Creating Something Valuable

Tough guy actor and value creator James Cagney was the stereotypical gangster, but the Academy Award winning Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) showed us he was also a masterful dancer (“hoofer”). Playing the multi-talented songwriter George M. Cohan, Cagney gave us a patriotic dose of the common good in the memorable songs, “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” “Over There,” and “The Yankee Doodle Boy.”

Creating Something Valuable

What makes something valuable? Value must increase the common good, as well as contribute to economic necessity. The common good is the degree to which everyone is benefitted, while necessity is the law of supply and demand. For example, oxygen is beneficial to everyone, but much too available to be critical, unless it is being vented out of a crippled Apollo 13. Scarcity of resources drives up prices, which is good for the seller, and bad for the buyer. Natural or manmade monopolies usually inflate prices. Plentifulness generally depresses prices. Consumers in a buyer’s market revel in an abundance of choice. Creating value then means finding and supplying the common good with something scarce.

Supplying scarcity involves human labor. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx agreed that labor generates wealth or value. And, value creation comes from human creativity. Wherever imagination, initiative, inspiration, practice, discipline, resourcefulness, innovation, inventiveness, and individuality are tapped, value will be added. Though creativity is commonly associated with actors, singers, artists, writers, composers, musicians, advertisers, yes, and even programmers, everyone can and should be creative. For example, a suggestion box is a request for creativity; and, recognizing, implementing, and rewarding that creativity fosters good will. So then, the human labor supplying scarcity creating value, demands foremost, our human creativity.

On the other hand, attempts to avoid work or dodge responsibility are also creativity, but the wrong kind. The common good must be the goal of all members of the organization. Leadership must model it. Supervision must support it. Labor must put it into practice. To the degree that any organization by law, policy, or practice works against the common good, value is destroyed. And, if it is only an organizational policy or practice — not a law imposed upon the organization — that works against the common good, then nature will find a way to circumvent that organization. And, another organization, more fit, will survive, and potentially prosper.

It is understandable why a lone creator, thinker, craftsperson, entrepreneur, academic, or professional would rather not deal with the vicissitudes of an organization. But, the common good needs more rowers in the boat. Whenever, we can encourage the right kind of value creation, we all benefit. And, as James Cagney said in a closing speech in Yankee Doodle Dandy, "My father thanks you, my mother thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you."