SECTION 1
Chapter 6:
Strengthening Value
4 minute read
By Tuesday Marcus had something he'd never had before: a record.
Six process guides. With four multi-team adoptions. Influencing a Relevant Business Result with numbers attached. A continuing trend of success with projects. A year of work that looked, for the first time, like a year of produced value.
But taking it in to put in front of Clair—that still felt like something he wasn’t ready for.
He texted Diane on Wednesday morning. “I have the evidence. Everything's recorded. But something's still missing.”
She replied in under a minute. “When are you free?”
***
They met in the same cafeteria—at what was becoming their Meaningful Competence table and window.
"Do you know what the department is focused on this quarter?" she asked.
"The Henderson rollout. The new vendor compliance framework."
"And six months ago?"
He thought it through. There was the eastern region expansion. The vendor error rates, the processing time—all front of mind, because the eastern accounts were new and fragile. Claire had talked about it constantly. But now, she didn't talk about that anymore.
"The eastern expansion wrapped," he said slowly.
"Right. So your two biggest outputs were solving a problem the organization was really worried about six months ago."
"The integration is still running," he said. "The guides are still being used."
"I know. The value is real. I'm not saying it isn't." She looked at him steadily. "I'm asking whether it's the value the franchise needs most right now."
He didn't answer, because he didn't know the answer.
Diane pulled out her phone. "The app has an assessment—the Individual Mesh. It maps the relationships that determine whether the value you produce is facing any systemic blockages. Nine relationships. Each with a simple rating and honest criteria for what doing well looks like versus struggling." She handed him the phone. "It tells you which relationship is limiting your production of value. And that tells you which one to work on first."
Individual Mesh: An assessment of the relationship between what you bring to an organization and what the organization, your manager, and your peers actually need. Not a performance review—a map.
Marcus handed the phone back. "So, when I improve the relationship where I've seen a blockage, I should see improvement in my outputs and results?"
"What else would you expect?" said Diane.
***
He went through the assessment that evening at his kitchen table.
Most cells he rated without much pause. When he reached Resource Creation—his ability to produce tools, guides, and frameworks the organization could actually use—he scored it without hesitation. Seven out of seven. He'd earned that one. The process guides alone had outlasted three reorganizations.
Two cells in particular took longer.
The first was Value-Added Outputs in relation to his manager. The criteria asked whether he and his manager shared a clear understanding of what he produced and why it mattered. His first instinct was to score it low. But he thought back to the conversation with Claire. She hadn't pushed back on his outputs. She hadn't questioned their value. What they'd lacked was a shared language—a way to talk about what he produced in terms the organization recognized. That wasn't a gap in alignment. It was a gap in vocabulary, and the app had already closed it—for him at least. He scored the cell and moved on.
The second was Predictable Synergy—how well his work style meshed with his manager's expectations and rhythm. He sat with that one longer. Claire was still relatively new to him. And if he was honest, he'd never been particularly good at this one. Not because he was difficult—his peers would have pushed back on that—but because he tended to operate on his own clock. He solved the problem, delivered the result, and assumed the timing worked for everyone. With some managers it had. With others it hadn't, and he'd never quite understood why until now.
He scored Predictable Synergy a three out of seven.
That was his cell to work on.
***
He stared at that score of three for a while.
He'd received feedback before—about his communication style, about needing to be easier to work with, about specific skills someone felt he needed to improve. That feedback had always felt like a verdict handed down from somewhere above him. This was different. This was a diagnosis he'd made himself.
He wasn't out of sync with Claire because he lacked skill. He was out of sync because he'd never built the habit of syncing. He operated on his own clock, delivered strong work, and had assumed all would sort itself out. Sometimes it had. Sometimes it hadn't. And he'd never known which outcome he was walking into until he was walking into surprise praise or reprimand.
© 2026 Torch Solutions Group, LLC