Innovate By Insight:

Modeling User Experience Into Contributor Experience

Brent Lackley : June 27, 2017 (updated Jan 6, 2018)

Need • For those who hold custody of value, innovation is now a fundamental pressure. Reacting to outside innovation, identifying what areas are ripe for innovation and continually producing innovation are key drivers. Yet, a systemic disconnect to the vision and principles supporting innovation often persists in organizations, from rejecting strong candidates in the hiring process to incompatible management to mute leadership in inspiring, providing for or rewarding independent and value oriented thought. Is there one simple mechanism that will support an organization's overall shift toward innovative growth?


Platform • The magic of innovation is as individual as the producer. So, putting aside a one-size-fits-all innovation formula, this means offering a framework to guide the individualized buidling and expression of evolutionary and revolutionary thought. Converting an organization into an innovative hive starts with each individual and scales up (it's rarely vice versa), but the viewpoint must be top-down. The transformative nature of innovation is enabled by a complete view of the value process including each contributing component. In an enterprise, each person supporting the total value is a “contributor” and requires both individual and total views of value for a complete investment - to be transformative. A tool is needed to define, align and build contributors who build innovative value. Steps inside the tool include;

  • Capture how standout contributors produce and enact their value in preparation for knowledge transfer,
  • Provide a platform for the adoption and individual expression of value,
  • Clarify who is contributing to value (and who isn’t) and
  • Scale the platform to link contributors in order to align and compound value.

In short, it should enlighten us to our own value process and empower contributors to use and add to that process for more consistent success (evolutionary innovation) and employ consideration of alternate ways to create value (revolutionary innovation).


Process • The User Experience (UX) process is uniquely equipped to examine and remember the emergence of value, discover keys in the value process and build tools for a disparate audience to easily access, interact with and make use of that value. Indeed, we maximize the UX process of ‘Learn, Build, Test’ with some shift in focus, turning it on ourselves and teaching its simple, value enhancing process for self-sustaining, innovative growth.


Are you chasing innovation
or building innovators?


  • Clarify who and what is contributing to value.
    Am I capturing what works and why?
  • Provide a platform for the individual expression of value.
    Am I transferring knowledge and initiating new understanding?
  • Link contributors to compound value (scale the platform).
    Am I aligning my community around evolving value?

Maximum UX: The Contributor Model


Effort • Start simple, with what is already clear. As the world continues to flatten (data, products and services are more available), the importance widens to innovate around the simple, fulfilling and elegant usefulness of those offers - the user experience. More significantly, we can apply the existing Experience process of continuous improvement driving insight to simplify value and make it easy to adopt, to understand our own value and potential value (in individuals and teams) and make it easy to use.

Experience is powerful. Use it to fuel your future. Translating accumulated experience into an innovation outlook is key - a basic outline of Maximum UX follows.

Components • Maximum UX for innovation, performance and profitability;

Maximum UX: The Contributor Model




Summary

Maximum UX: The Contributor Model (A) Examine the values that create value: Are you going slow to go fast?

Supplement the "Learn" stage of UX, focusing investigation on contributors' skill and supporting self-accountability. (Adopt a belief that the ability of standout performers can be captured and transferred.)

Turning UX inward, translate the experience of contributors into values, methods and purpose using the "What? Why? Key?" self assessment, building the insight muscle (in addition to interviews & observation).

Stream history and lessons learned into a wiki (or other tool) to form a knowledgebase in support of the habit, retention and connectivity of ongoing insights and improvements.

Maximum UX: The Contributor Model (B) Include both users & producers of value: Can you see clearly how value unifies your community, or doesn't?

Unify insights by finding context, needs and values relationships between users and contributors to form a whole view of the value cycle from conception to creation to consumption.

Add ongoing peer and colleague feedback loops around skill and working habits, in addition to a leadership perception, for ego and reality checks that support each individuals' talent and wholistic view.

Codify understanding into typical and key performer habits.

MaximumUX agents should be adept across the scope of UX, as unifiers and change agents, providing thought leadership, deliverables and relationship management.

Maximum UX: The Contributor Model (C) Create an interface for the value cycle (The Fast Fit Performance Framework): Are you mandating outcomes or maturing your practice?

Use a modular, scalable and visual framework to accumulate success factors into a cycle while accommodating and extending a challenge for the expression and testing of individual ideas and abilities.

Decommoditize contributors and un-silo groups of contributors with both Personal and Enterprise Value Performance Models that recognize and connect individual and group contributions in a shared purpose and vision.

Use interactive versions of the Corporate, Key Performer, Group and other Value Performance Models as an interface to your knowledgebase (wiki), drilling into tools and documentation supporting each success factor in context - for rapid insight, knowledge transfer and training.


A complete vision of value - internal, external and their connection - act as a platform for innovative insights and the capability to strengthen, streamline and link the overall skill base. A more detailed description of maximumUX for Innovation follows including Uses (human intelligence decisioning, income stream, etc.) and Benefits (unlock potential skills by decommoditizing and unsiloing);






Maximum UX: The Contributor Model

(A) Examine the values that create value

Are you going slow to go fast?


Slow & Mindful • When we abandon insight for speed, we loose sight of how the future is built. Environments where 'grow fast' outweighs 'grow wise'. overall value suffers. Discovering root causes mean faster and far more effective solutions. How do we explore the roots of a company?

Employees often join an organization with skills and great intentions but are entering a black hole of corporate or position history, starting over with lessons learned, and may let bad or incongruent habits blindside them. These issues compound moving up the leadership chain. Building contributors in value development begins with investment in self clarity and self accountability, for individuals and enterprises. If content is king, know your contents.

