We are rejoined by Will Thalheimer to talk about one of his favorite topics, awards in the L&D industry. Should we have them? Should we give them out? How do we do it better… if at all? We explore a pretty exhaustive list of the general issues with using and distributing awards among industry professionals by industry professional groups. Heck, we even find a few good points to support the tradition, as well. Are these industry awards fair? Are they judged effectively and fairly?  What are, and should, be the criteria for winning an award? What rubric is used? Who designs the rubric? Are we even rewarding the “right” stuff (whatever that means)? What about money? Application fees? And paying for the awards? Bias? Vendor relationships? Heck, are these awards even manageable… doable in order to ensure claimed standards and fairness? ‎Is an evolving approach, perhaps to think about certification?   Who judges the judges? Will even hands out an award called the Neon Elephant Award, as he attempts to bypass many of the issues we discuss. You can learn more about it here: https://www.worklearning.com/2010/11/02/neon-elephant-award/. Does he succeed? Yes— we know there are tons of awards out there, so we are speaking generically. But the questions of fairness and appropriate judgement still hold.  Matt references NASAGA. The North American Simulation and Gaming Association. We also reference ISPI, the International Society for Performance Improvement. Any conversation about awards within the context of L&D would, and should, lead to a conversation about program and practitioner evaluation. We, of couse, talk about Will’s Learning Transfer Evaluation Model (LTEM). You can learn more about that here: https://www.worklearning.com/ltem/. Will brings up one of his passion ideas… that within L&D, we should have independent journalists investigating and report on how we do, what we do, and what we could do better. He originally talks it about it in the LDA Podcast, Episode 4. And what about impact? Is impact the key? Or, are we missing the boat? What about the differences between learning and impact? How do we ensure that our learning engagement was actually the cause of the identified impact. LDA had the wonderful, Alex Edmans, from the London Business School, on our MEET THE AUTHOR Series. The video is here: https://members.ldaccelerator.com/c/meet-the-author-space/meet-the-author-alex-edmans. We reference his new book, May Contain Lies. You can find the book and learn more about Alex, here: https://alexedmans.com/books/ Will’s new book is The CEO’s Guide to Training, eLearning, and Work. You can learn more and buy it here: https://www.ceosguide.net.  You can learn more about Will here: https://www.worklearning.com/about/.