The groundbreaking book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ‚ and Others Don ‚ t (Collins, 2001) describes building phenomenal business momentum as a process of turning a flywheel to generate power. The first few turns of the flywheel can seem slow and arduous, but the more turns that are completed, the faster the flywheel spins and the more momentum the business gains. Similarly, in figure I-1 the financial value process is depicted as a flywheel. Stick with the concepts in this book. The first few times you go through the process can seem slow and arduous. But the more people in your organization that you can get to push the flywheel and the more turns you complete, the more power, speed, and momentum you create for yourself and for your organization or your client ‚ s organization.

How Can This Book Help?

Excellent value communication starts with understanding what value is from your audience ‚ s perspective and how that value maps to your goals. Each layer of an organization perceives value differently. The definition of what will be valued and how much value there should be starts at the top where performance is measured in financial metrics. As responsibilities move down through an organization, financial metrics eventually become the required performance metrics of the individual contributor . Part One, ‚“Identifying Value, ‚½ explains value and helps you see how your value is interpreted by the people you are communicating with.

Not every reader will feel excited at the thought of using finance to communicate value. Some of you may even feel as if you ‚ ve just been offered a trip to the dentist. But, in chapter 1 ( ‚“The Golden Key ‚ Finance ‚½), you ‚ ll find some compelling evidence about what executives expect as fundamental knowledge, skills, and abilities from WLP professionals.

Every organization has four basic layers of management and individual contribution. Even though the basic language is finance, specific financial measures are transformed as they move through these layers. This means that the way your value is perceived shifts, as well. In chapter 2 ( ‚“Decoding Value ‚½), you ‚ ll look at step 1 of the financial value process: defining your audience. You ‚ ll examine these common layers, what the expectations and duties of people in these layers are, and how their measures are connected so that you can relate your value appropriately to each person you communicate with. In this chapter, and throughout this book, you ‚ ll find forms and exercises that will immediately help you apply what you ‚ ve learned to your own organization or a top client ‚ s organization.

It ‚ s great to have a better understanding of how value must be translated to different levels of your audience, but that ‚ s not enough to gain true creditability. You have to know what issues your unique organization is grappling with right now, so that you can speak to real needs. In the financial value process, step 2 is research financial information. But, the first time through the flywheel, it ‚ s impossible to research when you don ‚ t yet know what you want. Because the executives at the top of any organization determine what everyone else will focus on, it is important to first understand their perspective. Chapter 3 ( ‚“An Overview of What an Organization Will Value ‚½) defines the financial imperatives that keep your executives awake at night.

Step 3 of the financial value process is to identify financial imperatives. This step is covered in chapter 4 ( ‚“Profit ‚½), chapter 5 ( ‚“Position ‚½), and chapter 6 ( ‚“Cash ‚½). You ‚ ll walk through explanations and examples of exactly how financial measures can be connected from the services you provide to the bottom line of your organization. You may find out that you are even more important to your organization ‚ s success than you realized. Or, you may find new opportunities for focusing your time and resources to bring even more value to your organization or your clients . Once again, you ‚ ll find exercises that you can use immediately in your organization.

Now, you are in the position to go back and address step 2 of the financial value process, researching financial information. In chapter 7 ( ‚“Business Intelligence: Researching What an Organization Will Value ‚½), you ‚ ll learn why you want to get on the distribution list for reports you never thought you would be interested in. If you are a consultant who ‚ d like to sell your services or a job seeker who would like to work for a new organization, you ‚ ll learn how to find out information from the outside looking in. Either way, you ‚ ll finish this chapter with a plan to find the information that describes the hidden (or not-so-hidden) value your executives need you to address.

At this point, you ‚ ll have learned a great deal. You ‚ ll know what ‚ s valuable to your executives. You know that you can create interventions that bring value, so you ‚ ll be ready to communicate, right? Not so fast. Even if you know the numbers behind the value and know that your intervention is what is needed, you must still deal with the perceptions of your audience. In Part Two, ‚“Positioning, Delivering, and Measuring Value, ‚½ you ‚ ll refine your financial value chains and value analysis through the lens of past history and future expectations. Every organization builds up conscious and unconscious expectations of what you do and how you do it. Part Two gives you insights on how these assumptions and realities affect how your value communication will be received and what you can do to make sure your value is positioned and measured appropriately.

Step 4 of the financial value process is to identify an intervention. Selecting the appropriate performance or learning intervention is an important step in creating value. But wait! Before you do the work of delivering your intervention, you need to perform step 5 of the financial value process: clarify perceptions. As a WLP professional, there is a great deal that you do every day that is taken for granted. Other things that you do would delight your audience if they only knew about them! You don ‚ t want to confuse the two situations because each dramatically affects your ability to be heard . Chapter 8 ( ‚“What Have You Done for Me Lately? ‚½) reveals a model for dealing with the obvious and hidden assumptions about your value.

