What you were actually holding
When a function comes under pressure, most high performers ask the wrong question.
Not wrong because it is irrational. Wrong because it sends energy in the wrong direction.
The question most people ask: am I still relevant?
That question generates three responses I have watched repeatedly. Some argue — making the case for the function, challenging the decision, lobbying for a different outcome. Some perform harder — delivering more, presenting more, ensuring they are seen to be delivering more. The implicit logic: if I am visibly excellent at this, the argument makes itself. Some wait — holding, watching, gathering information before committing to a direction. Strategic patience, or what looks like it.
Each response directs energy toward the external signal. The disruption. The organisation's decision. What is coming. What others are doing.
None of them ask the more useful question: what do I actually have that transfers?
I have watched this across investment research when passive strategies began displacing active ones. Across finance functions as automation arrived. Across specialist roles that technology began to absorb incrementally. In each case, the people who navigated the disruption best were not the ones who argued longest or performed hardest. They were the ones who stopped measuring the function and started taking stock of what they actually held.
In investing, when a core thesis comes under pressure, the question is not how to defend the position. It is what you were actually holding all along. Assets that were always there but underweighted because the primary thesis was performing. Ways of thinking that transfer across sectors. Relationships and capabilities that hold regardless of what the market does to a particular function.
The same assets exist in every career. Most people undercount them because they have been measuring the wrong thing.
Knowing which question is worth asking. Making decisions when information is incomplete. Holding ambiguity without rushing to a premature answer. Building relationships and trust that carry across contexts — not the relationships attached to a title, but the ones built on how you think and what you are like to work with.
These do not belong to a function. They belong to the person.
This week's ROE Letter asks: what were you actually holding? And this Thursday, Brief 2 gives paid subscribers a two-stage tool to map it.
https://substack.com/@charmianlong
What have you been calling a liability that is actually an asset in a different frame?