The Case for "Value-First" Narratives

For years now, there has been this unkillable narrative around "creating value".

On the one hand it drives me a little bonkers – and this is a way that having come up in higher ed still affects my own lens – as someone who learned early on the the primary goal of managing people is to develop them. I got an entire MBA precisely because I knew that viewpoint wasn't going to get me where I needed to go, but I also fought, kicking and screaming the whole time, against the reverse idea: that the primary goal of managing people is to extract value from them.

On the other hand, it is an unkillable narrative outside purpose-driven fields... and it's seeping into them, too. (When was the last time you read a job description that didn't mention value? When was the last time you listened to an org leader talk about their team's accomplishments without describing value?)

And in fact, you're about to start seeing a lot more of it from us this summer as we host events and retool programs (like the Aspiring Project Manager) to align with the increasing number of professional organizations who are using (or beginning to use) a value-first framework. As always, our goal is to help you understand how thought-leading orgs like PMI and SHRM are talking about work and working – which means if they're talking value, so are we.

So let's talk about it! Featuring... a deep dive into business frameworks kicked off by a kale salad anecdote.

The kale salad gambit

Sometimes, an expert mentions something that (to them) is so offhand, so peripheral, that it's not worth dwelling on. One example of this occurred for me about ten years ago when everyone seemed to be obsessed with kale salads (much like the "value" theme) and I just couldn't hack it.

"Either I am missing something or they are wrong," I thought to myself every single time I tried to make one. "Because this sucks."

I kept trying because the flavors that so often make up a kale salad (tahini, parmesan, lemon, dried fruit, etc #writingwhilehungry) are near and dear to my heart and also because I am stubborn and I do not like the feeling of either I'm missing something or everyone else is wrong. And then one day I was reading a recipe that mentioned as an off-hand half-sentence buried in the headnotes:

"... after you massage your kale..."

Sorry, what??? Have we all just been massaging our kale this whole time??? Was I supposed to know that??? Because I did NOT know that, thank you very MUCH, and this info would have really changed my whole game a long time ago.

The answer is yes. You are supposed to massage your kale with a little olive oil for not even a minute. It changes everything. I made a kale salad that day and thought to myself holy shit, this is so good and I never looked back.

The kale salad gambit, MBA edition: value = survival

Flash forward to one of the very last classes I took in my MBA: a strategic communications course. While setting the stage for a lesson that was about a totally different topic, my professor dropped the following – another off-hand, half-sentence buried in the headnotes of a lecture:

"... and as we know, the primary purpose of all organizations is to continue to exist in perpetuity..."

Record scratch, part 2 – sorry, what??? I'd never heard anyone say that before, and when I tell you that hearing that particular framing changed my LIFE, I could not be more serious. Because that's true across organizations, every kind I can think of. As a non-exhaustive list, to illustrate:

-> It's true of huge corporations: your Coca Colas, your Microsofts
-> It's true of venture-backed tech companies that float on staggering run rates before ever becoming revenue-positive (Anthropic as one of many examples here)
-> It's true of bootstrapped small businesses

And... it's true of nonprofits. It's true of universities and hospitals. It's true of shelters and youth organizations.

No matter your funding model, no matter whether you serve 100 people or 100 million people per year, no matter whether you deal in luxury goods or life-saving services, no matter whether you're bootstrapped, venture-backed, or grant-funded... the primary goal of every single organization I can think of is to continue to exist in perpetuity.

Value is the lever that permits that continued existence. It's also the lever that helps us answer the question: why SHOULD this SPECIFIC organization continue to exist in perpetuity?

That is the concept that cracked open the idea of "value" as a non-judgmental idea for me – because of course we all have ideas (some very different than each other) about which companies are "good". Which companies "deserve" to continue to exist. Defining value is a tool to communicate our thoughts on these ideas more precisely.

I had been muddying the waters by viewing "value" as "the extent to which society values the thing the company makes or does". And that's the path to a very particular kind of mental trap: where "creating value" is something that "the bad guys" do instead of creating impact, like the good guys do.

To take it one step further, we can also think about "positive value" (when the value created exceeds the cost of having created it) or "negative value" (when the opposite is true – when the benefit costs more to create than it's worth). Some organizations put more emphasis on this than others – the math changes a little depending on whether you're a nonprofit, whether you have investors, etc.

Narrative enters the chat

All orgs then use that value to create a feedback loop that aligns with their funding model. A list – again, non-exhaustive but helpfully illustrative:

-> Big orgs like Coca Cola and Microsoft use that value to convince customers to pay them directly on the market, instead of their competitors
-> Bootstrapped small businesses do exactly the same thing, though they might frame the value they create a little differently (if you've ever seen someone include something like this in their sales process, this is exactly what they're doing)
-> Venture-backed orgs use that value to convince investors to continue giving them money based on the idea that someday they'll be profitable given the value they're creating
-> Nonprofits use that value to convince grantors and donors to continue giving them money based on the value they're creating

The fact is that orgs care most about (often ONLY about) the types of value that continue to help them exist. Anthropic doesn't care about housing people in crisis because it's not part of the value narrative they've shared with investors. Shelters don't care about selling Coca Cola because it's not part of the value narrative they've shared with donors and grantors.

YOU enter the chat

Now, notice that each of the types of orgs above are going to frame that value differently – and many people have very different thoughts and feelings about those types of orgs because of how they prioritize and frame the value they create. That's related to this post, but not what the post is about.

The post is about this: the problem with the "value" conversation is that most of us have internalized a very specific definition of "value" – as an example, before (and during) my MBA, I had internalized that "value" is selling more plastic bottles of Coca Cola (i.e. I'd absorbed a very "big corporation" idea of creating value). And so, as someone who has strong feelings about the value created by other types of businesses, I often got my nose bent out of joint during conversations about value creation because I was approaching the conversation with a narrow lens.

Once you understand that value is how organizations survive – and that, no matter what type, this "survival" is their truest imperative – the "value" conversation becomes easier. The action step here is to practice stepping back, zooming out, and understanding how ALL types of organizations prioritize, create, and frame value (this is what we call their value narrative).

From there, you can do some real work around how your perspective intersects with the value narrative put forth by a type of org – or even a specific org! Maybe you're only interested in working for a certain type of org. Maybe you're interested in working anywhere but a certain type of org. Maybe you're interested in an org type if a set of conditions is true. (This is how I feel about the work I do with corporations – I'm happier going in when they're affiliated as a B Corp, 1% for the Planet, MWBE/WOSB, etc., even if I have no idea what my experience with the team I'm engaging with will ultimately be.)

Try this: map your value narrative

As always, let's get our hands a little dirty with this concept using your experience. Pick an organization you've worked for – now or in the past – and we can examine it through the lens of what we're describing today.

Step 1: What's the survival mechanism? How does this org continue to exist? (Grants? Tuition? Contracts? Donations? A mix?) Write it down in one sentence, as plainly as possible.

Step 2: What value makes that possible? What does this org create, protect, or make possible that its funders/donors/customers couldn't get elsewhere? Again: one sentence, plain language, no jargon.

Step 3: Where do you fit in that narrative? What value do you create that wouldn't exist without you — and how does it connect to Step 2?

(Bonus round: try this same exercise on an org you've always found confusing or frustrating. Sometimes understanding their value narrative is the thing that finally makes them make sense.)