Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.59)
Welcome to Simple Wins, the show where we talk to the architects behind the most successful B2B firms. We're currently in the middle of a massive project curating the 2026 B2B benchmark. And today we have with us the man, the myth, the legend, Barry Wolf, who has been a senior HR guy for over 30 years and is the owner of Argos HR Solutions, LLC, a human resources consulting form.
His latest book is It's All in Your Head, in which he challenges the value of psychology in the workplace and introduces his own alternative, which he calls value-centric leadership. Barry, a big welcome to the show. So excited to have you here.
Barry Wolfe (00:45.044)
Adam, I am so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Adam O'Leary (00:48.214)
Absolutely. So I'm glad that Jaharis were building out this 2026 benchmark because we're finding that the most successful firms are making very specific choices about their structures. And I'd love to start there with you. So when it comes to your business model, are you building an elite boutique where you stay small and go incredibly deep with just a few top tier clients? Or are you more of a scaling machine where you've built a system that delivers your high level results to as many companies as possible?
Barry Wolfe (01:15.734)
It's really the former, I'd say. I'd rather build a team with the right kind of people who can go into the right clients and create a success rather than trying to just sort of open it out to a whole lot of people and cross our fingers.
Adam O'Leary (01:33.453)
Absolutely and as you're growing are you growing mostly through authority meaning that your content acts as a magnet that pulls your best clients to you or if you more of the strategic partner who knows exactly which nor is the knock-on to create that perfect match
Barry Wolfe (01:48.896)
It's become more referrals as a result of driven in part by the book sales, but also working my network and just getting people to see what I can do for them and creating some fans that pass me on to some other folks.
Adam O'Leary (02:07.662)
That's awesome Barry, and that's the name of the game, referrals. I love hearing that. That's awesome. And as you scale, are you betting on hiring more elite talent, bringing in those top tier minds to solve big problems, or are you building a smart system using tech and automations to do the heavy lifting for you?
Barry Wolfe (02:10.724)
Yes it is!
Barry Wolfe (02:26.689)
It's really more the former. With all the attention paid to AI these days, what I find is that business leaders want to trust people and they want to trust relationships. So I would really, actually the team I have is, well like me, it's a bit on the grayer side, you know, because I want people who can
help organizations solve problems and walk in and create the confidence that look, know, we've got the bloody knuckles over the years, you know, we fought the wars and we really understand what you're talking about and what you're facing, not because you passed, we passed a certification course or something like that, but you know, we've been there, we feel the pain, so to speak, and we believe in the solutions that we're providing.
Adam O'Leary (03:22.157)
I love that, yes, and I love everything that you guys are doing, because it's super cool. And I guess for you, because you've gone ahead and built this, and I know everything that's going on with the book, if you had an extra 10 hours of executive focus this week, would you put that time towards scaling your impact, meaning bringing your expertise to more top tier companies, or perfecting the experience to make the results for your current partners even more elite?
Barry Wolfe (03:43.653)
It's really more the former or the latter, excuse me. I'd rather spend the time, know, every time you encounter people, you can write all this stuff out, you know, the program and it looks incredible on paper, right? But you, in the real world, a lot of it works. But every time you solve a problem for somebody with this process, you learn a little bit more. One of your clients gives you a better idea, frankly, than I had about how to go through this.
another 10 hours would be really helpful. And I have some clients that have really given me some great ideas that I need to get on the stick with and build back into the rest of process. So I'd rather be hold up making it better.
Adam O'Leary (04:28.17)
love that and this is one of the big reasons I wanted you on the show and as you know we call this show simple wins because the best experts usually have the simplest solutions so what would you say is your signature simple win that one tweak you've seen more time and time again that a listener could execute this week
Barry Wolfe (04:46.468)
The biggest thing is to stop looking at jobs in first and foremost in terms of duties and qualifications and ask yourself not what do I want to pay this person to do, but what are the results I want to buy from this person. my 30 plus years in human resources has shown me that the real, if you could boil it down to one simple.
solution to so many of the people problems we have. And I will tell you, having dealt with bazillions of people problems, I firmly believe 30 to 70 % of what we call people problems are really management problems on a variety of levels. And the one solution that would help your people become more successful, which I think should be the essence of leadership, how do you help your people help you succeed?
The one approach you can take would be to stop conceiving of jobs, explaining jobs, valuing jobs in terms of the duties, and focus instead on the deliverables.
Adam O'Leary (05:53.737)
That is killer. I love that. That is so good. So basically, I want to dig deeper into this. So are you saying to, when you're talking about the deliverables, are you talking about the KPIs or what is that deliverable that you're talking about?
Barry Wolfe (06:08.128)
You know, maybe it's a KPI, but let's put it this way. We, know, even with KPIs very often, we think about work in terms of what people do, right? So a KPI can be, we, they often start with a verb, like duties on a job description. The thing about it is if any organization, whatever you're selling, nobody buys a verb. They buy nouns.
