Value Creation Dust Bunnies

Earlier this week, Ben Pratt, myself, and a few others were discussing the Guiding Principles, and the Principle of Value Creation in particular.

As he is wont to do, he piqued my interest with a seeming non sequitur.   "Value Creation is like dust bunnies."

OK....

That got me thinking.  My first thought was, "I work in a weird place where this is a semi-normal conversation...."  The rest of our discussion has kept me thinking about this concept for the past few days.

Dust bunnies seem to mysteriously reappear despite the fact that we dealt with cleaning them from under the nether regions of our homes the week before, and the week before that, and the week before that....  They're a constant of life.

In a similar--but more positive--way, the issue of "how do we create value" is a constantly renewed problem (opportunity?).  

Why?  Well, creative destruction and change see to it that we will never have "the" answer to our customers' wants.

We discussed how sometimes people think, "OK, I just need to find that thing I'm good at, then I'll just do that for the rest of my life."  Of course, this isn't the case.  Often, what you're doing this year that's creating value will not be what creates value soon.  

The Guiding Principles all reinforce one another, but it's particularly clear in this issue how focusing jointly on the Principles of Change, Value Creation and Customer Focus can yield superior results, as long as we don't rest on our laurels once we've hit upon a valuable strategy.

Comments

[David McGinnis]

The office is dreadfully quiet today, I think I was looking for a sense of belonging when I logged in here. Now that I've justified spending time reading this blog and commenting instead of trying and failing for another hour to get something working on a website I'm editing... here are my thoughts:

It's typically an issue of severity for the quadrant 1 folks that continue to be employed by Papa Chuck. I would argue that it's rarely a question of being able to create some value; if failing to add incremental value was seen as an "opportunity" we would be kidding ourselves and using this word as a euphemism. That there would be a problem. In my experience that problem is not the typical scenario. We are usually in the opportunity realm.

The understanding of what creates the most value, how to achieve that and then the execution of creating the MOST value, however, is continually elusive. Similar to our relationship with those dust bunnies, we're usually in denial about how long it's really been since we've cleaned the house (read: revisited the vision or our RRE's or ...)

So I agree:
Often, what you're doing this year that's creating [maximum] value will not be what creates [maximum] value soon[er than you wish].

"Just when I was getting used to yesterday, along came today" - A

[Andy Gillette]

Haha! Well put, and nice quote at the end!

[Ben]

Andy - I think I was talking about eliminating waste as part and parcel of value creation - and the fact that waste is pervasive within any organization. Yesterdays useful practices are the spawning ground for tomorrow's bureaucratic rules and mindless activities...

Waste is like the dust bunnies under furniture - it shows up all the time, where does it come from? It's just a fact of life that has to confronted early and often. BTW - nothing wrong with your thoughts above, just clarifying mine. Cheers!

[Andy Gillette]

Thanks for the clarification, Ben! Still love the metaphor.