Chickens and Eggs

My friend Rob is a backyard chicken farmer. He lives in the heart of the city neighborhood with a backyard you can mow in 10 minutes. But he found room for chickens.

Last month we nursed a beverage together and talked about why he raises his chickens.

“Sawyer, brown eggs taste so much better”, he told me.

“Last month I accidentally bought brown eggs at the grocery store instead of the usual white eggs” I replied. “I noticed no difference whatsoever. Except that I paid more”.

“Dude, you just don’t get it”.

And he’s right I don’t get it.

And there it became clear. Rob values the taste, aesthetics, and experience of raising, collecting, and eating brown eggs.

I don’t.

What is valuable can vary dramatically between people.

And between business units, organizations, and companies.

Real-time streaming data ingestion? Incredibly valuable for one team. Complete waste of money for another.

All historical data in hot storage and available for on-demand queries? In demand daily at one company. Ignored and costly at another.

Not only does value vary. It also has a steep cliff. When a few factors change, the same idea, product, or design goes from invaluable to worthless.

• You will only know what’s valuable by deeply understanding your customers, stakeholders, or leadership.

• Your team needs to be designed to quickly adapt to deliver what’s valuable to business.

• What you read on LinkedIn, in Harvard Business Review, or in a Medium blog post about “business value” has to be adopted for your specific context.

If you need help on the journey to value,

I’m here,

Sawyer