And, you know, your bank gives you numbers, gives you money for nouns, your, your investors and so forth. So you have to get clear first on what those are, what, what, what are the key drivers of value in your business and think of them in terms of nouns and noun phrases. It's this thing that, you know, has these qualities. And once you're clear on those, you look at what are the results in my business? How do I know I'm producing that? But then it's a question once you're clear on that.
It's asking, what does each person in my business produce? Put in the hand, leave on the desk when they go home at night, change out in the wider world that helps the organization deliver that value. So that's really where you got to start.
Adam O'Leary (07:25.948)
That's awesome. And let's say if you're a software company, hypothetically, and let's say if you had a developer, okay, or if you're hiring for a developer, what would a deliverable look like there? Is it just the code? Is that what you're referring to? Or tell me, kind of let's go into that a little bit more.
Barry Wolfe (07:29.603)
Yeah.
Barry Wolfe (07:41.25)
Well, it could be the code. That could be one deliverable that they're responsible for. It might be types of documentation associated with that. And then drilling deeper into that documentation. what does that have to, what is valuable in the business with that documentation? I like to think of it in terms of not what you pay people to do.
But what do you want to buy? So if you want to buy documentation from this developer, what do you want to buy about it? So just if we're spitballing some of this, is it clear enough? Is it something that coworkers, the people down the line could pick up and apply in debugging the code that you left behind or things like that?
It could go on and on from there, but that's part of my process is understanding these for different roles. think about, just if can give you one little example, I work with one of my clients in this whole process, which I call value-centric leadership, is creating something we call success maps that would kind of lay on top of a job description that identifies what are these deliverables? And then what are different levels of success of contribution?
that you'd be wanting to buy from somebody. one role that they have in that organization is basically somebody that goes out on a construction site and ensures that the construction company is following the plans, building everything to code, et cetera, et cetera. And if you think about what does this person deliver for the company, one of the key things that my client identified
is this person's got to produce confidence both to the client and back to management that everything's being done the way it is and we're on top of it. whereas their training would always be things like, it would include things like, make sure you keep an extra pair of boots in your car in case the client calls you on site. Okay, that's important. But if you're thinking about in terms of, we need this person to instill confidence in our clients and we've got to be.
Barry Wolfe (10:05.612)
we as the senior leadership have to be able to have confidence in what's going on out there. Well, that's a whole different set of training.
Adam O'Leary (10:14.825)
That is fantastic. That is genius what you're describing right there. I'm actually so excited because I actually know somebody right off the bat once this is done that I want to send this over to because I know they will totally be able to use this. And I love it when people call out fluff. So what would you say is one golden rule in the HR industry that most people think is essential but you've proven is just a huge waste of time for a company?
Barry Wolfe (10:18.199)
No shucks.
Barry Wolfe (10:25.525)
Awesome.
Barry Wolfe (10:39.264)
That would have to do with most of what we're using around tools in psychology in the workplace. We spend about, and in my book I explore a lot of this, we spend about $2 billion a year on personality testing and yet we have, part of my book I did kind of a fairly deep dive about two years, two plus really, into research, where did we get tools like these from?
And what does it really do for us? a lot of what's behind that stuff is not really what everybody thinks it is. It's not the way it comes off in the marketing. when we look at, we spend $2 billion on personality testing. do competency models that usually cost north of $150,000 a pop.
We spend about, I think it's about $90 billion a year in this country in the US on leadership training. And yet we've got, according to Gallup organization, 90 % of executives, they reported a few years ago, 90 % of executives almost say their leadership programs are ineffective.
at meeting the organization's long-term needs. We have post-COVID, employee engagement and retention are the lowest. Retention, I think, is the lowest it's been in 22 years, according to US Department of Labor statistics. Engagement, we have about a third of the workforce reports that's highly engaged at work. So when you think at all this money that we're throwing into this, it's like, clearly, it's not.
doing anything close to what people believe it is. It's not making people more satisfied. We're not getting more satisfied workplaces. We are not creating workforces where people want to stay because of things like this. And I think that one of the biggest problems comes back to also a Gallup result in 2024. They reported that
Barry Wolfe (12:40.802)
45 % of employees strongly agree with the statement, I know what is expected of me in my job. So if you think about that, if all those tools of psychology, the tests and the competency models, even if it was all real and true and it works, so to speak, how could it possibly make a difference if over half the workforce doesn't even know what you want from them? So the solution to that clearly can't just be
a better job description. I'm in HR, I can tell you. It's not a better job description. And it really comes back to just rethinking, I believe. So what is it that you want from people? We're not really answering that question appropriately. And I think that the appropriate way, again, is by focusing on what are the deliverables we want to buy from somebody rather than the duties we want to pay them to do.
