58 Best Practice Case Studies
Only a few short weeks ago, I sat in my office combing through over 125 entries for the 2009 Best In Class Awards. In our office we each painstakingly read and analyze every nomination in search of a short list of finalists for each award category — and 2009 was clearly the most difficult year for us, in terms of narrowing the field. Others in our office also comb through that same list and then we all converge in the conference room to begin our annual ritual — a litigation process to lobby for our favorites and create the consensus list of finalists.
The Greystone conference room is a modest room, in comparison to some of the sophisticated state-of-the art conference rooms we often find ourselves making presentations in. On a normal day, the walls of our conference room are a very ordinary white and gray. On this day, however, they were overtaken by the wallpaper of giant notepad pages covered with lists of nominees and scribbled notes. As we each took turns pointing to the notes and making the case for our own favorites we talked about the great work going on within each of these organizations and how each hospital has its own unique story to tell. The walls were covered with valuable case studies — stories told by passionate team members about the efforts they had put forth to create something they considered to be “best in class”. And, although there were some on the whole that were better than others, each case study represented a significant labor of love and tale of achievement. At the end of our session, and through a number of other meetings and hallway conversation, we finally reached consensus on the finalists for this year’s awards.
As I read through the list of finalists it occurred to me how valuable this information can be to others in our industry who struggle for information to help them move their own Web sites forward. The Best In Class voting process is not just about selecting a winner, but it is also an educational and motivational opportunity to learn from the efforts of others within our industry.
Next week we will begin counting the votes from the voting process for the 7th Annual Best In Class Awards to be awarded at the Greystone.Net and Staywell Custom Communications Client Conference on November 2 in Las Vegas, NV. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to take the time to vote — and particularly to take time to read through the ballot and learn about what the others in our industry are doing to achieve success through their web efforts. The online ballot represents almost 60 case studies written by clients who have kindly shared their stories. One of those case studies might just be the catalyst needed to develop your “best in class” nomination for 2010.