How technology leaders can embrace value mining

The technology required to design, implement, and deliver products and services at scale is commodifying rapidly. As a result, new providers are popping up providing more choice, placing uncomfortable pressure on incumbent players. Think ride share services over taxis, as one example.
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With the value of organisations being increasingly measured by the quality of the experiences associated with the products and services that they deliver, it's time for technology leaders to flip the switch to value mining.

From technology-led to human-led
Today, we by and large, take a technology-led approach to serving our internal and external customers. We end up with more technology than we can ever effectively leverage. We tread a well-worn path to solving problems. Consider this example:

Your organisation feels the pressure to innovate. In response a business case is created for what you (or your organisation) believe is the most important problem to solve. You form a team to negotiate with stakeholders, to understand/develop a solution architecture, upon which the final solution is implemented.

In this example, once live, it is not uncommon that:

• the solution turns out not to be the real priority
• the solution is not a perfect fit for the problem to be solved
• as a result of 1 or 2 or both, the expected value is not realised

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Sound familiar? Now contrast this with a human-led approach.
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Your organisation feels the pressure to innovate. A business case is created, and you form a team to do research, focusing on the people involved, and their relationships.
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From this research, insights emerge that point to the most valuable problem to be solved (value mining). In response a business case is created to solve the highest value problem (based on evidence). You form a team to negotiate with stakeholders, to understand/develop a solution architecture, upon which the final solution is implemented.
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In this example, once live, it is not uncommon that:

• the solution is more likely to be the actual priority
• the solution chosen fits the problem to be solved
• the expected value (or more) is realised

From systems & processes to people & relationships
If the first example represents business as usual at your organisation today. In this respect you are far from alone. Technology leaders tend to view products and services in terms of systems and processes which in turn leads to a tendency toward shortcuts to solutions that replace or update those very same systems and processes.

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When you re-frame your products and services as experiences (which is increasingly the way your customers & employees are perceiving them) the change of focus to people and relationships enables the most significant needs to emerge. Critically, those problem nuggets can be weighed for value before solutions are considered.

From inside-out to outside-in thinking
Inside-out thinking is the tendency to view problems in context of what is possible as it relates to an internal context - the business status quo. Inside-out thinking impacts the variety and number of individuals consulted during the innovation process, with a knock-on effect of severely limiting the range of possibilities you consider.
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With such a restrictive outcome, why would anyone subscribe to inside-out thinking?
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As a technology leader you know your organisation, and on a daily basis you leverage this context by making decisions based on it. This knowledge, combined with the pressure to act, and the power to decide often influences technology leaders in innovation scenarios to shortcut to the problem to solve before the “magic” of value mining can take place.
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Alternatively, by driving innovation through experiences, technology is removed as an influence in the “how should we innovate” stage, providing a new freedom of discovery outside the business status quo - outside-in thinking.

With change comes magic gifts
To top it all off, if we do make the change to lead with humans instead of technology, we get to unlock some wonderful gifts:

• Human-led approaches significantly reduce the risks associated with any outcome-based engagement. The reduced risk can be passed back to the business in the form of reduced cost.
• Human-led projects reduce the potential to miss the mark, significantly increasing the potential to deliver outcomes that meet and exceed the expectations of our stakeholders.
• Human-led projects, by solving for the real priority, significantly reduces time wasting rework, increases time efficiency and as a result faster delivery for the business.
• Human-led projects increase the potential for technology leaders to develop long lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with happy stakeholders.