In much of my leadership career - and maybe my life in general - no small part of me hoped and dreamed about achieving formal recognition for the quality of my work. And along the way I did, in fact, achieve awards in my chosen profession. In that regard, I'm probably not that different from many of you. In reality, this desire for recognition is probably a function of our upbringing and our educational system. We were all graded. We all knew where we stood in our class academically or athletically. If we excelled we were given ribbons, medals, and even money in the form of bursaries and scholarships. And that recognition felt good.
As a society we continue to translate this award function into our leadership and business environments in the form of our nation's or province's top employers, most ethical companies, top leaders in [pick the profession] and almost any other category that you can think up. These awards are often pursued with incredible vigor by individual leaders and companies. I've even since seen individual leaders suggest, cajole, and coerce their staff or colleagues for that coveted nomination. If and once achieved, those accolades are then heavily marketed as a competitive advantage or even simply as a point of pride.
And because we are busy people, we place heavy emphasis on the validity and credibility of these ratings or rewards and make decisions as potential customers or staff of these organizations. If such and such experts say he/she/they are best in class, that should be good enough for me should it not?
Unfortunately this pursuit of awards and accolades comes with its own problems and opportunity to twist our personal behavior and organizational culture. Based on personal experience, I will suggest that in far too many cases, the emperor is, in fact, wearing no clothes.
I would encourage all of us to dig a bit deeper into what goes into these "achievements". I for one have had the misfortune of peeking behind the proverbial curtain and have come away more than a bit disillusioned with what I have discovered. In personal scenarios impacting me, I have discovered that competitors in my profession were not necessarily identified as best in class for their professional skill but rather on the quality of their website! Form over substance! In some cases, my so-called competitors were no longer in practice!
That's one small example, but there are even more egregious examples. This goes as far as something as prestigious as the Order of Canada. Aside from those who have been officially stripped of such recognition (e.g., Alan Eagleson, Steven Fonyo), I have my own impressions of others who have been so honored. In at least one case I joked - facetiously at the time - that I'd have to be rescinding my Canadian citizenship because of who had obtained this honour.
These examples of personal leadership failures also operate at an organizational level and we simply cannot place blind faith in the view of experts and awards achieved. We have seen far too many examples of spectacular corporate failures that followed on years of being media and business darlings. Example? In 2001, an American company achieved $90 billion in market capitalization making it the seventh largest company in the USA at the time. For six years running, this same company was ranked by Fortune magazine as America's most innovative company.
In December 3, 2001, this same company - Enron - filed for bankruptcy.
Of the many reasons cited for Enron's demise, two stand out for me within the context of my blog topic: (1) stakeholders/watchdogs overlooked bad behavior as long as they were profiting, and (2) looking to others believing that those others had done their due diligence. Clearly, these reasons were abetted by willful fraud, but for me, the long story short is don't believe everything you see or read on the internet, in newspaper clippings or promotional materials.
Unfortunately, too many award programs are based on an application process alone. There is limited to no on-site visitation or verification in play. There is no deeper dive into evaluating the veracity of claims made. In some cases, an organization or leader can present documentation on the existence of a policy or program but it is not required to provide information as to the quality of its implementation or effectiveness. In addition, staff, customers, and other key stakeholders may, or may not, be part of validating the leader's or organization's claims. The application might, in fact, only be as good as the paper it is written on.
And the motivations of the applicant to win are enormous - prestige, business opportunity, ego. Marketing acumen and writing skill then become more important to success then fact. Form runs the risk of trumping substance. Many of us are already familiar with this reality in other circumstances, most notably the recruitment and selection process. How many times have you seen others - or yourself - won over by a glorious CV and a charismatic presence in an interview, only to have buyers remorse later? Presentation and pizzazz can only cover up so many sins for so long.
As I penned this blog I was reminded of an exchange between two characters from the 1995 movie "The American President", which for me encapsulates the challenges we face in sorting the wheat from the chaff and seeing beyond formal awards and what might actually lie beneath:
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