adding value

Recently I was having lunch with a young lady who runs a very successful design studio. I asked her the following question: What defines a good designer?

Is it the person who can come up with creative designs? Or is it the person who ‘recognises a good design when they see it?’

The obvious answer is to say ‘both’. That may be correct. But if you were to force a choice, which would it be? The answer she gave me was that it was the skill of recognising a design that would work for the consumer and for the design brief. I would agree with that choice.

FINE ART

If we applied the same choice to fine art, would it be the person who expressed the thought in the painting or the person who could appreciate the aesthetic value of the piece?

If it was the latter, then we ought to be able to produce random arrays of lines and colours on a computer, and the artist would suddenly spot an arrangement that had aesthetic value. I believe it could be done.

Does the same principle apply to idea creativity? Which is the difficult part: to generate the new idea or to appreciate the value of the idea?

In this case I believe both parts are difficult. It is certainly not easy or natural to generate new ideas - unless you acquire the necessary skill in the use of the deliberate tools of lateral thinking!

If you do manage to generate new ideas, then the appreciation of the potential value of those ideas is of the utmost importance.

If you do not see value in the idea, then you are not going to pursue or develop that particular idea.

YELLOW HAT

Appreciation of ideas is all to do with ‘yellow hat’ thinking. This is the all-important ‘value sensitivity’ which I have talked and written about on various occasions.

I have sat in on creative meetings where very good ideas were generated, but where no one seemed to see the value in the ideas. Education is all about critical thinking and the way things should be. There is no attention at all paid to value sensitivity. Yet value sensitivity is a key part of life, of business and of entrepreneurship. Perhaps I should set up an ‘idea appreciation agency’, You send me the ideas and I would give a value appreciation – for a consulting fee!

SIX VALUE MEDALS

In order to appreciate value it may be useful to carry out a value scan. Here we scan in different directions in order to see the different values involved.

The Six Value Medals represent the six key values from organisational values to perceptual values, from human values to quality values, etc. There is a book of mine, published by Vermilion Press, London, which deals with the value medals.

As usual, attention is pulled by something which attract sour attention. A proper scan is directed by the thinker and not determined by what is being assessed.

The thinker can say: ‘I want to look in that value direction - what do I see?’

The thinker can also say: ‘I want to look at the perceptual values here - how might this be perceived?’ And...’How might this be perceived by different people?’

Just to have a vague sense of value is not efficient enough. We need to scan all the values in a deliberate and determined way.

Some values are obvious, but others are not at all obvious. I would say that I have had more surprises under the yellow hat (values) than under the green hat (creativity).

EXERCISES IN VALUE SENSITIVITY

Think of some apparently negative situations - then seek to find some value in them. This value may be for some people only. The value maybe present only under certain circumstances. It is the effort to find value that is important.

You seek value even though the first impression is clearly negative:

... if human beings always had one leg shorter than the
other

... someone who always tells lies... a very slow motor car... a scar on the face

... chairs which break easily.

ASSESSING IDEAS

When the Six Hats method is used to assess ideas, it always makes sense to start with the yellow hat and to look for values before proceeding with the black hat to; look for difficulties.

The reason is that if you start with the black hat and see all the difficulties, then you are not going to be motivated to find the values.

If you start by looking for values, and if you find strong values, then the difficulties are seen as obstacles to be overcome.

It is natural to look for difficulties first. If you are presented with a number of alternatives, you seek to choose amongst them, but throwing out the ones which present problems.

This makes choice much easier. It is a natural but dangerous habit. There may be an alternative with a minor, but obvious, negative point.

The same alternative may, however, have a strong but hidden value which easily out-values the negative point you have found.

As everyone knows, values are hugely important. At the same time they are general and rather vague. There is even more ‘lip service’ paid to values than to creativity.

REJECTION

Because you can see value in an idea does not mean that you have to use that idea. The values may not be strong enough. The negative points may weaken the values. Nevertheless, it is always worth making the effort to see as much value as possible.

Once this habit is established, then it becomes much easier for the thinker to assess creative ideas. You can always acknowledge the value and still reject an idea. This is very different from rejecting an idea without having made any effort to find value in that idea.

PEOPLE

Exactly the same principle applies to our assessment of people. If there are obvious negative qualities, we make no effort to find the positive qualities. Yet under certain conditions the positive qualities may become more important than the negative ones.