Finding Value

The TL;DR; version: Value yourself, value others, do good. Create value.

In 2017, I had the privilege of speaking at the RIMPA conference in Brisbane on “Five steps to greater value”. To my knowledge, I think I’m the only presenter that has used Emojis, Memes and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure to discuss the topic of finding new and greater value in our organisations.

I’m still not 100% sure if attendees have recovered from the experience!

This post is a somewhat more sedate exploration of some ideas that can help us create greater value in our organisations, our community and ourselves.

I have to say up front that smarter minds than mine have written about value from the perspective of our customers so I’m not really going to explore those items here. Value in the context of what I have written here is about exploring value within ourselves, within others and in the things that we do.

What is value?

Trying to answer this question seems like asking someone “How long is a piece of string?” In many ways that’s correct: Value is a subjective concept. Thoughts and things have value because we assign it a value.

At a societal level, we ascribe a value to money. Physically, our paper (or polymer) notes cost very little to produce, but have value only through a mutual agreement.

We personally place a value on things all the time, and this is reflected through our likes, dislikes, preferences and ideas.

Value comes in a variety of forms and one of the hardest things about value is that it will be different for everyone. Therefore, we spend a lot of time expressing, agreeing and disagreeing on the value of a thing or an idea.

As members of communities and organisations, we are usually outward-focused on what our customers or clients value. This is obvious and correct: To attract customers, we need to deliver something they value.

In this post however, I will start by asking a different question: As individuals have we considered: What do we value?

Value expertise

It can actually be quite hard to contemplate what you value; and can be even more difficult to understand what people value in you!

There are many ways to answer this, but I am going to focus primarily on the concept of expertise to explore this idea further.

Your expertise in a given area is valuable, but I’m going to burst your bubble for a moment by saying that you are not an expert in everything. Far from it. One of my favourite movies, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure summed it up thus:

So-crates. Knowing that you know nothing… That’s us Dude!

Whoa! That’s harsh! Well, it’s true (at least for me). Let me explain.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses, we are not experts in every area, but we sometimes think we are. Ever heard the phrase “a little knowledge can be dangerous” or the even more frightening “How hard can it be”? There is actually a name for this: The Dunning-Kruger effect.

Basically, the less you know about a topic, the more confident you will be in your belief that you are right. Your own incompetence actually hides the fact that you have no idea!

Only after learning more about a field do we start to understand that we don’t know enough to act with confidence. If you get the chance to listen to this Podcast with AI & Robotics expert Rodney Brooks, there’s a great example. Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Bill Gates are experts in their own right, but they are not experts in Rodney’s field.

A comic that I like, PhD comics, takes the Dunning-Kruger effect a step further.

So what does this mean for us? Well, our organisations value our expertise in specific areas, and we should be confident in that expertise (as much as we can be). Organisations also employ other people with valuable expertise. Some will be similar to yours, or can be dramatically different.

This therefore creates a twofold challenge: Understanding that other people in the organisation are not experts in your area and; recognising that you are not an expert in their area of expertise.

As professionals, we need to:

1. Value our own expertise: Be assertive and confident (not belligerent or arrogant) in our expertise when you know something is incorrect, oversimplified or creating risk.
2. Value expertise in others: Likewise, when dealing with others who are experts in their field; be prepared to listen — this is especially important in decision-making roles: Experts are there because of the value their expertise brings. Be conscious of your knowledge gap, ask questions and help give voice to their concerns in a constructive and collaborative way.

What you can see from the above is that our interactions and collaboration with others within an organisation is a balancing act between confidence in our own expertise, and valuing the expertise of others. This is not easy, and the reason why after all these years I still remember Bill & Ted’s hilarious mangling of “So-Crates” (Socrates) and apply it to myself: "That’s us dude!"

For further reading on the topic of expertise, I highly recommend the article by Tom Nichols (and the subsequent book), called “The Death of Expertise”.

Valuing others: Listening with understanding

Building on the first idea, we need to value the expertise and insight of others. As mentioned, this is especially important if we are in decision-making roles: Nobody has the monopoly on insight. You can’t leverage the insight in your team and your organisation if you are not able to align your vision and objectives.

