What's value?

What's the value of water? It depends on how thirsty you are.

Something that is worthless to one person or organization can be of immense value to someone else. Value is in the eye of the beholder.

Value can be the importance, monetary worth or usefulness of something.

The value of your work

I produce stuff at work. Is my work valuable by just existing? No.

It's what it does for the ones consuming my work that has the value.

My work creates value by solving problems worth solving. Fulfilling someone's needs and desires while helping my organization achieve their strategic goals and priorities.

Communicate value through numbers

What's the value of natural gas? $3.5/MMBtu, ish. That's every possible characteristic of natural gas combined into a single dimension. However, it tells me nothing about its potential, history and other qualities.

We describe and communicate value like a map, an abstraction, to simplify complexity and decisions.

Maps are useful, but with a specific purpose in mind. They cannot be everything to everyone. If we don't understand what the map does and doesn't tell us, it can be useless or even dangerous.

Concrete numbers can be useful, but you better have a story for the receivers of the value you intend to provide. You need to understand what they value, what they are interested in, and be able to translate your work and offering into their language.

Don't assume that what we value is what everyone values or should value.

Business value and user value

Business value is what the business values, often framed as economic benefits to the company, but could also be safety, security and sustainability.

User value is what the users value. The ones directly using the technology products to achieve and address their own desires, needs or problems.

Why is this distinction important? Products that people don't use or know how to use will not create any business value.

A team delivering a product can rarely control or influence the business value directly. But you can change the behavior of the ones using your product and make them take certain actions that can lead to and be measured as a predictor of business value.

That's the gap you need to close. That's the story you need to tell. Find the signals of business value.

Business cases

A business case tries to describe the potential value, cost, and risk at some point down the road. When there is a lot of uncertainty, this is difficult. We must make assumptions.

According to Prof. Bent Flyvbjerg's data from 16 000 projects from 20-plus field in 136 countries, only 0.5 % delivered on promised cost, time and benefits.

Avoid the illusion of certainty, "If we do X, then Y value will be result".

Don't set and forget. Treat it as a hypothesis that needs to be tested. What's the absolute smallest action that you can take to test out the riskiest assumption you have about your business case?

"We believe that ... To verify that, we will ... And measure ... We are right if ..."

What's value to you, and how do you evaluate it?

How to talk to anyone

You have been there. You are introduced to someone. You shake hands, your eyes meet, and then ...

What do I say after I say Hello?

Don't worry. 

Melody

80 percent of your listener's impression has nothing to do with your words. Small talk is about melody. You must first match your listener's mood and voice of tone.

It's not what you say that matters, it's how you say it. A passionate delivery makes you sound exciting.

An old friend

Here's a mental trick you can play on yourself. In your mind's eye, see him or her as an old friend.

Suddenly, WOW! What a surprise! After all those years, the two of you are reunited. You are so happy.

The secret to making people like you is showing how much you like them.

Throw out some facts 

When asked "What do you do?", flesh it out. Throw out some delicious facts about your job for them to munch on. You can also prepare different variations of this answer, depending on who's asking.

Also, learn some engaging facts about your hometown that they can comment on. Never provide a one-word answer on the question "And where are you from?".

Lingo of the crowd

Learn some opening questions and the lingo of the crowd you will be with. Find out what the hot issues are in their fields. Listen to a newscast just before you leave. Anything that happened today is good material.

Be a detective ... and a parrot

When talking with anyone, like a good detective, listen for clues. Be on the lookout for any unusual references: any anomaly, deviation, digression. Then ask about it.

Like a parrot, simply repeat the last few words your conversation partner says. Echo their nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives back.

Hearing their words come out of your mouth makes them feel you share their values, their attitudes and their interests.

Say their name

People perk up when they hear their own name. Use it more often on the phone than you would in person to keep their attention and to replace eye contact.

Indirect compliments

Instead of telling someone directly of your admiration, tell someone who is close to the person you wish to compliment.

A compliment one hears is never as exciting as the one he/she overhears. Keep your ears open for good things people say about each other.

Pass it on.

"How to talk to anyone" by Leil Lowndes

Career advice

I've been pondering about career advice lately. What would an older and wiser me say to this young student 19 years ago?

Work with the right people

Yes, the company, their vision, values and your tasks are important, but don't forget your future colleagues.

Work with people you can learn and grow from. You adopt the thoughts, attitudes and standards of the people around you.

Working with the right people is one of the best educations you can get.

The team you choose to join, and your boss, are huge factors in the value of a professional experience early in your career.

Simply do the basics well

Take initiative. Take ownership. Do what you say you will do. Be the one that people can count on to show up and figure things out. Ask questions. Get along with people. Do more than you are asked.

Care about your colleagues. Be humble. Listen to understand. Be on time. Be proactive in seeking new information, knowledge, and skills. Being willing to change things.

These basic things stand out. It's character. It's the result of your little choices and little actions, and they are completely under your control.

