Patricia Pulliam Phillips and Jack J. Phillips. Show the Value of What You Do. Berrett-Koehler, 2023.
Show the Value of What You Do is a very specialized book that thousands, if not millions, could benefit from. It presents a paradox—people may need the information here, but they may not know or even believe they do. The authors operate a consulting firm that specializes in analyzing the cost benefits or returns on investments (ROI) of projects and productions of all kinds. This books shows how such an analysis can be done—or in many cases, why a consultant might be helpful to do this.
In some ways the book is very dry. It is, after all, based on mathematical analyses. Still, the book comes alive because of its many examples or case studies. We observe organizations of all kinds and how they determined whether a certain project, production, or method of business was worth it.
The first example comes from the Methodist Church. It was supporting chaplains in over fifty large hospitals. Was it worth supporting these specialized ministers? Did their work make a difference in the places where they worked?
Each chapter begins with two epigraphs, one labeled “Myth” the second labeled “Reality.” It might sound to many people that such positions as chaplain might be considered “intangibles.” They could add to morale but there appears to be little to quantify in the companies’ bottom lines. That turns out to be a myth in this case.
While there is a chapter devoted to intangibles, many such things can be quantified. Often the authors use the basic scientific method or inductive reasoning to demonstrate this. Is there a cost benefit when comparing units with chaplains and similar units without them? After some serious data analysis, they determined that patients in ICUs with chaplains had a statistically significant shorter stay in the ICU than those without chaplains. That certainly benefited the patients, but what about the hospital’s bottom line?
It turned out that the study showed chaplains provided three or four benefits: shorter stays in the ICU, greater contact and concern for families of the patients, fewer costs for the hospital, and more availability of ICU units for people who needed them.
There must be fifty such examples, and they cover a wide variety of instances and situations from nonprofits to police SWAT teams and corporations around the world.
Show the Value of What You Do demonstrates that solutions to problems are not always obvious. It illustrates the importance of setting objectives and ways to collect data. The data may not always be financial, but many times abstractions can be made more concrete.
Impact measures may be hard or soft. You will find them in operations reports, databases, benchmark studies, and sometimes a simple conversation. Some measures and their baseline performance will be more obvious than others. When the impact is not so obvious, you may need to resort to a more determined effort to find the impact. (43)
As the title suggests, this book may be especially helpful for someone in a situation where those in authority are thinking of downsizing, wondering whether someone’s job is necessary, or thinking of making changes to the way things are done. I am reminded of the story in the first chapter of the Bible’s Book of Daniel. Daniel and his friends are being educated in the Babylonian court and are presented with non-kosher food to eat and drink. Daniel simply tells his supervisor to feed him and his fellow Jews a kosher diet and see the difference it makes in their health. This books shows that the same approach still works.
The method may also show what is not working well:
Remember that failure is okay. Progress is important. The cornerstone of this methodology is a relentless focus on project improvement. (133)
Show the Value of What You Do goes into detail to tell how to make sure the data is reliable and how to account for exceptions. The authors admit that some things truly are intangible, but many things can be statistically broken down.
A simple illustration shows this. The authors note the difference between ROI and benefit to cost ratio (BCR). They both can describe the same data but they are computed differently. Some places prefer one over the other, but they have to be explained clearly.
The ROI is a percentage and shows how the cost of something yields a return relative to the cost. So, for example, if a project cost $10,000 and yielded a benefit of $12,000, that would be a $2,000 yield or 20% of the original cost. The BCR would divide the benefit by the cost or 12,000/10,000, yielding a BCR of 1.2. The formulae are the following: ROI=(Yield – Cost)/Cost and BCR=Yield/Cost.
When Show the Value of What You Do comes out, I personally know a couple of people who would probably get a lot out of reading this. One is a management consultant to nonprofits; the other is a fundraiser for a religious organization. The first is looking for concrete ways to show how the nonprofit can effectively accomplish its purposes. The second is looking for ways to show donors that their money would be well spent. This book covers both kinds of situations. The authors of this book are experts and we can be glad they are sharing their expertise.