Impact is real, but it isn't always recognised.
Sometimes the story an organisation tells about product has more to do with its scars than with the results right in front of it. Old failures echo into the present. Wins get reframed through the lens of what went wrong years earlier. Narratives stick, even when reality has shifted - and the people closest to the work feel the gap most acutely, because they can see both what's actually happening and what the story says is happening.
That mismatch is hard to sit with. You're shipping value, moving numbers, supporting teams - and still the recognition lags. It's not usually politics so much as perception: echoes of past struggles, or experience on paper, can quietly outweigh the evidence of what's working now. I've watched good people doubt themselves when their impact was real but the story hadn't caught up. Seen confidence erode not because the outcomes weren't there, but because they weren't being seen.
The cost isn't just personal. When impact and recognition don't align, it blurs motivation. It makes talented people second-guess whether to keep carrying.
What I've come to believe is that recognition isn't the only currency - but it does matter, and pretending it doesn't is its own kind of loss. Impact leaves a trace regardless: in the product getting better, in customers noticing, in the team moving faster. That evidence compounds, even when the narrative is slow to catch up. Anchoring in the evidence is what keeps you from being held hostage by the story.
The harder truth is that stories don't shift overnight. Scars shape perception and they're slow to fade. The work is still real whether or not it's immediately recognised - and sometimes the most useful thing you can do is keep making that evidence undeniable, one decision at a time.
