"Value addition" a perfect formula in both professional and personal life...in team/people management - Discovery vs Invention.

Discovery vs Invention

The term "value addition" refers to a specific skill, ability or benefit that comes in addition to the standard features of a product or a service. When we buy a good or a service we judge by the "value for money" aspect that it comes along with the specifications. Similarly, we need to understand that our job is also evaluated with the value addition that we bring along to our existing role. The person who offers value addition in terms of knowledge, skills and abilities stands a better chance to a person who does not. For a better understanding in KSA's (Knowledge skills and abilities) please refer to me previous post:

Knowing the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSA's) Well.

Same goes with our personal relations as well. Only here the "value for money" is replaced with "quality time" that we spend with our loved ones. The more quality time we spend translates to better and meaningful relationships. In a constant endeavor to achieve value addition we strive to better ourselves with new inventions and discoveries acquiring new skills and abilities. We need not invent new methods each time we are challenged with a situation. There are few tips through this continuous betterment process.

Inventions and discoveries are a vital part of the human evolution, one cannot imagine today's world without them. Let us understand the difference between an invention and a discovery. An invention is a unique thing found out or made, that did not exsist previously. Whereas discover is finding or learning something for the first time. For example :

Thomas Edison 'invented' the electric bulb as against Christopher Columbus 'discovered' America.

Now coming back to our topic, relating it to a real life situation, we strive towards finding new outcome to a problem or an unique solution to a situation, than to explore the existing means by which it can be attempted to resolve. 

"In our quest for an invention we let so many valuable discoveries pass by".

In our day to day roles, both in career and personal life, we look at problems in a different angle. We strive to arrive at a unique and permanent solution for a problem. We often do not explore research alternate solutions, or to arrive at results with the readily available skill sets. In order to explain this better, I will share with you an incident. 

Like any parent, I was determined to coach my son with his school subjects, science social and maths; And like any other kid he was not very keen to learn them unless forced upon. Now I was pursing this task since a long time without any tangible results (I tried different methods explaining him with patience, sometimes warning him stern action, even bribing, etc but all in vain). I simply did not understand why he was not understanding the lesson. I was hell bent on ways and means of inventing new methods to make him learn. This was going on for quite sometime. 

Recently, I tried out a different method. I started teaching him the entire lesson as a story, explaining him the practical implication of the lesson and how it fits the big picture, made notes relating one thing to the other (basically the way I learnt the lesson even before explaining to him). He understood the lesson better this way. This got registered in his mind and he remembered the notes even long after it was taught. Together, we discovered that reading the lesson by making simple notes of key points was much easier. Better still, he started making notes on his own. Initially he used to make exhaustive notes but eventually he got better at it. He fine tuned the process and now he makes excellent notes of any given lesson and is quite successful at it now. The point is the ability to learn by making notes was always in him, it was just a matter of discovering the ability. The discovery of course was a life saver to me. I realized such a simple thing took so long for me to discover.

It is just a matter of exploring, discovering and tapping our hidden talents to find a solution to a problem in our career or personal relationships. We do not have to reinvent the wheel, we just need to discover how to use it for our situation. 

I really appreciate your time reading this post. I hope you enjoy reading the post and find it helpful. I request you to share the learning as much as possible so that many more benefit from it. I would be glad to know your inputs both For or Against. Please feel free to post,share or like if you find it useful.

Happy Learning! and Happy Sharing!