Daya Adeyemi found me on LinkedIn in the late fall. Thirty-five years old. First-generation Nigerian American. Magna cum laude from Harvard, 3.92 GPA. The day before graduation, her father called to congratulate her, then chastised her for missing the 4.0. At 35, she was still trying to heed his advice: be twice as good.

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The problem with that loving advice is that it is missing the crucial insight. Twice as good where, twice as good when, and twice as good in front of whom. Without those answers, being twice as good is not a strategy. It is a burden with no rest and no way out.

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She had been passed over for multiple internal positions at Helix² Health, a behavioral health technology company where she worked as a compliance and data consultant. She came through a staffing agency, so the organization benefited from her work without being accountable for her future. Her manager, Michael, had referred her for every one of those positions. But Michael was not positioned to hire her directly. Three other people held that power, and none of them knew Daya's name the way Michael did.

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Daya did not come to our first session looking for a map. She came hoping I would tell her that the system was basically fair and that pushing harder would eventually produce a different result. There was no way I was going to tell her that. I never tell my clients what they want to hear, only what they need to hear.

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So we mapped it. What the map revealed was not comforting.

 

Daya had one strong relationship inside Helix² Health: Michael. Her relationship with the three people who actually held hiring authority was effectively zero. These people had been making decisions about her future in complete ignorance of who she was. She had been working harder for Michael. The people with the power to hire her did not know she existed.

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The problem she had been trying to solve was performance. Work harder, show up more prepared, wait for Michael to refer her again. She had been answering a question nobody in power was asking. Performance answers the question of whether you are good enough. Positioning answers the question of whether the right people know you are good enough. Daya had been perfecting her performance while her positioning sat at zero.

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That is what the map does. It gives you system sight and helps you locate yourself accurately within it. You cannot close a gap you cannot see.

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