July 3, 2009, marks our 25th Anniversary as a company. Twenty-five years ago I went down to the Washtenaw County Building in Ann Arbor and filed a d.b.a. of Donald Hart called Hart Productions. At that time I had no idea of the adventure and trial I was inviting my wife and family into. Thank goodness!
Over the past 25 years, we’ve changed our name from Hart Productions to Hart Media Group to MOVE Communications, but all along the way we’ve endeavored to help our clients move ahead by moving hearts and minds. Our core ability is to distill the essence of your story and express it through the right idea. Within the communication arts we work as strategic artists to glorify God, provide for our families and enrich the human community. We hope we’ve helped to shape a better world by connecting people to people, and people to brands.
And to some of those people, our customers and colleagues…
In business, nothing happens without a customer. In our case, our customers are primarily other businesses. It is because of your initiative, skill and determination to deal with all the ambiguities of this thing called business that products and services are brought to market. We honor you for what you do for communities in Michigan and around the world. And we thank you for commissioning us to do some of the work that has helped you succeed. It has been a privilege working together.
Equally true, without people a business would not go and grow. And here we want to highlight our great debt to employees and supplier partners. Through the years, your skills of insight and creativity, practical know-how and human sensitivity have seen us through the inevitable ups and downs, fires and floods of business life. Thank you for coping with our quirks and mistakes, for filling in the many gaps and lifting us on your shoulders.
Robert Greenleaf, in his work Servant Leadership, points to Jesus as the consummate servant leader—because his life and mission epitomized love of God and love of neighbor. It is this model that we’ve endeavored to emulate and hope to grow in going forward. Greenleaf expresses the test of servant leadership this way and invites businesses to take the test:
“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous and more likely themselves to become servants? And what is the effect on the least privileged in society; will they benefit, or at least will they not be further deprived?”
We hope we’re passing the test.
As I look back over the years, I also “know with my knower” that it was God and his great goodness that has sustained us as we follow him. We have at times been stretched to the absolute limits of what our family could sustain, but always, always, there has been a divine mercy to carry us through.
May all of us move ahead with that confidence—knowing that the best is yet to come.