Doing Work vs Creating Value

An authentic and slightly irreverent blog on the applied dimensions of leadership & change...

• My Crap

• Your Crap

• Our Crap

• Everybody’s Crap.

Photo courtesy of @frantic, Unsplash

Do you ever feel like you are just marking time when you’re on the job? Doing mindless tasks, work that will just be tossed aside or redone by someone else? Work that doesn’t seem to serve an understandable purpose or one you care a whole lot about? Are you doing work that barely requires or engages a fraction of your capability or potential? You are not alone. Truly!

I am astounded by the amount of money wasted on dysfunctional work processes, spent on outside experts, and the time and energy spent actively ignoring the insights and abilities within each and every organization. Organizations have been so successful at turning off and away from the talent within that whole industries and countries are in creative and economic crises because they can’t think or invent themselves out of their competitive slump. They turned to their employees too late, and after they’d engineered the innovativeness right out of their organizational culture and structure. Holy crap! It sucks to be them. Unfortunately, if we’re not them, or don’t work for them, the entire industry and our economy are still impacted by them. Oh, crap!

So how do we transition from just doing work to creating value together? We cut the crap of course :-). Here’s how…

If I find myself “just doing work” and do not feel part of the value creation process within my organization, chances are those who work with me and for me do too. In fact, those I work for may even feel that way as well. The problem is that “just doing work” is an easier, cleaner, simpler way to work. Going into the office each day, doing your job, then going home and enjoying your life. Ah, what pleasure! Okay, snap out of that reverie. It sounds lovely, I agree. But we know how humans work. We can’t help but have ideas. We can’t help learning from our experiences. And when what we know, see, and think does not have an outlet we start to gripe, if not out loud, then in our heads. And this begins to effect the quality of our work.

What we do next is based on our crap. If we do nothing and continue to just put in our time, we’ve got to cut the crap because we are now part of the problem. It happens to us all, don’t sweat it. But don’t suck it up either. Leading change starts with one, and unfortunately you cannot delegate it or expect it to come from anyone else. Sorry. This is where function and dysfunction meet their maker.

An idea or insight is a terrible thing to waste. You have to find a way to effectively communicate your ideas to those who need to hear them. Period. Organizations, remember, are just groups of people serving a mission. Acknowledging the ideas and insight that are in and of the organization—its people—is the critical starting point for achieving results through value creation.

All of this idea and insight “acknowledging” can get quite messy and tiresome when it isn’t our ideas and insight, let’s be honest. In order to cut this crap so we can fully benefit from all of the value creation capacity within the organization, we need to be aligning it with the procedures, policies, performance reviews, and problem solving processes within the organization and shift its culture. This is the only way to ensure you harness individual value creation to collectively capitalize on it in terms of reaping organization-wide operational, as well as product and service enhancements. Value creation is the purpose of what we do, not what we do or how we do it. Aligning others’ ideas and insights occurs when the people who use these procedures, policies, performance reviews, and problem solving processes fully comprehend their purpose and are encouraged to innovate in order to enhance the delivery of their value both internally and externally. Or better still, it is when others have room to create additional value through the normal course of their daily efforts.

But anything that involves the entire organization has to factor in the collective crap of our employees, not just mine and yours. This can get complex. The most effective way to cut organizational crap is to start assessing what we need to achieve; in this case it is value creation. Asking the right questions and in the right context is the foundation of gaining strategic knowledge through assessment instruments. We often assume away the importance of this step, not testing our questions or mapping out potential responses and their implications. We “pencil whip” survey or performance review creation and revisions through delegation and/or committee without understanding the science behind question writing and assessment objectives. This happens in our organization’s strategic planning objectives and goal setting as well. But not to worry; knowing that you do this is half the battle and the first step to remedying the situation.

A goal is an overarching target to be gradually achieved over time. Your objectives are the specific, measurable, achievable, reasonable, and time-bound actions that will collectively fulfill your goals. Assessment questions each have their own objectives and these serve to measure progress toward a goal. When you want to tap into your employees ability to contribute to the organization’s value creation, craft your goal and objectives first, making sure they are aligned with your organizations’ procedures, policies, performance reviews, and problem solving processes. Next, craft the questions that will give you evidence that the objectives have been fulfilled. Then test them on a varied group to see if you reliably get valid answers.

Seem like a pain? So is losing market share and profits while those innovative organizations “eat your shorts”. By the way, if your employees are not contributing to your organization’s value creation, they are detracting from it. Think about it….

Employees are the foundational constituents of your community. Their families, friends, relatives, neighbors, and everyone they interact with are exposed to their attitude toward you. They also understand the needs of your community in a way you don’t. They live and breathe consumer value (best products/services for the money) and personal value (best investment of time, energy, expertise, skills) in ways you can’t. Why leave that value on the table? Your local and global communities also have the ability to inspire and collaborate in value creation. Those innovative employees you are now growing can definitely help you figure out the best way to engage them in cost-effective innovation that serves the communities in which you live and work. And if they aren’t involved in creating value with you, then they are directly or indirectly doing it for someone else. The time to cut the crap is now.

© 2019 Stacie L L Morgan. All rights reserved.