James Tuckerman, Editor-In-Chief, Anthill Magazine
On 25 September we staged a Gala Awards Ceremony, hosted by our Primary Sponsor PriceawaterhouseCoopers, to celebrate the Winners and Finalists of our 2008 Cool Company Awards.
The bash featured a Star Wars theme. The category winners each took home a 5′11″ surfboard (The biggest award in business!). The night was understandably ‘cool’.
But what makes a company ‘cool’? (And, perhaps more importantly from the perspective of our applicants, what makes one company ‘cooler’ than another?)
For those who’ve watched the evolution of the Cool Company Awards, you will know that it was initially created as an ‘in-house’ joke – a way for us to lampoon all the existing and various business award programs held by the media (it still makes us chuckle).
But, of course, the awards have since taken on a life of their own.
While we still maintain our responsibilities as founders and custodians of the ‘Cools’, we also acknowledge that, like all good initiatives, we are ‘slaves’ to our creation.
‘Cool’ is a subjective term. It is also a concept that is constantly mutating.
Fortunately, the Awards were created to be similarly malleable, designed to “recognise companies that are applying rule-changing behaviour to bring about positive change” (a foundation that already recognises the importance of change).
Of course, the Awards have rules. They have criteria.
Over the years, we have developed a complex application process and, of course, we employ the services of a highly talented and knowledgeable panel of judges from a diverse range of industries.
But we are still sometimes left scratching our heads while attempting to define that important word upon which the Cool Company Awards are based.
So, for our third annual Cool Company Awards, in addition to each applicant organisation’s eligibility, commercial intelligence and reference to the formal criteria, here’s what went into out thinking.
Firstly, if you haven’t already noticed, Anthill Magazine is about more than simply making profits. It is not about pure wealth creation, but rather about the process of creation itself.
It’s about the passion, the excitement, the trials, the tribulations, the highs and the lows of entrepreneurship and business development. Of course, the ultimate goal is to make a profit, but never to profit at all cost.
We believe that cool companies recognise this distinction. Applicant organisations that were able to demonstrate their own understanding of this philosophy were given a big tick by our judges.
Secondly, a while back we noticed that most business magazine award programs ask participants to answer only six to nine questions, supported by some key financials. We have always regarded this common format as shallow. (How can you truly understand an organisation by simply peering at its Profit & Loss statements?)
For the Cool Company Awards we ask participants to answer over 50 questions, requiring candid and intimate responses, as well as self-reflection. We also ask the key financial stuff, but these questions are mostly used to ensure that applicants aren’t telling us porkies.
We believe that cool companies are transparent companies. They understand their strengths and their flaws. They engage their employees and customers as informed benefactors of the organisation’s success (not just necessary cogs in the maintenance of the ‘machine’).
Finally, we looked at the ‘personality’ and ‘purpose’ of the organisation. Ultimately, it seems that the ‘personality’ of a company has as much to do with its ability to succeed as its ‘purpose’. Organisations with a compelling purpose and commanding personality were more often than not deemed ‘remarkable’ by our judges and this distinction quickly moved to the core of the judging process and the awards itself.
For example, if an application caused one of our judges to sit up, often involuntarily, and make the remark, ‘This one’s interesting!’ before providing a justification for his/her sudden awe, that application would automatically be pushed through to the next round of judging.
These companies were, by definition, ‘remarkable’ because they caused our judges to ‘remark’.
And this, it seems, became the ultimate benchmark upon which all applications were measured.
We all know that some companies inspire conversation and fuel word of mouth. We intuitively understand that these companies do so because they are somehow able to capture our attention and our imagination. Through the process of judging this year’s Cool Company Awards we began to fully appreciate this one commercial truth.
Most companies aspire to be very good. But only great companies aspire to be and achieve the description ‘remarkable’. And those companies, we believe, are simply… cool.
- To check out this year’s winners, click here.
- To see the surfboard trophy and other pics, click here.
