Being Great At What You Do Doesn't Get You Chosen

Great work can get you noticed. But it's clarity that gets you chosen. And the trick to getting there is surprisingly simple.

Growing up, my favorite book of all time was The Princess Bride. The movie is great, but the book is epic, because you get two stories at once. Westley and Buttercup, and the hard-won life observations of William Goldman sprinkled along the way.

At one point, Westley dies. And instead of moving the plot along, Goldman stops and tells a story about his mother teaching him that life isn't fair.

It stuck with me. Because it's true.

Life isn't always fair.

Watching it happen to good people still sticks in my craw. Talented people. Hardworking people. People doing genuinely great work, and still getting overlooked.

That's the unfairness I've never made peace with.

But there's a trick to getting what you deserve. And it's surprisingly simple.

Westley came back. As Miracle Max correctly pointed out — he wasn't all dead. Just mostly dead. With a little help and clarity about who he was and what he stood for, he won. Happy ending and all.

You can too. And unlike Westley, you don't need Miracle Max.

Just clarity.

Results don't speak for themselves anymore.

Not consistently. Not in the moments that decide careers, deals, or trust.

The market is louder, attention is scarcer, and decision-making is faster. Between email, Zoom meetings, social media, phones, scrolling news, texts, and TV — I'm old, I still watch TV — I'm not sure how any of us get things done, much less remember them.

Here's what all that distraction actually means: if you don't make your value clear, it doesn't get discovered later. It gets skipped.

You feel lost because you're getting lost.

In shortlists, referrals, and leadership rooms, clarity beats depth. Every time. Not because depth doesn't matter — it does. But depth that can't be repeated doesn't travel.

Think about the last time someone recommended you for an opportunity. They weren't reading from your resume. They were telling your story from memory. If that story isn't clear enough to repeat accurately, it gets edited down to "great person, really smart." And you lose the room before you ever enter it.

A storyteller buried in a spreadsheet.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow has been made into films, television shows, and stage productions well over a dozen times. Washington Irving wrote it in 1820. Two hundred years later, we're still telling it.

I've always had a soft spot for Ichabod Crane. Not the buffoon. The hero. The versions where you're genuinely rooting for him, Jeff Goldblum's nervy, brilliant outsider, Johnny Depp's quirky, tenacious investigator. The man who sees things differently than everyone around him and gets overlooked for it.

A story that clear, that human, that specific — travels. Across centuries, mediums, and generations.

Which is exactly why the moment I met George, I felt like I'd seen him before.

From stereotypical analyst to strategic architect.

I began my career as a financial analyst in a bullpen, so when I met George, it felt like going home. Super smart, passionate, built like a sincere Ichabod Crane.

George was a strong analyst at a regional firm. Strong results. Trusted internally. But he wasn't advancing. His manager finally told him: "We all know you're doing great work — but we don't know how to describe what makes you unique in leadership meetings."

His performance reviews said "strong analyst." Which is like calling Spielberg a decent cameraman.

That wasn't a performance problem. It was a clarity problem.

When I asked George about his work, he didn't talk about numbers. He talked about the stories inside the numbers — what the data was actually saying on a human level. He wasn't an analyst. He was a connector. With a guardian's instinct to protect and a leader's ability to rally people toward something bigger.

Once George could see that — and say it clearly — his signal changed overnight. Leadership meetings. Then a promotion.