KnolShare with Dr. Dave

This podcast is with my sister Dr. Lateefah Collingwood.  We grew up together on the island of St. Croix in the USVI and I wanted to share our sense of belonging as family.

Dr. Dave:

What is the importance of belonging and why do we all need to belong somewhere? It is built into our human nature. Learn how the powerful philosophy of Ubuntu helps to deliver a simple roadmap to building positive teams and relationships, improving engagement and performance.

Get your copy of Belonging and Healing, creating awesomeness for yourself and others by Dr. Dave Cornelius on amazon.com.

Dr. Dave:

Well, hello and welcome to the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.

You know what? My guest today is my sister, Dr. Lateefah Collingwood. Look, this is a historic moment because this is the first time ever, first time, that I'm officially interviewing my sister on the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast.

 

Hello, Sister. How are you?

Dr. Collingwood:

Hello, brother. I am well.

Dr. Dave:

So good to have you here. Hey, why don't you just-

Dr. Collingwood:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. Why don't you just give our audience a simple elevator pitch about who you are? You could go up to a minute, you could go longer, but nice and sweet so everyone could know who Dr. Lateefah Collingwood really is.

Dr. Collingwood:

Nice and short and sweet.

Dr. Dave:

Something like that.

Dr. Collingwood:

Well, hello, Knolshare audience. I am Dr. Lateefah Collingwood and I am currently an assistant clinical professor at a university of nursing. I'm also a neonatal nurse practitioner maintaining my hands-on practice.

I'm here to just have this conversation with my big brother, Dave, about belonging and so I'm really excited to be here with you guys and we're just going to have some fun today.

 

Dr. Dave:

Yes, we are. Yes, we are. So tell me, why is it important to feel like you belong somewhere? What's up with that? Why do we always have that desire?

Dr. Collingwood:

I believe that we are created to be a part of something. We are all born into families. We're all born into people groups and so, by nature, we are created to be a part of something. So we, as people, or as living beings born into groups have this longing and this desire to really be a part of, to really feel like we belong somewhere, or to someone, or to something.

So I think it's important because of that innate mechanism that we have inside, that thing that drives us to want to be a part of, to want to be accepted, to want to feel like we are a part of something. So the importance comes from the internal drive, in my opinion.

Dr. Dave:

Well, it's a wonderful opinion and a wonderful perspective.

I know you've played sports and what was that like to belong as an individual, or part of a sports team?

Dr. Collingwood:

I see a sports team as I see any other team. It's a group of people coming together to pursue a common goal. In teams it's to win the game, to strategize, to practice and so I think it's just really important. Just being a part of a team helps with a lot of things. It helps with a lot of development. It helps us to learn to collaborate with people so it helps us to learn to deal with different personalities. Because whenever you have a group of people, we come from different backgrounds, different likes, different dislike and so it just prepares us to work together with different people. It challenges us as well to learn to overcome some potential personality obstacles that may present challenges for us as we try to achieve our goal.

But being a part of a sports team,

E94: Belonging and Healing [Part 5] – Ubuntu

Dr. Dave:

Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. And my conversation today is with Nobantu Mpotulo from Ubuntu Coaching. And our conversation will cover the practice of ubuntu and see how that could play a really important role in belonging and healing in organizations and community. So Nobantu, why don't you share a little bit about who you are with our audience? And hopefully I'm saying your name correctly.

Nobantu:

Nobantu, yes.

Dr. Dave:

Nobantu, yes.

Nobantu:

Thank you very much. Yes. A very important name for me indeed. And Bantu in my language, which is Xhosa, means people. So Nobantu means mother of the people. And I find that in our culture we name our children with the hope that the name would be fulfilled. And I found that I followed the helping professions, starting off as a psychologist, and I worked at institutions of higher learning as a student counselor and also counseling staff. And from there, I branched into coaching executives in organizations, and also, I'm a facilitator of peace circles, and ubuntu plays a very critical role and central role in my work.

Dr. Dave:

That's so great. So you are an accredited master certified coach at MCC from the International Coaching Federation. So how do you define ubuntu?

Nobantu:

Ubuntu is the way of being, way of life that takes into cognizance the importance of interconnection, the importance of working with others, the importance of seeing the good in others. So if we define ubuntu in my language, it is [foreign language 00:02:57] I am because we are. I cannot be fully myself if you are not fully who you are destined to be. So in essence, what this is saying is that whatever I do I can be more with others involved. And we have a proverb in Africa that says if you want to work fast, go together. Go alone, sorry. If you want to go far, go together. Let me say that again. If you want to go far, go together. If you want to go fast, go alone. So the spirit of ubuntu is a spirit of moving from I-centrism to we-centrism.

Dr. Dave:

So if ubuntu is the spirit of being focused on we, what are the benefits to a person, to an organization if they practice ubuntu?

Nobantu:

If, for instance, we take diversity, inclusion, and belonging, we cannot be an organization that is successful or that is able to get far if, for instance, we focus on the competencies, on the strengths, on the resources of individuals. But if we take all of those collectively and looking at our bigger goal, looking at our global goal objective that we want to reach, then with all those different competencies, different ways of how people are, we able to enrich this objective we want to achieve. And as I'm saying that, I'm thinking of Maya Angelou's saying where she said that if you look at a tapestry on the wall, it's not the individual colors, the individual shapes of that tapestry that make it to be beautiful, but it's all of those combined together. And if you take one of those, then that tapestry becomes something else. So in diversity, in interconnectedness, in inter-beingness, there is more value, there is more beauty, there is more sustainability in what we want to achieve.

Dr. Dave:

So if we are working in a disconnected organization, how would ubuntu help people build bridges?

Nobantu:

I want to answer this with a story because we're storytellers in Africa. There's a tribe in Zambia is the Bemba tribe. And what this tribe does, for instance, if someone is, I would say, menace in the society, they are a troublemaker, instead of casting that person out, what this tribe in the spirit of ubuntu does,

E93: Belonging and Healing [Part 4]: The Root Before the Fruit

Kayanna: (singing).

Dr. Dave:

So hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We're continuing the conversation of belonging and healing, with my guest, Tracy Treacy from D & S Healing Center. Hey Tracy Treacy, how have you been?

Tracy:

Woo-hoo. Awesome. I've been doing well. How about you, sir?

Dr. Dave:

You know, same here, same here. Just one day at a time. We use the metaphor, an island of one, one, one, one. It's like walking, so one, one.

Tracy:

Okay.

Dr. Dave:

Okay. Yeah. Hey, we're getting into the conversation around healing. So one, one. One foot in front of the other, because sometimes that's what it takes, right?

Tracy:

Yeah. I mean you don't want to go backwards, though sometimes you do, but the idea is to... one foot in front of the other to keep it moving. Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. You got to keep it moving.

Tracy:

I guess I didn't get the island reference with that and-

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Tracy:

... but you islanders got your way of doing things.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. Well, that's what I learned. It's a thing.

Tracy:

It's a thing. One, one, here we go.

Dr. Dave:

One one. So here's a quote, a couple quotes that I grabbed from Vienna Pharaon. "Healing happens when you move through the pains, the patterns, and stories, and walk your way into a healthy ending." And that's one quote, and then, Maya Angelou of course, she says, "Forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know before you learned it." So our conversation today is, the root before the fruit. So the root before the fruit concept describes the need for solid root to support a sustainable opportunity to bare fruit in our healing space. Right? And so we're going to... I'm using I, I'm using the metaphor of sower, who own good soil to plant seeds. And good soil is rich with nutrients, which created space for plants and to have an abundant food supply to support healthy development. And I'm just using us, our bodies, our minds, our spirit, as that soil. And the work that we go through... the healing aspect is the seed. So good seeds are also essential for the process of growing healthy fruits. So you are a sower aren't you?

Tracy:

I would say yes. I have not heard that term, but I'm going to say yes.

Dr. Dave:

So tell me, let's talk about you as a sower.

Tracy:

You know-

Dr. Dave:

I know you're doing some good stuff.

Tracy:

Well, I mean, I do call myself a healer. Right?

Dr. Dave:

Okay. There you go.

Tracy:

And my healing can only happen when I'm, co-creating that space for a person... I'm creating a space for a person to help them heal, which is the co-creation. Right? That's with us working together and me supporting that work. And there are many different ways to do the work. I find the richest way to do the work is through the body. Right? And then that combines... the body, I don't think of separate as the mind. I think of that altogether. There's this one theory... oh my gosh, Dave, I can't remember who said it. I want to say it goes back to Freud, of how the neck is the separator. No, it goes back to Jung, not Freud. How the neck is a separator from the mind and the body. And that what we do is we cut off. We, we become very heady.

We become a world, a society, a community that really values the intellect. And then what the body holds, is the feelings. And it holds the experiences. And we don't want that to interfere with how things are processed up here, but there's no way we can't have that thing work.

kayanna:

(singing)

Dr. Dave:

Hello, and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We are continuing our great conversation of belonging and healing with my guest Tracy Treacy from DNS Healing Center.

Tracy:

Yay!

Dr. Dave:

Our topic today is healing, the antidote to trauma. Trauma is a source of pain that can be described and we can give it the name. So our conversation is going to really dig into forgiveness, somatic healing, psychotherapy, professional coaching, and spiritual healing. So Tray, Tray, Tray, how are you, man? What's going on?

Tracy:

You know, life is good.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Tracy:

... good friend. Of course, it is. How are you doing?

Dr. Dave:

I'm amazing. I'm amazing and I'm jealous because I'm thinking about you hanging out at Coachella which is a fun place to be.

Tracy:

Really. That's what we're doing?

Dr. Dave:

Well, that's not what we're doing, but I'm just telling your business so we can talk about it.

Tracy:

Exactly. That's wrong

Dr. Dave:

Belonging and healing.

Tracy:

Yes. Coachella was a good time.

Dr. Dave:

Awesome.

Tracy:

I mean, I would actually go back.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, yeah.

Tracy:

Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Tracy:

Yeah. It was a lot of people though, man, and it [crosstalk 00:01:42]

Dr. Dave:

Yes, it is.

Tracy:

... COVID. It was a lot of people.

Dr. Dave:

But you were more glamping than anything else, right?

Tracy:

How do you... What? No. I was not glamping.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, you were. I didn't see you. You weren't sleeping in the tent or in your car.

Tracy:

No, no. That's more than glamping. I mean, they have Yurts. Yurts. What are those things called? Yurts?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. Something like that. Yeah, like...

Tracy:

Yeah. The thing, that tent, the-

Dr. Dave:

The teepee thing?

Tracy:

The teepee tent, or the tent with the big opening at the top is... I'm not going to call it a teepee. But it is a tent with a hard side. You know?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Tracy:

And you could get one for the whole weekend. There's levels and it started at about $4,500 and it went up to $7,500.

Dr. Dave:

Yep.

Tracy:

Wow. This is a real thing.

Dr. Dave:

Well, yes, it is a real thing. So did you have a sense of belonging as you were there?

Tracy:

I actually, yeah, because you feel even in that big crowd of people, you're all there for the same thing. So you belong to the place where people go to appreciate music. You go to really enjoy artists, to do their thing. You see the performers in their, all their glory, like this is what I was born to do. So you feel like you belong to this exclusive little club of over a 100,000 people and you have access to. Everybody's so very nice to each other. Because we, being a little bit older, there were some of us, but there's a VIP section and then there's a general. So we were VIP and the general population folks, we were amongst them.

Dr. Dave:

Nice.

Tracy:

So it was really, yeah, it was just kind of cool. All the young folks acknowledging us, being like, "Look at you. You dope. You here! Yay!" So it definitely felt like I belonged.

Dr. Dave:

Okay. Well, that's what I wanted to just check in on. I just wanted to check in on that.

Dr. Dave:

So we want to jump into the very first part of our conversation, the healing power of forgiveness. So I think of forgiveness as a powerful state of spiritual, mental, physical presence that allows every person to move beyond the tra...

E92: Belonging and Healing Part 3 - Language of Belonging

Dr. Dave:

All right. Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. We're continuing a conversation of belonging and healing with my guest, Tracy Treacy from D & S Healing Center.

Tracy:

Woo.

Dr. Dave:

Yay, the thing is when we talk about sticks and stones can break my bones, but words could never harm me, to me that's just partially true because words matter. I think words can be harmful, especially for people in need of belonging, and even if they don't have a need for belonging, I think words can be harmful. And so for me, the word that always shows up is the N-word, which I think is a harmful word, and I said, no matter if it ends with A, personally, I don't want to continue to prolong long the use of a word that has been used to dehumanize my family and community, and other people may have a different opinion, but that's where I stand and I'm sticking to it. What about you, Tracy? What word rubs you the wrong way?

Tracy:

That's what you feel and you're sticking with it.

Dr. Dave:

That's right, it's all about that.

Tracy:

I don't know if a word rubs me the wrong way. I think it's the intention behind the word that gets me, or who it's coming from because if somebody off the street calls me something or says something to me that I'm like, "You know what, maybe they're having a bad day." I got a little bit more empathy and compassion for them, but if somebody who loves me and is part of my space where I feel like I belong, and they say something, that probably hits deeper than any... The N-word... I don't know, maybe I'm just numb to it. I've heard it so many times, it's like what the F ever.

Dr. Dave:

Right.

Tracy:

That's not my issue that you're calling me that, or that you think that, that's your issue, but when someone says, or has some meaning beside something that loves me or that say they love me, then that hurts, that affects me.

Dr. Dave:

I could totally relate to that. So, I was reading something from MIT recently and a study that they did, they were talking about we crave relationships in the same region of the brain that we crave food, that's belonging, and we experience social exclusion in the same brain area that we experience physical pain. So, what I'm thinking about is language is very powerful and we could use it to divide us, unite us and sharing the same language build camaraderie between individuals and it helps us support the shared knowledge base and words used. So, what language can be used to encourage more belonging in your opinion?

Tracy:

That's a lot.

Dr. Dave:

I know it is.

Tracy:

What came to my brain immediately is the language of love, and I guess what I mean by that is when you... And, we don't always do this because we're not always in a place to be conscious or mindful enough to do it, but speaking from the heart, as opposed to waiting to hear what someone's saying, being present, all of those things that we talk about in mindfulness, being present in the moment, taking a breath before you respond and then respond from a place of love, that's what came to mind for me, to me it's that simple. And in order to respond from a place of love, we may have to feel that we've been loved and we are loved, so that we can give and receive it, and I guess that goes back to that belonging.

Dr. Dave:

Love is one of my favorite words because my translation of it is very biblical in the sense that I'm talking about being patient and kind, and if I could bring those two aspects of my hu...

Deliver Value: Happy Contributing People

According to Aristotle - Happiness consists in achieving, through the course of a whole lifetime, all the goods — health, wealth, knowledge, friends, etc. — that lead to the perfection of human nature and to the enrichment of human life.

