What Anniversaries Are Really Telling Us — Julie Roehm
Milestones have a way of doing something we rarely give them credit for. They do not just mark time; they force a pause, a moment to ask whether the principles that started the journey are still the ones guiding it now. This year, that question is being asked at two very different scales at once. America turns 250. Convergint turns 25 (As CMO of Convergint, this is a big milestone for us). And in both cases, the anniversary is less about the number and more about what it reveals.
A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute looks at this exact idea through the lens of American competitiveness. The throughline is not that the country found one formula and stuck with it. It is that the founding principles, freedom, opportunity, human rights, have stayed constant, even as the way the country has expressed and defended them has changed dramatically across two and a half centuries.
That distinction matters. What has endured is the essence. What has changed, again and again, is the how. And that is not a flaw in the story, it is the story. A world that is constantly shifting, physically, economically, technologically, demands that the expression of a principle evolve even while the principle itself holds still.
Convergint’s 25th year sits inside that same truth, just on a different timeline. The values that shaped the company at the start, being the best service provider for its customers, leading with integrity, delivering real results, are still exactly what the company strives for today. What has changed is the how: the tools, the markets, the ways those values show up day to day. That is not drift. That is what an enduring culture actually looks like in practice, staying true to the essence while allowing the form to keep pace with the times.
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That is the idea at the center of this piece, using two very different milestones, one national, one organizational, to look at what actually makes a set of values last.
In either case, enduring principles are a reason to celebrate.
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