Supplementing the initial stage of UX, ‘Learn’, we must first answer individually to our skill level, innate or chosen purpose, what we believe and how we enact those beliefs. The practice of self-awareness with a reality check must be balanced with vision. Innovation emerges as a mental or visionary breakthrough and is built on some basic focus mechanisms and practicality required to support the internal, mental groundwork of insight.

Beginning by looking at skill level, the most successful contributors to value are easily identified, though the time is rarely taken to capture their insight and skill performance. When top performers leave, most of their understanding leaves with them. When organizations gain the skill of capturing and transferring vision, insight and skills, the speed and depth of performance can improve drastically.

It is essential to suspend the often held assumption that the methods of great performers can not be captured or transferred. The truth is that this can be done, in large part, with the performer’s knowledge preserved in a way that allows for adoption and personalization by a student.

To sustain growth of value, someone must first find themselves valuable. This realization is formed by both self discovery and by adopting skills or learning from others. It's important to support both forms of value discovery. Speed evolution and smooth out the flailing and 'shots in the dark' dynamics that can thwart basic business mechanisms. Smooth is slow. Slow is fast. And fast is profitable.  


Inside Out • To know ourselves, turn UX inside out and explore the core. If we think about User Experience as a way to translate users’ needs in value and approach into a valuable experience for them, we are now seeking a way to translate experience of contributors into values and method. Put contributors at the center of understanding and capture their experience in creating value.


Reflection • This is both a gathering and reflection phase. Awareness may happen through gathering facts, but analysis is demanded to decipher purpose and values. Simplicity is the easiest thing to ask for and the most difficult thing to achieve. It will be an ongoing process. Focus on objectivity and consider inviting colleagues and others who observe you to offer their views specific to behavior patterns, key points in the pattern and results (see Feedback Loops below). Outside eyes and independent, anonymous inquiries offer a balanced opportunity in collecting outside insight to be combined with your own internal insight.


Brand or Purpose • For an individual, the center point is purpose. For companies, it is a brand. Purpose is typically innate, while brand is normally adopted. Some may be able to answer the core clarity question of purpose in short order. For others it will become clearer by tracing and examining considerations and decisions tied to activities (see “How” below). Clarity of purpose is the primary key in building contributors. A shared cause is exponentially more powerful than divided causes.


Values Determine Value • In this model, values may or may not contain moral codes. Primarily they are key principles that reflect purpose and effect outcomes. Our values are the roots that feed growth and determine what makes us valuable in the marketplace. Values grow into value. These values should also reflect personality traits and the intangible characteristics that factor critically in success. (The assumption that these traits are 'uncapturable' or 'nontransferable' must be dismissed and replaced with the key contributor self assessment, skilled interviews, observation and analysis.)

When top performers feel unrecognized and undervalued, they leave. Make one value 'Recognition' of dedicated, high performing members. Singling out a great contributor for a Personal Performance Model that can be used to train others benefits the company, the team, clients and the top performer - a clear 'Win' across the board.  


Business Model • What we truly value is shown by actions. Capture how values are translated into action, usually displaying habit and patterns - a working model. Note that here, the business model is a conglomeration and monetization of personal working models.


Models • There may be a corporate brand that contains values. Likely it gets a rare mention. Even more rare are personal brands built on personal values. But, what if value (what we do and how we do it) is created from values (what we value, or think about, so we become). Capturing these values on an individual level and comparing them to the overall corporate values could ultimately save stumbles, stalling and heartburn ahead of time in the journey of increasing value.


Historical Memory & Lessons Learned • Forgetfulness is a promoter of failure. It is also the standard, because, along with avoidance, it’s the easiest thing to do. Successes are rarely analyzed for repetition. Failures are mostly pushed away. Corporate memory can seem nonexistent. When retirees or frustrated employees leave without having captured their experience or vision, teams are starting over - consistently. We want to believe that our situation is new, unique, incomparable. Is it?

Capture and mine the value of memory, the fundamental trait of progress. Deeper skill insight begins with focus on finding the repeating principles that feed those skills (“Why?”), rather than solely on what activities occur (“What?”). Establishing this practice early, allowing contributors to develop their own way to fulfill a shared goal, is more likely to unlock hidden contributor power and creative thinking.


How • Empowering individuals to decipher their own purpose or brand, values and working model is built by answering three questions. This is a self study and collection exercise though skilled interviewing (of the subject and satellites) along with practiced observation (particularly in the subject's performance environment) and investigation are key feeders for the sharpest insights.

To know ourselves, ask;

  • What do I think / know / love / feel?
  • Why do I think that?
  • What are the keys?

To know how we work ask;

  • What did I do?
  • Why did I do it?
  • What were the keys?

It may be easier for some to start with a historical narrative perspective and move inward toward reasons, principles and purpose. Either way, you are your own best teacher - pay attention to become your best student.


Knowledgebase • A good place to start collecting insights for your model is your most important successes and most recent work. To extend the value of your knowledgebase, add answers to the 5 W’s (who, what, when, where, why, how) to personal, group and enterprise performance models. The outer ring represents this extension of insight collection to competitors and other entities such as partners, vendors, governance, etc.


Tool • As a collection tool, I most often recommend a wiki for its ease of use and flexibility.