Happiness is based on experiences that are metabolized in our mind, body, and spirit.  When people say, “think happy thoughts”, they are referring to past experiences that we can recall and dream about.  Oswald, Proto and Sgroi (2015) found happiness made people around 12% more productive while unhappy workers proved 10% less productive.  Positive emotions appear to invigorate human beings. People are the center of delivering value to customers and provide innovations that allow the organization to thrive.  The more happiness people experience the better opportunity for the organization to have more satisfied customers and thrive.   Daniel Pink (2009) said if people were paid the right amount of money, given autonomy, purpose, and mastery they would be motivated to be their best selves at work.  Psychological safety is another popular topic that resonates with people.  In a Psychologically safe workplace people experience the freedom and courage to express ideas so the individuals and organization can thrive.  The same concept applies to enabling satisfied customers that volunteer personal time to show the world how amazing your organization's people are via social media or word of mouth.  If happiness is such a critical emotion and experience to invigorate people, why do organizations invest so little to create an environment where happiness can be experienced.

I spoke to four people who have an influential opinion in business and the agile community. My question was: What would you include in a working environment that would enable “Happy Contributing People”?  Please share one or more experiences.

 

Diana Larsen, author of Agile Retrospective and co-founder of Agile Fluency Model:

The Agile Fluency model has four zones, which 1) focusing on value (shift team culture), 2) delivering value (shift team skills), 3) optimizing value (shift organizational structure), and 4) optimizing for systems (shift organizational culture). The approach that you're going for is either the focusing zone or you're going for something that includes those skills of the focusing zone.  It's embedded in the whole model and those are the skills that allow for becoming effective as a team. When people have that sense of effectiveness of building good products, I mean, it's very tied to the project Aristotle ideas of psychological safety and dependability and having structure and clarity around what we're working on and you know those, those five keys that they talk about.

When we have the project Aristotle experiences for our teams, they tend to have much higher job satisfaction. I tend not to think so much about happiness because that has certain connotations for certain people, but I believe that people deserve job satisfaction. They need to be pleased with their work. They need to have that sense of accomplishment. They need to have that sense of control over their work lives as a team and the autonomy that they must think about.  That is true at the individual level, but it's also true of the team level. Does this team, and when we think about self-organizing teams, we begin to talk about autonomous teams.

Teams that can make decisions together to move forward together and that feel they have the mastery and the skills that they need. That's what fluency is about.  We've got the right skills that match the work that we need to do, or our company is willing to invest in us gaining those skills. When you've got all that together, you have high levels of job satisfaction.

E90: Belonging and Healing Part-2 - Why is belonging important?

Kayanna (00:00):

(Singing).

Tracy (00:00):

Is that what this-

Dr. Dave (00:00):

Hey, hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast. Hey, this is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host, and I'm excited to be here with my friend, Tracy. Tracy. We're going to be talking about belonging and why it's important. And so earlier, we talked about putting up an episode per month as we begin to work in our book, Belonging and Healing. So Tracy, Tracy, welcome. What's going on with you?

Tracy (00:45):

Dave, hey. Thank you. Good morning and life is good.

Dr. Dave (00:54):

Look at you. I am in that calm mode, just chill today. I don't know what's up with that, but I wanted to start off with a quote by Angela Maya.

Tracy (01:05):

Oh come on.

Dr. Dave (01:07):

By Maya Angelou.

Tracy (01:08):

Okay.

Dr. Dave (01:10):

And she says, "I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself." So that's her context of belonging. And so, why is belonging important? Why do we care so much about belonging as human beings? What's the deal with that?

Tracy (01:29):

Heck if I know. It's innate, it's something we feel complete, in order to belong somewhere, that makes us feel complete. That makes us feel like we have some kind of anchor, some kind of grounding. It just, to feel like you belong kind of gives you some wholeness, some sense of being, right?

Dr. Dave (

E89: Deliver Value Installment #2: Organization Leaders Want Value-Driven Outcomes

Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast.  I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host.  For those who have been listening and receiving value from this podcast, I thank you for the support.  If you are new, welcome.

 

The Deliver Value series is a set of topics that will be included in my upcoming book called Deliver Value: Happing contributing people, satisfied customers, and thriving business.    Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been struggling to finish this book, so I decided to use a lean-agile approach.  Each month a topic from the book will be released as one of my podcast episodes to create the Deliver Value series.  The second installment of the series is titled “organization leaders want value-driven outcomes”.

