We are especially bad at recognizing mid-career faculty who have made significant contributions to the improvement of departments, colleges, and universities. I argued it wouldn't harm us a bit to expand the number of recognitions we award and to think about how we compensate these folks.

The deans were aghast. They were very concerned about their "stars" and how the expansion of recognitions would undermine their sense of being appreciated. They had no tolerance for paying people more simply for satisfactory labor over a time period. For them, merit = exemplary performance.

In my college, there were recently (and have been before) some awards that went to teams. They got one plaque. Will a few additional plaques wreck the budget?

An organization in our field just approved a Mid-Career award (already have the usual Early Career & Lifetime Awards) for this very reason, a small token & hopefully attention getter since our universities don’t really care otherwise.