And I believe they will help unlock your potential.

Add communication and non-sales selling into your mixture

In addition to whatever your professional skill is, add communication, either written or verbal, into your mixture.

Learn how to formulate and tell clear, concise narratives. Good stories beat good spreadsheets.

Also learn yourself non-sales selling. You sell ideas, a vision, a strategy, a solution, even yourself.

These are skills for life that will be valuable in any role.

Find something to hold on to

You will face uncertainty, changes, and chaos. For me, having a set of personal values to hold onto has been a savior. A compass.

What's most important to you?

When you face situations where you have no idea what to do, hold on to your values and use them to guide your next steps.

Don't stress. It took me years to figure this out.

Take care of yourself

Breathe. Take care of yourself today, mentally and physically. Take rest seriously. It plants the seeds for a healthier, happier life decades later.

Follow your energy. When you have energy for something, go for it.

Find a balance between things that give you energy and things that drain you of energy.

Reflect and write down the things that stress you out and the things that make you happy.

Use your colleagues, they are here for you.

What's your career advice?

Make things worth making

Do you want to make things worth making? 

Here's my key takeaways from Tony Fadell, "the father of the iPod", co-creator of the iPhone and co-founder of Nest labs.

Cool technology isn't enough

A great team isn't enough. Plenty of funding isn't enough. You have to time it right. Customers need to see that your product solves a real problem they have today - not one that they may have in some distant future.

You can't wait for perfect data

It doesn't exist. You just have to take the first step into the unknown. Use what you have learned and take your best guess at what's going to happen next. It's not data or intuition; it's data and intuition.

Your product isn't only your product

It's the whole experience that begins when someone learn about your brand for the first time and ends when it disappears from their life. It's when you give care and attention to every part of that journey you create something that people will love.

Every product should have a story

A narrative that explains why it needs to exist and how it will solve your customer's problems. Make the story easy to remember, easy to repeat. Someone else telling your story will always reach more people than your own talking.

  • The story appeals to people's rational and emotional sides. Recognize the needs of your audience and connect with something they care about, like their worries and fears.
  • The story takes complicated concepts and makes them simple.
  • The story reminds people of the problem that's being solved. Why does this thing need to exist? Why does it matter? Why will people need it? Why will they love it?

You can only have one customer

You cannot make a single product for two completely opposite customers for two different customer journeys.

You need constraints to make good decisions 

... and the best constraint in the world is time. By forcing a hard deadline on yourself, you can't keep putting the finishing touches on something that will never be finished. Don't allocate too much money at the start. People do stupid things when they have a giant budget.

The best teams are multigenerational

Experienced people have a wealth of wisdom that they can pass on to the next generation and young people can push back against long-held assumptions.

Always be training someone on your team to do your job

There should always be at least one or two people on your team who are natural successors to you. Take vacations, they are a great way to build a team's future capabilities and see who might step into your shoes in the years to come.

"Build" by Tony Fadell

Testing business ideas

No business plan survives first contact with customers.

Testing is the activity of reducing the risk of pursuing ideas that look good in theory, but won't work in reality.
Design is the activity of turning vague ideas, insights and evidence into concrete value propositions and solid business models.

We test business ideas to reduce risk and uncertainty. You break a big idea into smaller chunks of testable hypotheses covering three types of risk.

First, that customers or users are not interested in your idea (desirability).

Second, that you can't build and deliver your idea (feasibility).

Third, that your business can't earn enough money from your idea (viability).

A well-formed business hypothesis describes a testable, precise and discrete thing you want to investigate.
  • Your hypothesis is testable when it can be shown true (validated) or false (invalidated), based on evidence (and guided by experience).
  • Your hypothesis is precise when you know what success looks like. It describes the precise what, who, and when of your assumptions.
  • Your hypothesis is discrete when it describes only one distinct, testable and precise thing you want to investigate.
Turn your most important hypotheses into experiments to create evidence you can learn from.
  • "We believe that ..."
  • "To verify that, we will ..."
  • "And measure ..."
  • "We are right if ..."
Evidence is what you use to support or refute the hypotheses. Insights are what you learn from studying the evidence.
  • "We believed that ..."
  • "We observed ..."
  • "From that we learned that ..."
  • "Therefore, we will ..."
Then turn insights into action. Make informed decisions to abandon, change and/or continue testing a business idea based on collected insights.

But testing ideas costs money. So then you just ask for millions in the big bang annual funding process and spend it all to avoid decreased budget next year?

No. Think like a venture capitalist instead. Invest and incrementally fund the teams and a series of business ideas and double down on the ones that are successful.

Set up a small investment committee that consists of leadership with decision-making authority when it comes to budget, because they will be helping the teams navigate from seed, launch and growth stages. Funding decisions typically take place at 3-6 months intervals.

To summarize: Key Hypotheses + Experiments + Key Insights = Reducing uncertainty and risks.

"Testing business ideas" by David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder