So your organisation has just found out that it has ‘won’ an award, put forward by an external party. Before I offer my congratulations…

Why did you get this award?

• Did you go searching for it; OR
• Did it come to you?

Why do ‘they’ want to give out an award?

• As much for their benefit as yours (e.g. to drive your and others behaviours); OR
• For the furtherance of an honourable cause?

Did you WANT the award and why?

• “Too right – are you mad?!”; OR
• “We just wanted to get some feedback as to what we are doing and see if we could learn anything from articulating this to others.”

What did you tell them in order to get the award?

• A beautifully crafted and selective ‘case study’; OR
• The warts and all reality

How did you tell them?

• A slick ‘look at me’ boast; OR
• A humble ‘matter of fact, if you are interested’ way

Who ‘made the pitch’/ ‘did the explaining’? (as appropriate from your answers above!)

• The commander-and-controller; OR
• A representative team of the doers?

How do you feel about the award?

• “Yes, get in. This will make me us look really good!!”; OR
• “That’s great…but let’s not let it distract us from what we are actually trying to achieve. We’ll move on now to the next challenge!”

And the most important question (I should be able to predict the answer from your responses to the above):

What is the award going to do for you?

• Make you crow, and sit back on your laurels praising your own brilliance because “wow, we clearly know how to do stuff round here!”; OR
• A renewed drive to keep on towards your true purpose, taking on board the learning gained from the experience…but clear that the award changes nothing in this regard.

And finally:

What are you going to do with the physical trophy that you likely received?

• Put it on display for all your customers to see, so that they are being force-fed how great you are despite what service their unit of demand is actually receiving; OR
• Allow the doers to decide where they’d like to keep it…which will probably be in something like the tea room along with other mementos that embody their team work…but you don’t ‘rub’ your customers’ face in it because it has no bearing on helping them with their specific units of demand.

Your answers to the above will reflect which management environment you work within.