  • Questions are easily translated into a quick Form.
  • Form results are collected into a Diary.
  • Establishment of a glossary with key word tracking will support pattern identification, theme production and concept linking into a flow for learning. (For example, a key word count could reveal the balance of “ask” to “tell” - are you asking more than you are telling? This may be a metric in your Leadership, found in your Values set.)


Structure • While some "best practices" may be overly rigid and some "lessons learned" may not be able to unify teams enough, an insight to values style of view creates a unified core with a flexible sheathing of personalized activities. Simplifying around purpose-based values and offering proven achievement methods while allowing for creation of new methods provides a clear view to determine a path forward while providing a platform for creative thinking. Layering learning in this way while forming your performance model ensures value with longevity.

An enterprise wiki can be a curated document databank though it should act as a magnification of your Enterprise Performance Model - organized in the same connective structure, or logical thought flow, and supported by a drillable set of explanations and assets (simple first, then detailed).


View To Value Creation • Structuring your wiki like your Value Performance Model means it’s also a platform for thought exercise. When all parties use the same framework, but fill it individually, it allows for both autonomy and unification. It is an instant insight view for leaders to identify, qualify and reconcile implementation of ideas.

It can take time to build commitment to value. Supporting individual value self-recognition is a step away from the standard of simply demanding corporate value support. It is a matter of inspiring an inward, self-sustaining vision of value to develop contributors. But, this vision is foundationary for innovation. Finding a comfortable, quick path to this commitment is key. If knowledge is power, self understanding is self empowerment.






Maximum UX: The Contributor Model

(B) Include both users and producers

Maximum UX: The Contributor Model

Can you see clearly how value unifies your community, or doesn’t?


Contemporary UX • User Experience is a process designed to lead us to the creation of a simple, fulfilling and elegant experience for users of goods or services. it's often applied to software applications, as a reflection of history. In part, UX emerged from software being developed without regard to the end users (siloed development), resulting in inadequacies and user confusion. But the process for creating a great experience can be applied to any object people use, service, system or group with which they interact.

The contemporary UX process generally includes three basic steps 1) Learn - research and discovery (business requirements, user needs, IT parameters), 2) Build - creation of prototypes and 3) Test - task-based tests of users against the prototype to determine effectiveness. These steps are repeated until effectiveness in test result benchmarks are met or exceeded.


Contemporary ROI • As a key to quality output, UX could be your key marketplace differentiator. Some of the ROI from UX comes with the assurance of customer need fulfillment ahead of pouring time and cost into development of or changes to that product or service - lowering risk and costs. When applied across company offers, it can increase happiness and loyalty in customers, raising overall profit. Welcomed side effects of growing an army of satisfied customers is fewer service / support calls or warranty issues and faster sales cycles.


Maximize • While contemporary UX helps us to remember the needs of people who use a product or service, modern business often forgets how to understand and forge relationships with its own employees. As a springboard for innovating for both clients and contributors to value, we must take a view of the "whole person" and the "whole" connection between the two.

Maximizing experience begins with identifying and capturing the insights and habits of the most successful contributors in preparation for transfer and 'testing' (see below) of their model with other contributors who have less successful results. Other contributors then adopt the proven model or create, test and prove new models.

High-value contributors are normally easily identified, other influencers and hidden visionaries will take additional investigation to uncover. Gauging the 'success' of contributors is partly based on understanding and matching end users' needs. When contributors' experiences, values and purpose connect, align or are similar to users', needs are met quicker and easier. So, Maximum UX is an expansion of contemporary UX, creating a clearer continuity of value between contributors and users. It is built on the self-sustaining, individual value - or, building contributors.

Fundamentally, the UX process does not change when we maximize it for innovative insight, value and performance. Value mining of contributor experience and creation of end user experience are uses and outcomes of the same tool. Seek deeper clarity inward before attempting to connect outward. Inward understanding here moves far beyond a collection of “business needs”, it is an examination of what, why and how business is conducted. Uncovering the root cause of business needs can lead to an examination of the total customer relationship, how companies react to industry innovation and influence, the core brand and widely impactful solutions. Outwardly, end users are the beneficiaries of contributor translated values and this may extend or create new demands.

A more complete view of the balance of input, output and consumption should spark value-oriented insight. If we're not driving in to the brand and the business model - both in understanding and influence - and then connecting that to users' needs, we're not doing it right. In effect, it should better balance acceptance of a situation and acting upon it. Contemporary UX may only deliver expected value, while innovation delivers unexpected value.


Relationship Discovery • Great Discovery is the foundation of great work. In order to see the relationship between contributors and users, the Discoverer must form a relationship with the subject. These relationships will be leveraged in feedback loops, relationship management around buy-in and elsewhere to make the process more smooth and accurate.

Measuring UX results may be drawn from how users (or contributors) feel before, during and after using a product or service. Context is key. With users, focus on the activities surrounding use and why they value those activities. With stakeholders, formulate their vision and how it factors into their value, the project, the industry and beyond - and draw connections to how UX supports their value and vision.

Similar to Object Oriented Programming, define the Object (Contributor, User), rather than the relationship, and allow relationships to form and gain value based on clarity and built around understanding. "Aligning contributors" is more than scoping where they fall in a pattern, it is about creating ease among contributors for seeing and connecting value for compound results. The missing link for your own unified field theory may be small and elusive - and it may be next door. In this way, allow a values-to-value performance model to generally replace the org chart for starting great work.


Performance Feedback Loops • Widening understanding, input and feedback around what your enterprise is doing is a key staple in your knowledgebase. In addition to what is happening, a wider understanding based on feedback should be established for who is performing.

