Are you creating, killing, or hiding value?

In business, we talk extensively about value, specifically how we can create it. But more often than not, in our quest to find new ways to develop value, we have many overlooked opportunities to unleash existing value and underlying things in our organizations that kill it.

If a company is a proverbial value chain, it seems logical to evaluate its every activity from two points of view:

1. How much does an activity contribute to value creation?
2. How much does it detract from value creation?

Everything we do in an organization has the opportunity to create value. Most of the time, we try to add new things to the process or set of offerings to create new value. We rarely examine those things that we can eliminate. This is where the magic happens - removing barriers, hassles, redundancies, and inefficiencies, all add up to value generation through elimination.

An award-winning custom automobile designer got this same advice when they were just a small, up-and-coming shop. They hadn't yet broken through in the competition circuit and tried to add more features, unique touches, and special components to their vehicles to no avail. One judge in a national competition said to them, "It's not about adding more things to a car. Everyone adds more and more features until the vehicle has lost its essence, its original uniqueness. When you take your car back to the shop, figure out all the things you can remove to make it even better than the original." The shop went on to win multiple, national, major awards - and is still racking up projects worth multi-millions of dollars.

This premise is critical for organizations to consider. As companies grow, there are layers and layers of bureaucracy which start to chip away at the inherent value which came from being a smaller, more nimble organization. New ideas go through much more assessment and rigor. Infrastructure and regulations limit the ability of individual departments to test new methods and concepts. Value creation becomes limited to the development of new products, services, or technological features.

However, value can be generated through customer experiences, and much of that value is hidden deep within the organization's processes. Things like extra steps, delays, information gaps, inefficient communications, frustrating runarounds, and a whats-in-it-for-us organizational attitude all chip away at customer value, and could alternatively be unleashed and leveraged as value-generating differentiators.

If you want to find out what's killing value for customers, or hidden value within your organization, examine the following:

• Rank your processes according to their contribution to customer value.
• Ballpark the cost of each process.
• Compare the processes’ cost with the value they create.
• Could you increase investment in some of them to create more customer value?
• Could you save some money to reduce the cost of the processes that don’t influence customer value much?
• Could you change the process by eliminating things to unleash new customer value?

Sometimes we lose sight of the ways value can be created, killed, or simply hidden within our company. By taking the time to focus not on adding new things, but on eliminating excess and simplifying what you already do, you can unlock new value that not only will make your customers happier but your employees too.

About the Author

Andrea's 25-year, field-tested background provides practical, behavioral science approaches to creating differentiated, human-focused organizations.?A 4x ADDY award-winner, TEDx presenter, and 3x book author,?she began her career at a tech start-up and led the strategic sales, marketing, and?customer engagement efforts at two global industrial manufacturers. She now leads a change agency dedicated to helping organizations differentiate their brands using behavioral science.

In addition to writing and consulting, Andrea speaks to leaders and industry organizations around the world. Connect with Andrea to access information on her book, keynoting, research, or consulting. More information is also available at?www.pragmadik.com?or?www.andreabelkolson.com.