If your company, your department, your team etc. have received high honor awards - congratulations!
In my travels I get exposed to various areas of the country and various shops, restaurants, and businesses. What is intriguing to me is when I visit a restaurant that has the following statement blazing by their front door: "Voted the areas best dining experience in 1998!" Wow 1998, what has happened since then? This is an outdated reward. The pride of accomplishment should remain for sure, but posting such an old achievement without any subsequent awards is high risk.
Think about this hypothetical statement: "Voted one of Fortunes Best Companies to Work For in 2000 and 2001." Are you giving yourself marketability or stink-ability? If I was a job seeker and saw this, I would for sure want to know what happened and if I happen to be a customer, I am not that turned on by an outdated fact.
This is mainly risky for companies in teams that are still in the game. It is not so much a risk for old teams, as a matter of fact, if a team has a legacy, help it live on. For example, the legacy of the Brooklyn Dodgers lives on and is still celebrated by the Brooklyn faithful. When people think of the Brooklyn Dodgers, they get excited. They are a legacy, not a current team.
Last year the Boston Celtics did not have patches on their jersey's that exposed their victories in the 80's (they were horrible last year - nobody would have cared about their past accomplishments in relation to the present reality). What did they do? They got things right with the right people and dominated this year all the way to the championship and now they can fly proud factual bravado.
My advice: If your award reception stopped 5 years ago or more, take them down (especially from customer view). Inform your people that you are taking them down and creating space for new ones. A simple message like this to your people can be a powerful ingredient in replacing your excellence back to days of old. Obviously you have to be doing a substantial overhaul of much else to get back on the plaque.
This is the last thing you want someone to say when they leave your business: "Yeah I can see why they have been 10 years since winning another one of those 'best of' awards. I'd rather the customer never know my outdated rewards.
We have to be excellent today, not just yesterday.
This post has zero intention of diminishing anyone's accomplishments.
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