Sep 15, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
Most organizations run on a fiction — that job descriptions describe jobs, that OKRs measure value, that personality tests reveal something real. Barry Wolfe — HR consultant and author of It's All in…
I find that a lot of times we embed aspirations to OKRs, wishful thinking, and not the real, as you frame it, understanding the business logic and who pays money, what value do we create for customers and to the broader ecosystem.
So how do companies get from, and I'm sure your company is helping here, but like how do companies get from that sort of vague job description to an active value-based or value-centric leadership frame? Who approves those statements? How often do they change? Walk me through that.
Well, the first thing is really to start with the ownership of the organization, the senior leaders.
First, what are the key drivers of value in your organization? Really, just looking in terms of what are those things that people give you money for? But looking at it not just in terms of your customers, right? but also in terms of your investors, your bank.
It could be looking at the organization leadership itself, what capital you're putting into the business.
And what are you expecting to get out of it? But the key thing is, we don't talk about the answers in terms of verbs, if you will.
And so we think about it in terms of, we answer those, identify those key drivers of value in terms of basically noun phrases.
And then for each one of those, so that's a column on this document, For each one of those, then we ask, so what are the business results you produce by which you know you're providing? that value.
And you wrote somewhere that each role should have three to five value outcomes.
I find that a lot of times we embed aspirations to OKRs, wishful thinking, and not the real, as you frame it, understanding the business logic and who pays money, what value do we create for customers and to the broader ecosystem.
So how do companies get from, and I'm sure your company is helping here, but like how do companies get from that sort of vague job description to an active value-based or value-centric leadership frame? Who approves those statements? How often do they change? Walk me through that.
Well, the first thing is really to start with the ownership of the organization, the senior leaders.
First, what are the key drivers of value in your organization? Really, just looking in terms of what are those things that people give you money for? But looking at it not just in terms of your customers, right? but also in terms of your investors, your bank.
It could be looking at the organization leadership itself, what capital you're putting into the business.
And what are you expecting to get out of it? But the key thing is, we don't talk about the answers in terms of verbs, if you will.
And so we think about it in terms of, we answer those, identify those key drivers of value in terms of basically noun phrases.
And then for each one of those, so that's a column on this document, For each one of those, then we ask, so what are the business results you produce by which you know you're providing? that value.
And you wrote somewhere that each role should have three to five value outcomes.
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