Value Multipliers

Jeffrey Phillips has a great article on Value Multipliers:

The military has a phrase that I like a lot – force multiplier.  What they mean by that are conditions,weapons, tactics or other factors that increase the force brought to beat on a particular enemy.  This means that because of other conditions and careful planning they get even more firepower or results from a small team.

I think we in business should define some value multipliers.  What processes, systems or cultural changes can we make to our business that will add significant value given the same inputs?  I think this is especially true in workgroups or teams.

A great example of a value multiplier for an individual is the Getting Things Done methodology.  As an individual, I can become more productive as I adopt the process and methodology and put it to good use.  But there is a limiting factor – as long as I’m the only one using the methodology and becoming more efficient, there’s an upper level impact to the gains for the work group or team.  What can we provide for teams or workgroups to multiply their value and results?

In a sense he is saying that the total value is greater than the sum of the parts. We see this issue in all sorts of places, unfortunately in reverse most of the time. How do we get through to an organisation culture that if everyone works together on something we all get the value, but if some choose to opt out we all loose. I’m yet to see an organisation, for instance, where everyone uses the calendaring capabilities of their infrastructure in a way that makes everyones time management as effective or productive as it could be. There is normally someone who refuses to put all of their appointments in their making everyones free and busy information of low value.

Having said that I have worked in teams where the team came together in a way which provided value that we could never have as individuals. If I could bottle that culture and that feeling I would not be sitting here now, that’s for sure.