There’s something that all my award winners have in common.

Four somethings, actually. I sent out a video BRAINSNACKS a few months ago describing what I’ve identified as the four ingredients common to winning award submissions I’ve developed and contributed to –

• Alignment: Does your corporate initiative align with your corporate strategies? Pretty straightforward. Another part of alignment is how tuned into, and involved with, your initiative the C-Suite and/or other senior stakeholders are. Their support is a key indication that what you’ve been up to matters and is making an impact.

• Intelligence: This has two meanings. The first is what kind of sleuthing you did to figure out what the problem was (no problem? no need for a solution) and then how you leveraged the smartest stuff out there to make your solution shine.

• Innovation: It’s hard to win an award for doing things the same way as everyone else. Not impossible, but truly there should be a spark of newness and “wow!” that makes judges sit up and take notice.

• Impact: Winning awards is all about measurable outcomes. You have to prove that you made a difference. That’s why individuals, teams and companies deserve to be recognized for their efforts – because they irrefutably had the intended effect.

To learn more about how you can use these four fundamentals to determine the award-readiness of your best initiatives, contact me about a tailored assessment, my latest award resource.

Thanks and go be awesome!