Contemporary UX opens a feedback cycle with users to continually refine results. Maximum UX opens another feedback cycle among contributors for the same reason. Ongoing peer and colleague feedback around skill and working habits, in addition to a leadership perception, creates the necessary dimension of outside insights and perceptions. When compared to the self-perception input for a personal performance model, it invites the necessary ‘ego check’ or ‘reality check’ for evolving value and how that value is delivered. Added as a tool in your knowledgebase and supported with outside agent interviews, this widening input for performance reviews is also key in identifying and understanding key contributors and value detractors.

UX gains the most amount of value from the initial stage, Research, while stakeholders see the least amount of gain, and may consider it a loss of time. To offset this, start designing early with full scenario thinking and design, based on what you do know. Use this to open and maintain the feedback loop with stakeholders. Explain that 'A wrong design, with your input, is one giant leap closer to the right design.' The sooner they see a full vision, the more input they generate, they consider their input as high-value and they understand and embrace your value - making you more able to execute UX process needs. Wireframes and long explanations may work well in UX practice meetings, but a high-stakes reality acts differently.


User Access • When access to users seems impossible, ask Brent about two ways to overcome this issue.


Agent • UX demands a special mix of science and creative skills. Because the UX Operator is typically the only person who talks with everyone in the value cycle, from CEOs, to Project Managers, to call center personnel, to security, to clients, to vendors, to nearly everyone concerned (Can you think of anyone else who touches and investigates everyone along the entire value chain?) - the UX Operator, as an objective but value-oriented investigator, grows a unique and empowered perspective.

In order to make this unique position capable of transformation an agent of Maximum UX must inhabit;

  • Scope - Leverage developed, key skills in;
    1. Grounding - Objectivity paired with Value-Solution Orientation. Determination with self-reliance and flexibility.
    2. Research - Particularly in observation and interviewing driving to purpose and values. Other interviews, when pace is a pressure, must be with those who can represent a conglomeration of key data aspects.
    3. Analysis - Pattern recognition. Chaos and control influencing factors.
    4. Presentation - Simple, insightful, connected and actionable intelligence.
  • Fresh Eyes - Maximum UX is best performed by outside eyes, engendering trust and eliciting more forthcoming answers from stakeholders and all other contributors.
  • Value, Fast - Speed and value are the primary demands of outside consultants in today’s market. The mantra is ‘Find ways to add value, quickly’.
  • Balance - Every client or project that applies UX is different - industry, goals, product or service, leadership style, clients, technologies and tool set. Carefully balance being an adopter of the client system and an agent of change. Offer full-scenario thought leadership, including recommendations linked to positive and negative outcomes while creating daily deliverables. Deliver recommendations on a transparent scale as ‘levels’ or ‘strengths.’ Then, adapt to final decisions.

Operate in all three rails of UX simultaneously;

  • Rail 1 - UX evangelism, philosophy and vision:
    • Exude - Excitement about the power and value of UX should propel contacts and conversations.
    • Connect - Begin connecting the vision of UX results to each contributors' personal, company and industry, long-term, vision.
  • Rail 2 - UX full scope practitioner:
    • Process & deliverables - Maximize the process (research, strategy, design, etc.) to approach positive change from the outside-in (the influence of users) as well as the inside-out (the influence of contributors). Deliverables may be simplified to filling the Performance Framework and evolving the content to become the Value Performance Model(s). Coaching and cognitive walk-throughs of the "What?-Why?-Key?" questions and insights will act as a kind of deliverable.
    • Curiosity - Mix evangelism with a healthy interest in who people are and their work.
  • Rail 3 - Relationship management including personality and conflict management:
    • Adopt-Adapt - Quickly gauge goals and outlook, understand the possibilities and limitations of the technology and tools at hand, and the overall client personality.
    • Key Supporters - Identify and develop relationships with supporters in each major area to work with directly for speed in factoring and decisioning.
    • Warning - The job is exposing value (and non value). Discovery can be deliverance or dangerous. Exposure risks everything for value inhibitors. Expect high intensity push-back and active undermining of you and your efforts from those who will be exposed as non-contributors, agents of mediocrity or value detractors.
      Reminder - There is always that person whom most everybody classifies as an interrupter and corrupter of value - everyone except the boss. Our job is not to destroy or even expose these folks - it is to provide the insights that exist, some of which will naturally pool around success and expose points of pain and failure.

      Note - A common instance of the need for careful relationship management is separating subjective and objective business requirements. Requirements may drift into dictating look, feel or operation. Explain that allowing the UX process to deliver the promised value means we (business) propose our needs and let others (users) propose, not impose, their needs. Neither UX, nor Business actually decides that value - the process is opinion-free in order to meet all needs. Focusing on objective business requirements helps clarify and focus the business operation and leads to a better quality result


Process - Every client has a process that works for them. The UX overall process, however, remains the same. The UX agent must balance adopting the client persona while delivering insight and promoting potential changes those insights encourage.

    Learn: Unify Insight

    • Deeper • UX is the great unifier bridging and connecting Business, Users and IT (or other product or service builders). Deepen the learning to broaden unification. Insights collected from assumed key contributors and users normally lead to other contributors and users. Loosen assumptions around business value and drive deeper to values. Unifying values between contributors and users first will simplify decisions in determining and streamlining the value process.
    • Contextual Insight • During discovery, examining context is key. A wider understanding of what users and contributors are doing and thinking before and after the subject activity can spark vertical and alternate revenue streams, features, products, services, add-ons,up-selling and other key innovations.

