In recent talks with colleagues about some of their company’s plans and projects, it became obvious to me that enormous company value was going undistinguished and as a consequence, impacting profit. We all know examples of undistinguished value being the source of many a fortune for those with an eye for spotting it. Think Facebook, or Groupon. In your company, maybe that person is you.
My sister was telling me about some of the projects she was accountable for in a rapidly growing technology company. She had to research, source and contract with human resource vendors for a number of services – pensions, health care, benefits, etc. Barry Fischer of NanoH2o.com was telling me that he was hired specifically to document and systemize their processes.
Both are typical projects a business might develop. Identify a result that’s wanted and needed, figure out how to measure it and give it a due date. How would they appear to someone who sorts for undistinguished value?
The first thing is to consider the context a project lives in. In my sister’s company, they’re growing rapidly adding new hires. It’s critical for them to have some policies in place to support all the new relationships, and the inherent expectations around workability and profitability.
In Barry’s company, documenting their processes and procedures is critical to managing multiple project work flows and gives them a framework to begin automating more of their project development and implementation. In both companies, they must integrate new team members quickly in order to profitably exceed the capacity they’ve just outgrown.
What if each company had a process to tell the ‘back story’ about what they do, how they do it and why they do it that way? What if that back story included a series of videos documenting the formulation, development and implementation of a policy, process or procedure? What if it told the viewer what they were viewing, why it’s important and what the next steps were? What if one of those next steps was an opportunity for the viewer, the employee or customer to post a video and close the feedback loop?
What opportunities might present themselves out of cataloging all that extremely rich and detailed video feedback about what a company is already doing? What impact might it have on employee training and development? How many ways could it be utilized for marketing advantages, research, customer acquisition and retention? How might it showcase company values and personality to attract investors or partners? What if you had video of your customers, the internal ones as well as the ones who buy from you, all declaring the things they love about working for or buying from you?
If you’re beginning to see some of advantages of adding a video component to document and enhance what you’re already doing anyway you’re not alone. Talk about reality TV! How about the reality of taking an idea and turning it into something that is urgently wanted and needed, right now, by your target market? The first step is to have pitch conversation about undistinguished value. It sounds like a formula to get green lighted and picked up for renewal. Hollywood here we come!