Adding Value...

I've made an executive decision. I am forbidding myself from using the phrase "Adding Value" as well as any derivatives of it. It's too generic. A post on twitter that stuck with me was something like "Don't say 'it is what it is'. It's a crutch of the inarticulate". I feel the same way when I say "Adding value".

Because on it's own - it means nothing. It's an abstraction, but many times the core idea behind it seems to be lost. For example, if I said "today at work I added value by discovering a bug with our financial reporting" then really the entire sentence means the same thing without saying "Adding value".

When you add value, it means you did something that made someone else life easier or your life easier, or solved a problem they had. So just say that! Daniel Ek doesn't say that he added value to a lot of people's lives - he says that he created a service to let anyone listen to any song they want to at any time for a monthly fee.

How does my team add value? Well what problems do we solve? That's the answer. Whose life becomes easier due to the work I am doing? If you can't define the value add, did you actually add it?

Since I've removed "adding value" from my lexicon, it forces me to be concise about what I've actually accomplished. It especially helps when defining goals for the future. I encourage people to stop saying it.