    Build: Vision Design

    • Codify • Conglomerate research data (as anonymized data) or completed Performance Models while allowing standout contributors, influencers and significant ideas to stand alone for widespread comparison and examination. UX practitioners should be well versed in the critical functions of how to determine the most pertinent value in a sea of opinion and perspective, flatten out that information and present it as actionable intelligence.
    • Framework Fill • The framework is an insight interface (section C), compelling full scenario thinking. A framework that unifies contributors, users and possibly other entities, must be simple, contextual, modular and scalable. When insights are used to repeat or compare successes, it becomes a performance dashboard. When evolved by adjusting to personal experience, it becomes a innovation presentation.

    Test: Validate Foresight

    • Pre-tested • As a large advantage, successful individuals and teams (key contributors to value) have already refined a system, even if they don’t recognize they’ve created a system. Their value is in essence, pre-tested. The Maximum UX role moves to unlocking their system - capturing and framing their model. This moves the experience cycle along to an altered outlook on testing.
    • Adapt • Task based testing is still key in the ROI of Maximum UX. Some testing here lies in the ability of others to adopt and adapt or alter a key contributor’s model to their own method (a kind of task based testing). Alternatives within the model may emerge for user personality or skill types - though, keep in mind that the initial models are based on proven contributors, not on theory. Test proven results first. Other testing may be needed to determine which values are germane and if they are being exercised operationally. When testing a composite model, it can be compared to and leveraged in current activities or scaled to implementation as a pilot program.
    • Informal • Testing is informal (as opposed to formal UX testing) as each person or group has their own timeline and method and will develop and evolve their own insights. This is personalized value momentum. Encouragement in performing the insight cycle (“What? - Why? - Keys?”) with analysis and editing results can clarify alternatives for testing.


Hiring Heads Up - When hiring a UX consultant, avoid requiring UX and Development skills. With all the value available from UX, it is a waste of time and money to have a UX consultant being diverted to development. Mixing these two jobs most often means you’ll be getting mediocrity on both. Treating each as a valued skill means contributors will learn from each other, sharpen individual skills and unifying for proficiency.






Maximum UX: The Contributor Model

(C) Create an interface for value performance

The Fast Fit Performance Framework: Build Your Model

Are you mandating outcomes or maturing your practice outlook?


Focus • Culminate your search with clarity and visualization of the complete value chain, from conception, onward. The Fast Fit Performance Framework is a vessel of layered topics, to be filled with results from the “Learn” phase of Maximum UX. Supplied with success factors, in working order, it becomes a performance model. Evolving as ongoing investment in insight (section A) it emerges as a tool for growing value toward innovation.

As a framework, it demands participation and energy to complete construction - building the insight muscles. It should provide the stability of a system while releasing contributors from the conformity demands of an imposed system. Even when a completed framework, or value performance model, is used as a training device it should be introduced as a filled framework to be individualized. Every model should evolve as experience expands.


Activate • Extend the “Build” stage of UX using the codified results from insight generation (stage 1 "Learn"). Every person or group has a working pattern, including rules, whether they realize it or not. With attention and pattern analysis of the “What? - Why? - Key?” diaries and interviews a model will emerge capturing contributors’ activity linked to principles and values in a timeline. The requirement to teach what we know is a clarifying event - starting with questions and ending with structure (again, building the insight muscle). The Fast Fit Performance Framework is helpful in recognizing a life cycle for our purpose (or, if purpose in unknown, for recognizing it as a thread emerging in thoughts and activities). This is the truest form of a User Interface (UI) - a model to explore self toward overall working success. As pattern analysis lags in intelligence and AI, this is as close to the human mind as we can arrive - for now.


Build • Each key aspect identified in discovery should receive a name and icon in the model (a mini brand), supporting speed in learning and memory. In interactive form, selecting these keys drills into summary explanations and subsequently into supporting information and tools. On an enterprise level, the value performance model is the interface to your knowledgebase (wiki), a complete working view of your value, process and performance measures.

The Fast Fit Performance Framework has five layers, flowing from core motivation to timing, it provides a logic for all success factors. Variable frameworks could be leveraged for your purposes;

Fast Fit Performance Framework

  1. Purpose - Activated values. Brand, if an enterprise or corporate model.
  2. Platform - Components organized to support the activation of purpose. This includes the actual value (offering), people and resources.
  3. Power - Thematic principles that provide overall direction in activities and support alignment across the platform. This is the innovation foundry. Key insights are formulated into modular “empowering patterns” and lead to game changers in more rapidly achieving purpose.
  4. Pattern - Principled activities. The ‘How’ is important, and included here as a sequence of engaging “empowering patterns”. Adoption, adaptation or personalized invention of ‘how’ to activate the principles, supported by the platform occurs here.
  5. Process - Clock identifying the portions of your value cycle and specifying when to engage the principled activities.


Aspects • A sixth, outer layer may include context, or you may choose to include context in each module - or some of both. Inherent to any framework you use to map your value process, it should be simple, answerable to the 5 W’s of value, modular, flexible, adaptive and to individuals, groups or projects.


Drive • Use the filled framework, your Value Performance Model, as an interface to the complete value process understanding (knowledgebase wiki):


Maximum UX: The Contributor Model


This is your mine of the skill patterns of experienced performers that will be tested among new and under performers to discover innate skills and refine working patterns. This is the provision of value for all contributors. Continual input means continued challenge of the model. Challenging the model, to the core, denotes vitality. As a living framework, it is not stagnant and should remain flexible and adaptive.






