You can use Value Add to tune your approach to activities. It can give you perspective on Leadership, Career and Organizations.

We hear Value Add in business jargon. Sometimes it is just used as a buzz-word, with little real meaning.
It refers to a specific activity that adds value.
It comes from the term ‘Value Added’ – which can mean the profit on items, or the net value of the production of an item or set of items.

I spoke to a group in the last week, to give them an idea of how Value Add can be used to measure the value of activities for themselves and their organization.

I told them how I spent some time trying to solve a problem of needing to move a oversized play-structure through a space it would not fit. I spent a lot of time working on a solution: a track that would take it over the neighbor’s fence.
In the end, I decided that the track was not practical: it had too much potential for excessive failure, and would need many other steps to make it more viable.

I had to take a step back to assess the value of the situation. I had spent many hours on a solution that I thought was unusual, yet doable. I had a lot of time invested, and a lot of ego invested in proving my way would work. It would take me a number of hours to take it back down and then more hours to take the play structure apart.
I considered the possibility of catastrophic failure, property damage, and personal injury. I decided the risks outweighed my ego and the time already invested.

The solution was not a Value Add. The time invested was not headed towards the probability of a positive outcome.

Sometimes in our lives, we get involved in a solution, an action or an activity that starts out with a very positive outlook and gave us good value. Yet, over time, the value decreases.

Take a moment to be honest with yourself: is the time you invest taking away from you more than it gives you?

Is your job, your hobby, you leadership decisions – are they adding value?

Is that choice a Value Add?

Or do you spend too much time investing in a choice because you don’t want to admit to yourself it is taking away too much from you? It takes too much energy instead of adding to your life positively.

For the organization, I gave them the perspective and challenge to consider what potential customers would see when they looked at them. Do they see a good value? What things could they be doing better to show the Value Add to their potential customers? How could they change a few things to show the Value Add.

They saw things from the potential customer’s eyes. The considered a few things that would make what they did look better than the competition. They saw actions that highlighted the processes they do well in a better light. They saw that taking a Value Add look at their organization, they could go back to a growth situation.

We each need to have Value Add in our lives. You are worth making the choices that create positive value in your life.