sadly, most of an organization's history may never be recorded. Essential heritage information is preserved only in the memories of your employees and customers. And much of this most perishable of commodities is being lost everyday. These precious stories touch not only upon dramatic events in your organization's past, but also on less obvious aspects that give color and texture to your heritage: what it was like to work for your company, the personality of memorable individuals, how your business reacted to outside events that shape and define an industry. This living history must be captured and preserved or it will be lost forever.