 

The goal of agility measures is to keep track of the most value-driven factors to lead business success.  – Pearl Zhu

 

The conversations that I commonly have with organization leaders can be summarized into the desire to 1) maintain and increase gross margin, 2) increase brand loyalty, 3) attract and retain resilient people, 4) practice agility, and 5) leverage risks for exponential gains.  These are the five core practices that leaders can use to help an organization thrive. 

 

1 - Maintain and Increase Gross Margins

 

Gross margin (GM) is the amount of money earned from the sales of products or services.  The higher gross margin value indicates the profitability of a company, which means more money available for investments and a sign of financial health.  To calculate gross margin, you subtract Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) from Net Sales Revenue. Leaders become concerned and frustrated when gross margins are negative because it is a sign that expenses or sales are not performing as planned.  The response is often the proverbial tightening of the belt that leads to layoffs and cost cutting.  However, when gross margin is positive, leaders can use this information to drive strategic decisions that include offering discounts to customers to increase sales and outpace the competition.  Gross margin should not be the only key performance indicator (KPI) that leaders use to determine profitability because not all expenses are included in the calculation.  

 

2 - Increase Brand Loyalty

 

The importance of the pursuit to protect and expand brand loyalty creates an environment that will help create happy customers and a healthy brand, which often leads to recurring revenue streams.  My great grandmother would often tell me “A bird in hand is better than two in the bushes”.  This simply translate from a West Indian colloquial proverb to mean focus on the things you currently have in hand but do not ignore what is possible. The cost to attract new customers can be significantly reduced when a Net Promoter Score (NPS) is high with a value of 9 or 10, and people are singing praises about a product and service to other people in their network. Often referred to as word-of-mouth advertising.  NPS is more than just a score, it represents actual feelings about your company, products, and services.  Buying a new or expensive product is an emotional activity and it creates anxiety about whether the product or service will provide the desired value or meet expectations.  Brand loyalty is not limited to products and services but also applies to individuals delivering value to people and organizations.  Creating brand loyalty as a professional coach and trainer is equally important as the Apple or Amazon brand loyalty.

 

3 - Attract and Retain Resilient People

 

E88: Belonging and Healing Part-1 – Sense Your Belonging Space

Podcast Soundtrack:

Let's talk about it. Let's go deep. We all have something to share, KnolShare with Dr. Dave.

Dr. Dave:

So hello and welcome to the Knolshare with Dr. Dave podcast. This is Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. I am super excited and pleased to announce the law to renew series of my friend, Tracy Treacy. We're going to be talking about belonging and healing over several episodes, starting with one episode each month. We'll see where we go from there, right? Hey Tracy, what's going on?

Tracy:

Good morning, Dr. Dave, how are you?

Dr. Dave:

That's so formal, we know each other too long to be calling well, you can call me Dr. Dave.

Tracy:

Well, I'm looking at your name on the screen and it says Dr. Dave, so I'm calling you Dr. Dave. Okay, I'll call you Cornelius. What's up, Cornelius, how you doing?

Dr. Dave:

I would rather you call me Dr. Dave. So, you know part of our conversation today, we have a few topics that we're going to go over. And since we're talking about belonging and so the four topics would be sensor space for belonging, we'll probably dig into some generative workspace for belonging, don't fake belonging, and then back to your vision, get some ideas around how we could get there. So what do we want, so let's just jump in and let's talk about the importance of belonging for us human beings, right? I mean, this is something that we need, if we don't have it, we go stir crazy, I guess. Or we go and live in cabins out in the bush.

Tracy:

And some people like to do that, because they belong out there, right, if you're talking about belonging. Yeah. You know I was thinking about that belonging thing and what that means in the society that we live in, and how it's, you got to find your people in order to feel like you belong.

Dr. Dave:

Right.