Maximum UX: The Contributor Model


Define, align and build contributors who build value


Maximum UX: The Contributor Model


What could your company do if you unleashed a team of innovative contributors?



Summary

There is no prescription for innovation. There is, however, a way to capture a display the full value cycle as a platform for insightful and innovative thought as well as strengthening, streamlining and linking the overall skill base. This overall view of root contributions combined with a view into outliers, both superior and inferior performers, creates a platform for comprehensive decision making. Support maximizing the vision and ability to contribute to value by finding, recording and repeating success factors (and avoiding negative factors). Grant, in the same tool, permission and encouragement to think on the individual contributor level and on a larger level, unified with other contributors in a stream of value creation, as a complete offer in the larger marketplace. When individuals, teams and companies awaken experience in themselves, broaden insight around successful contributions, align and refine work using a values-to-value based model, work will be weighted toward consistent success (evolutionary innovation) and pointed toward revolutionary innovation. It’s a matter of mining at home.


What If?

Ask “What tool am I using to change the climate for growing innovation?” If your top performers and leading thinkers had personal performance models, melded them into an enterprise vision that guides all contributors toward more consistent success and empowers innovation - what would happen? Put your greatest value in - get greater value out. Bring vision of value to focus on empowering a person to develop insight, who will then add more value;

  1. See value in ourselves for a self-sustaining commitment.
  2. Envision how that value is enacted, combined and consumed by users.
  3. Be challenged and empowered to improve by developing self-insight, success insights and peer sphere insights.
  4. Draw clear connections as to how our individual contribution fits into our larger, unified and purpose-driven community.

Contributor Keys: Becoming a skill and accountability driven company controls your value.

When someone sees their own value, develops and refines a clear expression of that value and finds how it fits and extends through a larger organization with matching values - that person is a true contributor. The Maximum UX system demands attention to and evolution of skill, contribution and value.

  1. Define - Capture the insights and methods of top performers and visionaries (in addition to users).
  2. Align - Create a platform of success factors for rapid knowledge transfer, unification of the full value cycle and testing of new, individual ideas.
  3. Build - Model the platform, scaled to the enterprise, as an interface to an evolving knowledgebase of insights.

Evolving UX

UX can be tapped for much greater value to individuals and enterprises. The Contributor Model may be integrated and aligned with other disciplines that evolve value - Knowledge Management, Lessons Learned, Change Management, Workflow Automation, Organizational Effectiveness, eLearning, Strategy, Management, Operations, Sales & Business Development and others. Along with this integration, UX itself should evolve into flavors for these varying team-ups and situations.

This focus on unlocking talent and releasing pent up value puts the onus on leaders to then guide contribution within a unified vision. Critical decisions to cut or convert managers, realign groups and change direction are all potential results and should be covered as a premise with the A and B suite folks on initiation of a project. UX will take on a greater importance as a complete corporate solution with flexibility to shed light and work from the top, down, from the bottom, up, from the outside, in and from the inside, out.



Uses

  • Companies - Becoming a skill and accountability driven company can streamline your workforce, deepen your skill base, strengthen connection to customers and sharpen your value. Develop your own value discovery tool and use it to evaluate what works and why, how you work, what moves to make, if your plan matches your brand or if your brand needs to be updated.

  • Executives - Clearly define and sell your brand and your value for recognition (salary raise, promotion). Discover a new future by mining your past. Evangelize your impact with a value performance model that displays your contribution and places you in a leadership position - displaying the full-scenario thinking that leaders must inhabit. Create a Center Of Excellence as you streamline the value operation of your team. Promote value. Lead with valuable performance and results.

    “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Gustav, Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist

  • Creative Agencies - Add a line of business (income stream) that leans on the consultancy space without having to be or claim business consultancy - and without adding staff or entirely new skills. We’re mining the minds of an organization rather than attempting to steer it or offering a fixed solution.

  • Business Consultancies - Understand the client more deeply to identify more potential offerings. Gain a tool to be effective at any point in a business of any size.

  • UX Practices - Connect the whole business to all users through individual value-building.

  • Emerging Technology / Frontier / Startups - Prove stability for funding or aquisition. Start with a platform for sustainability - solve common critical issues before they emerge;

    • Understand and target audiences more keenly.
    • Plan how to grow revenue.
    • Balance your team member skills in offering and internal / social skill.
    • Focus where to put speed, and where to slow down.
    • Find the accurate mix of offer and price.




Author

Brent Lackley leverages contemporary UX and Maximum UX in large, technical and complicated efforts for Fortune 50, emerging technology and select clients.

I bring my personal model to each project and Maximum UX is a reflection of it: Simplify > Clarify > Magnify. Here’s the expansion for insight and innovation;

  • Simplify - put a sharp point on purpose and brand.
  • Clarify - bring factors and method into focus.
  • Magnify - test, evolve, apply and scale success to factors and other interests.

Get started on your Personal, Team, Special Project or Enterprise Value Performance Model - for Innovation, Performance and Profitability:

Brent Lackley
470.395.1870
brent@uxui.expert


Notes From The Height of Success

I take notes when Robert Kraft speaks. His $5B set of businesses denote his skill for making things work. Mr. Kraft shared some key insights when he was interviewed on May 2, 2017 for the television show “Bloomberg Businessweek Debrief.” Note how he decommoditizes people, focusing on skill, a freedom to practice that skill, and alignment of contributors toward a shared purpose. See the full Bloomberg interview here.


