Value-added

Premise

If there was ever a phrase that was overused and almost meaningless, it’s “value added”. Worse than “learning curve”, more abused than “methodology” or “thought process”, and almost as slippery as a “paradigm shift”, “value added” is one of those obsequious phrases that has been added to the skills arsenal to any self-professed consultant or so-called business expert who feels the slightly pathetic need to advertise their worth once per hour, if not more frequently. If you’re not adding value, then you’re probably adding crap or you’re wasting valuable time.

History

“Value added” is originally an accounting term used in determining the worth of a good or service, particularly in the growth in value or worth.. This is what Wikipedia has to say about this term:

Value added refers to the additional value created at a particular stage of production or through image and marketing. In modern neoclassical economics, especially in macroeconomics, it refers to the contribution of the factors of production, i.e., land, labor, and capital goods, to raising the value of a product and corresponds to the incomes received by the owners of these factors.

Value-Added Example

Here’s a simple example of adding value. Let’s say you have a wooden chair that isn’t painted. If you add a coat of paint to the chair you’re adding value through: the labor used to paint the chair; the cost of the paint; and by making the chair more attractive to a potential buyer. An advertising campaign could add value to the chair by showing potential customers new and exciting ways to use this particular brand of painted chair. Both real work and selling are both valid ways to add value to a good or service.

Big deal, right? Many of us don’t paint our own chairs. Instead, we buy pre-painted chairs or we might pay someone else to paint the chair for us. This brings us to the topics of consultants or experts.

Consultants and Experts

Don’t get me wrong. Some consultants are absolutely brilliant people who deliver excellent goods or services. Some consultants may not be brilliant, but they may be extremely level headed and logical thinkers who do very good work. On the other hand, some so-called experts are not particularly intelligent, nor do they do good work. Worse still, and probably the biggest waste of all, are the extremely bright people who are unable to put ideas into practice.

Business methodologies are a means to put these good ideas into practice. “Value added” is a term used in business methodologies like Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, or Lean Six Sigma. They focus on delivering consistently good results while eliminating waste from work processes. There are a number of methodologies out there that are promoted as excellent ways to improve your business. Some of them work extremely well. However, the biggest crime that these schools of thought and action have committed is to popularize the term “value added” or “add value”. Despite the commendable intention behind adding value or eliminating waste, the successes that are generated by the proliferation of this tiring phrase are being eroded by overuse.

Overplayed, Oversaturated, Disinterested

Let’s look at pop music on commercial radio as a potential example of overuse. Mainstream pop radio programming, and its younger sister, music video, are great for promoting new music, but they are even better at making something new feel old, banal, and worthless. Why? Repetition. Top 40 radio programming ensures that “popular” music is played over and over and over again. A small percentage of die hard fans will love this frequent repetition and reinforcement. A large percentage will like it for a period of time, but this group of listeners will eventually tire of the repeated song and want to hear something new. A third group will tire of the “new” music very quickly and learn to loathe it.

So why does a new song get played more and more if it seems to catch the attention of the listening audience? The radio programmer will play the song more often in order to catch the attention of the listening audience, providing opportunities to sell advertising. Some listeners will enjoy hearing the song because it gives them joy or provides a respite from their own lives. And some listeners… some listeners will want to hear the song because their friends or idols like the song and they want other people to think they’re cool, too.

This is a key point. When you’re a kid, at some point you are going to want other people to think you are cool. Being “cool” can range from being liked to being accepted by your peers to being worshiped by many people. People will imitate cool people in order to share in the benefits of being cool, including a boost of self-esteem. Heck, some kids will even pretend to like the newest song or video when they actually hate it; they just want other people to think they are cool.

I submit to you, dear reader, that much of the excitement and fuss around “adding value”, at its core, is just an adult’s attempt to be cool in the business world. If other people think you are smart or cool, then you might gain the adoration of management and your co-workers. You might get better work assignments, more perks, or even a better job. Some people think that all you have to do is emulate a parrot and repeat the catch phrase of the month in order to advance in their careers. They need to be careful about this.

Going back to being a kid for a moment, cool has an antithesis. Cool’s opposite has gone by a number of aliases, words like: square; dull; boring; drab; or my personal favorite. Are you ready for it? OK, here it comes.

Phoney

Remember “phoney”? How about “poser”? Or “fake”? Or “wannabee”? These words describe things that aren’t genuine, real, or cool. Phoney isn’t the real thing. Phoney is a pale substitute for something of value. Phoney is the inability to walk the walk when you talk the talk.

Phoney is crap, not value.

A brilliant writer named Theodore (Ted) Sturgeon once coined a short but pithy phrase: “Ninety percent of anything is crud.” Crud is a synonym for crap, of course. Ted knew perfectly well that the world is full of fakes, posers, and talentless hacks (the author isn’t immune to this problem). Or, to put it in a kinder way, there are a lot of people in the world who just don’t have the necessary qualities to produce good work at what they are trying to do at any given point in time. Some people cause problems for themselves by exerting their energies at something they aren’t good at, when they could be very successful if they tried something else.

Add value if you can; absorb value if you can’t

Many people lack the skills or knowledge to make a meaningful contribution to a specific task or assignment. However, they feel the need to pretend that they understand what needs to be done in order to gain acceptance. They will promote their purported, yet fictional ability to “add value” in many situations in order to gain acceptance and esteem from the colleagues. The perpetual promoter runs the risk of becoming yesterday’s flash-in-the-pan. Unless the talent is there, most people should not go around trying to make people think they can make a positive contribution in a given situation. They are better off keeping their mouths shut, listening, and learning. Repetition make help you gain popularity for awhile, but if the substance isn’t there, your song is going drop of the charts and pull you down with it.