I remember one of my earliest business conversations involved the kitchen table, my father, and a company called International Business Machines. I was about eleven. Dad was telling us that his company had gotten a contract to make a part for IBM, but his team didn’t know anything about the product the parts were going to be used in. Even at eleven that didn’t make much sense. “How,” I asked, “can you tell if what you’re making is right?” “We can’t,” my Dad replied. “We just wait for them to tell us how close we are to getting it right and then we do it over again.”

This is the partnership question. Leaders who want to deepen their relationships with their customers ask this question often. In fact, it quickly becomes one of their favorite questions to ask. Understanding your customer’s view of their future helps you get a glimpse of your future. Asking this question will get you lots of data. First, there’s the basic information. Information that will give you insights into how you’ll have to innovate or modify your processes and products to meet your customer’s need in the future. Customers who can’t articulate their view of the future may not be a long-term asset for you.

Next, you can judge the excitement level. The future is a funny thing. People and organizations that are excited about the future generally have a promising future. People who are pessimistic about the future often face bleaker times. Who would you rather have on your client list?

When you combine the quality of the information you get from the customer with the enthusiasm level generated by giving the answer, you’ve got impressive insight into your own crystal ball. Targeting those customers who think and plan for the future and are excited about the possibilities the future hold for them seems like a great way to plan your future success. These are the customers you’d like to partner with. But you’ll never know who they are unless you ask the question.

Audience: employees and their families at a sports event
Message: Please accept these tickets as a token of appreciation for you.
Tone: informal, light
Timing: 2-3 minutes

What would work be without friendships with our coworkers? And what better way to build friendships than getting to know each other away from the phones and the paperwork? In a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere where there’s time to chat informally about outside interests? Please take advantage of tonight’s opportunity to do just that.

Before the game gets under way, I also want to thank you for bringing your families and for letting us get to know them a little better.

Families, a few words to you: Your husband or wife,… or parent,… or whichever family member works here,… represents the most important reason our company exists. Certainly, we operate to make a profit. But in earning a profit, we never want to lose sight of the specific individuals that make that profit meaningful. People who make work “play” in a sense. People who help us grow as a company and as individuals.

And, families, we want you to know that we see you as an important part of our extended employee family. You see, you make it easy for your loved ones to contribute on the job. By your interest in their careers—your listening, your advice, your questions. By your patience with the sometimes long hours and schedule juggling. By your understanding about short deadlines or crises. By your concern and help as they learn and practice new skills.

In all these ways, you offer support. These attitudes say to them and to us as an organization that you care.
Your emotional support—the kind you’ve demonstrated by coming to events like this tonight—make them happier, more productive people on the job. That makes you a special person to us, too. I’m sure they, as we do, appreciate your active participation in their work lives.

So thank you.

That said, let’s play ball.

Audience: employees and families at company picnic
Message: We appreciate you and your family’s support of the organization.
Tone: informal
Timing: 2 minutes

Mothers and dads, tots and teens, welcome to our annual picnic. Once a year we parade the ants out of town, order warm weather and blue skies, and nominate a few “undiscovered” coaches to organize games, and then we’re under way with the picnic.

As you arrived on the scene, I hope you found something of interest—the volleyball nets, the shuffleboard courts, the swing sets, or at least the food. Of food, there’s an abundance prepared by the (name) caterers, who’ve done such an excellent job for us over the years.

Other than these few plans, the day is up to you. You’ll find sign-up sheets and our volunteer “coaches” and organizers in various locations to help you show off your athletic prowess and assess the competition. Parents, we ask that you particularly make your children feel welcome and help them discover activities designed for them.
We want you families to know how much we appreciate the mom or dad, brother or sister, aunt or uncle who works here with us every day. We play in the same way we work—with honor,… sportsmanship,… a team spirit,… appreciation of each other,… and lots of good fun thrown in.

We also encourage each of you as employees to get to know those around you. Maybe you recognize names but not faces. And as you introduce yourselves, you’ll discover the person who phones you every week with that sales figure you need. And to those employees you work with on a daily basis, take your family in tow and use this opportunity to let them see how cute Susie’s French braid is and how warm and fun-loving that spouse can be. Here’s your chance to do some serious bragging about those you love.

