There’s the joyous message that you plan to communicate.

And then there’s the message that your audience (or prospects) receive and internalize.

My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary recently, and we five kids put together an open house that included a short program.

Of the kids, I’ve orbited the farthest from my home state of North Dakota, where we held the reception for my parents. I had not seen many of my parents’ friends for twenty years. I was devastated at how frail many appeared. I still remembered them when they were in midlife. Many arrived alone, their spouses long since buried.

“I almost didn’t come this afternoon,” one woman said. “It was 10 years ago yesterday that my husband died – we had been married 42 years.”

Another elderly woman, whose rigid face looked like she’d had a stroke, lost two teenage children years ago to two different tragedies within six months, one of whom was a classmate of mine. The woman’s husband was not able to make the 50th anniversary celebration because he was wheelchair bound, in the late stages of Parkinson’s. She also said, “I wanted to see you, but I almost didn’t come.” We talked a while about her beautiful daughter Suzanne, who died in an avoidable car accident in 1980.

When planning the celebration, we five kids never considered the emotion that my parents’ 50th would evoke in their friends.

That day, there was a sense of joy for my parents’ successful partnership (and that fact that the marriage survived the rebellious teenage angst of their oldest son).

But for some, the gathering marked a milestone they would never reach, because of divorce or death.

It’s true that there is no such thing as a brute fact (or brute event, for that matter). Every message that is sent by your organization is deconstructed in transit and then socially reconstructed through the filters of your prospects. It makes communicating your message the greatest (and most wonderful) challenge facing your organization.