This information needs to be shared on an ongoing basis with the people we bring in. They need to know about how we value creativity, our ability to shift focus from one business to another. They need to see the consistent themes. They need to know what other people did before them, and why they did it. Still, devoting corporate resources to historic preservation can be a tough sell to business executives who think vision is what they imagine they can see down the road.
Performance is all that's valued.
But Philip Cantelon, president and CEO of History Associates Inc., a Rockville, Md., consultancy, has a different spin on the old line. Once, while preparing a presentation on business history, Cantelon found that his secretary had made a typo transcribing the quote. Cantelon began to correct the error but then stopped. It's only one letter different, but it makes a world of difference in meaning. If you have a future.