Reading the Criteria as a Specification

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Most entrants read the criteria as a description of what the organisers admire. They are a specification of what will be scored, and the difference decides most entries.

What they actually are

A list of things a judge will award points against, frequently with a weighting attached.

Where weightings are published, they are the plan for the entry. A criterion worth forty per cent deserves forty per cent of the words; one worth ten deserves a paragraph. For another perspective on recognition, evidence, or professional standards, see Reuters.

Most entries do not allocate this way. They allocate by what is interesting to the entrant — the founding story, the difficult period, the thing everybody in the business enjoys explaining — which is frequently a low-weighted criterion or none at all.

The twenty minutes

Before writing anything.

Write each criterion at the top of a blank section. Literally, as a heading.

Note its weighting where published, and the word limit for that section, which is the best proxy where weightings are absent.

Then, under each, list the evidence you already have. Figures, dates, documents, people who would say something specific.

What emerges is the entry's shape — and, more usefully, the gaps. A criterion with nothing under it is a criterion you will either fill with adjectives or answer honestly as a weakness.

Reading the words precisely

Criteria use verbs and the verbs matter.

"Demonstrate" requires evidence, not assertion.

"Describe" accepts an account.

"Evidence of" is asking for the document.

"Impact" means change in somebody else, measured — not activity, which is what most entries supply.

"Innovation" almost always means new in a stated context rather than new in the world, and the context is usually specified nearby.

Reading these as synonyms is the commonest way an entry answers a question that was not asked.

Where weightings are not published

Infer them from the form.

Word limits are the strongest signal. A section allowing eight hundred words matters more than one allowing a hundred, whatever the marketing implies.

The order is a weaker signal and worth noticing.

And previous winners, where published, show what the programme rewards in practice — which occasionally differs from what its criteria say, and is worth ten minutes.

The criterion you cannot answer

Answer it anyway, honestly and briefly.

A blank section scores zero and signals carelessness. A short honest answer scores something and signals judgement.

"We do not yet measure this. Here is what we do measure and why." That is a real answer, and judges read it as such considerably more often than entrants expect.

What scores worst is a long answer to a question you cannot answer, which wastes the words and is transparent.

The criteria that reveal the programme

Reading them tells you whether the programme is worth entering, not only how to enter it.

Specific, measurable criteria with weightings indicate a programme that assesses. Vague criteria — "excellence", "outstanding contribution" — with no weighting and no word limits indicate one that decides some other way, which may be perfectly legitimate and is a different proposition.

And criteria that cannot be published at all are a signal of their own.

Which makes this twenty minutes serve two purposes: it plans the entry, and it tells you whether to write one.

Judges' guidance, where it exists

Some programmes publish the notes given to judges, and it is the single most useful document available.

It states what a high-scoring answer contains — sometimes with a scale described in words at each level.

Where it exists, write to it directly. Where it does not, ask: a programme that will share its judging guidance is telling you something about itself, and several will send it on request.

Rewriting the criteria in your own words

A check worth doing before you write.

Restate each criterion as a question in plain language — "what changed because of this work, and how do you know" — and answer that.

Where your restatement and the original diverge, one of two things is happening: the criterion is ambiguous, or you have misread it. Both are worth resolving before spending days on an answer, and the organiser will usually clarify if asked.

Asking the organiser

Most programmes have somebody who answers questions, and entrants rarely ask.

Good questions are specific: whether a period counts, whether a joint project is eligible, whether a figure should be gross or net, what "recent" means in a criterion.

Bad questions ask for an opinion on your chances, which nobody will give and which marks you as not having read the paper.

Ask early. A question three weeks out is answered; the same question on the final day is not, and the answer might have changed the entry.

And keep the reply, since an organiser's written clarification is what you point at if an assessor later reads the criterion differently.

When the criteria change between years

They do, and last year's entry is a trap.

An entrant reusing a previous submission against revised criteria is answering an old paper, and it is visible immediately to anybody who assessed both.

Compare the two documents side by side before reusing anything — ten minutes — and note what was added, removed or reweighted.

A criterion newly introduced is usually the one the programme cares about most this year, since somebody deliberately put it there.

The short version

• Criteria are a specification of what will be scored, not a description of what organisers admire
• Where weightings are published, allocate words in proportion to them
• Twenty minutes: each criterion as a heading, its weighting, its word limit, and the evidence you already hold
• The gaps that emerge are the useful output, because a criterion with nothing under it will otherwise be filled with adjectives
• Read the verbs precisely: demonstrate, describe, evidence of, impact and innovation are not synonyms
• Where weightings are absent, word limits are the strongest signal of what matters