SECTION 2
Chapter 3:
The Mentor's Two Questions
4 minute read
Ray Cortez’s office looked like the workspace of someone who had stopped trying to impress people a long time ago and had been more effective ever since. No motivational posters. A desk with actual paper on it. A shelf of binders that probably contained things that still mattered years later. He’d spent twenty-three years in management, under six different CEOs, four major restructurings. He poured Reid a glass of water and took the chair across the desk without ceremony.
“Before I ask you anything,” Ray said, “let me tell you about a training department I knew.”
He described it as a good team. Solid programs: new hire orientation, leadership development, compliance training. People liked the department. No complaints.
“Company hit a rough patch,” Ray said. “Two bad quarters. Senior leadership looked hard at every line item. The training director got a notice. Not just him. His entire department. Eleven people. Gone, end of quarter.”
“They couldn’t justify their headcount?”
Ray shook his head. “They showed activity. Hours of training delivered. Employees through orientation. Courses completed. Facilitator ratings.” He leaned forward. “Those numbers only meant something inside the training department. They weren’t numbers the CFO or COO watched. They never connected to ramp up time for new hires, retention rates, error rates in the roles they trained for, impact on the bottom line—the metrics that senior leaders actually track.
“The training was probably working,” Ray went on. “People probably ramped faster. Leaders probably made fewer expensive mistakes.” He looked at Reid. “But probably working and provably working are two entirely different things when someone upstairs is deciding what to cut.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Reid knew he wasn’t just telling him a story for no reason.
“So,” Ray said. “What measurable value does your team produce?”
Reid started to describe it. Ray listened without interrupting. It broke down quickly. Reid got through Ingrid and Devon before he heard himself—really heard himself—and stopped.
“I’m describing what they do,” he said.
“Yes,” Ray said. Not unkindly. Just accurately.
“That’s not the same thing as the measurable value they produce.”
“No. It’s not.” Ray leaned forward. “You need two things. Most managers try to figure out one without the other, and that doesn’t work.”
Ray used a basketball analogy. “A point guard’s value isn’t measured in minutes played or plays called. It shows up in two numbers. The first is the arena—how many fans are in the seats. That number belongs to the whole team. No single player fills it alone, and no player escapes it when it’s empty. The second is what each player contributes to making the team worth watching—the thing they produce that builds the wins, the excitement, the reason fans come back even in a losing season. Assists. Rebounds. Blocks. The contribution is individual. The result is shared. The job is to draw the line from what you specifically produce to the number the franchise lives or dies by.
“The first part is the metrics your organization already tracks,” Ray said. “The numbers that drive decisions—budgets, headcount, who leads the next initiative. Your team’s work influences those numbers every day. But many managers never help their people connect to them—not in a way that’s relevant to the person doing the work. Every employee is carrying the same unspoken question: ‘Can I see how my work influences something that matters?’ Most never get an answer.”
Relevant Business Result: A bottom-line metric connected to the organization's core mission—the kind of number that moves decisions about budget, headcount, and who leads the next initiative.
“I do affect those metrics,” Reid said, beginning to understand. “My team affects them.”
“Maybe. But can you show which ones? And by how much?”
Reid shook his head, almost imperceptibly, and didn’t answer.
“Those company metrics are just the first thing,” Ray said. “The second is the individual metrics—what each person on your team actually produces to move those metrics. Specific outputs. Things they can count. And not just count once—track consistently, the way a player tracks their stats 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.
“I do affect those metrics,” Reid said, beginning to understand. “My team affects them.”
“When each person on your team has both, and captures both metrics—the management metrics they influence and the employee’s record showing how much they influence those metrics— If you’ve got both, you can prove your value to the organization. That’s the business case. That’s what that training department didn’t have.”
“I do have job descriptions,” Reid said, a little bit sheepish, a little bit hopeful that this might count for something.
“Very thorough ones,” Ray said. “But completely invisible to the people making the decisions.”
He pushed a piece of paper across the desk—an app name, a website. “Start here. It walks you through identifying both pieces: the organizational results each person influences, and what value they produce that does the influencing. It gives you a worksheet for each: Relevant Business Results and Value-Added Outputs. Pay attention to those two worksheets while you look it over. Use them with your team, one conversation at a time. You’re not going to build the data for them. You’re going to facilitate their thinking. Then they’ll collect their own value data and share it with you.”
Reid looked at the paper.
“How long will this take?”
"Well, you’ve got less than two weeks to prepare that headcount justification," Ray said. "Which sounds like plenty of time until you spend the first week identifying the value your team creates." He glanced toward the door. “You’ve got someone walking out the door. You’ve had more than one. The real deadline was a while ago.”
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