Gold Quill Awards: Judging
Train for the Gold Quill Awards Early and Often
by Kristen Sukalac, Prospero Communications, France
Writing a concise and compelling Gold Quill Awards work plan requires strategic thinking and discipline. By using the Gold Quill Awards methodology every day, you can better align your activities with your organization’s critical success factors and lay the foundation for easily completing Gold Quill Award entries and your accreditation portfolio. Since practice makes perfect, this should also increase your chances of success.
What is the business need that you are trying to meet? If you are producing a publication, ask yourself why. Too many Gold Quill Award entries are focused on process rather than looking at the desired business impact.
Who are your intended audiences? The characteristics of your target audiences influence the key messages and communication channels that will be most effective.
Define what you would like to accomplish and translate it into measurable objectives. You need to have a sense of your general goals, but you also need ways to know when you have been successful. What behaviour or attitude have you changed? How have you measured that change? There are many creative ways to evaluate success that do not require huge research budgets.
Succinctly describe what you intend to do and why it is the most appropriate choice. Now that you know who you want to influence and what you want to achieve, feasible options should become apparent. A dose of creativity could help move your solution from good to excellent.
Outline likely challenges. Do some scenario planning to predict likely obstacles and ways to get around them. Projecting yourself into the future in this way may also help you identify new opportunities that could increase the impact of your planned activities.
At the end of your project, review the implementation, your results and challenges that emerged en route. Analyze what you could have done differently to be more successful. Ask peers (either colleagues or other IABC members) for their perspectives. Use that insight to improve your next endeavour.
Adopting the Gold Quill Awards attitude will help you achieve professional excellence and build your reputation as a top-level communicator. Earning accreditation and winning Gold Quill Awards is then likely to become second nature.
Start preparing your Gold Quill Award entry today! The early-bird deadline is 27 January 2010, and the final deadline is 3 February 2010.
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