The concept of “value” keeps coming up everywhere I look, and not in the purely economic sense.
It started with a research report Anthropic released last month, which quantifies how much certain job categories will be exposed to disruption from AI. There’s a cool graph and everything. But it’s sort of a powerful glimpse into the obvious. Knowledge work = Danger!!! Bus drivers = You’re in the clear!
Now that we have official numbers, though, shit just got real for a lot of folks, accelerating the existential crisis that was already well under way in many circles. What’s followed is more of the same “what to do if you lose your job to AI” advice we’ve been hearing for a while now:
- Start your own business. Heck, start a few or do gig/fractional work.
- Go be a plumber or electrician. All these new data centers need buildings, you know?
- Cram next-level AI tools and vibe-code agentic workflows so you can climb over the charred bodies of your colleagues who don’t.
I find this advice … unrealistic. Not everyone is cut out to run their own business. Those of us who’d like to be plumbers would already be plumbers. Literal rocket scientists are struggling to get Outlook to work, yet folks expect the rank and file to embrace build culture overnight and start vibe-coding secure, reliable, scalable applications like pros.
There’s a pretty solid dose of doomsday across all the advice, since no one really knows what to do when millions of people need to shift their professions en masse. But the undertext is that if none of the above is appealing to you, then your personal value to society is plummeting, so good luck in the bread line.
Not exactly conducive to inner peace, is it?
This isn’t dire. Yet.
Due to doomsday fatigue, there’s also been renewed emphasis lately on the value of human taste and judgment. As in, yes, AI can create six different website mockups in minutes, but it doesn’t know the one with purple unicorns is inappropriate for the client, since the requirements didn’t explicitly say “no purple unicorns.”
Another recent study from MIT also pumps the brakes on the job apocalypse by again stating the obvious: AI isn’t good enough yet to replace people entirely. It’s gonna take at least a few more years, which gives all of us time to make a backup plan.
In the business world, a crystal-clear value proposition serves as a guiding principle for strategic planning. Leaders spend hours and hours workshopping a crisp statement, because that’s what their business is built around. Something like: We do X for customers who need Y.
We all have personal value propositions, too, but we tend not to think about them until it’s time for a job search. Don’t wait. Get clear about your value now, because you’ll lean on it to help you understand the path forward. Caveat: I’m talking about personal value in the working-world sense. As in “value to the business.” Not personal values (plural), which is something completely different but just as important to understand.
Resumes and annual performance reviews tend to cast your value to the business around specific tasks or accomplishments, like “Prepared spreadsheets for quarterly reviews.” We’re gonna approach this from a more conceptual level. Gather up all the particulars, then roll them together into a summary sentence that ties them to the outcome you’re providing for the business. You’ll end up with something similar to a personal branding statement:
“I do (what) that (has what result), which is important because (what it does for the business).”
Here are some examples:
- I turn complex data into clear reports, which is important for speeding up decision-making.
- I build user interfaces that make products easy to use, which is important for helping customers do their work efficiently.
- I create social media campaigns that increase brand awareness and boost company reputation, which is important for customer loyalty.
I challenge you not to outsource this part of the exercise to AI. Even if your statement rambles or sounds rough around the edges, it needs to start with what’s inside your brain and what you internalize about the work you do.
Ignore imposter syndrome
We all have those days when we’re not really feelin’ the value-add, and the constant doom spiral in the news doesn’t help. If you’re having trouble, make a list of all your day-to-day tasks. Not your accomplishments, but what you do on any given day. Strip out any confidential company information or personally identifying data, then feed the list and this prompt into the chat tool of your choice:
You are a talent development expert, and I need your help summarizing the value I bring to my workplace. This will be my personal North Star and not the basis for a resume or job search. My title is (what) and I work in the (whatever) industry on a team that (serves what function). Below is a list of my day-to-day tasks. Evaluate the list and return a one-sentence statement that follows the formula: “I do (what) that (has what result), which is important because (what it does for the business).”
What you get back will likely be word salad and perhaps a bit generic. For example, here’s what I got from Claude when I fed it my daily to-do’s:
I orchestrate strategic planning, cross-functional execution, and operational infrastructure that enables my team to align their work with business priorities, which is important because it transforms the team into a strategically-driven capability that delivers measurable business impact.
Yeah. That’s chock full of jargon-y goodness. “Strategically-driven capability”?? Who even talks like that?
But interestingly, Claude gave me a better version when it did its summarizing-the-action thing at the end of its response:
Your work essentially creates the “operating system” that allows the team to focus on their craft while staying connected to business value—you’re translating between execution and business strategy in both directions.
That’s pretty spot on, and a good starting point for refinement. If you do end up needing a job search, a summary like this is also a good starting point for putting your career story together.
When you’re happy with the statement, use it as a constant in the weeks and months ahead. How you deliver this value — the tools and processes you use, or even the company or customers you serve — will change, probably faster than you’d like.
But your value stays the same. Go you!
All opinions here are my own. All text is my own, too, including the em dashes. I welcome constructive comments and discussion on LinkedIn and Bluesky.