SECTION 1
Chapter 3:
What Diane Knew
5 minute read
Diane Okafor had been promoted in August. Marcus knew her the way you know people when the organization is large enough that you don't share a team but small enough that you share a building. They'd been on a cross-departmental task force together two years ago. She was sharp and direct and had a way of asking questions in meetings that made other people's vague answers sound vaguer than they'd intended.
She was also, as far as Marcus could tell, not obviously more talented than he was.
He ran into her on a Wednesday in the cafeteria. She was pouring coffee. She looked over and said, "The one on the left. Trust me." He took the pot on the left. They ended up at the same table by the window.
"I heard you got passed over for Q2," she said. Not unkindly. Just directly.
"Word travels."
"Operations is a small floor." She wrapped both hands around her mug. "How are you feeling about it?"
"I'm trying to figure out what I'm missing. I know what I got done this past year. I just can't seem to make anyone else see it."
Diane nodded slowly. She seemed to be deciding how much to say. She tentatively began. “Can I ask you something?"
"Go ahead."
"If I asked you right now to show me your scoreboard—everything you've produced this past year, what changed because of it, what it was worth to the organization—could you do it?"
Marcus looked at her. "Like I said, I could list those things I’ve produced. But what it was worth to the organization? No."
"That was my answer too," she said. "Eighteen months ago."
"In real sports," Diane said, "the numbers are just there. The score of each inning, quarter, or half. Player stats. The player knows. The coach knows. The GM knows. Everyone's looking at the same scoreboard.
"But our game, CorporateBall, doesn't work that way. There's no scoreboard that tracks what a player actually contributes—not for the coach, not for the front office, and not for the player. Coaches manage a full roster through a long season. They see what's in front of them: attitude in the meeting room, whoever's loudest in the room. That becomes the record."
"Yeah, Derek is always in front of someone," Marcus said.
"Derek is good at being visible. That's a real skill. It's just not the only skill. The problem is that without your own scoreboard, visible is the only thing that counts."
Marcus turned his coffee cup in his hands. "So how do you build a scoreboard?"
"Two things," Diane said. "Both are important. Most people try to use one without the other, and that's why it doesn't work."
She set down her mug. "The first is the metrics your organization already tracks. The numbers that move decisions—who gets promoted, which budgets get approved, who leads the next initiative. Your work either influences those numbers or it doesn't. Most people never stop to ask which ones they influence, or track their trends."
"I affect results," Marcus said, thinking. "I know I do."
"Maybe. But can you show which ones? And by how much?"
He was still considering that when she went on.
"So, that's the first thing," she said. "The second is what you produce that impacts those results. Specific outputs. Things you can count. And not just count once, but you can track consistently, the way a player tracks their numbers across a season."
Value-Added Output: Something you produce—a service, document, event, or other countable output—that is proven to influence a Relevant Business Result. Not what you do. What you make that changes something.
She pointed out how a pitcher doesn't describe a season as a feeling. They don't say they worked hard on the mound or gave maximum effort in every start. They say they went 15 and 7 with an ERA of 3.12. The number exists whether the manager was watching or not. It doesn't require memory. It doesn't depend on who happened to be in the room.
"You need your own version of that," Diane said. "A count of what you produce—and a record of what changes when you do. When you have both, you can connect them. That's your scoreboard."
"And when you can't connect them?"
"Then you figure out why. Either you're producing things that don't move any numbers the organization cares about—which is a direction problem. Or you're moving numbers but can't prove it—which is a measurement problem. Either way, now you know what to fix."
Marcus sat with that. He'd spent the last three days making a list of things he'd done. He had one number he knew moved, 40% reduction in error rates. But he didn’t know how to take credit for it when it was a team effort. Other work—he just shrugged and thought, how do you even get a number for that?
"You make it sound so straightforward," Marcus said.
"It is and it isn't. The concept is straightforward. Doing it consistently is harder. Knowing which outputs actually matter—that takes some thinking." She picked up her mug. "I had help. There's an app I use. It walks you through the whole thing—identifying the right outputs, connecting them to results, keeping the record current. It's not magic. It just gives you a structure that works. And each step has a short video if you get stuck."
"What's it called?"
She told him.
"Would you be willing to show me how you use it?"
"That's why I brought it up," she said. "But let me give you a place to start. Open a blank document and describe the value you created for the company in the last year."
***
They agreed to meet on Friday at noon. Same cafeteria, same table by the window.
Marcus walked back to his desk and sat for a moment. He'd ended up at the search bar three days ago with no idea what he was looking for. Now he had a direction.
He pulled up a blank document. At the top, he typed a single line.
What value did I create this year? What does my that value look like?
He stared at it for a long moment. Then he started to write.
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