I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t allow myself to slack on posting. One post a day.. like an apple, is supposed to keep the guilt away and the mind healthy. So much for that. With nearly a week between the last post and now, I’m a bad bad boy.
This delay got me to thinking… why did I put it off? What are my excuses? Of course… its time, or more importantly, the lack of time. What is the value of time? What is the value of my time? your time? Their time? How does that factor into our decision making processes? Of course, it has a huge but often subconscious effect on our decision making processes.
As my socio-economic status has changed, my value of time has been dramatically altered. When I was a minimum wage earner, it was more economically beneficial for me to self-source tasks (assign to myself for completion). At some point in time after I began to earn more money and my responsibilities grew, it became more worthwhile to outsource many tasks that I previous completed.
In “The World is Flat” we’re reminded of just how much the economics of the world have changed. No longer are we restricted to approach markets within towns and states. We have the opportunity to address markets in countries and continents. This dramatic expansion of scope mixes affluence with poverty and interesting conflicts in cultural beliefs. However, the constant in every culture is time. Until our scientists find a way… we all operate with the same resource constraints of self: 525,600 minutes. How we decide to spend this currency is a matter of self definition and context.
A minute of my time. What is that worth to me? What is that worth to you? What is the fundamental value I need to see or experience in order to give you a minute of my time? That truly is a fascinating question. When applied to the world, the variation in possibilities is dizzying.
Further, when looking at this valuation framework from a group or corporate level, it makes sense why there are so many new ways for organizations to look at engaging people’s time in goal accomplishment: insourcing, outsourcing, homesourcing, offshoring, and now, crowdsourcing.
In Crowdsourcing… the talent pool is described by Jeff Howe as possessing the following five (5) attributes.
1. The crowd is dispersed
2. The crowd has a short attention span
3. The crowd is full of specialists
4. The crowd produces mostly crap
5. The crowd finds the best stuff
It is under this precept that Word of Mouth marketing actually works.
Are you able to thin slice your customer contingent enough to involve them in marketing your products or services? Do you know what they value?
If you don’t, you better better figure it out. The answer comes down to understanding their individual value of time and how your offering weighs in that process. If you’re not offering an experience that is in excess of the time required to experience it, there is no way you’ll ever successfully get them to speak positively of your service.
