Leadership award presentation

There’s Value in the Work We Create

To honor the untimely death of one of its founders, a mid-size consulting firm in the Chicago area established a leadership award in his honor. Every year, at a black tie event sponsored by the company for employees and their families, the president of the company awarded the prize to the employee selected for the honor. For this speech, the president of the company had four objectives: to honor the memory of the founder, to articulate his vision for the company, to build a sense of community, and to make an award to a specific employee. He wanted the speech to be funny as well as poignant. He wanted something different from the previous years. This speech attempts to meet all these objectives.

Scoping Document

Event: Fourth Annual Outstanding Leadership Award Reception
Theme: Award ceremony
Place: Chicago, Illinois
Date: December 6, 2003
Audience: Company employees and their families
Length: About 15 minutes, 1,713 words

I

Good evening. It’s a privilege for me to wrap up this wonderful evening.

I want to say a few words tonight about the nature of the work we do together and how we celebrate that work.

I have the honor tonight of presenting the fourth annual _____ outstanding leadership award.

It’s entirely appropriate that we do this.

Every other day of the year we rightly put our focus on the needs of our clients. On those days, the decisions we support are theirs. They come first.

But today, it’s about us. We get to support each other.

We do so by putting our hands together to advance our goals as an organization.

We do so by putting our heads together as we reflect on our destiny.

And we do so by putting our hearts together to celebrate each other.

Today is our day to bask in the satisfaction of an excellent year. We worked hard and now we get to bask in the fruits of that work and have a little fun.

Business intelligence consulting can be a strange way to make a living. We have a strange reputation among professionals. Oh, yes, it’s true. Maybe a story will illustrate what I mean.

A surgeon, engineer, and a business intelligence consultant are arguing about which profession is the most respectable.

The surgeon says, “Look, medicine is the oldest and most respectable profession. It says in the bible that eve was created out of Adam’s rib. That’s a surgical procedure so therefore a surgeon had to be first.”

Then the engineer says, “You want to use the bible? Okay, I can do better than that. Long before Adam and Eve came along, it says in the bible that god created the heavens and the earth out of chaos. That’s engineering, my friends, so therefore an engineer had to be first.”

Then both the surgeon and the engineer looked at the business intelligence consultant.

“Who do you think created all the chaos?”

li

There are many gratifying things about business intelligence consulting, but visibility is not one of them.

Let’s face it. It’s the nature of business intelligence consulting that however brilliant we are, the credit goes to the client. That’s if we do it right. If you want the glory, you’re in the wrong business.

Here’s a truism about our business: the more credit we claim, the less often it comes.

As we all know, the business of business intelligence works best when it works in the background.

The satisfaction we derive from our work comes from seeing what is hidden, revealing the truth that the value is less at the center, more in the nodes, and most in the connection between the nodes.

It’s a quiet satisfaction that comes from unveiling what is disguised, measuring and cutting, making unruly pieces fit, and building something that our clients can occupy.

Yes, I know, what I’m describing sounds more like construction work than business intelligence.

What can I say? My first job was in construction.

I did carpentry. Framing. Roofing. It was hard, physical labor and I loved it because after I was done, I knew that what I built would be there for a good long time and that I could point and say, “I helped build that.”

I remember one particular home we were building in a new subdivision.

I was doing some finishing work on the roof of one house and watched as a young family occupied the new house next door.

The guy had a beautiful wife, and a gorgeous baby, and a bright red sports car . . . And I suddenly realized that’s what I wanted more than anything in the world.

There’s a straight line between that young man perched on that roof and the slightly older man standing before you tonight.

And that line is infinite in length, bounded only by opportunity and hard work, desire, and more than little luck.

Speaking of work, success, and sports cars, let me tell you a story about one of my friends who put himself through college by doing odd jobs in the wealthiest neighborhoods.

One Saturday morning he knocked on the door of a big, stately house, with a big wraparound porch, and a big, stately five car garage.

An important looking executive-type answered the door, and my friend said, “I’m a student paying my way through school. Is there anything you need done around the house?”

The executive gave my friend a look and said, “yeah, you can paint the porch . . . You’ll find the paint and everything you need in the garage. See me when you’re finished.” And with that the owner of the house slammed the door.

