Viral Value
The week.
Hello friends,
Hope your week has been more productive than it has been busy.
I received a criminally simple question from our newest user:
“what is the value of what you do?”
This is the type of question that ruins a person’s whole day: some get upset, defensive, flustered while others may stare into space and get a little existential.
I’ve learnt to relish it. It’s a question we should all be asking ourselves on a weekly if not daily basis. Before I worked for myself and on Accelerating Action I’d forget to ask myself this question. Days and months would go by where I’d forget to check why I was doing what I do.
You can see my answer below on why I think what we’ve created is uniquely valuable.
Value vs values
Understanding something can have more than one value is crucial when working in sustainability.
Modern life tends to reduce things into a singular, often financial, value. "If you can’t measure it you can't manage it" goes the old adage.
But just because you can't measure doesn't mean it's not there.
You have to at the very least acknowledge it or else risk it being ‘value engineered’ out and disappearing.
Value is in the eye of the beholder
I wish it wasn’t. Life would be a lot easier.
I cannot stress enough how, if you want to know what’s valuable, you have to find out from those that need that value.
User feedback helps you see value you can’t see. Here’s some mockups of social media exports from our product below. We sent these to our users this week to ask the question ‘how can we help you communicate your impact?’ or more accurately ‘what value can we provide to you so you can explain your value to others?’.
Seems like the whole world revolves on communicating value.
Visual of the Week
“A meme can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes.”
I give up. I spend all this time creating original content for you people and what gets all the likes? One throwaway meme that took me 5 minutes to throw together.
On a serious note, there’s a crazily powerful pull that memes have on people.
The below is a meme I adapted to explain the same concept of value vs values as the gif above - and how even the sustainability community can be guilty of reducing complex ideas into single measures.
The post has had 1000s of engagements and I think it’s not just the message that resonated. It’s as much the recognition that resonated: it’s a well known meme. At the risk of explaining and ruining the joke humour also plays a part.
Pop culture is powerful so let’s harness it rather than ride against it. Take 2022’s trending topics and understand that climate change is competing for attention and yet we can’t so simply ask others to not talk about the metaverse and instead value what we do.
Speaking of competing for attention, thank you for taking the time out of your busy/productive week to read this.
Have an excellent weekend ✌️