As a leader, you probably have a general sense of who is performing well on your team. You know who gets things done. Who you can rely on. Which projects seem to be going well. You may see people working hard, responding quickly, attending meetings, and taking on more.
But if someone asked you tomorrow to objectively demonstrate the value your team, a specific role, or one of your programs brings to the organization, could you?
That’s a very different question.
I learned just how important that distinction can be when a larger team I was part of found ourselves facing significant cost cutting.
Suddenly, multiple teams needed to determine which work was delivering enough value to justify its cost. Programs, projects, and roles that had existed without much question were now being looked at through a different lens.
And we didn’t have months to figure it out.
The leaders who had already established clear ways of tracking the progress, outcomes, and value of their teams and initiatives were in a much stronger position. They could point to what their teams had accomplished, show progress over time, and explain the impact their work was having on the business.
For us, making the case to continue investing in a program or role was relatively straightforward. We had the data. We could show what was working, what progress had been made, and where the business was seeing value.
For leaders who hadn’t been tracking that information, the situation was much harder. There was no quick way to go back and recreate months or years of meaningful performance data. Without it, conversations became more dependent on subjective feedback, perceptions, and how confidently someone could advocate for their work.
And I felt for those leaders. You could see the pressure they were under. At times, that showed up as panic or defensiveness as they tried to make a case for work they genuinely believed was valuable but didn’t have the evidence readily available to demonstrate it. It was painful to watch, especially knowing that the decisions being made could affect their people, programs, and projects.
I was fortunate to learn very early in my career how important it is to understand the value your work creates, and to be able to demonstrate it. This was because I was strategically placed on a team of Six Sigma Black Belts, where I learned to look at work through the lens of measurable outcomes, impact, and value. Since then, metrics and data have become a fundamental part of how I lead and evaluate work, not only to demonstrate when something is creating value, but also to recognize when it isn’t.
Could you prove your team's value tomorrow?
That experience has stuck with me because none of us knew that moment was coming. No one was tracking performance because they expected to suddenly have to defend a role, a program, or an entire team. But when the questions came, the information either existed or it didn’t.
And that’s the question I think every leader should ask themselves: If tomorrow you were asked to demonstrate the value your team is creating, could you?
Could you show what your team has accomplished? Which initiatives are working? Where you’ve improved something? What your people contribute individually? And ultimately, why the business should continue investing in the work you’re doing?
We don’t know when we’ll face budget cuts, reorganizations, leadership changes, or a sudden shift in business priorities. And hopefully, you won’t find yourself having to defend your team’s value tomorrow.
But that’s exactly why you shouldn’t wait until you need the data to start collecting it.
Performance tracking isn’t just something we do for annual reviews. It’s how we understand the value our teams are creating while they’re creating it.
As a leader, you should be able to explain what your team is responsible for, what they're accomplishing, and why that work matters to the organization at any point in time. That starts by making sure you're actually measuring performance, not just activity.
Hours worked, meetings attended, messages answered, tasks completed, or how busy someone appears can tell you something about activity. They don't necessarily tell you whether meaningful progress is happening.
Instead, start with the outcomes your team exists to create.
For each role, project, or initiative, ask:
- What are we responsible for accomplishing?
- What does success actually look like?
- How will we know we're making progress?
- What evidence can we gather over time to demonstrate the impact of this work?
The answers will look different depending on the work.
For a sales team, value may be relatively easy to quantify through revenue, pipeline, or retention. For other teams, it may be improvements in quality, time saved, problems prevented, customer outcomes, adoption, reduced risk, project delivery, or improvements in another part of the business.
Not everything valuable fits neatly into a single metric. The goal isn't to force every contribution into a KPI.
The goal is to create enough objective evidence that you aren't relying entirely on perception when someone asks, “What value is this work actually creating?”
Track the story while it's happening
One of the biggest lessons from that experience was that you can't wait until you need the evidence to start collecting it. By then, you may not have the time or ability to reconstruct it.
Build performance tracking into the way your team operates. Define outcomes early. Establish a baseline when it matters. Track meaningful progress. Capture results as they happen. And connect those results back to the priorities of the business.
That doesn't just help you manage your team better. It helps your employees understand how their work contributes. It gives you better information for coaching and development. It makes performance conversations more objective. And when circumstances change, you can advocate for your people and your work with evidence instead of opinion. Because someday you may be asked to explain why your team, a role, or a project deserves continued investment.
You shouldn't have to figure out the answer when the question is asked.
You should already know.
