| | By Mick James
I’ve just seen the
shortlist for this year’s
MCA awards. It’s quite a
long list, so details are
scanty, but there’s a
very tantalising group of
clients there and I look
forward to finding out
more in April when the
winners are announced.
On the other side,
there’s a very familiar
ring to many of the
consultancies on view: a
few are new to me, but
many of the firms, both
large and small, crop up
again and again in these
contexts.
This isn’t just a
matter of an unremitting
commitment to excellence,
although, obviously,
these projects wouldn’t
have got this far unless
they were very good
indeed. But these
consultancies did
something even more
special: they got their
act together and entered
their project for an
award. And they do it
year in and year out.
Last year I wrote an
article urging
consultants to capture
and enter their projects
for any and every award
possible in the noble
cause of advancing human
knowledge. This year I
have a simpler message:
enter awards and make
money.
Coincidentally this
week, a company called
Awards Intelligence, a
consultancy which helps
its clients win the
things (yes, there really
are no limits to our
industry), forwarded me
some fascinating research
from the British Quality
Foundation.
Companies which won
awards saw their sales
increase by more than a
third. Smaller companies’
operating income went up
by 63%, while larger
awards winners gained a
48% boost. Companies
which won awards saw
their financial
performance improve
within a year of winning
the award but were still | |
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| | ahead of their peers a
year later. True, the
effect might not be
entirely causal: an
award-winning performance
might coincide with a
company getting its act
together in all sorts of
other ways but still:
look at all that money.
Now, it’s easy to be
cynical about winning
awards. Anyone who’s sat
in an awards ceremony,
watching some clapped out
comedian struggle (or
sometimes not) to
disguise their ignorance
of and contempt for the
professionals their
addressing, while serving
up a routine of warmed-up
leftovers, will know what
I mean. (There are
exceptions: the
commitment and
professionalism of Clive
Anderson and Gyles
Brandreth spring to mind.
Are there awards for
awards hosts?). And we
all know people who seem
to do very little else in
life but plot their next
award.
I should add here that
I fall into the category
of those who’ve either
never been bothered to
enter awards or have had
to be bullied into it by
a marketing person. If
you’re incredibly lazy or
don’t handle rejection
well, it’s not a bad
strategy. But I’ve seen
the effects of this at
the other end as a judge.
Awards entries can be
incredibly patchy,
although organisers will
hardly ever admit to this
(“incredible range of
entries…so hard to choose
a winner”).
First, there’s the
volume. In an ideal world
the event organisers
spend some time winnowing
down the entries to a
long-list and then a
short-list, at which
point the judges are
unleashed on the good
stuff. On other
occasions, you find
yourself looking at two
entries, both of which
are of such low quality
almost anyone could
outclassed them.
Omissions from the | |
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| | long-list are another
interesting point. Surely
any big consultancy firm
must have at least one
project out of the
thousands they do each
year that they feel proud
enough to enter for an
award? How does a small
firm even survive if
everything they do is
mediocre?
In other cases, you
look at an entry and
wonder if your clients
get this sort of quality?
Again, although everyone
always says how difficult
it was to pick a winner,
the gap between the best
and the worst entries is
often embarrassingly
large. I wonder how many
consultancies each year
miss out on awards they
could have walked—if only
they had entered.
Meanwhile, other firms
are running out of
shelf-space for all the
abstract lumps of glass
they collect each year.
If you’re not entering
awards each year, you
have to ask yourselves
why not, but not so much
“why don’t we” as “why
can’t we?” If you choose
not to enter awards, or
you’re not a member of a
relevant body, for
whatever reason, so be
it. But if there are
significant obstacles in
your organisation to
getting an entry
together, then I think
that raises all sorts of
questions that are worth
asking. How is our client
feedback? How motivated
are our partners? Are our
consultants finding the
work rewarding? What did
happen to that KM
project…and so on?
It’s not too late to
make New Year’s
resolutions. I’m planning
to make this the year I
attend an awards ceremony
in the original trousers
that came with the dinner
jacket. Why not make this
the year you’re on the
podium when I do?
See the MCA short
list here. | |
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