Value Stream Value Stream

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

The FOBs kept me amused again today. We had to join an organisation-wide Q&A session on "Continuous Improvement".

It was interesting to me that although colleagues all confirmed it contained many, many words, it actually said almost nothing about anything.

So we kept ourselves busy by playing "bullsh*t bingo". We have an entire spreadsheet of buzzwords and scored points every time we spotted one. 

As you can see, "value stream" is the current favourite. By a COUNTRY MILE. It seemed to us that these two words were inserted almost at random throughout. As in:

"We're confident that this new flexible approach will allow us to maximise the  - uh - value from this value stream which will then flow into other - uh - value streams."

What does value stream even mean? I remember someone asking me this before it became a thing at Kāinga Ora. It was already a thing at Kiwiwank. Of course it was. 

"It doesn't mean ANYTHING," I replied. Scarred by Kiwiwank.

Nevertheless, it served to amuse the FOBs. 

S.