| name | impact-narrative |
| description | This skill should be used when writing self-reviews, preparing for promotion discussions, updating stakeholders, or asking "how do I explain this to leadership?", "what's the business impact?", or "how do I write this for my perf review?". Translates technical work into leadership-ready narratives. |
| argument-hint | technical work or accomplishment to translate |
| disable-model-invocation | true |
Impact Narrative
Translate technical execution into business and leadership impact language.
Technical Work to Translate
$ARGUMENTS
Translation Methodology
The Core Problem
Engineers describe what they did. Leaders care about why it matters.
| Engineer Says | Leader Hears |
|---|
| "Refactored the auth module" | "Spent time on code cleanup" |
| "Reduced query time by 200ms" | "Made something faster" |
| "Added monitoring dashboards" | "Built some graphs" |
Your job: Bridge this gap by connecting technical work to business outcomes.
Step 1: Identify the Impact Type
Every technical contribution maps to one or more impact categories:
| Impact Type | Business Translation | Example Signals |
|---|
| Revenue | Increased sales, conversions, retention | Conversion rate, ARR, churn |
| Cost | Reduced spend, improved efficiency | Infrastructure cost, time savings |
| Risk | Prevented incidents, improved security | Uptime, vulnerability count |
| Velocity | Enabled faster shipping | Cycle time, deploy frequency |
| Scale | Supported growth without proportional cost | Users per engineer, requests per $ |
| Quality | Reduced defects, improved experience | Bug rate, NPS, support tickets |
Mapping Technical Work
| Technical Work | Primary Impact | Secondary Impact |
|---|
| Performance optimization | Cost, Scale | Revenue (if UX-facing) |
| Refactoring | Velocity | Risk, Quality |
| Security hardening | Risk | (compliance = Revenue) |
| New feature | Revenue | Velocity (if platform) |
| Monitoring/observability | Risk | Velocity |
| Documentation | Velocity | Risk |
| Test coverage | Quality, Velocity | Risk |
Step 2: Quantify the Impact
The Quantification Formula
[Action] → [Output] → [Outcome] → [Business Impact]
Example:
Optimized database queries → 200ms latency reduction →
15% conversion increase → $2M incremental ARR
Finding Numbers
| If You Don't Have... | Try This Instead |
|---|
| Revenue impact | Time saved × hourly rate × frequency |
| Cost savings | Infrastructure delta × months |
| Risk reduction | Incident cost × probability reduction |
| Velocity gain | Hours saved per sprint × team size |
Estimation Framework
When exact numbers aren't available:
Conservative estimate: [low bound] - [high bound]
Basis: [how you calculated]
Confidence: [high/medium/low]
Rule: A conservative estimate with clear basis beats no number at all.
Step 3: Frame for the Audience
Executive Audience
Formula: [Business outcome] by [doing what] resulting in [metric].
| Don't Say | Say Instead |
|---|
| "Migrated to Kubernetes" | "Reduced infrastructure costs 40% while enabling 3x scale headroom" |
| "Wrote comprehensive tests" | "Reduced production incidents by 60%, freeing team for feature work" |
| "Refactored legacy code" | "Enabled weekly releases (was monthly), accelerating time-to-market" |
Technical Leadership Audience
Formula: [Technical improvement] enabling [capability] with [evidence].
Can include more technical detail, but still lead with impact.
Peer/Team Audience
Can be more technical, but still connect to "why it matters."
Step 4: Structure the Narrative
STAR-L Framework (for accomplishments)
| Component | Content |
|---|
| Situation | Context and problem (1-2 sentences) |
| Task | Your specific responsibility |
| Action | What you did (technical, but accessible) |
| Result | Measurable outcome |
| Learning/Leverage | Reusability, what it enabled |
Problem → Solution → Impact Framework
PROBLEM: [Business pain in business terms]
SOLUTION: [What you built/changed - brief]
IMPACT: [Quantified business outcome]
Step 5: Craft Promotion-Ready Bullets
Bullet Formula
[Strong verb] + [what you did] + [scope/scale] + [measurable result]
Strong Verbs by Impact Type
| Impact Type | Verbs |
|---|
| Building | Designed, architected, built, implemented, created |
| Improving | Optimized, streamlined, accelerated, reduced, eliminated |
| Leading | Led, drove, spearheaded, championed, mentored |
| Enabling | Enabled, unblocked, established, standardized |
| Preventing | Prevented, mitigated, secured, hardened |
Before/After Examples
| Weak | Strong |
|---|
| "Worked on performance improvements" | "Reduced API latency 60% (400ms→160ms), improving conversion rate 12%" |
| "Helped with the migration project" | "Led database migration for 50M records with zero downtime, enabling $0 legacy licensing cost" |
| "Fixed bugs in the checkout flow" | "Eliminated checkout abandonment bug affecting 5% of transactions, recovering ~$500K/quarter" |
| "Added monitoring" | "Built observability platform detecting incidents 10x faster, reducing MTTR from 2hr to 12min" |
Step 6: Address Risk Reduction
Risk work is often undervalued. Make it concrete:
Risk Quantification
Risk Value = Probability × Impact × Frequency
Example:
- Incident probability: 20%/quarter → 2%/quarter
- Incident cost: $50K (engineering time + revenue loss)
- Annual value: 4 × 18% reduction × $50K = $36K prevented
Risk Narrative Patterns
| Pattern | Example |
|---|
| Prevented | "Prevented potential $X incident by implementing Y" |
| Reduced | "Reduced incident probability from X% to Y%" |
| Accelerated recovery | "Reduced MTTR from X to Y, limiting blast radius" |
| Enabled detection | "Enabled early detection of Z, preventing escalation" |
Output Format
Executive Summary
[2-3 sentences, no jargon, leads with business impact]
Impact Breakdown
| Category | Impact | Evidence |
|---|
| [type] | [outcome] | [metric/data] |
Risk Reduction
[How this work reduced business risk, quantified if possible]
Business Leverage
[How this enables future value beyond immediate impact]
Measurable Outcomes
| Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|
| [metric] | [value] | [value] | [change] |
Promotion-Ready Bullets
- [Strong verb] + [action] + [scope] + [result]
- [Strong verb] + [action] + [scope] + [result]
- [Strong verb] + [action] + [scope] + [result]
Narrative Version
[Full paragraph version suitable for self-review or stakeholder update]
Related Skills
- promotion-draft: Use when assembling a full promotion packet. Start here with impact-narrative to translate individual accomplishments, then use promotion-draft to structure them into a level-appropriate packet with scope evidence and stakeholder support.
