In business, there’s no currency more honest than results. Not output. Not effort. Not optics. Results—defined as the agreed-upon outcomes licensed in advance—are the sole measure of value. If it wasn’t agreed upon, it isn’t a result, no matter how beneficial it appears afterward. This is the foundation of the “Results as Sole Value” principle and the reason I built leadership philosophies like Outcomes Over Optics (OOO) and execution frameworks like Collaborate by Contract (CBC).
The agreement is the contract between the contributors and the business — the scoreboard everyone plays by.
Results are relative to expectations. In CBC, every project or initiative starts with an explicit agreement: objectives, deliverables, success criteria, and scope. That agreement is the contract between the contributors and the business — the scoreboard everyone plays by. Preventive actions, compliance requirements, and relationship management are all valid results if they were licensed in advance. Without that clarity, the door is left wide open for performance theater, post-hoc justifications, and subjective claims about “value.”
Now, imagine a near future where your workforce is split between humans and autonomous AI systems. The AI is capable of producing output equal to — or even better than — its human counterparts. You’ve given both the same mission: deliver an agreed set of outcomes. How do you assess value? You can’t grade the human on “how hard they worked” and the AI on “what it delivered.” That’s an apples-to-oranges game that destroys fairness and clarity. The only logical, scalable approach is to measure both against the same standard: did they meet the agreed results, yes or no?
This removes ambiguity, strips away the politics of perception, and keeps the focus where it belongs: on creating value for the business.
When results are the sole measure of value, accountability becomes symmetrical. Human or AI, the method is irrelevant — the outcome is what matters. This removes ambiguity, strips away the politics of perception, and keeps the focus where it belongs: on creating value for the business. Businesses exist to generate returns for their owners. Whether that return comes from hitting a revenue target, preventing a costly risk, passing an audit, or renewing a key client contract, it only counts when it was agreed upon in advance.
The operational law is simple: if the business hasn’t agreed it’s valuable, delivering it doesn’t count as value. This rule not only aligns with the purpose of business but also ensures that humans and AI operate on the same playing field. In a world where execution will be increasingly shared between both, clarity and parity in measurement aren’t optional — they’re survival.
