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I won a lot of awards when I was in radio back in the nineties. For four straight years, I was voted number one in some category in the state of Illinois. Once it was for "best editorial" (I know, it's shocking that I would have an opinion). Another was for "best commercial series" and two others were for different talk shows I did.
The plaques are buried in my office closet somewhere down beneath other things that mean something to me, but don't need to be in my line of sight everyday.
The awards were nice at the time. Receiving the first one was especially surreal...kind of a warpy, dreamy, weird moment...but a good warpy, dreamy, weird.
Awards. I'm not sure what to make of them. If they're given for true achievement based on meaningful objective criteria, they can be exciting. They can be a vindication of sorts when you believe you're good and someone confirms it.
But I think most awards are pretty meaningless. This can be especially true with business awards that associations and municipalities sometimes hand out. Businesses are seldom what the awards say they are.
A reader of this newsletter sent me such an example recently. I will name no names for obvious reasons.
A company in a rather large American market was named the "city's fastest growing business" and received awards and laurels to match. It was held up as a shining example of how to do things right. Hmm...you be the judge:
- The email announcing this recognition as the city's fastest growing company was sent to employees during their annual evaluations in which they were told that money was tight and that no one would be getting bonuses. Many were told that "the owner spent the bonus money on something else already."
- More seasoned employees reported that because of the owner's creative financing practices-money juggled from bank to bank to bank-that more than once their paychecks had bounced. Next morning company reps would be there to pay them in cash.
- There was a policy recently established at the company and emailed to all employees that anyone resigning from their position, regardless of how much notice they were giving, would have their last day of employment be the day they turned in their resignation and they would be immediately escorted from the building by two security members. So to avoid the humiliation, most people who quit since that policy was enacted-and the number seems to be growing-simply didn't show up for work and emailed their resignation. (One woman got sick and had to go the doctor one day a couple of weeks ago. The rumor mill got cranking and everyone assumed she'd quit despite the fact that she had sent appropriate emails to the right people letting them know she would be gone and why. The next day, when she came back to work, she saw that her desk area had been picked clean by the "office vultures" already.)
- Recently, two employees were terminated out of the blue. No one talked to them. No one explained. Security simply showed up at their desks and escorted them out. Their direct supervisor wasn't even given a heads-up-even she doesn't know why they were fired!
Awards in business can mean so little. Those that bestow them generally reward dollars not culture and that kind of success can be fudged. They tend to also reward those that brag the loudest and those that are most deeply involved in the organization that is doing the awarding. Awards are great marketing tools, but they seldom reveal reality.
Except radio awards, of course.
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