Think You’re Creating Impact?

 

“You need to show more impact.” It’s probably the most common feedback Directors hear, and the least useful.   Because no one defines what impact actually means.   So people do what high performers always do when the goal is unclear: They increase volume.   More projects. More responsiveness. More effort. More output.   But impact is not a function of time spent.   You can spend weeks on the wrong thing and create zero impact. Or spend a few hours on the right thing and change the trajectory of a quarter.   There’s a big difference.   So what does impact really mean at the executive level, and how do you know if you are doing the right things?   This is what today’s newsletter is all about. I want to share the impact scoreboard executives are actually using and how to create yours.

The 3 Types of Impact Executives Actually Measure (and how to show them)   1) Business Results Did your work move a meaningful business lever? This is the baseline. Without business results, nothing else matters.   But “results” does not mean “I finished a lot of things.” It means your work materially influenced an outcome the business cares about: Revenue. Retention. Margin. Cost. Risk. Speed.   Early in my time at Microsoft, I spent over two months reorganizing our team’s SharePoint.   I reviewed every document. Cleaned everything up. Built a polished “source of truth.”   And then I realized something brutal: No one used it. No one cared.   It didn’t change how we worked, how we made decisions, or what the business produced. It was a perfect example of high effort, low impact.   Around that same time, I prioritized something else: collecting testimonials from past clients. It took days to design the approach, and a few weeks to capture and edit videos.   Those testimonials were used in real sales conversations. They helped attract new clients and influenced revenue.   One initiative took months and created no meaningful business effect. The other took a fraction of the time and directly supported growth.   That’s the point.   If you’re a Director aiming for VP, ask yourself: Does my work tie to one of the company’s top 3 priorities? If this initiative succeeds, what financial metric changes? Would the executive team feel it if this disappeared?   If the answer is unclear, you may be optimizing something that doesn’t matter at scale. At the executive level, impact starts with ruthless alignment.   Creating business impact means: Ruthlessly aligning initiatives to enterprise goals. Killing projects that don’t tie to real business levers. Elevating conversations from “did we ship?” to “did we move the metric?”   Business results get you credibility. They are table stakes.   If your work doesn’t move a business lever, it might keep you busy. But it won’t move your career.   2) Strategic Leverage The multiplier Strategic leverage is what separates a strong Director from an executive-ready one.   It answers one question: Does your work change how the organization operates going forward?   One of my Directors nailed this in her first week.   We had a project management tool. We were “using it.” But in practice, it was the Wild West.   Everyone used different language. Different ways to prioritize. Updates were inconsistent and hard to compare.   She could have quietly managed her own projects better and called it a day.   Instead, she built a workflow for the whole team: Standard update templates. Shared prioritization language. A consistent operating rhythm.   She didn’t just improve execution. She reduced friction. She made the system repeatable. She made the team easier to lead.   That’s leverage.   Leverage looks like: Solving root causes instead of recurring symptoms. Turning one-off efforts into repeatable systems Building infrastructure that scales beyond you Making future decisions faster and cleaner   Ask yourself: Does this initiative reduce complexity long-term? Does it scale beyond my team? Will this still create value 12 months from now?   If your work requires your constant intervention to function, it’s operational. If it compounds without you, it’s strategic.   That’s executive impact.   3) Team and Organizational Growth The force multiplier At senior levels, impact is not just what you personally deliver.   It’s what grows because you are there.   I used to have a leadership habit that felt helpful and decisive: When someone on my team brought me a problem, I gave them my solution.   Fast in the short term. Terrible in the long term.   Because it trained the team to rely on me for answers instead of building their judgment.   So I changed one thing.   When someone came to me with a challenge, I started with: “What do you think?”   If they truly had no direction, I’d offer a few starting paths. But I stopped jumping straight to the answer.   The effect was immediate and compounding: They built confidence. They practiced decision-making. They stopped escalating everything.   The team became more capable, and less dependent on me. That’s organizational impact.   Executives pay attention to whether you: Build leaders and decision-makers Increase ownership without constant escalation Create a bench that scales Improve performance through others, not just through yourself   If everything runs through you, you look important. If performance improves without you, you look like an executive.   Promotions Are Bets on Future Impact Executives don’t promote you as a reward for effort. They promote you because they believe you can produce bigger outcomes, at bigger scale, with less oversight.   That’s why these three buckets matter.   Results show you can deliver. Leverage shows you can scale. Team growth shows you can multiply.   That combination signals readiness for executive roles more than any amount of effort you put in.

Your Next Steps Before you change everything, audit your current work against the executive impact scorecard.   List your top five initiatives and evaluate each against three questions: What measurable business outcome does this influence? What long-term leverage does this create? What capability does this build in others?   If an initiative doesn’t clearly hit at least one of these, ask: Can I redesign it to create leverage? Can I elevate it to connect to a business priority? Should I delegate it? Or should I stop doing it?   Executive-level impact is not about doing more. It’s about choosing work that compounds.   And that choice starts now.