“We try to collect good people, encourage them to take risks and be bold. And if they’ve taken risks and it hasn’t worked out right but they’ve done what’s in the best interest of their company or been very logical, we encourage them to do that because most people are going to try to play safe all the time. And then, you know, you need your special people who are outside of the box, who do things differently, and sometimes who’s personalities are quirky. But, they have a special talent.

The kind of business we’re in is a business of egos and a business that - ‘who gets the credit.’ In any business, division from within can become the biggest enemy. I learned that in our paper and packaging companies. We’re selling product throughout the world. We’re competing against big companies, public companies who - you know, within their companies one side doesn’t want the other side to do well because they’ll go and get ahead of them in promotion or they’ll - and we always took advantage of those inefficiencies in the market, to our benefit.

Well, it’s the same thing when you’re running a football team. You know you have personnel people. You have coaches. Very often the coach will say ‘Well, the personnel people didn’t get me the right people.’ And the personnel people will say ‘Well, the coach didn’t play the proper people at the proper time’ or, ‘They don’t have the right system.’ It’s excuses, always. And, so, the real trick is how you get everybody on the same page and force egos, who sometimes have problems working with one another - and you see it your own business or with colleagues that you have in your company. If you can get people to check their ego at the door and put team first, whatever the team may be. And then, once you have it going, having continuity. You know, I find that people make changes so often because they don’t like things or it’s… One of the disciplines I’ve always had is - I never make a change unless I know I have something better to put in its place, but I never make change for changes’ sake.”

“When I hired him (coach Bill Belichick), people told me I shouldn’t… he had a losing record… but the simpatico of connection - because what’s right for me might not be right for you. And, I really believe we have a system in all our companies where people are free to do what they do and not be encumbered by corporate BS, if they’re really good and have substance. We create environments where people can flourish if they’re good at what they do…

In the end, when you’re running your businesses, you need to look at the people who have heart and qualities that you can relate to, that come together. …building a business, I mean, you get people together of different backgrounds and ways of thinking and mold them with their strength….”




Culture Change - The Root Benefit

Focusing on skill, connected across a singular vision, with self accountability for refinement makes your company a value powerhouse. Outside of value, culture is paramount for success. Moving to the root of culture as 'how people art teated', it’s time to stop commoditizing people or disconnecting people by creating silos. Build contributors who build value. Deliver the skill of discovering, refining and connecting value - both business and cultural value. The insight muscle, like UX, connects the mind, the heart and the artisan hands - building a more complete contribution.

  • Decommoditize people - Spread insights from key contributors while unlocking others' individual value, all with a built-in ego filter and skill growth mechanism. Link contributors and value together, showing how they contribute to a larger cause and combined value. Create singular purpose with individual commitment to better results.
  • Unsilo groups of people - Dividing groups of employees may be logistically practical but, when not tethered with purpose and values in a full construct of value, this leads to the ‘silo’ effect. When ‘siloed’, misplaced ‘awareness’ and subjective ‘insights’ drive (even well intentioned) all too frequent and confusing management dictated changes. In this atmosphere, big thinkers and different thinkers go unnoticed, ignored or are pushed aside for more ego-driven pursuits.



Bottom Line Benefits

Offering individuals and leaders a view into what people do and why they do it opens possibilities in streamlining vision, strategy, talent and process - driving to bottom line business concerns:

  • Control Costs - Target clients and projects with more accurate planning. Gauge value contribution to reduce process time and streamline work.
  • Increase Revenue - Bring repeatability and consistency to your best performance(s). Reveal additional value from contributors. Add clarity and a view of the value process in large and small scale to spark innovative revenue ideas.
  • Balance Risk - Build more precise timing. React more concisely to unknowns with a proactive, cross-trained team. Develop stronger relationships with clients and potential clients to understand current and future needs. Stack win factors and avoid loss factors.

Benefit Points In The Value Cycle

  • Talent - Current recruiting and HR are not measuring up on any of the three talent touchpoints of innovation; Hire > Inspire > Recognize & Reward Contributors. Provide a tool to turn recruiting and HR from a vision-disconnected commoditizer of skills to a support group for discovering potential contributors who align with vision, purpose and principles.
    • Skill recognizes skill - the Value Performance Model helps replace guesswork, irrelevant personal preferences and assumption in hiring by representing successful skills in place - both attracting and matching the like-minded.
    • Hone in on attributing contribution for matching rewards.
  • Offering • Contemporary UX dials in your connection to users and customers. Maximum UX is a delivery system for innovation, evolving value for clients and employees, as a profitability platform.
  • Sales -
    • Bring strategy to sales with skill and cycle capture with faster insight & knowledge transfer.
    • Grant clients easy buy-in with clarity of value from conception to delivery (including value Contributors, as needed).
    • Qualification of clients and projects with extracted criteria.
  • Logistics -
    • Replace focus on the Org Chart with an Insight & How-to Model to incite creative thinking.
    • Decrease political behavior and increase purposeful behavior.
    • Map key business processes. Simplify processes, coordination and timing with competencies.
    • Determine most supportive expenses for the cost of doing business.
  • Delivery -
    • Deliver quality and value assurance.
    • Recognize, establish and spread project standards, practices and competencies with a built-in evaluation tool.
    • Identify expertise for critical input, decisions and projects.
    • Faster identification and development of tools for increased performance.
    • Establish deeper relationships and respect among clients (and competitors).
  • Measurement & Improvement -
    • Formulate improvement processes without increasing oversight demands.
    • Quicker traction and movement toward goals. Build a success proven, value-rich training program.
    • Generate success repetition and failure abatement
  • Vision -
    • Clearly define vision with values and process.
    • Lead an ethos of insight and positive change, both evolutionary and revolutionary.
    • Stabilize, shape and evolve business direction.
    • Lessen risky behavior going unchallenged.
    • Target incoherence, unstable and unsuitable behavior for mitigation.
    • Curtail whim and opinion and support more rational logic with increased focus.
  • Leadership -
    • Tap internal potential and uncover unseen value.
    • De-silo groups with purposeful unity and a fluid value connectivity - compounding the effect of value.
    • Offer leadership a view of who’s doing what and why.
    • Isolate issues more rapidly. Replace symptom solutions for system solutions.
    • Understand success factors, how to translate them for all contributors and how to repeat them.
    • Establish and maintain a healthy system integrity.
  • Contribution & Accountability -
    • Identify who is and is not contributing what, why, how, when.
    • Use your Enterprise Performance Model to move contributors to the best suited area or remove incompatible employees.
    • Clone successes while finding, retraining, transferring or removing non contributors or value preventers.

