Value Added vs. Value Expected

Why Your Boss Doesn’t Seem Impressed: Stop Confusing Hard Work with Value

The Director of Infrastructure walks into the quarterly review, energized. He’s about to share six months of effort: a large-scale patching initiative that tackled hundreds of vulnerable, outdated servers. His team worked nights, juggled risks, and brought their infrastructure into compliance.

He lays it all out in detail.

The CIO nods. “Good work.”

Next topic.

The Director leaves the meeting deflated. He was expecting more. At least a few minutes of recognition. Maybe even a thank-you.

Instead, he got a shrug. What went wrong?

The Harsh Truth: You’re Talking About Value Expected

Here’s the problem: the Director framed his update around effort and execution—what his team did. But the CIO interpreted it as something the team should have been doing all along.

There’s a difference between value added and value expected. It’s one of the most important communication lessons professionals never get taught.

Value expected is maintaining the status quo. Fixing what’s broken. Meeting obligations.

Value added is improving how the business operates. Making things faster, cheaper, safer, or more profitable.

In the Director’s story, he essentially said: “We did our jobs.”

That’s not a reason to celebrate. That’s the minimum bar.

Worse, without context, the CIO might be wondering why the systems fell behind in the first place. Is this a clean-up of the Director’s own mess? Is this just tech debt that finally got attention?

Now contrast that with a reframed update:

“We identified that our manual patching process was causing backlog and creating risk. We automated it using a scheduler with monitoring. This reduced patching time by 80%, eliminated hundreds of vulnerabilities, and frees up 15 hours per week in staff effort. It also brings us into compliance with our internal SLAs for infrastructure hygiene.”

That’s value added.

Even better? Tie it to business impact:

“This directly reduces the risk of unplanned downtime on systems that support our revenue cycle tools. We estimate it prevents 1–2 incidents per year that historically cost the business ~$100K each.”

Now you’re talking like an executive.
Business Outcomes, Not Technical Activities

Executives don’t get excited about technical work for its own sake. They get excited about:

• Increased revenue
• Reduced costs
• Mitigated risk

If your message doesn’t touch one of those, it will fall flat. Even something as mundane as storage optimization can be reframed:

❌ “We improved the compression ratio by 10%.”

✅ “That means we’ll save roughly $80K this year on cloud storage.”

The translation matters. If you don’t speak the language of the business, don’t be surprised when leadership doesn’t engage.

Be Clear on Cost Savings vs. Cost Avoidance

Another communication trap is mixing up cost savings and cost avoidance—especially when it comes to risk.

Let’s say your sourcing team negotiates a vendor down from a proposed $5M to $4M.

If you walk into the CIO’s office and say, “We saved $1M,” they might assume they have an extra million to put toward another project.

Later, when you clarify that the budget was never actually $5M and no real dollars were freed up, you’ve lost credibility. That’s cost avoidance - not savings.

Both matter. But you have to be precise.

The same goes for security initiatives. Telling leadership, “If we get hacked, it could cost us millions,” is vague and unconvincing. Frame it instead like this:

“Industry data shows a breach in our space averages $4.5M in damages. This initiative reduces our exposure by closing X vulnerabilities, implementing Y controls, and bringing us into full compliance with our third-party risk requirements.”

Now you’re making risk real—and your mitigation efforts measurable.

How to Present Your Work Like a Leader

Before your next update to senior leadership, run your message through this checklist:

1. What’s the value added?

Don’t just report what was done. Frame what was improved, made faster, cheaper, safer, or more scalable.

2. Tie it to business outcomes.

Think dollars, time, risk reduction. If it doesn’t affect the business, why should leadership care?

3. Quantify the impact.

Use data where possible. Even estimates are better than vagueness.

4. Be honest about cost savings vs. avoidance.

Don’t erode trust by inflating the numbers. Be proud of avoidance, just call it what it is.

5. Own the origin of the issue.

If you’re cleaning up past mistakes, say so. Accountability builds credibility.

6. Keep it short.

If your update takes 10 minutes to get to the point, you’ve already lost the room.

Final Thought: If It Doesn’t Create Value, Why Are You Doing It?

One of the most important questions you can ask your team: “What business value are we delivering with this work?”

If no one has a good answer, that’s not a reason to spin a better story. It’s a reason to pause, reassess, and redirect. Your time, your team’s time, and your company’s dollars are too valuable to waste on low-impact work.