The Invisibility Trap

When I was 10 years old, I saw the Ice Capades in Syracuse, New York. The Capades traveled around the U.S., performing dazzling ice skating shows with retired Olympic and national champions. The skaters were so effortless in their performance, I was sure I could skate onto the ice and, through sheer grit, skate right along with them.

What my 10-year-old brain didn't understand is that countless hours of grueling training had forged in these performers a kind of muscle memory so deep that jumps and razor-sharp spins — feats that would leave me with a broken leg on the ice — flowed from them as naturally as breathing.

All work is like this. The better you are at making things look easy, the less perceived value or effort. Having been in marketing and public relations for more than 25 years, I can write an effective press announcement in about an hour or less. This is because I wrote 75 press releases in one semester at university, and then in my career, I have written hundreds more. There is a certain cadence and rhythm to these announcements. I know what information is important to include and, most importantly, what information should remain out.

This is the Invisibility Trap.

The more skilled you become, the more invisible your effort appears — and invisibility is the enemy of advancement. High performers are routinely overlooked for promotions not because their work lacks value, but because that value goes unnoticed. Leadership either takes their consistency for granted ("they always deliver") or simply can't connect their output to anything that moves the needle on the business.

This is especially acute in marketing. The sale is the headline. It's measurable, celebratable, attributable. But the press announcement that shaped how a prospect thought about your brand six months before they ever spoke to a salesperson? That's harder to point to. The brand awareness campaign, the media relationship, the careful ad placement — these are challenging-to-measure touchpoints that set the stage for revenue.

The solution is to translate your work into business metrics that leadership cares about.

You have to connect your work to the outcomes leadership actually cares about: revenue, pipeline, market share, and cost. Not “I published 10 press announcements” or “our social post had 3,000 views”, but “this email campaign increased our enrollments by 50%.”

This is hard to do in marketing — most campaigns resist direct attribution, because great marketing works the way water shapes stone: not through a single dramatic moment, but through constant pressure over time. The brand that shows up consistently — in the right publications, in the right conversations, in the right inboxes — is the one people trust when it finally matters. Like the years of grueling training for the Ice Capades, that steady presence is the strategy.