Adding Value

 We are reaching the point of the year where "Annual Reviews" and "Next Year's Goals" and "Budgets" are starting to enter the chat.

This is by no means a foreign concept of course: I have done this sort of thing for well over 25 years now, the rush at the end of the year to remember all that was done during the year previous, and then - as a manager - to help people remember what they did during the year and what they will need to accomplish during the next year.

The timelines change - they always do; my current company does not have corporate goals until well into December and our individual goals are due until March of the following year - but it remains - like the falling of the leaves that are happening as I write this - an annual seasonal event.

That said, this year is - for me - a little more thoughtful.

One of the questions, given what I sense in world around me, is the question of adding value.

---

"Value" can be a subjective measure of course. Some measure it in purely financial terms by what one "brings in" or enables.  Some measure it by the specialized knowledge one has.  Some measure it by those indefinable factors that make work a "better" place.

But businesses, ultimately, need to make a profit to stay in business. And to that sense, those that are there need to - in some form - add value.

There have always been, I suppose, employees that never added value throughout history. That said, when labour is mostly manual or hand-made, it can be pretty clear who is adding value and who is not.  That became - I suspect anyway - much easier as we moved into the mechanized and then digitized environment:  the ability to "look busy" has never been more easy. One can simply sit in front of a screen and for all the world, people think you are doing something important.

Maybe. Maybe you are just checking messages or surfing the InterWeb.

But a strange thing happens when demand sinks and money tightens up:  businesses start to look at the bottom line and results.  They look at things like cost and development time and lead times and returns.  They generate labour models for expected workloads, and begin to carefully look at all those numbers.

The boom in Artificial Intelligence - whether one completely buys into it or just partially - will exacerbate these trends. Absolutely it does not get everything right; it can also automate a lot of simple tasks and provide some level of data analyses that it would take a person hours or days to do.

And companies, in an era of rising expenses and flat earnings. are taking notice.

---

I have taken to asking myself every day as I come in "How am I adding value today?" and as I leave "How did I add value today?"

To be fair, it is a mental exercise for myself at this point: clearly my employer determines the value I add, not me (at least for purposes of employment).  But it is a useful sort of thing to have at one's fingertips in case the question is asked.

My worry is more for many of coworkers, especially those of the younger generation.

For a great many people - and not just the young - there is a sense that a job is owed them simply by their existence, and that once in that job their productivity ("Adding value") is simply their presence there.  The idea that at some point they might have justify their job to the corporate powers that be never occurs to them.  I do not wonder if part of that is a simple failure to see things from the employer's side of the equation.

And the quickest way to attract attention to yourself in economic environments such as the one we are entering is to sit at a desk or on the shop floor, being present - and not much else.

That is not the sort attention it is wise to attract.