      Often in a position of power, by longevity or maneuvering, many noncontributors are well known among the ranks though are unseen by leaders or difficult to dislodge - and no one acts on it. Your Value Performance Model should bring value preventers into view and provide clear, unbiased reasoning for redirection or removal.

  • Streamline - Audit and adjust members, programs and decisions through a lens of success.
  • Wholistic - This is a more wholistic approach to aligning contributors. A tool to map self realization, geared for identifying and breaking negative cycles while supporting positive cycles. Contributors are mainly self-limiting and little progress can be made without addressing core influences. This should help break self limitations and release corporate limitations.
  • Fearless - Fear inhibits thinking and activity. Much of fear comes from approaching the unknown. Help contributors to understand themselves and successful forerunners, know how they work and invite their value into a larger vision and effort. Using a framework that is built into a continually evolving model provides the safety of a system without imposing overly strict structure - allowing, and compelling, contributors to focus on value. Bring them closer to fearlessness.
  • Ego Control - Create insight into skills and imperfections as well as frame contributions as part of the larger whole - gaining perspective in shared purpose.
  • Evaluate & Collaborate - Promote collaboration when comparing experience and during evaluations.
  • Full Scenario Thinking - Focus any team as a coordinating, accountable contributor in an enterprise value performance perspective, rather than closed-off system.
  • Clarity Connects - Decisions and programs backed by clearly defined values means everyone who invests effort in the enterprise can see value in, and support, important decisions.
  • Whim - Avoid the ‘whim cycle’: Leadership enacting continual changes in direction, often based on whim and opinion, without a model that checks concepts and activities against purpose, values and history. Adopting a model that solicits all the value cycle factors demands measured decisions that can be tested, then scaled.
  • Un-management - The traditional ‘management’ model often falters. Not only because people are granted a management position without training in the skill of managing others, but because there is normally no simple and clear tool for organizing people toward growth - or, self-organizing around growth. If we consider the role of manager is to provide clarity and to discover, unleash and leverage talent, this would be in opposition to managers attempting to forge, or force, team members into their own model. ’Unmanage’ people by comparing team members’ models among themselves and to the group, project and enterprise performance models to discover, rather than force, appropriate coordination. Give contributors a model of success and a framework for building their own success.
  • Clarity -
    • Brand - defined
    • People - contributors aligned
    • Process - clarified and combined (desilo)
    • Principles - refined
  • Skill - More than a performance measurement, a skill gauge and skill gap closer.
  • Growth - This egalitarian, eclectic approach is both merit-based and equal opportunity, seeking out ideas and allowing the best to rise to the top, while maintaining the continual refinement of qualified value delivery to the customer. In this stance it is possible to replace “innovate” in the title with “grow”, fitting this process to companies in the struggle to maintain values and value as they expand. Innovation and growth are correlated and somewhat interdependent. Weighted toward 'grow wise' over 'grow fast' this system of modeling great performers and transferring success factors to new and under-performers maintains brand and personality during growth. Defining core clarify around the ‘intangible presence’ factors, as part of a Standard Performance Model makes for fast training and faster course corrections as well. This is a system for small businesses to create Personal, Team and Enterprise Value Performance Models for quality growth - and easing up the schedule of the top performer or CEO.
  • Gamification - Filling the framework to create a model, improving methods and outcomes, creating new theories to test and delivering alternate performance techniques - all support an atmosphere of positive competition.
  • Training - Quickly train new team members. More rapidly cross train team members to create a deeper bench of talent, make functions and hand-offs go more smoothly and adjust more quickly from unexpected events and absences.
  • Cures - Remedies are often short term, being isolated to a symptom. Maximizing UX spans contributors and users and drives to the heart of both and to root causes.

Key Benefits

  • Innovation - Provide a view of the complete value cycle for big thinking and insights into personal working cycles spawning contributor value breakthroughs.
  • Performance - Repeat success factors and patterns, identify and leverage skills more appropriately, empower new and underperformers, align performers in common understanding and purpose while inviting new ideas about improvements and alternative concepts.
  • Profitability - Sharpen value, match up committed and like-minded contributors, deepen customer relationships, qualify sales planning, streamline processes and unlock value in each contributor.



Prove, spread and maximize your value -

Find your Personal/Executive, Team or Enterprise Value Performance Model:

Brent Lackley
470.395.1870
brent@uxui.expert



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