Recently a participant shared how strange it had felt to be paid a different amount than usual.

The feeling was a combination of something that felt good and something that wasn’t really clear. It could be described with some anxiety assessing the customer’s satisfaction.

And that’s what we often are told to look at. Is the customer happy? What’s his feedback? Would he give a testimonial? These are simple questions we’ll use to measure satisfaction.

But if we let that be the only measure, we are missing the point.

Whenever the customer buys something we can expect that he is paying for something that costs him less than what it is worth it for him. The assessment we do at the end thus is there to verify that this is still a given for the customer. It is living up to the promise we are making.

There is more to it to capture the value we create.

In principle, the ones doing the work are the ones who know best what the value they are creating is. However, it most often is in the exchange with the other that they will learn what others value in it and how they value it.

Doing the work means allowing the possibility for the value we create to come into existence. Depending on how we do our work and how it is received will allow for its potential to unfold.

It takes time to learn to see the value of the work we do. It’s nothing that can be simply measured.

We learn to see it by becoming professional about what we do, being engaged in doing it, and most importantly by being committed to the relationship with the customer.

Our interest in the value and its creation teaches us what makes up the value.

It is curiosity about the work we do, how it feels to create it, and how it is being received that lets us experience the value we create.

To make it complete, it is trusting the value we create that gives us access to it.