We all understand the importance of listening and addressing issues (rather than what we think are the issues). However, I believe that there is more to unpack here. It’s not just a matter of active listening or “going where your people are”; but creating greater value requires us to move forward together.

The challenge of course is that people are messy things!

To value each other’s ideas and create new value together, we need to have clarity around what we’re talking about. Have you ever had a friend that has told you a spicy food is “pretty mild”, only to find that it is extremely hot? Perhaps you have done this to a friend? What someone might define as hot, another person may define as mild.

I explored something similar in one of the case studies in my thesis (though then it wasn’t to do with chilli, it was rating holiday destinations). What this tells us is that we have to be very careful about terminology: We might think we’re moving together, but unless we have clarity around our meaning and intention, we can end up a long way from each other.

A great quote I heard once sums this up: “Are you fighting fires in the right forest?” Like I said: People are messy!

We can’t know each other’s internal thoughts, so how can we at least try to align? Well, there is one way to tackle this problem:

Talking to each other.

Again this is much harder than it seems because in order to talk to each other, one party has to talk while the other parties listen. Genuine listening (as opposed to waiting to respond) is difficult. However there are a few things you may want to try:

Establish baselines and common terminology

When you say something is “hot”, it should have the same meaning for everyone. Be explicit. Are we using Centigrade or Fahrenheit? Seek clarity. Sometimes, getting “lost in translation” can lead to disastrous consequences.

Be explicit and specific

If issues are being discussed, be explicit and specific about what the issue is. “The user experience is crap” does not add value. Instead, “Customers expect the app to remember their order instead of tapping on save. Since they miss this step, when they view their cart, it is empty and 78% of customers leave the app.”

The added benefit of nailing down a specific issue or topic of concern is that it helps to aid in objectivity and can take the sting out of issues that are emotionally charged.

Group Interactions

Getting groups talking to each other in a formalised setting can be even more tricky. One approach may be to segment a meeting into multiple parts, or arrange several additional meetings.

One approach can be to establish a basic rule that the person or group that has the floor is the only ones who can respond with statements — everyone else must ask questions.

I used this approach with several teams from different countries and regions that had to come together. There were several dominant personalities (not in a bad way, just enthusiastic). In order to allow each group a time, the rule was if you were not presenting, you could only ask questions and not respond with “Yes, we already do that.” The result was a far deeper questioning and interaction between the teams. They delved deeply into the topics and uncovered many valuable insights and techniques that could be applied: One of which saved one of the teams a significant amount of money.

Look at how people in team or group situations interact and aim to give everyone voice.

Creating conditions for value creation

To create greater value and understanding:

1. Assess where you are relative to the team around you. Determine what the differences are in terms of motivation, culture (or subculture), personality, vision and interpretation of common terminology. Consider the expertise of the people involved to avoid group-think.
2. Understand where these gaps are, and create a plan to address. E.g. Giving appropriate voice to dominant or passive group members and considering different frames.
3. Start! We can’t create real value if we don’t listen: So get started!

Improvement: Don’t ignore the little things

Getting to spend all your time on new possibilities and creating new value through innovation is a very important (and fun) occupation. There are instances where people get to spend all of their focus time on creative pursuits through R&D or focused programmes of work however, most of us don’t have that luxury and so have to find other ways to create value through improvement of our day-to-day.

The important part however lies with us recognising the importance of improvement and making a place for it. If all you have is 5 minutes a day, then that’s what you take. Make time for yourself first. Start small and eat the elephant of improvement one bite at a time.

Get involved

Sometimes we forget that there are always opportunities to improve what we do, who we are and the condition of others. The wording is deliberate: Personal improvement and improvement of the wider community beyond the business situation allow us to enrich ourselves and open up to new and serendipitous possibilities and perspectives.

A closing thought

I am sure there are far more valuable points I could make, things I should have said, and highly likely concepts I have completely mangled, however I am taking my own advice and searching for ways to create value in the little things first. I hope these thoughts give a glimpse of the journey so far.

So as I sit down to eat my own elephant one bite at a time, I’ll finish this with the wise words of Abraham Lincoln (as seen in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure):

Be excellent to each other, and… Party on dudes!