Celebrating progressive management with the first Zero Distance Excellence Awards
The Business Ecosystem Alliance, directed by Thinkers50 cofounder Stuart Crainer, has partnered with the Haier Model Institute and Gary Hamel’s MLab to launch a new series of awards which celebrate progressive organizations worldwide. Over 70 organizations applied for the inaugural Zero Distance Excellence (ZeroDX) Awards announced in Qingdao, China on September 20.
‘The awards are proof that progressive, imaginative management is alive and well—often in unlikely places,’ observes Stuart Crainer. ‘From Unity Group in Poland to Japan’s Sonicgarden, there is no industry, sector or geography in which the performance of individuals and organizations cannot be improved by innovative management.’
The starting point for the awards is the concept of Zero Distance which is championed by Haier as part of its overall management philosophy of RenDanHeYi—which can be translated as customers plus employees equals value. The ZeroDX Awards celebrate Zero Distance but also imaginative management which breaks down barriers inside organizations and between organizations and the world.
The ZeroDX Awards for 2024 celebrate achievements by organizations in three categories:
Transformational: One of the great organizational challenges is shifting the culture and behaviour of an already existing large entity which may be highly successful. To succeed in changing individual habits, organizational systems, expectations and measures, is an act of true transformation. These awards recognise organizations which are in the process of, or have succeeded in, achieving major progressive transformation.
Benchmark Innovators: Through their vision, values, strength and persistence some organizations successfully forge new standards for the application of progressive management. They set the standards which others follow. They are the benchmark innovators.
Emergent Excellence: Each change in an organization is significant. It can make a difference to how people behave and how the organization performs. And, more importantly, one change can ignite another and another. An appetite for improvement, a curiosity to do things better and differently, is what marks some organizations apart from the crowd. These are organizations which demonstrate, often repeatedly, the capacity for emergent excellence.
The winners in each category are:
Transformational:
ASA Group
Bosch MPS
Ingersoll Rand
Raízen
SD Guthrie
Seamos Uno
VAR Group
Benchmark Innovators:
Buurtzorg
Hoxby
Morning Star
SINA
Emergent Excellence:
Chorus
Codewave
Epoch
ET Group
Everest Engineering
Gaiax
High Peak
HR-ON
Latro
Mindera
Net Protections
Rebel Energy UK
Sonic Garden
Unity Group
Walter Pack
For more details of the winners please visit the Business Ecosystem Alliance.
About the author:
Stuart Crainer is the cofounder of Thinkers50.
