What Does It Mean to Be Valuable Now?

For years, I’ve been inside conversations about value.

How to add it.

How to measure it.

How to differentiate it.

How to stay relevant as the ground shifts under the accounting profession.

Every discussion circled around the same questions:

• What does it mean to be valuable now?

• What does value even look like as technology moves up the value chain?

• How do we differentiate ourselves when the old playbook no longer works?

We were talking about value in terms of the systems, the firms, the service offerings, the clients.

But what we were REALLY talking about was….human value.

I’m really excited because I believe this is the first time where individual human value is actually being discussed as a key differentiator at work.

When I laid it out across time, there’s an underlying theme that’s pretty undeniable:

• Thirty years ago, value looked like technical mastery.

• Ten to fifteen years ago, it looked like execution at scale.

• Today, it looks like judgment, interpretation, and sensemaking.

• And soon enough, it will look like systems leadership and ethical oversight. Humans will govern increasingly intelligent systems.

Individual human value is moving up the value chain….just like technology is.

But this moment feels weird for a lot of us. And it’s because we’re living in a mixed reality.

We can see where the work is going.

We know what kind of value is emerging.

We know judgment, trust, and unique ways of thinking are becoming the real differentiators.

AND, the full toolkit isn’t here yet.

Some of the technology we’re counting on is still being built.

Some delivery models are still forming.

The scorecards we use to measure our value are still anchored in the past.

So, we’re trying to do future-state work inside partially past-state systems.

As I was sitting in one of these conversations talking about value - The Genius Equation was born.

We’re living in a moment where it’s finally not “silly” or “soft” to be asking:

What is it about me that is uniquely valuable in a world where the definition of value keeps evolving?

I deeply believe in helping people understand their individual human value.

Follow along - we’re just getting started.

I’m glad you’re here.