Most people confuse "being busy" with being valuable. They think showing up to every meeting, commenting on every Jira ticket, or logging long hours is proof they matter. It's not. Activity is noise. Outcomes are signal. You don't get paid for looking exhausted — you get paid for producing something that works. If you want leverage as an operator, stop bragging about effort and start delivering results.
Activity Is Cheap, Outcomes Are Rare
- Activity = motion without proof. Updating Confluence pages, "aligning" in meetings, endlessly refactoring code nobody asked for.
- Outcome = commitment delivered. A feature shipped, a bug eliminated, an API spec agreed upon. Something verifiable and done.
- Impact = expectation, not outcome. Launching the feature is the outcome. Customers using it is an expectation. Don't conflate them — you can't control user adoption, only whether you launched.
The Traditional Dogma (and Why It's Nonsense)
- OKRs/KPIs: They fetishize "impact" metrics (monthly active users, conversion rates) and turn them into commitments. You don't control adoption. You control delivery. Measuring success by things outside your span of control sets you up to fail.
- Agile Theater: Sprint after sprint of "velocity" and "story points burned." Who cares? Nobody brags about how fast they rowed in circles. What matters is whether you got the boat to shore.
- Busywork Culture: In too many companies, "always available" and "always online" is mistaken for dedication. Congratulations — you're a very expensive Slack bot.
What Owning Outcomes Looks Like
- Define the Commitment: Success Criteria = "what done means." Example: "API v2 deployed to production, with backward compatibility verified, by end of Q2."
- Control What You Can: Deliver the outcome itself. Don't over-promise adoption, usage, or revenue — that's the business's problem to solve.
- Name Ownership: Don't hide behind "the team." Own the piece you control. "I will deliver X by Y." If it's a shared outcome, explicitly divide responsibilities so accountability isn't diluted.
- Make It Observable: An outcome is binary — it's either done or not. No wiggle room. No "we made good progress."
Scenario: The Startup vs. The Enterprise
- Startup Chaos: A founder asks a developer to "make the product more engaging." That's activity bait. The reframed operator translates: "Ship a new onboarding flow by March 15, measured by whether it's in production and functional." That's an outcome.
- Enterprise Bureaucracy: An engineer gets assigned an OKR: "Increase cloud revenue by 10%." Laughable. You can't personally force Fortune 500 CIOs to sign bigger contracts. The reframed operator narrows it: "Implement tiered pricing API by Q4 so sales can close new deals." The outcome is controllable, the revenue is not.
The Operator's Rule
Your worth isn't in hours logged, tickets touched, or meetings attended. Your worth is in outcomes you own, finish, and deliver. Everything else is theater.
Takeaway: If you want to be indispensable, stop worshipping activity. Own outcomes — clear, verifiable, finished commitments — and let everyone else drown in their busyness.