So that's where I think people should be stepping back and looking deeper into what are you communicating about, what a successful job in your company looks like.
Adam O'Leary (13:54.402)
Absolutely. And if you could just snap your fingers and give your clients a massive competitive edge by December, what's the one transformation you'd love to see every single one of achieve?
Barry Wolfe (14:04.482)
putting, you could apply a tool that in value-centric leadership that we call success maps, which as we were talking about, is looking at what are those deliverables that you want from each person in your organization? And then understanding what's, when you've identified, if you will, the baseline deliverable, the thing that has these characteristics for each one of those. And there could be six days, say eight.
know, tops, would say. Defining for each of those, okay, if you got this, what would be something that would go beyond that, that would, you could say exceeds expectations, if you will? And then what would be the top 2 % thing? If this person really wants to blow the doors out of delivering this, you really want to get the boss's attention. What would you deliver at that level? And then below that, what's something that, hey, this is going to not be good enough. And then below that, what's the thing that
If we don't fix this, you may not be continuing to work here. part of the, you can think about it this way. You know, if you, I have a chapter in my book called, what every new employee wants to ask and almost no employer can answer. And it's about how every day when a new employee starts, HR, you know, goes crazy to make sure it's a perfect day. So we've got these super.
technical detailed checklist, you know, we make sure they know that the chocolate bar with the card saying welcome and a balloon on it is on the desk on day one, right? And we show them, here's your job description and we show them here's where the coffee creamer is and everything. But there's one question everybody has that almost nobody can answer. And I would ask groups even of CEOs, what do you think that is?
Nobody's ever gotten the answer. A guy named Zach, who's like 23 years old, the only guy that ever got the answer to this. And it's very simply, what do I have to do to get a raise around here? And I used to think, you know, if it's the sales leader, if you're hiring a guy day one for a sales role and that person says, what do I have to do to get a raise around here? Everybody can instantly answer. whole group, like if they do this in a group setting, everybody will instantly answer, we'll get more sales. Absolutely.
Barry Wolfe (16:19.072)
Why is the salesperson the only person in your organization who can get an answer to that question? And I used to think, well, you know, I've always worked for the president and so, yeah, they hate passing out raises and they don't want to make commitments about raises too far ahead of time. So it's always that. I used to think that's what it was, but you know, the more I would reflect on this, the more I became convinced that there's a deeper answer to that, which is simply that they really don't know.
It's not that people don't know what their employees or the new hires do. It's that they don't understand what is the value this person delivers. And there has to be an answer to that for, I mean, if there isn't an answer for that, for every person in the organization, you gotta ask yourself, what the heck do you have them in the business for then? So.
I think that that's where, again, having dealt with so many performance-related employee problems, which are the hardest, drug problems and so forth, mean, they're weird, but they're pretty straightforward, really. The performance issues are the ones that are really knotty. And I think so often, it just, I know this from experience, more often than not, it just comes back to what did this person really understand or not understand about the role?
But the deeper question is what did the leadership really understand or not understand about it? So if I could wave that wand, would be giving organizations that level of clarity so that they can truly help their people help the business succeed. that they can show people up front, day one, you want to move forward in this business, not an arbitrary career path. Put these things on the desk at night. Change the wider world to look like this.
That's how you get our attention.
Adam O'Leary (18:10.916)
I love that Barry, you just totally blew my mind. I mean, it was so simple too, because I've been in sales my whole life and I've always thought about, okay, how do I get a raise? Like, how do I make more money? And it's so true. The fact that you just said that, I mean, when you start thinking about all the different people inside of an organization, holy smokes, like you start thinking and you're like, yeah, how does that person get a raise? I don't even know the answer to that question for some of my team members. And now that you just said that, that's...
Barry Wolfe (18:19.81)
Right. Yay.
Barry Wolfe (18:32.928)
Yeah. Yeah.
Adam O'Leary (18:39.128)
That's scary to me. So Barry, where can people go to learn more about you?
Barry Wolfe (18:43.414)
Well, my website is www.argoshr.com and you can find a link to my books. My most recent one is on Amazon. It's called, it's all in your head and the subtitle is why psychology doesn't help your employees deliver value and what can. It's currently on, right now it's the Kindle version, the hardcover and the paperback. The audio book was
ridiculously delayed, but it should be out before the end of January, God willing. so it's, an audio coming very soon. Supposed to be finally supposed to have been out before Christmas, but well.
Adam O'Leary (19:24.906)
That's awesome. Well Barry, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being on the show. Truly appreciate you coming out.
Barry Wolfe (19:29.791)
My pleasure, Adam. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.
Adam O'Leary (19:32.459)
Absolutely, you're the best and everyone, thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being here. Make sure to go click on the link in the description and go give Barry a visit because seriously, what Barry is doing over at HR is incredible. So ciao ciao for now. I will see you all on the next episode. Bye.