Now that you ‚ ve dealt with the conscious and unconscious assumptions about what you do or are offering to do, you still need to relate your value to what ‚ s happening right now with your audience. Chapter 9 ( ‚“The Financial Imperatives Scorecard ‚½) will show you how to plan and track your value so that you ‚ ll know what types of numbers you are delivering and can show how much value you bring to your audiences ‚ financial value measurements. This chapter helps you complete step 6 of the financial value process: develop scorecard.

Step 7 in the financial value process is to deliver the intervention. This is a step that many WLP professionals are very comfortable in performing. It is Step 8 of the financial value process, evaluating results, that is often missing when communicating financial value. It ‚ s possible to make a claim that you will provide a certain amount of value within a specific timeframe, but eventually you have to prove your claim or lose your creditability. Chapter 10 ( ‚“Value and the Levels of Evaluation ‚½) shows you how levels of evaluation map to the four layers of an organization and what level of evaluation data is the minimum needed at each layer. But, because no one ‚ s evaluation data ever seems to be ideal, you ‚ ll get some ideas on how to make the best use of the data you have.

Anyone can get numbers, but if you can ‚ t communicate your value quickly, you ‚ ll lose your chance to have your executives understand how valuable you are. Part Three, ‚“Communicating Value, ‚½ describes how to put all the information you have gathered into an accessible, concise format so that your value can be heard.

Every audience you communicate with has its own hectic workload of tasks to manage. Step 9 of the financial value process is to plan quarterly context. This step is covered in chapter 11 ( ‚“Building Your Context Plan ‚½). This chapter shows how to predict what tasks your audience will need help with throughout the year. If you ‚ ve never looked at how the natural lifecycle of a business drives the activities of executives, and how they prioritize and filter your communication, this chapter will help. When you finish this chapter, you ‚ ll not only know what value to focus on, but when it ‚ s best to communicate about it.

Great negotiators recommend picking a central theme and sticking to it when convincing others of the value of what they offer. In chapter 12 ( ‚“Your Communication Base: Value Themes ‚½), you ‚ ll learn how to create performance-based value themes that allow you to focus your communication. This chapter covers step 10, which involves creating themes for your financial value.

In chapter 13 ( ‚“Creating Financial Value Statements ‚½), you take all of your planning and pull it together into great communication! The average executive gives you 30 seconds or less to get your point across. Creating statements is the goal of step 11 of the financial value process. This chapter introduces a quick, concise format to communicate your value and shows you how to polish just what you ‚ ll say in your 30 seconds. You ‚ ll get hints on different ways to use your financial value statements. The way you look at communicating value will never be the same again.

Finally! All that preparation is going to pay off. Step 12 is communicate and refine. Chapter 14 ( ‚“Putting It All Together ‚½) refines all the exercises, examples, and forms that you ‚ ll have worked so hard to complete throughout this book. You ‚ ll see a summary of how the financial value process can work to generate momentum and power in your value communication. And, because your insights will have grown as you ‚ ve worked through the book, you ‚ ll have a chance to review your questions, data, and statements so that your value will really shine .

But, if executives believe you should be able to do these things now, they ‚ ll expect even more in the future. Executives need professionals who not only know what is valuable and when it ‚ s valuable, they need people who can help them move faster and faster to stay ahead of their competition and meet the needs of the people they serve. For these goals, hope is not a strategy. In chapter 15 ( ‚“Conclusion: The Courage to Begin ‚½), you ‚ ll look again at the difference between the WLP professional ‚ s focus on the goal of the job and your executive ‚ s focus on the goal behind the job. In the end, the difference between the two is the courage to lead others from an understanding of the numbers to an understanding of the power of workplace learning and performance.

Perhaps this seems like a great deal of work. Well, it is. After all, the knowledge and skill of an organization ‚ s people is one of the most important competitive advantages in today ‚ s global marketplace . Retaining and building the best talent is an urgent topic in the executive boardroom.

It may seem unreasonable to have to work this much to get your value across in 30 seconds or less, but remember: You only have one chance to make a good first impression . First impressions are important to your momentum. If you haven ‚ t been communicating financial value well in the past, it can be hard to get your flywheel started. Nevertheless, the rewards can be phenomenal. Once your flywheel is turning, it will rapidly pick up power and speed. The strongest flywheels will feel like an unstoppable force in the service of your people.