1 min readmeaning
Why you cannot see your own progress
The second promise of the program, and the harder one: building a relationship with your work where growth is something you can actually notice.
Ask someone what they have gotten better at this year and watch how long the pause is. Most people can list what they delivered. Very few can say what they became.
Delivery is measured; growth is not
Your organisation has a quarterly rhythm for output and no rhythm at all for development. So the growth happens, and then it goes unrecorded, and then it stops feeling real.
- Write down the hardest problem you solved this quarter
- Write down how you would have approached it two years ago
- The gap between those two answers is the thing nobody is tracking for you
If the only record of your career is a list of shipped projects, you are measuring the least durable part of it.
This is the second promise, and the one most programs skip entirely. Becoming irreplaceable is worth very little if you never notice it happening.