Linking Values

Moses has a product he desperately wants his people to choose and cherish. The product has innate value and offers substantial benefits. Despite the quality of the product, the market is reluctant, skeptical, and inclined to choose low quality substitutes.

Moses works hard to demonstrate how his product can reduce the buyers’ costs and increase the buyers’ performance. In this process he is making links between the values and activities of God with the values and activities of the chosen people. He is trying to demonstrate that “I am Who I am” is uniquely powerful, uniquely loving, uniquely just. Moses is seeking to persuade his people that the God of their ancestors is not just one of many possible gods, but is absolutely differentiated from all other gods, is the one true God of the universe, and is their unique source of meaning and purpose.

Moses can observe that assurance of meaning and purpose is valued by his people. In what they say and do, they want and need what God is offering. But, still, it is challenging to link the values – even when what is valued is fundamentally shared.

Porter writes, “The starting point for understanding what is valuable to the buyer is the buyer’s value chain. Buyers have value chains consisting of activities they perform just as a firm does… The buyer’s value chain determines the way in which a firm’s product is actually used as well as the firm’s other effects on the buyer’s activities. These determine the buyer’s needs and are the underpinnings of buyer value and differentiation.” (Porter, Michael E.; Competitive Advantage, Free Press, 1985)

My firm’s principal value-delivered – reflecting its true self – is learning efficacy. But many of our clients have only a passing interest in evidence of real learning. In most markets “education” is seen as a viable product whether or not the delivery results in learning. The quicker, cheaper, and easier education can be delivered, regardless of actual impact, the happier many of our clients will be. But this low expectation regarding learning translates into a tendency to low-ball budgets. The disconnect between what we value and what many clients value is clearly disadvantageous to the firm.

Almost all of our clients, however, place high value on increasing their budgets. This is often the preeminent activity in their value chain. Recognizing this buyer value, we have also observed that many of our clients depend on PowerPoint presentations to argue for their budgets. As a result, we have increasingly used PowerPoint presentations to report on learning efficacy. We produce these PowerPoints with the buyers’ funders in mind. This tends to encourage our buyers to use learning efficacy – and the same PowerPoints – as an argument to justify increased funding, which, if successful, tends to encourage our buyers to give greater value to our firm’s core value in learning efficacy.

We place high value on learning efficacy. Many of our clients place high value on generating higher budgets. By making it easy for our clients to see and use a relationship between what we value and what they value, we create a greater sense of shared value, and better position our product as having unique value.

This one linkage is not enough to create a sustained strategic advantage. We must make similar links with a wide variety of buyer activities. As Porter explains,“Differentiation… stems from the specific activities the firm performs and how they affect the buyer. Differentiation grows out of the firm’s value chain. Virtually any value activity is a potential source of uniqueness.” The more links in the value chain that the supplier and buyer clearly share, the stronger the supplier’s strategic advantage.

What do you do? How you actually behave is the best evidence of what you value. How are your various activities linked? Are they linked? How do the links impact your results? Try to map out your value chain – the sequence of behavior – that results in your “product.”

What does your client do? How are your client’s activities linked? Try to map out your client’s value chain. Where can you forge a connection between links in your value chain and links in your client’s value chain?

After the debacle at Mt. Sinai – with the chosen people fleeing from their loving creator – Moses and God substantially adjust their approach. In place of thunder, lighting, trumpets, smoke, and devouring fire – a veritable volcano of a God – Moses receives instructions to craft an exquisite tabernacle of fine wood, precious stones, and rare metals in which God will dwell among the people in a tent.(Exodus 25) Talk about strategic repositioning.

From this Ark of the Covenant, made of acacia wood, God will travel with the chosen people, and meet with Moses “face to face, as one who speaks to a friend,” (Exodus 33: 11) and in this less dramatic way build a relationship with the whole community. The buyers no longer have direct access, but through Moses there is significant indirect access. The power available is still the same, but the packaging is much less intimidating. The God of the tabernacle is just as responsive to the profound needs of the people as the God of the fiery mountain, but the subtle mystery of the tabernacle is, evidently, more acceptable than the full power of the volcano.

Throughout the Bible we can perceive God working to link our value chain to the source of ultimate value. It remains the buyer’s choice. But God is trying to make it easy for the buyer.