An hour later, my friend knocked on the door again. “I’m finished,” he said.

The executive looked at his watch. “Give me a break! You painted the porch in an hour?”

”Sure,” my friend said, “take a look in the garage if you don’t believe me. And, by the way, it’s not a Porsche . . . It’s a Lamborghini.”

Iii

I think there’s a way that our first job informs our expectations and determines our outlooks about work.

The most important lessons we learn about responsibility, teamwork, and ethics we learn from our first jobs.

Let me show you what I mean. With your indulgence, I’d like us try something a little unusual.

Think back to your first real job. The first job you did . . . Not because it was a chore, but because you accepted it.

I believe we are assigned chores . . . Whether we get paid for them or not . . . But we accept work.

So let me repeat the question . . . What was your first paying job?

[pause about 5 seconds; take five breaths]

Now, bear with me. We’re going to take about five minutes for the people at each table to go around and just share what their first paying jobs were.

As you share what your first job was, please add some details such as how old you were and how much you were paid.

Each table will do this go-around among themselves.

I suggest that the person at each table closest to me start . . . And then just go clockwise around the table.

Are there any questions?

[answer the questions, if any]

Are we ready to start? I’ll let you know when five minutes are up. You may begin.

[sit down, move, or do something to give the employees a physical cue to start. After a while, you may wander around the tables. At the right point, shout out a one-minute warning.]

Was that fun? From what I heard going around the tables, that might have been the best five minutes of my speech.

Before we go on, let’s hear from a few people about their first jobs.

[if you want to avoid some awkward silence, you will have clued two or three employees about this game and to be ready to break the ice with responses; ideally have the people stand and shout out their answers]

IV

I asked you to play this game for a reason.

It seems to me that we often focus so much attention on the work of our clients that we forget that our own work is important beyond the value we deliver for our clients.

There’s value in the work that we create, both individually and as a team.

So it is appropriate for us to celebrate our accomplishments as an organization and appreciate each other for the many successes that have come our way this year.

One way we do that is to honor the individual contributor who exemplifies the outstanding leadership that proactive worldwide clients have come to expect.

This is the fourth time we have bestowed the ____ Outstanding Leadership Award. It is never easy to select one person for this honor and this year was no exception.

How do you . . . How do we . . . Evaluate outstanding leadership?

We can talk about the standards of leadership that we apply in our evaluation process: collaboration, culture and envisioning, continuous improvement, customer and market focus, all driven by business results.

And while scores and ratios are important—for after all, we are a numbers-driven organization—they don’t tell the whole story.

For the ultimate formula to reflect those things we value, we turn to the inspiration of the individual for whom this award is named.

As we do, we acknowledge that the most important things in this world cannot be graphed or measured.

____ left this world entirely too soon, and we are all the poorer for it. But the model he set for us lives on, sustaining proactive worldwide, and never more conspicuously than at this moment.

It is fitting that the recipient of this year’s award received some of her training from ____. Many of his outstanding attributes are likewise reflected by the person we are honoring tonight.

Like ___, she has never met a deadline she could not vanquish, difficult clients she could not satisfy, and complexity that would not yield to her intelligence and drive.

She believes in the work of proactive worldwide. She spares nothing of herself in delivering everything for the clients who trust us.

She competes forcefully and emulates the best qualities that sets proactive worldwide apart from the competition.

In short, we honor her with nothing but what she has earned.

Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in congratulating the fourth annual recipient of the ____ Outstanding Leadership Award. I am very happy to present ____.

[____comes up and you present her with the plaque. If she gets to say a few words, it would go well here.]

V

Before we bring this memorable evening to a close, I again want to thank each of you for coming tonight and for all your many contributions over the year past.

I hope you'll hold onto the encouraging things we have shared tonight. As you engage in dialogue and discussion over the next several weeks, think about how much more we could do.

Our opportunities to achieve extraordinary results are limited only by our imaginations.

So let’s rest for a little while and savor our accomplishments. But I know in my bones we have even greater mountains to climb. And together we will climb those mountains and reach for those heights.

Together.

Thanks for being here. Good night.

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