There's a Reason the Best Are the Best
When companies excel, it paves the road to excellence for all of us.
One of our favorite business-recognition programs every year is our Best of Business Kansas City awards, presented in full for a 24th year and starting—coincidentally enough—on Page 24 of this issue of Ingram’s.
In every other case—40 Under Forty, Corporate Report 100, Top 100 Private Companies and more—we meticulously research candidates for honors that we believe stand for something in this community. Only in this one instance do we turn the reins over to our readers.
There are a few downsides to giving up that kind of control over the process. Occasionally, we have to ferret out an attempt to stuff the ballot box, even though we only count those ballots that are demonstrably extracted from pages of prior issues. Hint to the overly ambitious: save your toner, folks—mass-produced copies won’t work. And don’t try to seduce us with a bulk order of magazines in the spring, either, or mount signature-forging campaigns on those forms.
The other downside, of course, is that you run the risk of alienating long-time partners—and in some cases, advertisers—who might feel like their relationships with the magazine should have counted for a little something extra in the vote-tabulation process.
Clearly, then, it would be easier to take this back in-house and devise a metric that determines winners—and even easier to say “The heck with it: We won’t hurt anyone’s feelings, so we’ll just scrap it”—which, regrettably, has been the case at times when certain categories were tainted with unethical submissions.
But we’re not about to do that, and here’s why: Our readers represent something special in this community, and for this community. A vastly disproportionate number of them are power players, decision-makers, civic leaders and business executives whose judgment on many other topics we deeply respect.
We interview them all year long to gather their thoughts on public policy, banking practices, trends in business law, developments in engineering, architecture, commercial property development, insurance and health-care trends and much more.
Simply put, this is a highly educated, discerning bunch. We think it matters what they think. So that’s why they get a seat at the table each year for the Best of Business Kansas City Awards to pick their favorites.
When a crowd like this says you’re the best restaurant in town, you can pretty much take that to the bank. We think that’s important, because our marketing research efforts tell us that Ingram’s readers dine out, on average, nine times a week. In some cases, you wonder if they’re putting any mileage at all on their dishwashers at home.
Those people are already voting with their wallets when it comes to making judgments on where to dine. It’s not much of a leap from there to ask them to codify that with a ballot.
The outcomes, though, matter as much to the winners as the process does to the voters. We’ve seen companies in town that have set up what amount to small shrines with the plaques we present to our Best of Business winners every year. We’ve heard the radio and TV commercials where companies are selling their products or services with an extra kick, noting their Best of Business accolades. We know this is a big deal for many honorees.
To take all of this one step farther, we think it matters because in a vibrant economy, it’s important that everybody knows who’s setting the highest standards. Without those markers, there’s no target to shoot at for building better mousetraps, serving a better slab of ribs or meeting the needs of a client, a patient, a customer.
Simply put, competition makes all of us better. It compels us to find ways to do things more effectively. More efficiently. Faster. At lower cost. All of which adds fuel to the economic engine.
Here’s a challenge for those who want to know what excellence looks like: Find a competitor on this year’s list of winners—it shouldn’t be hard; voters choose from among dozens of business interests that go well beyond places to take a corporate client for dinner.
Then go eat there, buy flowers there, shop there or rent a hotel room there. Find out what it means to be the best, then go out and devise a strategy for beating it.
That’s how we all get ahead. If you do it, we’re certain that Ingram’s readers will recognize your efforts. And if so, maybe we’ll see you in the Silver Anniversary edition of Best of Business Kansas City next year.
Joe Sweeney
Editor-In-Chief & Publisher
JSweeney@IngramsOnLine.com