Mix and mingle and make the day a good one. We’re pleased you and your family came to party and picnic.

Focus on employees as individuals; make them feel the event is for them individually, not for the company’s well-being.

Overview the program or details of the event.

Encourage employees to get to know each other and the families of their colleagues.

Express warm wishes for the season or event.

Welcome stockholders by making them feel a part of the company.

Present a state-of-the-company summary, including your financial position, new product or service information, marketing issues, ongoing research, pending legislation that will affect you, pending litigation, management and staffing changes. Also include comments on the negatives, particularly responding to press coverage and downturns in the economy.

Overview your plans for the future.

Invite the stockholders to ask questions or offer suggestions about the organization’s operations.

Audience: employees of the company
Message: We are achieving, thanks to you.
Tone: informal
Timing: 2-3 minutes

Today, we have just shipped the one-millionth (product) out our front door. It’s great to be CEO of an organization that cares about quality and productivity. We’ve set in place policies that produce quality, and you’ve contributed the craftsmanship and the commitment to productivity.

You’ve heard it said that the optimist sees a glass that is half full. The pessimist sees one that is half empty. Comedian George Carlin says that he sees a glass that’s twice the size it needs to be. Your own attitudes are a reflection of how you see life in general and how you see your job specifically. I think we have a lot of George Carlin clones around here. You look at designs or procedures that are inappropriate for the tasks and then make the necessary corrections. That’s what you’ve become known for—an eye for detail, improvement, and innovation.

Steel magnate Charles Schwab concluded, “All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.” Lee Iacocca has agreed:

“The kind of people I look for to fill top management spots,” he says, “are the eager beavers, the mavericks. These are the guys who try to do more than they’re expected to do—they always reach.”

We here at (corporation) have both kinds of employees—the support people who follow well and who daily do more than is expected of them and the “eager beaver” executives who lead the way in new directions.

You here at this (city) plant have become team players in the best sense. That is, your commitment to pull together has helped you avoid the vast wasteland of mediocrity. Instead, your team spirit has molded you into “cream of the crop” employees, in a group that can act as a role model to others in our industry we’ve left far behind.

Through training, communication, cooperation, and commitment, you’ve turned an assembly line into a customer’s line—a line of workers who think like customers think and who work like customers would work if they were building their own products. You demonstrate an understanding of quality, waste-reduction, and increased efficiency. In short, you understand profit and you are the real door to our future.

I’m proud to stand before you on this historic day for our company. Keep up the good work. Together we are going to dominate the next decade.

Audience: employees of the company
Message: We appreciate your contribution to our company’s distinction in this area.
Tone: formal
Timing: 2 minutes

“Give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over…” wrote Luke, the Apostle. We have given and now we are receiving. I’m pleased to announce to you that our company has just received the (title) award. Not only are we thrilled by this recognition of our contribution to the field of art, we are thrilled by the fact that we could donate the money, time, and talent of so many of you to this worthwhile project.

Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian patriot, has aptly put it:

The moral law of the universe is progress. Every generation that passes idly over the earth without adding to that progress remains uninscribed upon the register of humanity, and the succeeding generation tramples its ashes as dust.

You can be proud as employees to have added to that progress in our community’s support of the arts, to have contributed to that record of civilization that will outlive us. Artists look at things through their eyes. They make those things and ideas visible to us that we might not otherwise learn about ourselves and our world. Our sensitivities and our revelations grow with each generation. We as a company have contributed to that knowledge; you as individuals have contributed to that knowledge.

By giving, we have received recognition as a company with foresight and a commitment to the local community.
And that brings me to my closing thought: A company is nothing more than its employees. Our honor is yours individually. Thank you for your talent, and we encourage your continued support of the arts as you attend performances at (theater) and tour the (name) Art Museum.

Lead the audience to appreciate the achievement with a history and details of the distinction and with names of other individuals or corporations who have excelled in this way.

Mention the effort, time, or expertise this distinction required.

Express pride in the individual or the company’s contributions.

For Employee’s Distinction
Create a desire in the audience to emulate the honored employee’s achievement.

For Company’s Distinction
Share the credit with employees who have contributed to the company’s achievement or distinction of honor.