Value creation
Value creation is a topic I like to nerd out on, to be blunt. Some of you have heard my poetic admiration for Apple’s use of the squircle on the iPhone, and how the mere difference in degree of a shape creates value. I see value as the delta between the ordinary, and the extraordinary. An iPhone made with a circled corner, vs a squircled corner, is that delta. Value doesn’t come from any direct investment of money. It comes from what you capture. with clients, with other parents and with colleagues.
2 years ago, we had a new set of twins at home, and our oldest was in Kindergartener. 5 children under the age of 6. And we felt, often, stretched to the limits of how to operate. We received 15 tardy slips that year for our Kindergartener. Things progressively got better over the years, although it was too hard. The biggest change wasn’t that we were operating more optimally, which would mean everyone is doing their jobs, and doing them well. It was that my husband and I were expending far more energy to ensure smooth operations. That meant us owning every step of the morning routine. Making the breakfast, feeding the children, getting the clothes, dressing the children, cleaning the breakfast. I work with large business enterprises, and as we talk about, scale doesn’t happen from tanking up people to do more work. Scale happens when routine work becomes just that- routine. It uses no more cognitive energy. It operates as it should. That’s value.
Where are you creating value in your life?