The dynamics of capturing value early and often

I'm thinking about how organizations often wait for too long to capture the expected benefits (value) from initiatives or projects. Sometimes it is not a conscious decision to wait, but rather lack of organizational capability to capture benefits early and often.
 
One way to think about the dynamics of capturing benefits that I find helpful, is to look at three main parameters that affect the capturing of value. These are

• The expected benefit rendered from the initiative
• The cost of delay incurred when waiting to introduce the value, including the cost of running the initiative
• The transaction cost for introducing the value to the organization

 
Should you run the initiative? Yes, if the following holds true:​​

---

---

Benefit > Cost (t) + Transaction cost

---

Organizational capability and culture influence these three parameters. Also, the uncertainty related to expected value plays a huge role.A lot of the time we make assumptions about the value we are about to create and it will not be clear until we can measure benefits. Thus, there is an inreased risk over time that the expected value will not be captured. In other words - the uncertainty of benefits increase with time, as does the cost of delay.

With this I'd argue that releasing value early and often from the initiatives you run will decrease risk for your organizations and reduce cost. A main enabler for doing this is to reduce the transaction cost incurred when you release value to the organization. 

What goes into the transaction cost then? Things like proactive quality assurance, change management, cost of recovery from change failure, distribution cost for benefit enabler (information systems, data, training), etc.

Looking at transaction cost as a one-time-fee is where you would risk derailing. It will be a setup to capture benefit late and seldomly. Any organization looking to capture benefits early and often should focus relentlessly on reducing all components of the transaction cost incurred when releasing benefits to the organization. Things to focus on are

• Early validation of (value oriented) assumptions
• Proactive quality assurance
• Automation of repetitive tasks
• Focus on the people experience of incorporating the change into the organization

All of this assumes you are trying to capture more value tomorrow than today. Otherwise, keep doing whatever you're doing. If you read all the way here to discover this assumption does not apply to you - I apologize for wasting your time.