A model speech that gets the fundamentals right
When I told my wife I was speaking at Alan’s send-off, she asked what everyone asks: “What are you going to say about thirty years?” And the honest answer is — you can’t say thirty years. So I’m going to say one afternoon instead. March 2014, the Hendricks project was collapsing, the client was on a plane to fire us, and Alan gathered the team and said, “Nobody panics. We fix the work; the work fixes the rest.” We fixed it by morning. The client stayed nine more years. That’s who Alan is: the calmest voice in every burning room, and the man who taught this whole company that panic is optional and craft is not. Alan, we can’t say thirty years tonight. But everyone in this room is carrying an afternoon like mine. To the calmest voice we ever had — and the fixed work that followed him everywhere. Cheers, Alan.
Why it works: It demonstrates the cardinal tip — one afternoon over thirty years — and even explains the technique aloud as it uses it.
Customize it: Choose the single afternoon that best contains your retiree, and let the speech openly admit it’s standing in for the decades.