Sometimes the best lessons we learn throughout our careers are those which we draw from parallel situations.
Having said that, I’d like to tell you a little story. Stay with me, because I promise this all comes full circle in the end.
Several years ago as I was planning a city-wide event to honor World War II veterans, the Mayor at the time shared with me a concept which has been rumbling around in my head ever since.
Of course, there’s a lot of room for it to rumble…so take that for what it’s worth…
The concept is simple, but significantly changed the planning for the event and made a tremendous impact on its success
This event was being held because the company I work for opened right after WWII. To commemorate the 60th anniversary the owner of our parent company asked me to throw a party for the city as a celebration.
It didn’t take but a few seconds for me to start planning a VJ (Victory in Japan) Day celebration to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ending of the war and to honor those of the “greatest generation” that served our country.
As I began planning…in one of my rare moments of brilliance I asked the Mayor to be on an informal committee I was putting together. The Mayor was a retired high school history teacher so I knew he would be not only a great advocate for the event, but would also have a great historical perspective of how VJ day was originally celebrated back in 1945.
The Mayor not only contributed his historical perspective but also suggested and recruited some WWII veterans and local people who experienced VJ Day here in town.
Those “eye witnesses” helped shape the three-day event that we put together which included many of the same elements of the original celebration.
However, the Mayor shaped the event in other ways as well. You see, in our first meeting he said to me, “Gary, you need to go where the people are”.
I thought, “Ok, great but where are they?”
It just so happened that our celebration coincided with several other events of which the Mayor suggested we take advantage.
For instance, there was already an event scheduled for downtown on the opening night of out celebration, so we planned a “dancing in the streets” event (just like it happened in 1945) complete with a swing band playing period music which took advantage of the “pre-existing crowd”