Tracy:

Right. How do you find your people? And then when you find your people and you show up, do you feel like you're part of the people that you think you want to be a part of? So do you really feel like you belong?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, that is a very insightful view, right, into those relationships, right, that you're trying to build with these individuals that you're part of. So, oftentimes we're looking in to see, hey, do they help us emotionally, right, do they make us happy or spiritually...

Tracy:

Right.

Dr. Dave:

Or even from a physical context, right, are they helping us physically in terms of us being a part of their, that space, how do we sense that, right? Trying to figure that out.

Tracy:

Yeah, and do they make me happy or do they help me find my own happiness, when even in those groups of belonging, there's so much stuff that needs to be healed within those groups in order to feel like they even belong.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah.

Tracy:

I kind of think the sense of belonging comes back to self. Can I accept who I am and all of my stuff in order to show up authentically in a group that I think are my people, and then feel like I belong? And that was a whole lot, but that's kind of the trajectory, right?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, because I think of it as self love, self respect, self-healing, right, self-esteem. I mean, it all comes, it starts with us because the sensing is from us into the environment with other people that we connect with, so it starts with us.

Tracy:

Yeah. I like using self-efficacy instead of self-esteem, right.

Dr. Dave:

Sure.

Tracy:

Because self-esteem feels to me more externally driven, because I feel good when people respond to me in a certain kind of way, and it can also be internal,

E87: Deliver Value Part-1 – Definition of Value (Dov)

Hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast.  I am Dr. Dave Cornelius your host.  For those who have been listening and receiving value from the podcast, I thank you for the support.  If you are new, welcome and I

The Deliver Value series is a set of topics that will be included in my upcoming book called Deliver Value: Happing contributing people, satisfied customers, and thriving business.  As an author our creative juices are not as fluid, and we hit the proverbial writer’s wall.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have been struggling to finish this book, so I decided to use a lean-agile approach.  Each month a topic from the book will be released as one of my podcast episodes to create the Deliver Value series.

 

Let's begin with the Definition of Value (DoV)

The Definition of Value (DoV)

 

If you ask several people what the definition of value is, you will likely receive varying responses.  Let's begin with the dictionary and see what is written about the definition of value in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  This dictionary was established in 1828.  Value is identified as a noun, verb, and adjective. The following are the three (3) definitions as a noun that I selected:

* The monetary worth of something, like market price

* A fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged

* Relative worth, utility, or importance

 

I spoke to four people who may have an influential opinion in business and the agile community.

 

Marty Nelson, Alchemy Code Lab founder:

Value has a positive exchange, positive emotion, and experience. Value is generative - money, friends, and social connections, working ecosystems.  Value is something that satisfies true wants.

 

Diana Larsen, author of Agile Retrospective and co-found of Agile Fluency Model:

I think there are different kinds of value. It's too bad we only have one word to talk about several definitions.

One context is value to the customer. Businesses are sensitive to their customers' needs. They want to give the customer what they want so that customers will pay for services and products. So, there's the value around the value stream going to the customer.  Are we getting closer and closer as time goes by to build what the customer wants and will accept and pay for?  Product management helps the organization focus on the items with the highest priority over others, which gives a sense of, "this is more valuable than that, at least at this moment in time."

To better understand priority, we can add methods like the cost of delay, and it begins to get us closer to understanding value as well.

Then there's also business value, which is the investments enabling the business to thrive, be resilient, and sustain over time.  Value, I think in the business sense, is very much tied to strategic direction. Is this strategic position providing us value because it's moving us more toward our strategic goals, like targets in the Improvement Kata? Is this moving us in the direction that we need to go to give greater value to the business? In the Agile Fluency model community, we tend to talk about value as business benefits. The value is the benefits that the business wants to gain from supporting and investing in their teams to help achieve the maximum value from the products in the market.

 

 

Dave West, CEO, Scrum.org:

Value is a subjective measure.  Therefore, it is not how I define it that matters, but ultimately the person and organization that I wish to bring value to that are relevant.

For example,