Jay AcunzoI’ve always been proud of my work. For years, I described what I did with a statement that felt right:
"My mission is to collaborate with organizations to help people understand and use software better."
It was a good, honest statement. It explained what I did and how I worked. But something about it never quite fit. It focused on the process, not the outcome. It said what I did, but not why it mattered.
That thought lingered until I read Jay Acunzo’s piece on two kinds of value. He talks about:
- Apparent Value: the benefit people recognize right away, the thing that connects to what they already want.
- Discovered Value: the deeper benefit they notice later, once they’ve experienced the work.
Reading that helped me see my old statement differently. It was about discovered value—the appreciation that comes after someone works with me. But it didn’t lead with the apparent value, the outcome that matters most to users and teams.
So I rewrote it:
I help users succeed by delivering the right answers, in the right format, right when they need them.
The first part, “I help users succeed,” is the apparent value. It is clear and outcome-focused. The second part, “by delivering the right answers, in the right format, right when they need them,” hints at how I get there. It gestures toward the deeper value of good documentation without getting in the way.
That small change reshaped how I talk about my work. It shifted the focus from the mechanics of what I do to the result it creates. Now my statement felt a bit stronger than before and useful. Rewriting my mission statement using this lens was a small change, but it shifted my perspective. Clarity is not only about doing the work well; it’s about helping others see why the work matters.
It also leaves me with a question. As technical writers, how often do we describe our work through the discovered value—clarity, accuracy, usability—without first naming the apparent value that others can immediately relate to? And what might change if we led with that? I explored that in more detail in my latest PaperArrow post: Apparent and Discovered Value in Technical Writing.
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